Tag Archives: Dignāga

Posted on

Does Kumārila accept I-cognition as a kind of perception? (updated 2)

Kumārila is an extremely systematic thinker. Thus, if there is a seeming contradiction in Kumārila’s thought, it is likely the case that the contradiction is only a seeming one and that it can be solved.
In the case at stake, we have:

  1. Kumārila stating in the ātmavāda chapter within his ŚV that we can directly grasp the self through our awareness of ourselves as an I (via ahampratyaya)
  2. Kumārila stating, against Dignāga, that cognitions are not transparent to themselves (see ŚV pratyakṣa 79, 134 and then ŚV śūnyavāda) and that they are rather known a posteriori through arthāpatti based on the fact that something, e.g., a pot, has now the characteristic of being manifest (jñātatā or prākaṭya, see ŚV pratyakṣa 56) and that this characteristic wold be unexplainable otherwise
  3. Kumārila stating in the pratyakṣa chapter within the ŚV that perception is sense-perception

Which sort of cognition is ahampratyaya? The “I” cannot be known through cognitions’ awareness of themselves (as in Prabhākara), because of No. 2. Nor can the “I” be known through perception, because of No. 3. Again, given that there must be a solution (the point is too striking to have been missed by Kumārila himself) and that No. 2 looks quite sure, let me try to explore No. 3. Could it be that Kumārila accepts perception as sense-perception AND ahampratyaya? (In this connection, please note that also Jhā writes that “the notion of “I” […] is directly perceptible by the Senses”, fn on ŚV ātmavāda v. 107).

The relevant verses in the chapter on perception are mainly addressed against upholders of yogic perception. Kumārila insists there that perception is about present contents, and the “I” would qualify. He also says that perception arises from a contact between the object and the sense-faculty (sati indriyasaṅgame […] tasya (=pratyakṣasya) evaṃdharmakatvataḥ, vv 17–18), thus excluding svasaṃvedana or other forms of non-sensory direct perception from pratyakṣa. Still, ahampratyaya could qualify as belonging to perception. The sense-faculty at stake in the case of the “I” could be manas, the inner sense faculty. It is in this sense somehow disappointing that Kumārila does not mention the case of ahampratyaya while discussing ātman-manas contact in ŚV pratyakṣa, v. 66. Moreover, ŚV pratyakṣa v. 83 discusses the apprehension of pleasure and pain via manas, but does not mention the case of the manas also cognising the “I”. Even more relevant, v.83 follows a discussion of how a cognition cannot grasp itself and how pleasure etc. can be an exception because there is no svasaṃvedana there, but rather the apprehension of something inhering in the self, via the manas (see Pārthasārathi thereon: manaḥsañjñakenendriyeṇa saṃyuktaḥ ātmā svasamavetān sukhādīn […] pratipadyate). If we were to apply the same scheme to ahampratyaya, we would need to say that the self, connected to the manas, grasps the self itself, which seems to contradict the point made in v. 82, against reflectivity. Also disappointing in this regard are ŚV pratyakṣa, vv. 134–139, that discuss the role of manas in svasaṃvitti (refuted by Kumārila) and pleasure etc. (accepted) and never mention the case of “I-cognitions”. Then, again, ŚV pratyakṣa v. 160 states that manas can work on its own, without an external object, but only cites pleasure and pain as an example (yathā hi manasaḥ sārdhaṃ rūpādau cakṣurādinā | pravṛttiḥ sukhaduḥkhādau kevalasyaiva dṛśyate ||). Same with ŚV śabdanityatādhikaraṇa 337 on manas grasping pleasure etc. when not connected with the external senses.
This is all not conclusive, but it is disheartening that Kumārila never mentions the case of ahampratyaya in the chapter on perception, if ahampratyaya is in fact a case of perception.

At this point I might have been too negative about the possibility of ahampratyaya being a case of perception. Let me therefore look at the evidence in favour of it. The main one is that ahampratyaya is mentioned as an evidence for the existence of the self and as being different than inference in ŚV ātmavāda v. 107. Next, ahampratyaya is discussed in conjunction with recognition (pratyabhijñā) in the same chapter (v. 109, v. 137), and we know that recognition is a combination of memory and perception.

Could it be that ahampratyaya is just a case of recognition? In favour of this view run a few passages in Pārthasārathi’s commentary, where he says pratyabhijñārūpeṇa ahampratyayena (ad ŚV ātmavāda v. 109) and ekasantānasambandhino ‘hampratyayā ekajñātṛviṣayā iti pratyabhijñeti (ad ŚV ātmavāda v. 139), as well as the fact that the self is proven to exist because of phenomena like desire, which need some extension through time (perception of X, memory that X in the past produced pleasure, desire of X, see vv. 104–105). However, recognition requires a preceding (perceptual) awareness (and Kumārila has already established that inference does not establish the ātman). How could one re-cognise something if one had not cognised it in the first place? Recognition is essential in the argumentative structure of ŚV ātmavāda, because this has as its main opponent the Buddhist epistemologists’ point of view on the self being momentary. Yet, it would be strange to claim that ahampratyaya is only a recognition, since this would deny the phenomenological appeal that we recognise ourselves qua-I immediately (not inferentially, as Nyāya-Vaiśeṣikas would like it to be, see vv. 92–101).

