Dialog on Buddhist Philosophy with Professor Mark Siderits

Dialog on Buddhist Philosophy with Professor Mark Siderits

[This discussion is a part of Interview of the noted Buddhist Philosopher Professor Mark Siderits (Illinois State University ) taken by Debajyoti Gangopadhyay ( VBU ’ Jharkhand ) as a part of the ongoing Dialog Mission he is conducting in collaboration with two of his Physics colleagues - Sisir Roy ( NIAS’ Bangalore ) and R Srikanth ( PPISR ’Bangalore ) . Professor Siderits responded to a set of questionnaire sent to him through e mail by early 2015. This is the first of the series of ongoing Interviews with the Philosophers representing different Indian knowledge systems.]

Debajyoti Gangopadhyay: Professor Siderits, you are widely acclaimed for your contribution in Buddhist Philosophy. What precisely motivated you for a Philosophy of Eastern origin? The Question put in another terms - as a Western Philosopher, what was your point of departure towards Buddhist Philosophy? Was it purely Logic or something else?

The Question put in yet another terms , even if I accept your kernel of initial interest to be some alleged overlap between Western and Buddhist Thought… , do you think ‘this overlap’ as meaningful Today to serve some ‘practical ‘purpose other than historical ?

MS: Like many others of my generation, I first became interested in Buddhism when I was in high school and was exploring alternatives to the religious tradition in which I had been raised. At that time, popularizers of Buddhism were presenting it to Westerners as a soteriological tradition that is compatible with naturalism (i.e., accepting the methods of the natural sciences as the best way of finding out the nature of reality). But this popular representation was very much dominated by the then-widespread image of Zen Buddhism as anti-intellectual. So when during my first year at university I read Wittgenstein’s Blue

Book it occurred to me that the line of thought presented there might be a better way of understanding the Buddhist teaching of non-self than what I then took to be the Buddhist approach (i.e., seeking to attain a state of non-conceptual intuition through the practice of meditation). I then decided to pursue the study of both Western and Asian philosophy simultaneously. It was through that study that I came to see that in the Indian Buddhist tradition philosophy has a prominent place, and that the practice of philosophy in India involved the same commitment to clarity and rigorous argumentation as what I found and valued in

analytic philosophy in the West. I continue to be interested in the question of the existence of a self, and at least some of my interest could be characterized as stemming from soteriological concerns. So to that extent one could say that I see a practice of philosophy informed by knowledge of the Buddhist tradition as having some ‘practical’ value. Of course I also do what I do at least in part because I derive so much intellectual pleasure from it. While doing analytic metaphysics is hard work, it can also be lots of fun.

D G : We have seen , that , the sources of modern interest in Buddhist Logic lies mostly in different aspects of possibilities to compare this with some variants of non-standard Western Logics . Buddhist Logic , developed surely within the scope of metaphysical jurisdiction of Ksanabhangabada , had been frequently compared with some non-standard versions of its western counterparts like Free logic ,Logic of Empty subject term .. or more recently with Paraconsistent Logic ..

In fact this can’t be denied, that, Prachin non-Buddhist Nyaya and Mimamsa were initiated ( nearly before 3000 years or so !) as a consequence of the then necessity to resolve the debate of different aspects of relation between Jiva , Jagat and Jagatkarana ( not always equated with Isvara ).

Thus Logic in early Indian context wasprimarily meant to serve a ‘transcendental’ purpose ... , and in this sense Sruti , Smriti and Nyaya ( Indian Logic ) were tied up with a common thread of concern….; none of them had its independent justification ..or relevance without any reference to the other . We need not get into that details here .., but the issue that seems to matter for our purpose here , can perhaps be stated as follows –

The very long History of Indian scholastic Tradition, though seems to have apparently decoupled itself later from its early motivating Brahmanjijnasa .. , but, what the Naiyaikas were obliged to address as their Prameya still happened to include …..

Atma , Indriya , Sarir , Artha , Buddhi , Mana , Prabriti , dosa , Pretyabhaba , phala , Dukhkha .. and Apabarga ….

