Category Archives: ontology

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Sarvagatatva in Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika: ātman, aether and materiality (mūrtatva)

The Sanskrit philosophical school called Vaiśeṣika is the one most directly dealing with ontology. Its fundamental text is the Vaiśeṣikasūtra, which is commented upon by Prāśastapada in the Pādarthadharmasaṅgraha (from now one PDhS) (the following is a summary of Padārthadharmasaṅgraha ad 8.7).

The school distinguishes substances and qualities. The first group includes four types of atoms (earth, water, fire, air) and then aether, time, space, ātmans and internal organs (manas). The latter are needed as a separate category, because they are point-sized and therefore not made of atoms, unlike the external sense faculties.
Among the 17 qualities, it recognises parimāṇa or `dimension’. This encompasses at first two possibilities, namely atomic (aṇu), or extended (mahat). The former covers partless entities that have allegedly no spatial dimension, like points in Euclidean geometry and atoms themselves. These are considered to be without extension and permanent through time (nitya). The latter is subdivided into mahat and paramahat. The first covers all objects one encounters in normal life, from triads of atoms (imagined to be of the size of a particle of dust, the first level of atomic structure to be extended) to the biggest mountain. These entities have parts and extension and have an origin and an end in time. The second subdivision covers special substances, listed as ākāśa `aether’, space, time and ātmans, which need to be imagined to be present at each location. Such entities are also imagined to be nitya, that is permanent through time. In other words, they are present at each location of time and space.
The above also implies that entities considered to be permanent through time can only be either atomic or all-pervasive.

However, space, time, aether and selves (ātman) are present at all locations in different ways.

About aether, to begin with, texts like Jayanta’s Nyāyamañjarī say that it needs to be accepted as a fifth substance in order to justify the diffusion of sound across multiple media. Texts of the Vaiśeṣika school, and of the allied school of Nyāya specify that aether does not occupy all locations, but rather is in contact with each individual atom):

[The aether’s] all-pervasiveness consists in the fact that it is in contact with each corporal (mūrta) substance.
(sarvamūrtadravyasaṃyogitvam vibhutvam (Tarkasaṃgrahadīpikā ad 14).)

This means that aether does not pervade atoms, but is in contact (saṃyoga) with each one of them.

This point is already explicit in the allied school of Nyāya, the Nyāyabhāṣya, and is needed because of the point-sized nature of atoms. If these were pervaded by aether, then they would have parts, and thus not be permanent. These undesired consequences are examined in the following:

This is impossible, because of the penetration through aether || NS 4.2.18 ||

It is impossible for an atom [to be] partless and permanent. Why? Because of the penetration through ether, that is, because an atom, if it were permeated, that is `penetrated’ by aether, within and outside, then, because of this penetration it would have parts, and due to having parts it would be impermanent.

Or, the aether is not all-located} || 4.2.19 ||

Alternatively, we don’t accept that. There is no aether within the atoms and therefore aether ends up not being all-located

(ākāśavyatibhedāt tadanupapattiḥ || 4.2.18 ||
tasyāṇor niravayasya nityasyānupapattiḥ. kasmāt. ākāśavyatibhedāt. antarbahiścāṇur ākāśena samāviṣṭo vyatibhinno vyatibhedāt sāvayavaḥ sāvayavatvād anitya iti.
ākāśāsarvagatatvaṃ vā || 4.2.19 ||
athaitan neṣyate paramāṇor antar nāsty ākāśam ity asarvagatatvaṃ prasajyeta iti.)

Aether is postulated as a substrate of sound (which can move through solids, liquids and air, thus proving that it has neither earth, nor water, nor air as substrate). Thus, it needs to be unitary (multiple aethers would not explain the propagation of sound, sound would stop at the end of the respective aether) and it needs to be present at all locations (for the same reason). More in detail: Only because of the unitary nature of aether is it possible for sound to travel between different loci. Otherwise, one would have to posit some mechanism to explain how the sound encountered in one aether travels to another one. Instead, the simpler solution is to posit that aether is necessarily both single (eka) and present at all locations (vibhu).

