Mark Siderits

On the soteriological significance of emptiness

When it comes to interpreting the Madhyamaka doctrine of emptiness (śūnyatā), we presently find ourselves with an embarrassment of riches. As concerns the meaning of this doctrine (as it is found in the works of Nāgārjuna and his followers), there is a wide array of competing views, with little evidence of an emerging consensus. It is nonetheless possible to see these different readings of emptiness as falling roughly into two kinds, which I shall call ‘metaphysical’ and ‘semantic’. The interpretation that I favor is of the semantic sort, and I have elsewhere tried to support it by pointing out difficulties for various forms of metaphysical interpretation of emptiness (Siderits 1988; 1989; 1994; 1997a). But even if those criticisms are all valid, there still remains one objection to a semantic understanding of emptiness that many find quite persuasive. The objection is, in essence, that if emptiness is interpreted in this way, then it is utterly mysterious how the realization of emptiness might have the sort of soteriological significance that it is usually understood to have. I shall explore that objection here. But first I shall try to make clear just what the metaphysical and semantic interpretations amount to, and I shall say something about the evidence that I believe supports the second over the first variety. Then I shall take up consideration of the objection proper. In the end, I shall claim that the objection can be answered. But I think it will prove worthwhile to give it careful consideration, for this may reveal some important points concerning the Buddhist path to liberation. Mādhyamikas claim that all things are empty (śūnya). And emptiness, we are told, is the being devoid of svabhāva. There has been some confusion over what it would mean to say that something has svabhāva, for here bhāva is sometimes taken to mean ‘being’ or ‘existence’, so that svabhāva should be translated as ‘own-being’ or ‘self-existence’. But as Candrakı̄rti makes clear, bhāva in this context means ‘nature’. So to say that something has svabhāva is to say that its nature is wholly its own; that is, it is not ‘borrowed’ from or dependent on those other things on whose existence it depends. Here the stock example of an entity that does not have svabhāva is the chariot, all of whose properties (including its functional properties) may be accounted for wholly in terms of the properties of its parts. If this is true of a chariot, this may be taken as establishing that the chariot is not ultimately real, that it would not appear among the items on the inventory of our final ontology. For it would then follow that the chariot has no independent explanatory role to play: all the facts about the world can be explained just in terms of the properties of the parts of the chariot, so that its presence in our ontological inventory would be com-

Indian Philosophy and the Consequences of Knowledge

This work consists of five chapters each of which explores a particular facet of a larger theme, that of the place of knowledge in Indian theories of liberation. Classical Indian philosophy is distinctive for the widespread (though not universal) acceptance one finds there of the notion that the highest end – liberation from the wheel of rebirth and the suffering that attends such sam. sāric existence – is attained through cognition of some sort. We even find the claim in the Bhagavad Gı̄tā that devotion to God leads to liberation by producing the requisite liberating knowledge in the devotee. An investigation of the soteriological significance of knowledge in Indian philosophy may prove worthwhile for those seeking a way out of the impasse generated by the faith-reason dichotomy in modern Western thought. The first chapter concerns the epistemology and semantics that stem from what Ram-Prasad calls Jainism’s ‘multiplist metaphysics’, the view that reality is such as to warrant true contradictions. It is widely held that this position represents an expression of the Jain commitment to non-violence (the practice of which is central to attaining liberation on their view). The idea is that refuting the position of one’s opponent is itself an unjustifiable form of violence, since it rests on the false assumption that two contradictory views cannot both be true. The difficulty lies in articulating this in a way that avoids the trap of relativism about truth. Ram-Prasad has interesting things to say about how Jain efforts to accomplish this lead to the higher-order difficulty of avoiding relativism about the nature of the truth-predicate: what can Jaina philosophers say when their opponent insists that contradictions cannot be true? Ram-Prasad concedes that the resolution he has in mind goes beyond anything that Jainas say or even might want to say. It is nonetheless a suggestive and significant response to Jain thought. The second chapter explores the variety of views Indian philosophers held on the question how we come to be aware of our own cognitions. Some held that when we cognize a blue patch, we are aware only of the blue and not of the cognition whereby we come to be aware of the blue; awareness of the fact of cognizing comes only subsequent to the cognition. Others held that cognitions are self-luminous–a cognition illuminates not just its object but itself as well. RamPrasad discusses five distinct views on this matter. He then explores some ways

More things in heaven and earth

In his work, The Problem of Universals in Indian Philosophy,1 Raja Ram Dravid has done an excellent job of locating and elucidating a large number of the major discussions of the problem of universals in the Indian tradition. In so doing, he succeeds in demonstrating that all of the major positions which are associated with the problem in the Western tradition — extreme realism, moderate realism, conceptualism, and extreme nominalism — are to be found as well in Indian philosophy. The picture which emerges from his account is that of an often heated debate in which the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches to the problem are thoroughly explored. Dravids discussions of this debate reveal him to be possessed of a remarkable command of an extensive and widely varied literature. He has done other scholars in the field of Indian philosophy a great service by providing an illuminating guide to the relevant portions of a sometimes bewildering array of texts. There are, nonetheless, a number of problematic areas in Dravids work. In what follows I shall be focusing on these, not because I wish to belittle Dravids accomplishment, but rather because I feel there are some important methodological issues here which require comment. The general question which informs my remarks is this: To what use should we put those materials on the problem of universals which we discover in the Indian tradition. This question arises in part because it is not clear that Dravid feels there is much, if anything, which we can learn about the problem from the examination of these materials. I wish to suggest that a study of the Indian debate on the question of universals can play an important role in our attempts at under standing this issue, for instance by suggesting to us possible approaches which have not been extensively explored in the Western tradition. I shall confine my remarks to two issues: the status of qualities, and the possibility of a consistent extreme nominalism. On the first point, the consensus in at least the modern Western tradition is that if there are universals, these are of the nature of recurrent qualities. In the Indian tradition, on the other hand, it is assumed by realists and nominalists alike that the qualities of a particular

Does a Table Have Buddha-Nature?

