Category Archives: Nyāya

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Again on ahampratyaya in Kumārila (using Watson 2010 and 2020)

My previous post on Kumārila’s cognition of the I (here: https://elisafreschi.com/2026/02/15/does-kumarila-accept-i-cognition-as-a-kind-of-perception/) was part of an ongoing conversation with Alex Watson, who patiently prompted me to read or re-read (respectively) his 2010 (“Bhaṭṭa Rāmakaṇṭha’s Elaboration of Self-Awareness (svasaṃvedana)…”) and 2020 (“Four Mīmāṃsā views concerning the self”) articles. They make many very important points and put together most of the sources we need, besides being thorough in reconstructing the arguments and their history. Reading the articles made me think about a few more points:

Re. the nature of ahampratyaya: It is clear that scholars after Kumārila have been having the same debates we are having and have concluded that ahampratyaya must be a form of mānasapratyakṣa. They are much more explicit than Kumārila about it, which seems to show that they sensed the problem and addressed it.

In the 2010 article (the one on Rāmakaṇṭha), Watson wonders whether the ahampratyayas of everyone among us would be the same. He mentions (and excludes) the cases of “I am thin”, which Kumārila explicitly refutes. I think that Kumārila favours a “thick” view of the subject, so that ahampratyayas would be distinguishable, even though not through the characteristics of the bodies attached to them.

In the same article Watson also repeats that in ahampratyaya the self figures as the object, quoting sources later than Kumārila (see below on why this is relevant). 

In the 2020 article (Four views…) Watson imagines ahampratyaya to work like the Naiyāyika anuvyavasāya, namely as a temporally subsequent moment, e.g.:
I know a pot—>I know that *I* knew a pot (=>I know that I must have *known* the pot).
The last step is clearly not needed, Kumārila says that we only occasionally perform the last arthāpatti. I am also not sure about its specific chronology, especially because I am not sure about the chronological separation of ahampratyaya. Do we have any evidence that Kumārila thought of it as occurring later? I have to admit that so far I thought that ahampratyaya was the I’s recognition of itself qua knower while it knows. If it were to occur after the cognition, it would have a viṣaya which is no longer available and thus violate the satsamprayoga ‘connection with something present’ requirement of PMS 1.1.4, which is meant to exclude yogic perception, but also Buddhist types of mānasapratyakṣa. Or at least so I thought. (Buddhists allow for that, given that they believe in momentariness and hence stricto sensu for them every cognition is always about a previous moment; Naiyāyikas don’t have this problem because cognitions are qualities of the self, and hence they are perceptible like other qualities) But how could “my” version work? I can imagine two possibilities:

  1. We would need to have two cognitions happening simultaneously, namely that of the pot and that of the aham. This would be impossible for Naiyāyikas, since the manas cannot work simultaneously for both cognitions. Mīmāṃsā authors are divided among the ones who claim that manas is atomic and can therefore only join the ātman to one sense-faculty at a time and the ones who claim that it is vibhu and thus allow for simultaneous perceptions (yugapajjnānutpattir iṣṭaiva, Gāgābhaṭṭa p. 16). I wonder whether this would be similar to the case of apprehending at the same time the piṇḍa, its jāti, its qualities etc. I also need more homework to understand which of the two views is Kumārila’s.
  2. Alternatively, we could imagine that perception is a temporally extended process for Kumārila (see his discussion of the move from nirvikalpa to savikalpa pratyakṣa). If this is the case, while I look at the pot I could first know it indistinctly (nirvikalpa stage), then as a pot etc. (savikalpa stage). Perhaps the acknowledgement that it’s me knowing it could take place within this temporal extension? The only difference with the Naiyāyika-anuvyavasāya-like hypothesis would be that the object would not be a preceding cognition (which violates PMS 1.1.4) but still the same I that is currently cognising the pot.

Sucarita’s commentary in Watson 2020, fn. 28 suggests that the ātman grasps itself through a dharma of itself, being cognition, hence there is not the same fault of double use of the same thing as in the Buddhists’ svasaṃvedana, because the grasper is only the cognition and the grasped is only the self (whereas for the Buddhists the same awareness is grasper and grasped). It is also noteworthy here that Kumārila explicitly denies any form of self-illumination by the cognition.