As for ātman, the self is by definition permanent (otherwise, no afterlife nor cycle of rebirths would be possible). It cannot be atomic, though, because the ātman is the principle of awareness and people become aware of things potentially everywhere. The fact that they don’t become perceptually aware of things being, e.g., behind a wall, by contrast, is only due to the fact that the ātman needs to be in touch (via the internal sense organ, manas, which is believed to be atomic and to move quickly from one to the other sense-faculty) to the sense faculties (indriya) in order for perceptual awareness to take place. Yogins are able to perceive things their bodies are not in contact with because their ātmans are omnipresent, like our ātman, and are able, unlike our ātman, to connect with other bodies’ sense faculties.
Within Sanskrit philosophy, Jaina philosophers suggested that the ātman is co-extensive with the body, since it can experience whatever the body can experience. Vaiśeṣika and other non-Jaina authors disagree, because this would lead to the absurd consequence of an ātman changing in size through one’s life.

A further element to be taken into account with regard to theories of location, and in particular while adjudicating whether they are about occupation or non-occupation is materiality.
Occupation of space seems to occur only from the level of atomic triads up to big, but not all-located, objects. Atoms are said to be mūrta and mūrta is usually translated as `material’, but taken in isolations, atom do not have parts and are only point-sized. In this sense, their being mūrta refers more about their being fundamental for material entities, rather than being material if taken in isolation. The distinction is theoretically relevant, but less evident at the pragmatic level, given that atoms are never found in isolation. Being mūrta is attributed to atoms of the four elements (not to aether) as well as to the inner sense organ (Nyāyakośa, s.v.), but not to ātman neither to aether.

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Solipsism in Sanskrit philosophy: Preliminary thoughts—UPDATED

How do Sanskrit philosophers deal with solipsism?

Some Buddhist epistemologists just accepted it, as a necessary consequence of their idealism. The example of Ratnakīrti’s “Rejection of the existence of other continuous sequences [of causes and effects leading to the illusion of a separate mind]” comes to mind. In my opinion, Ratnakīrti has a specially strong argument in favour of his view, namely: The Buddhist epistemological school denies the ultimate mind-independent existence of external objects. But once one accepts that, and thus accepts idealism, how can one safeguard intersubjectivity? If there is no reality other than our representations, how comes we can understand each other? Would it not be much more economical to imagine that there is only one representation?

Others rejected it based on analogy (basically: I am a mind, i.e., a continuous sequence of causes and effects; other people behaving similarly must be a mind too). The first and main example of this reasoning is Dharmakīrti’s “Establishment of the existence of other continuous sequences” (santānāntarasiddhi).

The Pratyabhijñā and the Advaita Vedānta schools are ultimately forms of solipsism. In the former case, there is only Śiva’s mind, and the appearance of other minds is part of his līlā ‘playful activity’. In the latter (at least after Śaṅkara), there is only brahman, and the appearance of other minds is due to māyā. What is the different explanatory power of līlā vs māyā? That māyā’s ontology is hard to explain, whereas once one has committed to the existence of a personal God, with Their likes and dislikes, then līlā is a perfectly acceptable solution. Thus, AV is light on the Absolute’s ontology, but implies a leap of faith as for māyā, whereas the opposite is the case for the Pratyabhijñā school.

What about the realist schools? Some of them established the existence of the self based on aham-pratyaya, i.e., our own perception of ourselves as an ‘I’ (so the Mīmāṃsā school). Some thinkers within Nyāya (like Jayanta) used inference to establish the existence of the self.

Is this enough to establish the existence of other selves?

Yes, in the case of Mīmāṃsā, because other minds seem prima facie to exist and due to svataḥ prāmāṇya (intrinsic validity) such prima facie view should be held unless and until the opposite is proven.

Yes, according to Jayanta, because other selves can be inferred just like the own self is.

Realistic Vedāntic schools will rely on either the Mīmāṃsā or the Nyāya paradigm. Thus, the question at this point will rather be: What is consciousness like, if one subscribes to this or the other school?