Among the Buddhists whom Deguchi, Garfield, and Priest claim accept contradictions as true are members of the Indian Madhyamaka school beginning with Nāgārjuna. This claim is investigated here, and the conclusion is that while it may be possible to read Indian Madhyamaka in this way, the texts allow another interpretation that may have greater overall plausibility. A central issue warranting further investigation is the soteriological significance of the Madhyamaka understanding of emptiness.

Freedom, Caring and Buddhist Philosophy

My visiting professorship in the Philosophy Department at Liverpool came about thanks to the generosity of the Leverhulme Trust, which awarded a grant in connection with the development of the new MRes program in classical Indian philosophy. This program represents something of a departure in philosophical studies in the United Kingdom. The Indian tradition is more commonly studied by philologists in language and culture programs, and by scholars in religious studies programs. What I would like to do in these lectures is explore some of the reasons why it might be important to include the study of the Indian tradition in a philosophy program—for it is not completely obvious that this is important. Perhaps we all recognize nowadays that Europe has not had a monopoly on the systematic use of reason to address the perennial problems of philosophy. Still this does not necessarily mean that philosophy has been done better elsewhere. And given the complexity of any philosophical tradition, there is something to be said for studying just one—perhaps one’s own—tradition in depth, instead of dabbling in several. One response to this is that the study of a distinct tradition serves the important pedagogical function of putting one’s own in proper perspective. But there is an additional benefit that also deserves our attention. It has been my experience that when two distinct traditions treat the same problems using similar methods, it can sometimes happen that one will explore solutions that are neglected in the other. This makes the study of a tradition other than one’s own a source of potential insights that can be of help when a tradition has reached an impasse. I shall try to illustrate that here in these lectures. From among the many schools of classical Indian philosophy, it is the Buddhist tradition that I have chosen to discuss. And the problem I want to explore is how to ground values that we care about. We agree that people ought to have concern for the welfare of others. And we believe that people should have more rather than less freedom in their lives. The question is what reason there is to believe these things. But before I begin to address this question, I should immediately clear up a possible misunderstanding. Buddhism is widely thought of as a religion.

Perceiving Particulars: A Buddhist Defense

1 – See ‘‘Against Immaculate Perception: Seven Reasons for Eliminating Nirvilkalpaka Perception from Nyāya,’’ Philosophy East and West 50 (1) ( January 2000), for my discussion of the first debate. See ‘‘Perception, Apperception and NonConceptual Content,’’ in Perspectives on Consciousness, ed. Amita Chatterjee (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 2003), for my discussion of the second debate. And see ‘‘Experience, Concept-Possession and Knowledge of a Language,’’ in The Philosophy of P. F. Strawson, ed. L. E. Hahn, Library of Living Philosophers (Chicago: Open Court, 1998), for my discussion of the third debate.

Talk About the Non-Existent

‘Devadatta, the son of a barren woman, does not speak—but neither is he silent.’ Most non-philosophers would be inclined to accept the Buddhists’ claim that this sentence is true, and that it is about Devadatta. There are widely shared pre-theoretical intuitions to the effect that it is possible to make true assertions about non-existent entities. But many philosophers see this as yet another instance in which our intuitions lead us astray. In the West there is a tradition beginning with Parmenides that denies that anything meaningful can be said about the nonexistent. In response to the challenge that at least this much may be said about a non-existent, that it does not exist, this tradition has given us various analyses of negative existentials all of which are designed to show that such sentences are actually about something else. Only a relative handful of Western philosophers-Meinong being the best known example-defend common sense on this point. But the Meinongian defense comes at a price--a bloated ontology replete with the golden mountain, unicorns, and the son of a barren woman-that many find too steep to pay.

The Sense-Reference Distinction

It is generally accepted that Indian philosophers of language do not posit sense as a component of the meaning of an expression in addition to its reference. There is, for instance, no notion of analyticity-- of propositions which are true by virtue of meaning alone--in Indian philosophy. Likewise no distinction is drawn between contingently and necessarily non-existent objects: two stock examples of a non-existent are the horns of a hare and the son of a barren woman, and these two examples are treated as in all respects alike. Thus the distinction is not drawn between negative existentials that are true by virtue of the meanings of their constituent words, and negative existentials that are made true by the facts. We find instead a more or less pure reference theory of meaning: the meaning of an expression is that entity which the expression designates. Here the name-bearer relation seems to reign supreme as the central metaphor of semantics. I shall nonetheless argue that, predominant though the reference theory might be in their tradition, certain Indian philosophers of language were still forced to recognize something akin to sense as a distinct element in meaning. That the sense- reference distinction was never extensively made use of by Indian philosophers of language is clear; I shall not be concerned to dispute this or attempt to explain it. Instead I wish to explore how recognition of something sense-like is forced on philosophers working in a tradition dominated by an extreme realist view of all semantic properties.1.

The Problem of Sentential Unity

If words have meanings, then how is it that these meanings unite to form the meaning of a sentence? This question will naturally arise for anyone who recognizes the composition principle--the principle that the meaning of a sentence is a function of the meanings of its constituent words--and also recognizes that the sentence is the basic unit of discourse. Given the first principle plus some fairly intuitive notions of word meaning, sentence meaning, and sentence, it may seem surprising that we can do with sentences what we cannot do with their constituent words: assert propositions, utter commands, ask questions, etc. Crudely put, the question amounts to something like this: why is the meaning of a sentence not just the meaning of a list of words?