By the way, one may wonder whether this temporal synchronicity between perception and its object would not be violated also in the case of recognition. Mīmāṃsā authors explicitly say that recognition (e.g. “This person is Devadatta!”) is made of perception (“This” person I am seeing) and memory (the “Devadatta” I saw in the past and am now remembering). But I have already discussed that ahampratyaya is not always a case of recognition.

Watson 2020 is also very relevant for the identification of the forth view, attributed to Prabhākara, and its phenomenological character (with the ātman being neither pratyakṣa nor parokṣa, fn. 44) and has helpful footnotes on Śālikanātha’s understanding of Kumārila’s view.

Watson 2010, pp. 303—310, is key on ahampratyaya vs. svasaṃvedana, and how we might be aware of the ‘I’ without being aware of the cognition it is undertaking when we are aware that “*I* know”.

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Cognition of the self

How does one know about the self, according to the three main schools discussed in my last post?

Buddhist Epistemological School (Dharmakīrti): the self does not exist. The only thing that exists is a stream (santāna) of causally linked momentary cognitions. Cognitions are self-aware of themselves qua cognitions (svasaṃvedana). This is not contradictory, because each cognition has a perceiver and a perceived aspect (grāhaka and grāhya-ākāra respectively).
Nyāya: the self is known only through inference (Vātsyāyana, Jayanta); it is known also through perception (Uddyotakara, Udayana)*
Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā (Kumārila): we have direct access to our self through ahampratyaya `cognition of the I’. No need to infer it, since perception trumps inference and Mīmāṃsā authors require novelty as a criterion for knowledge, so that repeating what is already known through ahampratyaya would not count as knowledge.

The first Nyāya position might lead to problems if connected with the acceptance of yogic perception. Yogins can indeed perceive the self, according to all Naiyāyikas. Why not all other beings, given that perception requires a conjunction of self+manas+sense faculties, that the self is pervasive (vibhu) and that spatial limits are not needed for perception, as shown by the case of absence? Jayanta explains that the self is partless and that a partless thing cannot simultaneously be perceiver and perceived (cf. Kumārila’s argument against the Buddhist idea of cognitions’ having a perceiver and a perceived aspect and Kumārila’s claiming that this does not apply to the self, which is complex and not partless).

The Mīmāṃsā position requires the joint work of intrinsic validity and falsification: some I-cognitions are not about the ātman, since they are indeed falsified (e.g., “I am thin”, which only refers to the body).
Other I-cognitions are not, e.g., cognising ourselves qua knowers and recognising ourselves as the same knower who knew something in the past.

*I am grateful to Alex Watson for discussing the topic with me per email, on top of his decades of work on the topic!

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Intro to Sanskrit philosophy

Background: This year I taught again a class on Sanskrit philosophy (for the first time since 2021). I only had 12 meetings, of three hours each, hence I had do made drastic choices. The following is the result of these choices (alternative choices could have been possible, e.g., focusing on the Upaniṣads and their commentaries). Comments, as usual welcome!

There is a time within Sanskrit philosophy, approximately around 500 to 1000 CE, without which all later discussions do not make sense (whereas one can understand later discussions without referring to, e.g., the Brāhmaṇas, the Pāli canon etc.).
I am thinking of this core of Sanskrit philosophy as the period of time in which philosophers interacted with each other in a dialectical way, learning from each other and being compelled by each other’s points. In other words, as the time in which philosophy was constrained by the need to give reasons for each claim. In this sense, I am not focusing on the Pāli Canon or on the Upaniṣads.

At the core of this period lies the interaction between three schools, namely Mīmāṃsā, Nyāya and Buddhist epistemological school. No matter the topic, the interaction among these three is always at the center and always needs to be taken into account. According to the various topics, further schools might need to be taken into account. For instance, discussions about atomism will need to take into account the Vaiśeṣika school, discussions about language need to take into account the Vyākaraṇa school.

At the center of this core moment are discussions about epistemology and philosophy of language. It is interesting to note that ontology does not necessarily logically precede epistemology and that the opposite can be the case, especially in the case of Mīmāṃsā. This is particularly evident in the case of discussions about prāmāṇya `validity’.

Sanskrit philosophy developed through debates among thinkers commenting and responding to each other. In this way, they showed that ‘novelty’ is overestimated as a criterion to assess philosophical value and its consistent presence among the criteria reviewers of grants and projects are asked to assess is more the result of a fashion than of inner-philosophical reasons.