And Atmanand Moksha were the most important amongthem! Vatsayana .. ,the earliest commentator of Nyayasutra (arguably the commentator of Kamasutra also !) reminded this categorically !

So given these set of concepts / categories as Prameyaor the Kernel of interest to start with for the Indian Logicians , do you find this way of East West comparison as still helpful ?

M S: My answer to this question is consolidated with my answer to the next one.

D G : What comes immediately after this question of useful analogy , is the question of independence of Logic in Indian Philosophical context - independence of Logic of its own beyond the scope of jurisdiction of the presiding metaphysics this was originally meant for . The issue , put a bit differently , Nyaya – both in its Hindu and Buddhist versions , in context of Indian Knowledge dynamics , doesn’t seem to have independent Agenda of its own ! Logic ( Nyaya and Mimansa ) ) in Indian context doesn’t seem to have independent relevance outside the scope of jurisdiction delineated by the presumed framework of metaphysical necessity in connection with Brahmanjijnasa .. Prachin Nyaya and Mimamsaat around 500 B. C started evolving from within this very metaphysical embryo..

Atman was considered to be primal among the 12 Prameyas for the PrachinNyaiyaikas … , because Mithyajnana about thisd Atman causes Samsar . This Mithyajnana implies identification with Anatman … and so on so forth ..

So the Hindu Nyaiaikas aimed ultimately towards the Brahmanjnana / Moksha .. , with Logic just as means for that … !!

As a modern Philosopher of Western origin , what do you think in this regard about your Indian Logical Ancestors ?

MS: While I have difficulty taking seriously the idea of karma and rebirth, I still think the idea of liberation from the suffering that results from our ordinary conception of our identity makes sense. And this is how I see the classical Indian concern with self and liberation. I think the Naiyāyikas, Sāṃkhyans, Vedāntins and Buddhists were all trying to work out whether a self exists, and if so just what it is like, because they wanted to solve the problem

of existential suffering. And that problem arises whether there is rebirth or not. I also think this is as good a place as any (and better than some) to start philosophizing. Of course soteriological concerns can also lead away from the philosopher’s commitment to follow the argument wherever it leads. But in the classical Indian context, where there are many different views about the nature of the self, there would naturally be interest in working out how to conduct

inter-school debates, and that naturally leads to the development of pramāṇavāda. What differences there are between rival theories about the number and nature of the pramāṇas have very little to do with doctrinal commitments of rival schools. Even the epistemological theory that the Mīmāṃsakas use to argue for the authoritativeness of the Vedas is defended on grounds that should be acceptable to nāstikas like the Buddhists.

Indeed I would go further than just saying that their soteriological concerns did not adversely affect how the Indian schools understood the practice of attaining knowledge. In fact I suspect they did a better job than their modern Western counterparts despite their soteriological concerns. This is because their conception of veridical cognition is externalist and reliabilist in nature, whereas epistemological internalism has dominated Western epistemology ever

since Descartes. And I think it is fairly clear that Descartes introduced epistemological internalism as a way of trying to carve out a separate sphere for reason and faith in light of the new ascendancy of the natural sciences. Ironically, the classical Indian approach to epistemology turns out to be far easier to reconcile with the naturalistic stance than is the approach that has dominated recent Western epistemology.

I should add that I do not believe any of the pramāṇavādins accepted the idea that there can be true contradictions, or held any other views that might require employment of a non-classical logic.

D G : Let us now turn towards the concept of Sunyata in Buddhist Philosophy ! Sunyahad been famously advocated by Nagarjuna as even beyond the CATUSKOTI ( )- the four possible state of affairs advocated by the Buddha . Given any Question, Buddha used to advocate four possibilities – Yes, No , Both ,Neither .. the celebrated Catuskoti ( Greek Tetralemma) .. However ,Buddha doesn’t seem to have endorsed explicitly in favor of any possibility , but trace of his departure from common sense ontology is often traced in his advocacy for the ‘Both’ option .. But Nagarjuna advocated to get even beyond the framework of four possibilities !