Some schools (like Pratyabhijñā, Yoga…) claim that we can have direct access to other minds, through yogipratyakṣa or intellectual intuition. However, yogipratyakṣa is possible only to some exceptional individuals. Moreover, Pratyabhijñā thinkers like Utpaladeva think that even this is not an evidence of the existence of separate other minds.

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Thoughts on Arindam Chakrabarti’s Realisms Interlinked — 2

Almost all the chapters I will deal with in this second post (“Part 1″ in the book) are about a defence of objects. The next bunch of chapters will be about a defence of subjects and the last one will be about “other subjects”, meaning not just “other stuff” but also literally “other subjects”, like the ‘you’.

Basic thesis:
Arindam does not keep his card hidden. He speaks of a “suicidal movement of our thought about reality” “sloping from Naïve-realism to Absolute Skepticism through Idealism”, a suicidal movement that needs to be “blocked” (p. 75). It can be blocked, Arindam says, at three levels: 1. at a very early level, like Nyāya did (and Arindam wants to do), 2. by embracing some form of idealism while rejecting skepticism, 3. by embracing skepticism at the empirical level, but accepting the possibility of a mystical insight.

Methodology:
philosophia perennis: p. 101: ” ‘Contemporary; is a slippery word. Whether in language or in thought, those who worship what is current tend to ignore the timeless universal structures of human experience, thinking, and speech”
interaction with sources: ND asked in a meeting whether Arindam could have written the book by just “omitting the footnotes”, like Jan Westerhoff did with Madhyamaka philosophy. Now, my impression is that this is ethically unfair BUT ALSO impossible for Arindam’s book, since this is not based on a single argument (so that you can “delete” the footnotes), but rather on a dialogue among positions. It emerges from a tea-time-like conversation among colleagues in which it would be impossible to say “One might say that…” unless you specified which colleague is speaking, because their being a positivist or an idealist sheds a different light on their question. See, on this point, Arindam’s own perception of his contribution (p. 114): “In the context of the insightful infightings of the contemporary Western philosophers of language and the medieval Indian thinkers, I put forward my own conclusion about the meaning and reference of “I”.” We will see an example of this way of arguing already in chapter 6.

Defence of objects:
The main purpose of the first chapters is to go against idealism. Arindam presupposes that we can talk about “idealism” in general, as an over-arching category applicable to Berkeley, Śaṅkara and Yogācāra (and many more). However, behind this general framework, his discussions are more to-the-ground and focus on one specific speaker at a time.

Chapter 6 (pp. 65–75) focuses on how other idealists defeated idealism. It starts with 4 points in favour of idealism (in its Yogācāra fashion), namely:

  • 1. mid-sized objects lead to antinomies because they have parts (this will be refuted through the assumption of samavāya, p. 87);
  • 2. an object cannot be at the same time the cause of cognition and the thing featured in it. Atoms, for instance, cause the cognition, but don’t feature in it. Chairs etc. feature in the cognition, but don’t produce it.
  • 3. the well-known sahopalambhaniyama (discussed in a previous post).
  • 4. the argument from dreams shows that it is possible to experience objects without their mind-independent existence (this will be the topic of chapter 8).

Then, Arindam moves to Śaṅkara’s refutation of the Yogācāra position. For instance, how can something inner and mental *appear as* external, if we have never encountered anything external to begin with? How could we feign the external? (This is connected with the dream argument, as we will see below). Arindam suggests that Kant would be less vulnerable to this objection, since he could say that there is a specific function of our cognitive apparatus responsible for projecting things as external.

Arindam here reads Śaṅkara (and Kant) as accusing the Yogācāra of confusing the “phenomenal with the illusory” and he reads therefore Kant as an idealist who confutes idealism through the introduction of phenomena.
Here, by the way, Arindam attacks the Yogācāra because of a lack of distinction between saṃvṛtisat `conventionally real’ AND other forms of unreality. One should have been more nuanced, he thinks, in distinguishing between 1. what is phenomenal, 2. what is absolutely impossible (triangular flavours driving furiously) and 3. what is the result of illusions, dreams and illusions error. (By the way, Arindam’s first book was on absence, so let us consider him an expert here).