This does not mean that individual authors did not deliver substantial contribution to philosophy. Philosophy develops through its history and its history is made by individual thinkers. Nonetheless, these individual thinkers contribute under the garb of a school, downplaying their disagreements with their predecessors and often enveloping them within a commentary on a predecessor’s text, which is meant not just to explain it, but also to enfold all its potential meaning. Some scholars did move from one school to the other (e.g., possibly Vasubandhu or Maṇḍana), others just introduced in one school the elements of the other school they more strongly agreed with (e.g., Jayanta).

Key authors to be kept in mind:
• Dignāga (Buddhist epistemological school), introduced the threefold check, later accepted by all thinkers
• Kumārila (Mīmāṃsā), introduced the concept of intrinsic validity, explained that cognitions are not self-aware, challenged the Dignāga framework, systematised the discussions about absence and the other sources of knowledge (found already in his predecessor, Śabara).
• Dharmakīrti (Buddhist epistemological school), younger contemporary of Kumārila, adjusted the apoha theory and several other epistemological points in the light of Kumārila’s cricitism.
• Jayanta (Nyāya), modified the Nyāya epistemology in the light of Kumārila’s criticism, explained that cognitions are intrinsically doubtful, unless proven right, but that this does not lead to a paralysis, because one can act based on doubt.

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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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Mapping the territory: Sanskrit cosmopolis, 1500–today

There is a lot to do in the European intellectual history, with, e.g., major theories that await an improved understanding and connections among scholars that have been overseen or understudied. Using a simile, one might say that a lot of the territory between some important peaks (say, the contributions of Hume, Kant, Hegel or Heidegger) is still to be thoroughly investigated.

When one works on the intellectual history of the Sanskrit cosmopolis*, by contrast, one still needs to map the entire territory, whose extension still escapes us. Very few elements of the landscape have been fixated, and might still need to be re-assessed.

What are the mountains, main cities as well as rivers, bridges, routes that we would need to fix on the map? Key authors, key theories, key schools, as well as languages and manners of communication and how they worked (public debates? where? how?).
I mentioned authors before schools because for decades intellectual historians looking at the Sanskrit cosmopolis emphasized, and often overemphasized the role of schools at the expense of the fundamental role of individual thinkers, thus risking to oversee their individual contributions and to flatten historical developments, as if nothing had changed in astronomy or philosophy for centuries. This hermeneutic mistake is due to the fact that while the norm in Europe and North America after Descartes and the Enlightenment has been increasingly to highlight novelty, originality is constantly understated in the Sanskrit cosmopolis. It is not socially acceptable to claim to be novel and original in the Sanskrit world, just like it is not acceptable to be just “continuing a project” in a grant application in Europe or North America.
Still, schools are often the departure point for any investigation, since they give one a first basic understanding of the landscape. How does this exactly work?
For instance, we know that the Vedānta systems were a major player in the intellectual arena, with all other religious and philosophical schools having to face them, in some form of the other. However, it is not at all clear which schools within Vedānta were broadly influential, where within South Asia, and in which languages. Michael Allen, among others, worked extensively on Advaita Vedānta in Hindī sources, but were they read also by Sanskrit authors and did the latter react to them? Were Hindī texts on Vedānta read only in the Gangetic valley or throughout the Indian subcontinent? The same questions should be investigated with regard to the other schools of Vedānta (Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, Śaivādvaita…), the other vernacular languages they interacted with (respectively: Tamil and Maṇipravāḷam, Kannaḍa…), and the regions of the Indian subcontinent they originated in. And this is just about Vedānta schools.
Similarly, we still have to understand which other schools entered into a debate with philosophy and among each other and which interdisciplinary debates took place. Scholars of European intellectual history know how Kepler was influenced by Platonism and how Galileo influenced the development of philosophy. What happened in the Sanskrit cosmopolis?
Dagmar Wujastyk recently focused on the intersection of medicine (āyurveda) alchemy (rasaśāstra) and yoga. Which other disciplines were in a constant dialogue? Who read mathematical and astronomical texts, for instance? It is clear, because many texts themselves often repeat it, that Mīmāṃsā, Nyāya and Vyākaraṇa (hermeneutics, logic and grammar) were considered a sort of basic trivium, to be known by every learned person. But the very exclusion of Vedānta from the trivium (it cannot be considered to be included in “Mīmāṃsā” unless in the Viśiṣṭādvaita self-interpretation) shows that the trivium is only the starting point of one’s instruction and is not at all exhaustive. And we have not even started to look at many disciplines, from music to rhetorics.

