A new article by Andrew Ollett, Matteo Pascucci and myself has been published OA on History and Philosophy of Logic. You can download it here. Don’t forget to let me know what you think about it!
Category Archives: logic
From unfinished starting points to new balances
The common background of all Mīmāṃsā authors is based mainly on Jaimini’s Mīmāṃsā Sūtra (henceforth PMS) and Śabara’s Bhāṣya `commentary’ thereon (henceforth ŚBh). I refer to this phase in the history of Mīmāṃsā as ”common Mīmāṃsā”, since the authority of these texts was accepted by all later Mīmāṃsā authors.
Various later Mīmāṃsā authors rethought this inherited background, in particular, on two connected issues:
- How later Mīmāṃsā authors reconsidered the classification of obligations implemented in the early Mīmāṃsā
- What later Mīmāṃsā authors considered to be the real trigger for obligations
They will implement in both cases reductionistic strategies which, however, were based on very different presuppositions. They introduced to the background Mīmāṃsā new assumptions, although these were —according to the ancient Indian étiquette— concealed as (re)interpretations of the ancient lore.
As for No. 1, the Mīmāṃsā school operates presupposing that prescriptions could enjoin:
- nitya-karman `fixed sacrifices’, to be performed throughout one’s life, such as the Agnihotra, which one needs to perform each single day
- naimittika-karman `occasional sacrifices’, to be performed only on given occasions, e.g., on the birth of a son
- kāmya-karman `elective sacrifices’, to be performed if one wishes to obtain their result, e.g., the citrā sacrifice if one desires cattle
Here one can see already how the scheme offers the chance for different interpretations, precisely according to one’s interpretation of No. 2, namely of the understanding of what is the real motivator of one’s action, as below:
| elective | specific desire |
| occasional | occasion, generic desire |
| fixed | generic occasion (being alive), generic desire |
A prescription with two goals is meaningless?
According to the Mīmāṃsā school, especially in its Bhāṭṭa sub-school, each prescription needs to have a goal, which is independently desirable. Without a goal, a prescription is purposeless and meaningless (anarthaka). Does it also mean that it must have only one goal?
Within the discussion on the need to study Mīmaṃsā, Veṅkaṭanātha discusses the prescription which would promote such duty. He discusses at length whether the injunction to learn by heart the Vedas (svādhyāyo ‘dhyetavyaḥ) could be considered responsible also for the duty to study Mīmāṃsā or whether it stops its functioning at the learning by heart of the Vedic phonemes, without the need to undertake a systematic study of its meaning, as it happens within Mīmāṃsā. This leads to further discussions about the purpose of the injunction to learn. Can it really aim only at learning by heart the phonic form of the Veda? How could this be considered to be an independently desirable goal? By contrast, grasping the meaning of the Veda could be a goal in itself, because it enables one to perform useful Vedic sacrifices. In this connection, Veṅkaṭanātha notes that learning by heart the phonemes cannot be a goal and adds a cryptic remark:
svādhyāyārthabodhayos tu bhāvyatve vidhyānarthakyaprasaṅgāt (Seśvaramīmāṃsā ad PMS 1.1.1, 1971 p. 21)
Because, if both the [learning by heart] of one’s portion of the Veda and the understanding of its meaning were the goal to be realised, the prescription would end up being purposeless
What does this mean? Is a prescription meaningless when it has two purposes?
Philosophy of action
In case you missed it, I would like to recommend a website on philosophy of action which is a great single go-to page for almost anything related to the topic. It offers links, biographies, encyclopedic entries, essays, videos and learning materials on various facets of philosophy of action. It has also a section on job vacancies and one with short interviews with scholars working on philosophy of action. It is learned and enjoyable and the same time, a great achievement.
bādha: What is it? Why did Mīmāṃsā authors spend so much time elaborating on it? Why is it interesting for us?
What is bādha?: bādha is a way of dealing with contrasting Vedic rules, so as to know what to do when they seem to clash. E.g., what shall we do when we encounter a prescription telling us to do X and then one telling us not to do X?
Maṇḍana on fixed sacrifices
The eight century philosopher Maṇḍana tried to streamline the distinction among various types of sacrifices he inherited from the Mīmāṃsā school. The Mīmāṃsā distinguishes between:
- fixed sacrifices one has to perform throughout one’s life
- occasional sacrifices one performs when the occasion arises (e.g., the birth of a son)
- elective sacrifices one performs in order to obtain a coveted result
It is also noteworthy that the auxiliary acts of fixed and occasional sacrifices can be performed “as much as one can”, whereas auxiliaries of elective sacrifices need to be performed exactly as prescribed.