Arindam uses again Kant as an idealist defeating idealism when he uses him in order to justify the possibility of permanence of objects over time, given that we perceive ourselves as changing over times, something must remain stable so as to appreciate the change. But time is the form of our inner experience, so that no permanent element can be detected inside, unless through a comparison with something outside. (Arindam himself is not completely convinced by this argument, p. 73).

Chapter 7 focuses again on the sahopalambhaniyama problem and replies that “difference […] tolerates relatedness” (p. 79). It is true that we access objects through the mind, but this does not mean that they don’t exist also independently of it. Arindam takes advantage here of a characteristic of the English language (and of many others) and insists on paying attention to the `of’ when we speak of a `cognition *of* blue’: “I cannot experience or imagine a tree unless it is made as an object of some kind of awareness, but there is as much difference between the tree and my awareness of the tree as there is between the tree and its roots and branches. Inseparability does not mean identity” (p. 90).
It is a priori impossible to demonstrate the existence of uncognised things, but the very fact that everything is knowledge-accessible, says Arindam, presupposes that it really existed prior and independently of being cognised (p. 81). As suggested in a previous post, this thesis is closely linked with the one about how cognitions are never self-aware.
This chapter also gives Arindam a chance to discuss how he sees Nyāya realism. The objective world of Nyāya is a “world for the self”, that exists to enable selves to suffer and enjoy, thus different from the Cartesian dualism (where selves don’t really interact with matter) or from the world of imperceptible quarks in contemporary physics (p. 81).

Chapter 8 is about the Dream argument: How can we recognise something as a dream unless we wake up?

Chapter 9 on the Accusative is a good chance to discuss Arindam’s use of linguistic arguments. For some decades people working on Sanskrit philosophy thought that the linguistic turn was going to be the way Sanskrit philosophy could finally be vindicated. After all, did not Sanskrit philosophers understand ahead of time that the only way to access reality is via cognitions and that cognitions are inherently linguistics? Thus, analysing language is the best approach to reality after all. This dream was somehow scattered when philosophy of language became less popular in Anglo-Analytic philosophy. Still, Arindam has already explained that following contemporary fashions is not the only thing that counts. Hence, he could nonetheless write a fascinating chapter (chapter 10) on the reference of `I’, moving from Wittgenstein to Abhinavagupta. The main problem is what is the reference of `I’ (is it the ahaṅkāra? The ātman? Is it an empty term, because the very fact that it cannot go wrong means it cannot be correct either).

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Thoughts on Realisms interlinked by Arindam Chakrabarti 1/

Author: A philosopher of two worlds, pupil of amazing scholars of Nyāya and of Analytic philosophy, completely accomplished in both worlds in a way which is hard to repeat

—Book: It puts together Arindam’s research of 27 years. Thus, it is a collection of articles, but very well edited together, possibly because they deal with a topic very much at the heart of Arindam’s global philosophical enterprise, one that I am going to discuss below.

—Target reader: A Mark Siderits, i.e., someone who is completely committed to the project of “fusion philosophy” (more on that below), who is able to roam around Sanskrit texts and is committed to Anglo-Analytic philosophy AND to its confidence in neurosciences. Thus, this target reader, unlike in Sanskrit philosophy, demolishes the idea of a stable unified subject, but believes in the world of atoms and mind-independent objects of hard sciences. This point is crucial to explain why Arindam often explains how denying the subject *will* lead to denial of the object as well, rather than explaining that denying the object will lead to denying the subject (as it would happen in Sanskrit philosophy and European one).

—Topic: Arindam is an outspoken realist. He grounds his realism in the self-evident reality of hard sciences, based on which we cannot be illusionists nor idealists. However, he also claims that one cannot be a realist about objects without being also a realist about subjects AND even about universals and relations (!). So, basically if you want to be a good scientist, you are committed to defend also a robust understanding of the subject and you can’t avoid defending also universals and relations, such as inherence. Once you open the door a little bit and allow for the idealism / not realism about universals, you WILL UNAVOIDABLY end up undermining the whole realist enterprise.