One might wonder whether it is not enough to look at reports by today’s or yesterday’s Sanskrit intellectuals themselves in order to know what is worth reading and why. However, as discussed above, such reports would not boast about innovations and main breakthroughs. Sanskrit philosophy (and the same probably applies to Sanskrit mathematics etc.) is primarily commentarial. That is, authors presuppose a basic shared background knowledge and innovate while engaging with it rather than imagining to be pioneers in a new world of ideas. In a commentarial philosophy, innovations are concealed and breakthroughs are present, but not emphasised. Hence, one needs a lot of background knowledge to recognise them.

I would like to map the territory to realise who was studying what, where and how. How can this be done? The main obstacle is the amount of unpublished material, literally millions of manuscripts that still remain to be read, edited, translated and studied (I am relying on David Pingree’s estimate). Editing and translating them all requires a multi-generational effort of hundreds of people. However, a quick survey of them, ideally through an enhanced ORC technology, would enable scholars to figure out which languages were used, which theories and topics were debated, which authors were mentioned, and who was replying to whom.

This approach will remind some readers of the distant reading proposed by Franco Moretti. I am personally a trained philologist and a spokesperson for close reading. However, moving back and forth between the two methods seems to be the most productive methodology if the purpose is mapping an unknown territory. Close reading alone will keep one busy for decades and will not enable one to start the hermeneutic circle through which one’s knowledge of the situation of communication helps one better understanding even the content of the text one is closely focusing on. As hinted at above, this is particularly crucial in the case of a commentarial philosophy, where one needs to be able to master a lot of the author’s background in order to evaluate his contribution.

*As discussed several times elsewhere, I use “Sanskrit philosophy” or “Sanskrit intellectual history” as a short term for “philosophy in a cosmopolis in which Sanskrit was the dominant language of culture and everyone had to come to terms with it”, as with the use of “philosophy in the Islamic world”, that includes also thinkers part of the Islamic world but who were not themselves Muslims.

(The above are just quick notes. Any feedback is welcome!)

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“dadhi and dadhy are two different words”

The case of combination variants like dadhi and dadhy is used by Nyāya authors as an evidence of the fact that words are produced and modified. Mīmāṃsā authors, who think that language is without beginning, need to respond to that and explain therefore that dadhy is not a modification of dadhi, but an alternative word, and both are used in specific phonetic contexts.

Veṅkaṭanātha in his commentary on PMS 1.1.16 elaborates thereon and explains that they are described as archetype and ectype of each other for pedagogical reasons only (in order not to further multiply the number of words to be learnt). At this point, he faces two very different objections.

The first opponent says that the archetype-ectype relation could be reverted according to a different grammatical analysis. This probably means that dadhy could be considered as the archetype and dadhi as the ectype. Veṅkaṭanātha answers that one should choose the grammatical analysis based on its pedagogical merits, and the one suggested by the opponent is not pedagogically easier.

The other opponent says that the ectype-archetype relation is real and based on the similarity between the two. The “similarity” is not further elaborated upon, but we can guess something more about it through Veṅkaṭanātha’s reply. Veṅkaṭanātha answers that if similarity were the ground for real archetype-ectype connections, then there would be no way not to avoid over- and under-extensions. On the one hand, one could over-extend it to other cases of similarities, like yogurt (dadhi) and jasmine flowers, that are similar insofar as they are both white, although they are not considered to be archetype and ectype of each other. On the other hand, cow-dung and beetles are dissimilar, but are considered one the ectype of the other (beetles are believed to be a transformation of cow-dung).

Now, my problem regards a terminological choice. The first opponent says: vyākaraṇāntareṇa prakṛtivikṛtivaiparītyam. In his answer to the second opponent, Veṅkaṭanātha says na ca sādṛśyāt prakṛtivikṛtibhāvaḥ śaṅkhyaḥ, vaiparītyasyāpi prasaṅgāt. However, vaiparītya in the first case seems to be the opposite of what should be the case (the inversion of dadhi and dadhy as archetype and ectype). By contrast, in the second case vaiparītya seems to indicate just a different set of consequences. Comments welcome!