At this point I wonder whether for Kumārila ahampratyaya is an ad hoc pramāṇa, a cognition that never ceases every time one cognises something (see ŚV ātmavāda 133), but different than the arthāpatti through which one knows a posteriori that a cognition has taken place. Now, against that runs Kumārila’s mention of six pramāṇas (e.g., ŚV codanā 111cd), which seem to either point to ahampratyaya as a subspecies within one of the main sources of knowledge or to ahampratyaya as not necessarily knowledge-conducive. Could be just a cognition (jñāna), one that is not necessarily true, but that remains valid as long as it is not falsified? However, a pramāṇa is in Kumārila exactly defined as something that remains valid as long as it is not falsified. That is, in Nyāya it is easy to distinguish pramāṇas from thinking processes that are not *necessarily* knowledge-conducive although they might lead to true cognitions, such as tarka. But this distinction does not seem to be available to Kumārila’s falsificationism. He does use the term pramāṇa also for sources other than the six (pratyakṣa, anumāna, śabda, upamāna, arthāpatti, abhāva), for instance in the case of pratyabhijñā and of the hermeneutic pramāṇas, but both can be reduced to a subspecies of one of the six pramāṇas. This all would lead one back to ahampratyaya being a form of manas-pratyakṣa, with the ātman featuring both as the subject and object thereof.

ŚV ātmavāda 142 seems to offer a slightly different point of view, with the ātman being described as self-luminous (through the simile of a light, jyotiḥ). Thus, even though Kumārila refutes (see point No. 2 above) self-luminosity in the case of cognitions, he seems to accept it for the self. The next verses explains that this does not apply to other people’s selves, that need to be known through inference (v. 145) and perhaps also through analogy and linguistic communication combined (v. 144). Unfortunately, Uṃveka’s commentary is not available for this chapter and Pārthsārathi does not add much to this short section.

By the way, one might wonder whether ahampratyaya could ever count as knowledge, given that it is unfalsifiable. However,
a. Kumārila has defeated the alternatives already (mainly bhūtacaitanyavāda, or physicalism and the non-physicalist illusionism of Buddhist epistemologists)
b. Kumārila showed at least in one case that he is comfortable with an unfalsifiable knowledge, namely the Veda.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

IABS, IDhC, etc.: which paper did you like more? UPDATED FOR THE THIRD TIME with further papers

UPDATE: I received further new suggestions per email or personally. You can add yours in the comments below.

I cannot help but enjoying papers dealing with Mīmāṃsā (especially if from a philosophical viewpoint, as it happened during the last IABS), they are just more interesting to me, but I asked friends and colleagues to forget about their personal interests and to tell me which papers of the IABS and IDhC they enjoyed more and why. The following ones are the results I collected.

Posted on

Dharmakīrti Conference—Summary of my posts

You can read my views on the written version of the paper presented by Kei Kataoka on apoha (and of the views by Kiyotaka Yoshimizu discussed in it) here, here and here.
A discussion of K. Yoshimizu’s paper (on the chronology of Kumārila and Dharmakīrti) can be found here.

A summary of likes and dislikes of my readers and colleagues can be read here (don’t forget to add your own favs).

Posted on

What was Dignaga’s theory of apoha? On PS 5.43

The sequence of opponents and discussants within the Pramāṇasamuccaya is difficult to reconstruct and one might need to gather informations from many different sources. In the following I will focus on a specific problem:

  • is the example of the presence of horns as leading to “non-horse” an instance of the way apoha works (as with Yoshimizu, which supports in this way his analysis of Dignāga’s procedure as entailing a compositional analysis) or just an example about an inference, which works in a way similar as the apoha, i.e., does not need to exclude elements one by one (as with Kataoka, who thus supports his claim that Dignāga does not need any positive postulation).
Posted on

What was Dignaga’s theory of apoha? On PS 5.41–42 SECOND UPDATE

The main point of departure for any inquiry into Dignāga’s theory of apoha is his Pramāṇasamuccaya, chapter 5. Unluckily enough, this text is only available as a reconstruction from the two (divergent) Tibetan translations and from Jinendrabuddhi’s commentary.

Posted on

How exactly does one seize the meaning of a word? K. Yoshimizu 2011 (and Kataoka forthc.) on Dignāga and Kumārila UPDATED

We all know that for Dignāga the meaning of a word is apoha ‘exclusion’. But how does one seize it and avoid the infinite regress of excluding non-cows because one has understood what “cow” means? Kataoka at the last IABS maintained (if I understood him correctly) that Dignāga did not directly face the problem of how could one seize the absence of non-cows. He also explained that the thesis he attributes to Hattori and Yoshimizu, which makes the apoha depend on the seizing of something positive (e.g., one seizes the exclusion of non-cows because one seizes the exclusion of dewlap, etc.) contradicts the negative nature of apoha, since it indirectly posits positive entities, such as dewlaps. But this leaves the question of how apoha can take place in the worldly experience open.

Posted on

(Third day at the IABS:) Franco on the datation of Dharmakīrti and some further thoughts on Dharmakīrti, Dignāga, Kumārila

The datation of Dharmakīrti is a topic I am not competent enough to speak about, but I will nonetheless try to summarise other people’s arguments.
The departing point is the traditionally accepted date of Dharmakīrti, namely 600–660, settled by Erich Frauwallner mainly on the basis of the reports of Chinese pilgrims,

Posted on

K. Yoshimizu on valid inferences in Kumārila (and on the chronology of Kumārila and Dharmakīrti)

All nice things come to an end, and so did the IABS conference. Now, many among you will be heading to Heidelberg for the Dharmakīrti Conference. Although I will not be able to attend, I received from K. Yoshimizu his paper for it, with the assent to discuss it here.