Accepting Nagarjuna’sstandpoint,what about the possibility to understand Sunyain terms of any so-called logical characterization?Or Question about Sunyata is forever beyond any kind of epistemic qualification ..? This is only dhyeyo , that can be attained through meditation/ Zen - something pertaining to a level Abangmanasagocharo – a Reality beyond any possible categorization ..

MS: My own reading of the uses of the catuṣkoṭi in the Indian Buddhist tradition is rather different. The Buddha himself seems to have used the device in order to show that with respect to some question all four possibilities involve a false presupposition, thus rendering any of the four possible answers meaningless and so neither true nor false. The rejection of each involves use of a commitmentless form of negation that does not entail affirmation of any alternative. In

effect it functions like ‘Do not say …’ (Note that when p has a false presupposition, no contradiction results from asserting both ‘Do not say that p’ and ‘Do not say that not-p’.) As for the apparent violation of non-contradiction and excluded middle in the third and fourth koṭis, these are avoided by parametrization. As for instance the third claim the Buddha rejects, ‘The enlightened person both exists after death and does not exist after death’, is to be understood as ‘exists in one sense’ and ‘does not exist in another sense’.

Nāgārjuna’s use of the catuṣkoṭi follows the same pattern. The one key difference is that whereas in early Buddhism and in the Abhidharma schools it is applied only to things like persons and chariots that are deemed to not be ultimately real, in Madhyamaka the same logic is applied to everything that is thought to be ultimately real. So if the arguments in support of this use are sound, the upshot is that there is nothing that is ultimately real. The only things that can be said to be real are things that other Buddhists consider merely conventionally real. Nāgārjuna is not affirming an inexpressible ultimate reality. He is instead trying to get us to stop supposing there could be any such thing as how the world is anyway. Nāgārjuna is not a Hegelian-style absolute idealist. He is a global anti-realist.

If this interpretation is correct, then any attempt to turn physicalism into a form of ‘serious ontology’ will be incompatible with Madhyamaka, and Madhyamaka arguments can be deployed against any table-pounding variety of physicalism. In philosophy of science this would amount to something like a global operationalism. What it would most definitely not do is align Madhyamaka with anything like Ladyman’s structural realism, let alone with anything calling for wholesale adoption of a deviant logic. Of course a Mādhyamika might concede that our best theories about such things as quantum mechanics might turn out to require using something other than classical logic. But they would add that this is not to be taken as showing that ‘reality is ultimately non-classical’. D G : In fact , it is not difficult to locate the motivating kernel of the unsettled debate , for Centuries , between the AnatmanbadinBuddhists and Atmanbadi Hindu Nyaiyaikas .

However, crux of the present day debate ( championed notably by Graham Priest and a few others .. ) about whether Buddhism implied Contradiction ( Paraconsistencyin modern term ) as an essential part of understanding Reality or not evolves around this point – his implicit advocacy for the ‘Both’ option ..

Do you feel sympathetic to Graham and others who are trying to figure out Paraconsistencyin Buddhism as well as in Jain Logic in this way ? M S: I’m not competent to judge the case of the Jainas (though scholars I trust assure me that they reject paraconsistency). But as will be clear from what I’ve already said, I reject Priest’s interpretation of Buddhist uses of the catuṣkoṭi. Indeed I’ve often pointed out to Graham passages where Buddhist philosophers explicitly affirm non-contradiction, excluded middle and the like; even a passage where the MādhyamikaCandrakīrti calls anyone who utters a contradiction ‘crazy’ (unmatta).

D G : Above considerations lead us once again to one of the most important aspects of metalogical issues - the way Indian mathematics /Astronomy was affected by the dependence of Logic on metaphysics .. Of course this issue is important in context of the Growth of Knowledge in Indian Philosophical context as a whole …. So far Buddhist teachings are concerned.. , certainly He had an implicit agenda against Metaphysics … We need not get here into the social perspective of this Agenda in contemporary Mithila where Buddhism and Jainism developed , or other contemporary doctrinal traces of this Agenda in Yajnavalkya’s teachings or in Samkhya .. , but this Agenda ( against Metaphysics ) was surely an assignment to defend for Nagarjuna as well as for the later Buddhist Logicians .