(Cross-posted on the indianphilosophyblog.com)

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Reconstructing Viśiṣṭādvaitavedānta: Veṅkaṭanātha’s contribution

The book on Veṅkaṭanātha I am working on is an attempt of doing history of philosophy in the Sanskrit context, given that no agreed canon, chronology, list of main figures or main questions has been established for the history of Sanskrit philosophy. Therefore, in the Sanskrit context, doing history of philosophy does not amount to reconstruct some aspects within an established picture, but rather to understand what is the picture altogether. This also means that it is impossible or counter-productive to do history of philosophy in just an antiquarian way in the Sanskrit context.
The book also takes on the challenge of talking about Sanskrit philosophy without reducing it to ahistorical “schools” which are depicted as unchanging through time, so that while talking of Nyāya one can mix 5 c. CE sources with 11 c. ones. In contrast to this approach, the book focuses on the role of individual philosophers within such schools.

Accordingly, the book reconstructs the intellectual figure of Veṅkaṭanātha and his philosophical and theological contribution to what we now call “Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta”. Its main thesis is that Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta as we know it now is mostly a product of Veṅkaṭanātha’s brilliant mind. He connected various texts and theories into a harmonious whole, so that readers and practitioners looking at the time before Veṅkaṭanātha now recognise them as pieces of a puzzle. Once Veṅkaṭanātha’s contribution is in place it is in fact easy to look back at authors before him and recognise them as pieces of the same jigsaw puzzle. However, it is only due to Veṅkaṭanātha that the entire jigsaw puzzle exists and the various texts and ideas could have remained disconnected, or could have led to different developments without him. The book analyses Veṅkaṭanātha’s contribution in shaping the school, a con- tribution that goes so deep that it is hard to imagine Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta through a different lens. Veṅkaṭanātha’s synthesis was not, or not just, the result of a juxtaposition, but itself a philosophical enterprise. Veṅkaṭanātha re-interpreted a large amount of texts and ideas connecting them in a higher-order theory. In this sense, he is a philosopher doing history of philosophy as his primary methodological tool.

The book investigates this synthesis, its range and its theoretical foundations. In this way, it also attempts to reframe the usual understanding of Veṅkaṭanātha’s impact on Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, shifting him from the position of a learned successor of Rāmānuja to that of a builder of a new system, with a different scope (ranging well beyond Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta and incorporating much more into it) and possibly with a different basis. Consequently, this book deals with philosophical themes in connection with their intellectual development.

Among the tools used by Veṅkaṭanātha in crafting his synthesis, of particular interest is his emphasis on the unity of the system holding between Vedānta and another school, called Mīmāṃsā. This is a school focusing on the exegesis of the Vedas and therefore on epistemology, deontics, philosophy of language and hermeneutics. Veṅkaṭanātha borrowed from it the tools to reconcile sacred texts seemingly mutually contradictory, as well as a well- developed dynamic ontology and account of subjectivity. However, the Mīmāṃsā school was also atheistic and considered the Vedas to be only enjoying a deontic authority, not an epistemic one. Both claims (especially the first one) contradict basic tenets of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta. Therefore, in crafting a single system out of Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta Veṅkaṭanātha needed to find a way not to deny these claims while at the same time transcending them. Last, some readers not too familiar with Sanskrit philosophy might find a lot of topics Veṅkaṭanātha deals with “non-philosophical” or at least “non-philosophical enough”. For instance, why does he spend so much time on the injunction to learn the Vedas by heart? As an interpreter, I might have just used the debate in order to extract from it what is relevant for what is recognised today as “philosophy of action”, e.g.: Can someone be motivated to undertake an action whose results will only take place after years ? Does this even count as an action? What at all counts as motivation with regard to a course of action involving multiple years? Can a cost-benefit analysis still work in such cases? Which concept of subjectivity is needed for complex actions extending over multiple years? Alternatively, I might have just depicted the relevance of the debate in the historical setting in which it took place. In general, I gave hints going in both directions, but I primarily tried to reconstruct the debate in its own terms, because a global approach to philosophy means being open not just to new answers to old questions and to new questions within known fields, but also to altogether new fields of investigation. The unitary Mīmāṃsā system is in this sense a treasure house of ideas leading to a philosophy of exegesis and a philosophy of ritual.

Comments and criticisms, as usual, more than welcome!