The motivator of the former two groups seems to be the fact that the Veda prescribes them, whereas the motivator of the latter group seems to be the fact that one desires their result. But this is weird, given that they are enjoined by prescriptions which have a comparable form. Maṇḍana tried to find a way to have the same motivator for all. This is how he develops his argument:
- Prima facie view: The motivator can only be the fact that one desires a given result. In the case of fixed sacrifices, the result needs to be something one desires fixedly, like happiness.
- This hypothesis does not stand to reason, because the following three aspects of fixed sacrifices remain irreconcilable, namely their being fixed, their having a result and the fact that their auxiliaries needs only to be performed as much as possible. In fact, if they need to have a result, they cannot be fixed, since one would cease performing them as soon as one’s desire for them were appeased.
- Hence, the desire for the result can be the motivator for the actively undertaking of sacrifices, whereas the fear for a sanction needs to be the motivator for the not-ceasing to perform them.
- Final view: No, the above contradiction can be avoided because the fixedness is not just something one arrives at pragmatically, due to the fact that one happens to desire happiness all the time. Rather, their fixedness is prescribed in the Veda, hence it is surely not the case that it ceases. Consequently, one just needs to correctly identify a desire which never ceases, and this is the desire to eliminate accumulated bad karman. People who are currently suffering will be keen in eliminating bad karman in order to eliminate the cause of their sufferings. And people who want to achieve new goals will also want to eliminate bad karman, since they know that this could hinder them.
- Thus, it is true that all sacrifices are motivated by desire. The desire motivating fixed sacrifices never ceases and needs to be identified as the destruction of bad karman, because its fixed nature is itself prescribed by the Veda.
As often the case, the pars destruens is almost more interesting than the pars construens.
Talk on Mīmāṃsā and deontic logic in Vienna
In case you are in Vienna and you have not heard me talking about Mīmāṃsā and deontic logic yet, here is the chance to do it now (better: on Tuesday).
Teaching ethics to a machine? You need some casuistic reasoning
Marcus Arvan convincingly argues in this article that while programming AI you can produce psychopathic behaviours both if you decide not to teach any moral target AND if you decide to teach moral targets.
Instead, you need to teach your machine some flexibility. Thus, I would argue, moral reasoning used for machines needs to be adjusted through a large set of cases and through rules dealing with specific cases. Can the Mīmāṃsā case-based application of rules help in such cases?
Siddha and sādhya in Viśiṣṭādvaitavedānta
Has anyone read the Bhagavadguṇadarpaṇa?
At the beginning of his Seśvaramīmāṃsā, Veṅkaṭanātha tries to synthetise what he (and Rāmānuja) calls Pūrva and Uttara Mīmāṃsā, with the further addition of the Devatā Mīmāṃsā.
In this connection he needs to address an apparent divergence, namely that between the siddha and sādhya interpretation of the Veda. In other words: Does the Veda always convey something to be done? Or does it always convey something established? The unity of the three Mīmāṃsās and of the Veda as their basis does not allow for a different interpretation of the statements in the Upaniṣads and in the Brāhmaṇas.
Veṅkaṭanātha cites Rāmānuja in order to show that there is no real opposition and that the sādhya-aspect is parasitical upon a siddha one. The example he reuses from Rāmānuja is that of taking action in regard to a hidden treasure: One starts acting only after having known that the treasure is really there. Thus, the sādhya element (taking action) depends on the siddha one (the acquired cognition of something existing).
At this point he also quotes from anoter Vaiṣṇava author, namely Parāśara Bhaṭṭa. His Bhagavadguṇadarpaṇa is a commmentary on the Viṣṇusahasranāma and here comes the quote:
Maṇḍana on the Śyena
We already discussed (here, on November the 30th 2017) Jayanta’s position on the Śyena sacrifice. In this post we will observe that Jayanta was in fact inspired by Maṇḍana and, perhaps, by Maṇḍana’s commentator Vācaspati (it is still unsure whether Vācaspati was inspired by Jayanta or the other way around).
According to Maṇḍana, there are two kinds of Vedic prescriptions, the ones regarding the person (puruṣārtha) and the ones regarding the sacrifice (kratvartha).
In the case of puruṣārtha actions, the Vedic prescriptions do not motivate people to undertake them, since one would undertake them anyway because thery lead to happiness (prīti).
Rather, the Vedic prescriptions motivate people to undertake these actions with a certain set of auxiliaries. Similarly, in the case of the Śyena, the prescription about it does not promote it, since it is in itself puruṣārtha. The Śyena remains an anartha. (Vidhiviveka, p. 279, Goswami edition)
(ef and Sudipta Munsi)