—Methodology: I spoke already about “fusion philosophy”. This is not comparative philosophy, insofar as what Arindam does is not a descriptive comparison nor a detached description of two or more comparable points of view. Rather, he has a problem he cares about (realism) and uses the best possible arguments to drive his point home. And he finds the best arguments in Nyāya and in contemporary anglo-analytic philosophy, with some addition of neuro-sciences, but also of other philosophical traditions. They are anyway all subservient to finding the truth. There is no interest in being complete or exhaustive, nor in exploring different points of view as a good thing in itself. This also explains why Arindam does surprisingly little to justify his methodology and espouses some possibly naïve terminological choices, such as speaking of “Indian vs Western philosophy”. 

—”Object”: not just atoms, but also mid-sized objects, like the ones we encounter every day, chairs etc. Here the key is its persistence through time (via re-identificability at different moments of time) of the object, which is invariably linked to the persistence through time of the subject.

—”Subject”: Which subject is Arindam defending? One that is the complex knower of Sanskrit philosophy, i.e., the unified knower who is able to perceive with different sense faculties and remember and is then able to desire and act based on what they cognised. Against Hume and the Buddhist and neuro-scientific idea that it is enough to have unrelated sensations + a superimposed sense of their unity.

—”Universals”: You cannot be a realist, says Arindam, unless you are also a realist about universals. You need universals to recognise things as tokens of a certain type. And, since Arindam is the intelligent crazy person he is, he adds a great example: A piece of music exists independently of its specific realisation. Similarly, a universal exists independently of its specific instantiations. Now, you might say that it’s hard to be a realist about universals, since these are products of our mind. No, replies Arindam basing himself on P.K. Sen. If you think that you can’t perceive universals, it means that you have a wrong theory of perception. He therefore welcomes conceptual perception and expert perception as evidences for the perceptibility of universals.

—”Properties”: This includes also universals and what Sanskrit philosophers call upādhis ‘pseudo-universals’, such as generalisations

—Indefinability of truth: Arindam defends the Nyāya precept according to which it is possible to uphold simultaneously these two things:

A. Everything that exists is *in principle* knowable

B. Not everything that is knowable is known at any point of time

Why is this important? Because if existence and knowability are invariably connected, then Dharmakīrti’s argument about the sahopalambhaniyama is doomed to failure.

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Inert and alive substances: Alternative classifications in Veṅkaṭanātha

In the Nyāyasiddhāñjana and the Nyāyapariśuddhi, Veṅkaṭanātha discusses some fundamental ontological topics in order to distinguish his positions from the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika position.

The Nyāyasūtra proposes a fundamental division of realities into dravya ‘substances’, guṇa ‘qualities’, and karman ‘actions’,1 with the former as the substrate of the latter two. This leads to two difficulties for Veṅkaṭanātha’s agenda. On the one hand, the radical distinction between substance and attribute means that Nyāya authors imagine liberation to be the end of the connection of the ātman ‘self’ to all attributes, from sufferance to consciousness. By contrast, Veṅkaṭanātha, would never accept consciousness to be separated from the individual soul and even less from God. The other difficulty regards the theology of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta. Since the beginnings of Pañcarātra, one of its chief doctrines has been that of the manifestations (vibhūti) of Viṣṇu, which are dependent on Him but co-eternal with Him and in this sense are unexplainable according to the division of substances into eternal and transient.

To that, Veṅkaṭanātha opposes more than one classification, so that it is clear that Veṅkaṭanātha’s main point is addressing the above-mentioned problems with the Nyāya ontology, rather than establishing in full detail a distinct ontology. For an instance of alternative classifications see, e.g., Nyāyasiddhāñjana, jaḍadravyapariccheda:

dvedhā jaḍājaḍatayā pratyak taditaratayāpi vā dravyam | ṣoḍhā triguṇānehojīveśvarabhogabhūtimatibhedāt || dhīkālabhogabhūtīravivakṣitvā guṇādirūpatvāt | jīvātmeśabhidārthaṃ tredhā tattvaṃ viviñcate kecit || (Nyayasiddhanjana 1966, p. 33).