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Thoughts on Realisms Interlinked by Arindam Chakrabarti/4

This post is part of a series discussing Arindam Chakrabarti’s Realisms Interlinked. The previous posts are available here, here and here.

The last chapter (chapter 16) of the second part is a discussion of the Nyāya theories for the existence of the self and it includes also discussions about the no-ownership theory (mental states don’t need to be *of someone*) and against physicalism (pp. 189–191). I especially enjoyed the discussion about the inner sense faculty (manas, already discussed in chapter 13) and its role as a connector among sense faculties. How else could we compare different sense data, given that sense faculties do not have autonomous agency and cannot communicate with each other? However, this seems to be a lot of burden placed on the shoulders of manas.  It seems straightforward to accept a sense-faculty for inner sensations, but how can one justify its extension to other functions? manas seems to grow to incorporate also what Sāṅkhya authors would have called a buddhi ‘intellect’. Can it do so and remain a sense-faculty? Can it really be responsible, e.g., for anuvyavasāya and *still* remain a sense-faculty?

Next, the third part (“Other subjects”) starts. In this third part, the book’s title (“Realisms interlinked”) increasingly looses its cogency and the book is more and more about “objects, subjects and other subjects”, including also less closely connected topics, such as the brilliant article on the ontology of shadows and Arindam’s theory of śabdapramāṇa —but Arindam waves them together nicely, e.g., by discussing how śabdapramāṇa is part of our acknowledging the existence of epistemic others, i.e., others we can learn from.

To be honest, I enjoyed the first part, but I enjoy even more this latter part, since it is more experimental and draws from more sources (whereas the first part was closer to keeping the Anglo-Analytic and Nyāya paradigms). For instance, the wonderful chapter 18, on the vocative reminded me of Martin Buber’s masterpiece, “I and Thou” and how relating to one by addressing them is different than discussing about them. The latter way to speak reifies them, the former means entering into a relation. Thus, whereas it is contradictory to say “I am now talking to God. I do not know whether They exist”, it is not meaningless to address God asking for faith, because addressing is not about existence, but about relation. 

As hinted at above, Arindam follows different philosophical inspirations in this part, starting with Abhinavagupta, whom, as discussed in a previous post, is also responsible for his moving beyond realism. We had already seen this influence at play, for instance in chapter 12, and within the third part again in chapter 17, while discussing how it is possible to know about the existence of others. The whole chapter discusses the arguments by analogy in Dharmakīrti and its critique by Strawson, which Arindam labels as “devastating”. Why so? The argument by analogy is, according to Arindam’s reading of Strawson, an induction. But how weak is an induction, if it is based on a single case? Moreover, according to Strawson, there is strictly speaking not even a single case the induction can be based on. In fact, predicates such as “happy” or “depressed” are completely different if they are experienced from within and attributed from the outside to other alleged subjects. And in which sense is a predicate a predicate if it is not predicable of others? Thus, for predicates to be predicates, they need to be applicable to more than one person, even if in one case through direct access and in the other through behaviour-observation. At this point, Abhinavagupta is ready to step in. But before getting to his solution as understood by Arindam, let me pause a little longer on why following Abhinavagupta.

Why would Arindam be ready to sacrifice direct realism and follow Abhinavagupta on this dangerous path? Because Arindam likes intelligent thinkers, but also because Abhinava allows for a rich conception of the ātman, which is dynamically evolving (against the permanent self of Nyāya and Vedānta), and can therefore be an agent and a knower of intentional contents (the Sāṅkhya and Advaita Vedānta subject could be aware, but of no contents, the Nyāya subject had knowledge as an additional quality). 

Thus, while holding Abhinavagupta’s hand, Arindam ends up coming out of the plains of naïve realism and ends up in transcendental idealism or panpsychism. And here comes the solution for the problem of the existence of other subjects. In Arindam’s words:

“Post-Cartesian Western thought finds the problem of the Other Mind challenging and the very presence of the Other existentially constraining and self-annihilating. Abhinavagupta, on the other hand, finds the You to be a foundational middle-reality between the pure Self and the apparent non-Self, in contrast and continuity with which the Self discovers its own playful knower-hood” (p. 202).