How would you like to relate Today in modern Logical terms the Buddhist defenses of their KsanabadiMetaphysics ( or no-metaphysics/ontology ) with Catuskoti ?

M S: If by ‘metaphysics’ you simply mean using philosophical methods to try to determine facts about the ultimate nature of reality, then I am not sure the Buddha is against all metaphysics. He certainly opposes all ‘speculative’ metaphysics: all attempts to use reason alone to prove the existence of things that are by nature imperceptible. But his anātmavāda as well as his rejection of the existence of an Īśvara and his apparent acceptance of mereological nihilism look to me like metaphysics. Nāgārjuna could be called anti-metaphysical insofar as his global anti-realism might best be understood as leading to a kind of quietism.

Kṣaṇavāda was not taught by the Buddha, who merely claimed that everything relevant to the continued existence of persons is impermanent. Kṣaṇavāda was, however, accepted by all the philosophical schools that later developed from his teachings, with the probable exception of Madhyamaka. And this doctrine certainly looks like a case of a metaphysical theory that is in principle not empirically verifiable. Now the standard argument for kṣaṇavāda does not use the

catuṣkoṭi, it only examines two options: the possibility that anything subject to destruction does so due to extrinsic causes, and the possibility that destruction is intrinsic to anything subject to destruction. And the argument seeks to prove the latter is true by showing the former is false. So even if the catuṣkoṭi did involve the use of deviant logic, their defense of kṣaṇavāda does not. So this would not count as a case of adopting a logic based on its utility for establishing a certain metaphysical theory that supports one’s doctrinal commitments. In fact I’m not sure any Buddhist ever ‘adopts’ a logic; since they

all seem committed to classical logic, they would be better described as simply using the logic they take to be commonly accepted. The one possible exception here might be Madhyamaka. Although they never say anything like this, I suspect that if they were presented with a convincing case

for adopting an alternative logic in order to account for the phenomena we observe at the quantum level, they might agree that logical deviancy is acceptable in this specific area; that is, they might accept the utility of ‘quantum logic’ or some such. But they would hasten to add that this can tell us nothing about ‘the logical structure of ultimate reality’. There being no such thing as the ultimate nature of reality, the question of its logical structure simply does not arise.

D G : In fact Metaphysics had been tried to be exorcised , from time to time , from Logic or even from Science as a whole .. We are aware of the famous Viennese attempt Against Metaphysics led by Carnap et al … ; but none of these attempts has been successful ultimately . Compared to the Buddhist Agenda against Metaphysics, what message do you suggest to read out of all these Failures as well as the recalcitrant Metaphysics at the same time?

M S: If metaphysics is just bookkeeping for physics, then there should not be any incompatibility between naturalism and the practice of metaphysics. Doing metaphysics typically requires the assumption that there is such a thing as how the world is anyway, but then since the proponents of naturalizing usually share this assumption, there is no source of conflict there. What the Vienna Circle seems to have been objecting to is Hegelian-style speculative metaphysics. The sort of metaphysics one finds in contemporary analytic metaphysics as well as in much of the Buddhist and Nyāya material is more like ‘bookkeeping for physics’: using philosophical tools to lay out the ontological commitments of our best theories.

Metaphysicians run into opposition when their practices lead to results that outrun empirical verifiability. The trouble is, it is not at all easy to say exactly why doing such a thing should be a problem. Vienna Circle anti-metaphysicians tried to do this using assumptions derived from the doctrines of epistemological internalism, semantic internalism and internalism about mental content. But externalists question all those assumptions so those arguments are

not decisive. This difficulty of saying why verification-transcendence is a problem may be why periods of anti-metaphysics are followed by the resurgence of metaphysics: Kant’s strictures are followed by Hegel, the logical empiricist orthodoxy is followed by the rise of analytic metaphysics, Madhyamaka quietism is followed by the return of Abhidharma-style metaphysics with Diṅnāga and Dharmakīrti, etc. There is evidence both that bookkeepers can have important things to say about how the firm should be run, and that when a bookkeeper is put in charge the firm suffers.