“Substance is of two types, [according to this classification:] inert or alive, or [according to this other classification:] innerly [luminous] or what is its opposite. [Furthermore,] it is of six types, according to the division in [natura naturans having] three qualities, time (anehas) individual souls, God, the ground for [God’s] enjoyment (bhogabhūti) and [His] cognition. Some distinguish reality as of three types, in order to distinguish the Lord, the individual soul, and the self (as the material cause of the universe) because they do not want to include (lit. express) cognition, time and the ground for [God’s] enjoyment, since these have the nature of qualities”.

Bhogabhūti must mean, out of context, the same as vibhūti. My interpretation of ātman in jīvātmeśabhidartham is also based on context. Alternative suggestions are, as usual, welcome!

  1. There are in fact further categories, namely sāmānya ‘universal’, viśeṣa ‘individual’, and samavāya ‘inherence’. See for the fact that these latter categories have been added at a later stage of the evolution of the school. The Navya Nyāya school adds also abhāva to the categories. (see Eli Franco and Karin Preisendanz, “Nyāya-Vaiśeịṣika”, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy)↩︎

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Does anything exist according to Advaita Vedānta?

Not substances, not qualities, perhaps not even the brahman?

The authors of Advaita Vedānta maintain that God, the impersonal brahman, is the only reality and that each hint of dualism or pluralism is due to māyā ‘illusion’. In other words, the absolute, the brahman, is the only reality and everything else (including the material world and the conscious beings within it) only seems to exist, due to māyā, but is not ultimately real. Due to the the Advaita Vedānta’s absolute monism, the brahman cannot have any quality, as any quality would introduce a duality in the singular nature of the brahman. Thus, given that the brahman is the only reality and that it is absolutely simple (since any complexity would entail plurality) it cannot contain any intentional knowledge*, since any such knowledge would be necessary articulated according to the distinction between a knowing subject and the objects it knows and exactly such distinction is considered illusory by Advaita Vedānta authors.

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A basic introduction to Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta

(I have been asked to write a short introduction to Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta and would like to test it on you, dear readers. Any comment or criticism would be more than welcome!)

In its full-fledged form, the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta (henceforth VV) is a Vedāntic school, thus one which accepts the authority of the Upaniṣads, the Brahmasūtra and the Bhagavadgītā and which recognises a form of God as brahman (on the various ways of understanding God in India, see here). The full-fledged VV accepts also further groups of texts, namely on the one hand the Pañcarātra (a group of Vaiṣṇava texts prescribing personal and temple rituals, see Leach 2012, and, here) and on the other the Tamil devotional poems collected in the Divyaprabandham.

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Omniscience and realism

Marginal notes about a workshop in Hawai'i

A non-intelligible entity cannot be conceived to exist. But, if the world needs to be known in order to exist, we need to postulate a non-partial perspective out of which it can be known. Since the perspectives of all human beings (as well as those of other animals, I would add) are necessarily partial and cannot be reconciled (how could one reconcile our perspective of the world with that of a bat?), this perspective needs to be God.

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The subject as knower and doer in Yāmuna’s Ātmasiddhi

Again on the ontology of qualities and substances

Opponents coming from the Advaita field figure often in Yāmuna’s Ātmasiddhi, which shows that even before Rāmānuja Vaiṣṇava authors were taking seriously the challenge of Advaita. Even more interesting is the way Yāmuna answers to them. Let us see some examples concerning the concept of self (ātman):

[Obj.:] But the fact of being a cogniser is the fact of performing the action of cognising and this implies modifications and is (typical of) insentient things and belongs to the sense of Ego.

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Viśiṣṭādvaita and Nyāya on qualities UPDATED

Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta authors claim that the whole world is made of the brahman and that everything else is nothing but a qualification of it/Him.

This philosophical-theological concept, it will be immediately evident, crashes against the (Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika) idea of a rigidly divided ontology, with substances being altogether different from qualities. In other words, the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika world if seen from outside is similar to the world of today’s folk ontology, the one influenced by scientism, while its structure resembles the one of Aristotle’s ontology.