Next come chapters 19 and 20, which discuss the epistemology of testimony. Arindam is here preaching to the convert when it comes to me, but let me repeat that unless we accept testimony, we have no way to ensure knowledge of basic facts, like our name and date of birth. Arindam also convincingly shows that testimony cannot be reduced to inference (pp. 217–8). Can the Nyāya theory of śabdapramāṇa, which is based on descriptive language, work also in the case of prescriptive language. As a Mīmāṃsaka, I am biased against it, but also Arindam’s reconstruction seems to allow for some doubts (“You are a person who is qualified by the agency to do X” does not seem tantamount to “do X!” —the prescriptive character appears to be just missing).

A last word on chapter 21, which is one of the best pieces of writing by Arindam in general and which allows me to go back to a point I discussed in the second post of this series, namely Arindam’s way of doing philosophy through a dialogue with other authors. In chapter 21 Arindam mentions a sentence by Wittgenstein. The interesting point is that the sentence looks trivially true. It says: “In paintings darkness *can* also be depicted as black”. No source is given, and I don’t know Wittgenstein good enough to be able to identify and reproduce the original German and check whether there is any additional shade of meaning, but as it stands, the sentence looks banal. However, Arindam is able to go deeper and disagree with the ontological theory about shade it presupposes. The key point that became clear to me only at this point is that Arindam is a great philosopher because (or also because) he is a great interpreter. He is able to let sentences by Nyāya philosophers (or by Leonardo, Turner or Goethe) disquiet him, and then keeps on thinking about them until he can identify what they implicitly presuppose, spell it out, and continue thinking philosophically about them until he can elaborate a theory that answers all the objections he has contemplated and taken seriously.

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Thoughts on Realisms interlinked by Arindam Chakrabarti/3

Main thesis: While we move from realism about objects to realism about subjects and other subjects, Arindam’s commitment to naïve realism decreases. Since I have discussed in the first two previous posts about how Arindam’s methodology makes him do philosophy while talking with other philosophers, let me now say that he is moving from talking mostly with Naiyāyikas to engaging closely with Abhinavagupta. And in fact in his interview with M. Keating Arindam had complained that I had called him a ‘staunch realist’ in a previous post. I now know why, given that he is less of a realist in this second part of the book.
(The inclination towards Abhinavagupta is highlighted also in Ram-Prasad’s book review.)

First, the facts: The first part defended realism about objects, this second part is about the knowing subject. Arindam argues against fictionalism (especially in chapter 15, entitled “Fictionalism about the mental”), and in favour of the persistence through time of the knowing subject as proven through memory and recognition, but also through our capacity to correct our errors (how else could one correct oneself, if there were not a subject who is aware of the mistake and goes back to it?).

This leads to an important subtopic, namely the epistemology of the knowing subject, which occupies at least two chapters, namely “In Defense of an Inner Sense” (chapter 13) and “Our Knowledge and Error about Our Own Cognitions” (chapter 14).

Another interesting subtopic regards the nature of the defended subject. I have already revealed that Arindam does not defend the Naiyāyika ātman (which is inherently quality-less), but rather a full-fledged knowing subject, closer to an aham than to an ātman. Ram-Prasad’s review says that Arindam is more comfortable with P. Strawson’s concept of person. In Sanskrit terms, one might want to go back to the dialogue with Abhinavagupta (who gets the idea of aham, I believe, from Mīmāṃsā), but Arindam also adds further remarks on the usage of the first-person pronoun (chapter 10). This, in turn, leads to the problem of solipsism and the existence of other knowing subjects (chapter 11). The connection with Abhinavagupta also enables Arindam to discuss a topic which is very much discussed in the Pratyabhijñā school, namely how can one know a subject *qua* subject? Does not one transform it into an object, thus violating its nature, as soon as one approaches it (chapter 12)?

In fact, chapter 11 (a refutation of solipsism entitled “The Self at Other Times and in Other Bodies”) is connected with both the establishment of a first-person-like subject (the topic of chapter 10) and with the inaccessibility of subjects to objectification (dealt with in chapter 12). If we can know other subjects qua subjects, we can at the same time establish the existence of other subjects and the possibility of their non-objectification. Arindam does not mention it, but I can’t avoid thinking of Buber’s “I and Thou” for its emphasis on two modalities of knowledge (an objectifying one, which knows others as things, and a relation one, through which subjects enter in a dialogue).
Chapter 12 also discusses anuvyavasāya, the second cognition occurring after a first cognition during which one becomes aware of having had that first cognition. If we know our cognitions only through anuvyavasāya, then we are not only objectifying other subjects while knowing them, but even ourselves. In fact, we can’t know even ourselves *qua* subjects. By contrast, if Prabhākara is right and each cognitive act includes an awareness of the object, the subject and the cognition, we can know ourselves from within.

Chapter 13 discusses the elusive inner sense faculty (manas) and its domain. Manas is generally invoked to explain one’s perception of inner qualia, such as pleasure and pain and to justify the phenomenon of attention (and lack of thereof) and the impossibility of simultaneous perceptions.
Further, chapter 14 also discusses how manas works as the sense faculty for the successive awareness of a just occurred awareness event. In this case, the contact (sannikarṣa) at stake occurs not directly between manas and the object of the preceding awareness event, but rather via the awareness event itself. It is through this mānasapratyakṣa (my label, Arindam does not use it), that we can move from the perception of an apple to the awareness of “I have seen an apple”.
Moreover, Arindam also mentions manas’ role in the context of language-based knowledge: “In Navya Nyāya semantics, the resulting understanding of meaning is not classified as knowledge by testimony (śabdabodha) or information gathered from words, but as make-believe awareness generated by the manas (āhāryamanasa bodha), which can creatively put together a cow and chairing [found together in a non-sensical poem]” (p. 152). The āhārya (‘artificial’) suggests that manas can also play an active role, and in fact Arindam points out to this possibility while discussing the Yuktidīpikā stance about it. Can this work also in Nyāya? This artificial language-based understanding seems to suggest that manas can concoct a non-committal understanding. Along this line, is manas also able to lead to synaesthetic judgements (“I like this music more than I enjoyed the smell of the jasmine flowers”)? I would be inclined to say that it cannot (since it is a sense faculty, it cannot be responsible for judgements), but any synaesthetic judgement by the buddhi presupposes the manas as being able to run from one sense experience to the next so as to make the buddhi able to formulate a comparative judgement. Let me also follow Arindam’s lead and add an “Unscientific post-script”: Can manas also be responsible for proprio-perception (perception of one’s own body and its position in space as standing, sitting etc.)? Of inner sensations such as hunger? Or are they awareness events and as such cognised like any other awareness event?

Chapter 14 discusses epistemology and intrinsicism (svataḥprāmāṇy) and extrinsicism (parataḥprāmāṇya) in connection with some theories in Analytic epistemology, primarily internalism vs externalism, and then also fallibilism and reflexivism. I discussed aspects of this topic elsewhere (in a nutshell: I think that intrinsic validity disjoins elements that are generally found conjoined in internalism, namely access to cognitions and no external reasons needed). I am also not completely convinced of the connection between infallibilism and intrinsicism. On p. 160, Arindam writes: “If intrinsicism is correct, then once a true cognition is registered, it would be impossible to entertain a doubt about whether it is knowledge or error. But in certain circumstances, when for the first time cognition about an unfamiliar object occurs, it is often made the subject of subsequent doubt”. The last step evokes Gaṅgeśa’s distinction between familiar and unfamiliar circumstances and doubt being the default response only in the latter case. Gaṅgeśa’s was a good step forward if compared to the previous position considering doubt the default attitude in all cases (so that we would not be able to prepare a coffee with our usual coffee machine in the morning before having verified that it is really a coffee machine, that the tin really contains coffee, that the liquid coming from the tap is really water etc. etc.).
Still, I don’t think that the one described by Arindam is a counter-argument against intrinsicism. A svataḥprāmāṇyavādin would say that even in the case of an unfamiliar object, we initially cognise it as X, even if immediately thereafter we might switch on the light, correct ourselves and realise it was not an X but a Y. Overturning the previous cognition is not excluded by svataḥprāmāṇya (in fact, it is its very foundation!), that rather attacks the idea that doubt is our first response to familiar (or unfamiliar) circumstances.

A last word on methodology and the need of Global Philosophy, by Arindam himself: “Within the insular power-enclaves of philosophy, even a mention of non-Western theories […] is punished by polite exclusion. Well-preserved ignorance about other cultures and mono-cultural hubris define the mainstream of professional philosophy in Euro-America. In many cases, the discovery of exciting connections, sharp oppositions, or imaginable parallelisms is greeted with condescension or cold neglect” (p. 145).