epistemology of buddhist philosophy

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). A common example would be: "The mountain is a locus of fire because it is a locus of smoke." Albany: SUNY Press, 1997. Instead, only particulars (svalakṣaṇa ) truly exist, and particulars alone are the objects of perception because only particulars are causally efficient. Author: Ethan Mills (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga) The irreligious Cārvāka school, which existed at least as far back as the time of the Buddha (c. 400 BCE), is often depicted as denying the validity of inference as a means of knowledge. In brief, Dharmakirti apparently holds that some conventions—including causality—are so stable that they may be treated as invariable when they are used in nomological arguments about the interpretation of perceptual content. It has been one of the key, much debated fields of study in Buddhism , Hinduism and Jainism since ancient times. When one reaches the hearth, the sensation of heat on one's hands is itself the fulfillment of one's goal. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1999. "Landmarks in the History of Indian Logic." Well aware of this problem, Buddhist epistemologists follow Dharmakirti's argument: The sameness of those second-order determinations is not constituted by the fact that they all produce the same effect; rather, they are counted as the same because they are phenomenally presented in that fashion. The latter accounts for the sense of subjectivity in the act of knowing, whereas the former accounts for the content of the cognition. Of prime importance is the desire to know (jijñāsa ) without which the cognition could not arise: it may be true that "there is a fire in the hearth," but without some purpose one will not have a cognitive event in which that belief occurs. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. Each individual cow, however, is different from every other cow. You are expecting a lot if you want a quick way to understand the epistemology, ontology and ethics of Buddhism. The success of the inference depends on the pervasion (vyāpti ), which by the time of Dharmakirti is understood as a necessary relationship between evidence and predicate. October 2011 edited October 2011. See also Buddhism; Buddhism—Schools: Dge-lugs; Buddhism—Schools: Madhyamaka; Epistemology, History of; Illusions; Mind and Mental States in Buddhist Philosophy; Perception; Reference; Universals, A Historical Survey; Vasubandhu. Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA). That is, the cognition must pass a threshold whereby the person, usually idealized as judicious (prekṣāvant ), is willing to act on a particular goal based on the content of that cognition. He then considers specific details of the Dharma with special attention to Buddhist metaphysics and epistemology… Encyclopedia.com. Buddhism is considered by some to be more of a philosophy than a religion. Lord Buddha criticized all these concepts and encouraged His disciples to discuss the problems in metaphysics, phenomenology, ethics, and epistemology. Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Their account rests on the claim that the mind consists of a series of causally related, instantaneous mental moments, each of which is ontologically irreducible. A perception that requires such confirmation is said to be extrinsically (parataḥ ) reliable. A favorite Tibetan example is the "blue snow mountain": When one looks at a snowy Himalayan peak on a clear day, the snowcap appears blue because it reflects the sky's color. The causal relation is operative in the inference of fire from smoke; the identity relation is operative in an inference such as, "This is a tree because it is an oak.". In his teaching Mahāvīra indicated simply that one could see a thing differently from different sides and that, accordingly, different answers would be possible. In other instances of perception another cognition must verify the cognition's content. In my project, I look at these and similar questions from the angle of Buddhist epistemology. Nāgārjuna figures in the traditional accounts developed to authenticate the literature of the self-styled “… There is enough there for a lifetime, let alone other schools! This tradition is called “those who follow reasoning” (Tibetan: rigs pa rjes su ‘brang ba); in modern literature it is sometimes known by the Sanskrit ‘pramāṇavāda’, or “the Epistemological School.” They were associated with the Yogacara and Sautrantika schools, and defend… In Buddhism the epistemology of the mind is that the mind is impermanent. Dharmakīrti's “seven works on epistemology” … Hence, the ultimate arbiter of a cognition's reliability is the way in which it presents its objects in causal terms. But relative to the aim of cracking a walnut's shell, a cognition in which that belief occurs would not be reliable, since the vase lacks the causal capacity to crack open a nut. Thetitle ‘Buddha’, which literally means‘awakened’, is conferred on an individual who discovers thepath to nirvana, the cessation of suffering, and propagates thatdiscovery so that others may also achieve nirvana. They are therefore obliged to formulate a theory that, while denying the ultimate reality of universals, accounts for the way that universals may be contingently constructed so that words may refer to their referents. The history of Buddhist and Indian logical and epistemo­ logical theories constitutes an interesting study not only for the Buddhist scholars but also for philosophers as well as historians of philosophy in general. In this clearly written undergraduate textbook, Stephen Laumakis explains the origin and development of Buddhist ideas and concepts, focusing on the philosophical ideas and arguments presented and defended by selected thinkers and sutras from various traditions. On this model, the word cow does not have a direct relation to any particular cow. In brief, the sameness required to construct the universal cowness is formulated by appealing to the causal characteristics of the individuals in question. © 2019 Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. The same type of account holds true in the identity relation: the concept or term oak can only be properly applied to an entity that also has all the causal characteristics that make it suitable to be called a tree. But since the perceptual content—the image—is distorted by causal factors not given with the object, the content itself does not provide any basis for recognizing that distortion. Perception cannot include universals, and linguistic or conceptual cognitions must include universals. . Still, as noted earlier, some perceptions are alleged to be intrinsically reliable, such that they do not require confirmation by a subsequent act of knowing. Katsura, Shoryu. Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. As with perception, inference is a cognitive event in which an image of the object appears. What then would distinguish those perceptions such that, unlike the sight of "blue snow," they could never be spurious? Buddhism and the other Indian philosophical schools mutually influenced each other … Reliability concerns the justification of knowledge. In Dharmakīrti's Thought and Its Impact on Indian and Tibetan Philosophy: Proceedings of the Third International Dharmakīrti Conference, Hiroshima, November 4–6, 1997, edited by Shoryu Katsura. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1987. Not every cognition, however, is an act of knowing. This article provides an introduction to Buddhist epistemology. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. It is an excellent entry to Buddhist philosophy for students of Western thought. Dharmakīrti's philosophy is based on the need to establish a theory of logical validity and certainty grounded in causality. Hence, Buddhist epistemologists must argue that all those images are the same, and to do so they use the same reason: Those images are the same because they all have the same effect, which in this case is a second-order determination of sameness (ekapratyavamarśajñāna ). To avoid this outcome, Buddhist epistemologists therefore deny the ultimate reality of universals as things in the world. Aristotle's claim that "it is impossible even to think without a mental picture" (On Memory and Recollection 450a) has frequently been echoed…, INTELLECT © Oxford University Press, 2018. Here as well, the paradigmatic case for causal functionality is a perceptual image. Journal of Indian Philosophy 31 (1–3) (2003): 302–321. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2007. Posts about Epistemology written by Global Philosophy. Nevertheless, since the form of that judgment is causally constrained by the image presented by indeterminate perception, the perception itself is considered reliable. In other words the evidence cannot occur if it is not accompanied by the proximate occurrence of the predicate, or to put it another way the predicate is necessarily predicable of any subject to which the evidence is correctly predicated. Encyclopedia.com. death) of the Buddha and later spread throughout Asia. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. What is real for them is only theparticular (svalakṣaṇa). To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage … The concept of the object in psychoanalysis proves to be an enigmatic one, because of its mobile and polysemic aspect and constantly changing…, Psychoanalytic object relations theories may be defined as those that place the internalization, structuralization and clinical reactivation (in the…, Images Williams, Paul. Published work has been in Buddhist Madhyamaka and epistemology, with an increasing emphasis on issues of comparative philosophy. "John" at birth and "John" at forty-five are actually different. Buddhist philosophy refers to the philosophical investigations and systems of inquiry that developed among various Buddhist schools in India following the parinirvana (i.e. This chapter explores how the relation between direct experience and discursive modes of knowing is articulated in Indian Buddhism. KALUPAHANA, A HISTORY OF BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY. Perception: An Essay on Classical Indian Theories of Knowledge. This, however, does little justice to the Pāli Nikāyas, where the Buddha is said to be part of a long and respectable tradition of past Buddhas, and where the first Brahmins are sometimes commend… 7 Apr. Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Süd und Ostasiens 5 (1961): 125–148. Nevertheless, from a phenomenal standpoint the act of knowing presents itself with two images, the aforementioned object-image (grāhyākāra ) and a subject-image (grāhakākāra ). Unlike inference, in perception the image is produced directly by the object, and the reliability of perception is based on this direct causal relation. That difference or exclusion from other entities is a matter of causality: All cows are the same in that they are all equally different from those entities that are not capable of the causal functionality that one expects when one uses the word cow. Hence, the causal character of the mental moment that is a perception is restrained (niyata ) by the causal characteristics of the object to which it is in relation through the sense organ. Buddhist epistemologists describe this invariable relation between evidence and predicate as being of only two kinds: either the evidence is the effect of the predicate, or else the evidence stands in a relation of identity (tādātmya ) to the predicate. Tillemans, Tom J. F. Scripture, Logic, Language: Essays on Dharmakirti and His Tibetan Successors. I'm not currently interested in diverse strands of Buddhist philosophy. In relating reliability to purpose Buddhist epistemologists argue that an act of knowing must not only be reliable but must also be a motivator of purposeful action. By grounding reliability in telic efficacy Buddhist thinkers seek to justify beliefs by interpreting them as descriptions of their objects' causal characteristics. The name was adopted by a group of philosophers who shared many of his v…, Object "Deductive, Inductive, Both or Neither?" Dharmakirti formulates this relation as a necessary rule of unaccompanied nonarising (avinābhāvaniyama ). Frequently, this assertion is formulated as a requirement for novelty, whereby an act of knowing reveals a previously unknown object (ajñātārthaprakāśa ). Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Largely because a personal essence is considered a special case of a universal, Buddhists likewise reject the existence—and hence the perception—of universals. Buddhist philosophy is a system of thought which started with the teachings of the Buddha, or "awakened one", also known as Gautama Buddha or Shakyamuni (the sage of the Shakya clan). Journal of Indian Philosophy 31 (1–3) (2003): 323–341. Access to the complete content on Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase. The fact of being a motivator of action is a psychological feature that reflects teleological and ontological concerns. "Dharmakīrti's Theory of Truth." When one constructs a sameness that warrants one's use of the label "John," one falsely believes that the sameness is not constructed, but real. The link was not copied. The problem, however, is determining whether those conventions accurately depict the causal characteristics of real things. Instead, it is directly related to the universal "cowness." Recent scholarship in Buddhist (and more broadly, Indian) epistemology, however, has (1) improved in quality, (2) broadened in subject matter, and (3) become more accessible to non‐specialists. Because the hearth contains a fire that is capable of fulfilling one's goal, the perception of a fire in the hearth is deemed reliable. Both in the case of the causal relation and the identity relation the success of the Buddhist analysis of inference depends heavily on the exclusion theory of meaning and reference. "Once More on Circles." A word such as cow thus refers to each particular cow by virtue of the universal cowness to which both the word and each particular are related. Thus, as a mental event the act of knowing is ontologically identical to a mental moment. The examination of “reliable cognition” (tshadma) is the core subject of Buddhist epistemological works inIndia and Tibet. For example, the perceptual content interpreted as "blue snow" might be unreliable in regard to one's need to identify a blue object, and yet it may still be reliable in regard to the need to identify snow. Objectivity In the Tibetan tradition, it is subsumed under thebroader enterprise of classification of “mind” or“mental episodes” (Tib. Firstly, I want to tell you a bit about my academic background, so you will know where my project is coming from. Although Buddhist epistemologists deny the ultimate existence of universals, they nevertheless adopt their rivals' approach to reference. Buddhist epistemology is by no means a new field of study, and yet knowledge of this field is still largely limited to a narrow group of specialists. How does one determine, for example, that smoke is necessarily produced by fire? Each author of this anthology combines historical and philological scholarship with philosophical acumen and linguistic insight. Therefore, it’s best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publication’s requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html. Please subscribe or login to access full text content. On this view one can thus say that all cows are the same not because each individual is identical, but because each individual instantiates that one universal cowness. Fourth, the Buddhist epistemology is not the opposition of subject and object, because there is no眞is the object of all the hue is false as true, the only object of Buddha nature, Buddha nature, but is the subject himself. Although the implications of this claim are left covert, it seems likely that for Buddhist epistemologists one factor in the intrinsic reliability of some perceptions is that the goals in question are such that the perceptual content could never be erroneously interpreted. The Buddhist theorist Vasubandhu initially appropriates these tools, but Dignāga first employs them in a manner that reflects all the issues addressed by later Buddhist epistemologists. to naturalism in epistemology, hence to understanding cognition in embodied and causal terms, we may now be in a better position to appreciate the contributions of Buddhist philosophers to epistemology. Tom J. F. Tillemans holds the Chair of Buddhist Studies at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. One may only glimpse the fire from a corner of the room, and one must appeal to inferential evidence (such as smoke) or a subsequent perception to verify that one was indeed seeing fire. For Buddhist epistemologists to exist is to be knowable (jñeya ), and since knowledge is a causal process, an existent entity must therefore be causally efficient; likewise, any causally efficient entity must exist. But as noted earlier, the criterion of reliability requires a determinate cognition, which is necessarily conceptual or linguistic in form. As will be evident in the following text, the Buddhist strategy is to make perception the actual motivator of action, while relegating the determinate content of perception to a subsequent judgment, which is not strictly speaking the motivator. The Buddhist model of perception is causal and eidetic: an object interacts with a sense-organ such that, with other factors in place, the next moment of mind occurs with an image or simulacrum (sādṛśya or sārūpya ) of the object. The act of knowing occurs when the mind comes into a direct or indirect causal relation with an object such that, with other conditions in place, the next mental moment contains an image (ākāra ) of the object. When it comes to defining pratyaksha, three distinct positions are discernible within the rubric of “Buddhist” philosophy. The paradigmatic case of an entity's causal efficiency is its capacity to produce an image of itself in a perceiver's mind, and it is for this reason that Dharmakirti remarks, "To exist is to be perceived" (sattvam upalabdhir eva ). Suppose, for example, that one is cold, and that one seeks to warm one's hands at a fire. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1986. The Buddhist path combines both philosophical reasoning and meditation. Due to the ontological unity of a mental moment, the notion that the mental moment contains an image of the object is metaphorical; in fact, the image is ontologically identical to that mental moment itself. Here, one encounters the general problems of induction, and while Buddhist epistemologists propose various empirical means of overcoming such problems, it would be difficult to argue that they have fully succeeded. By contrast, anythingthat is a universal (sāmānyalakṣaṇa) isunreal; at most it is a customarily recognized fiction needed forthought and language. If one again asserts that they all have the same effect, then the argument ends in an infinite regress. He starts with a sketch of the Buddha and the Dharma, and highlights the origins of Buddhism in India. Ment… The act of knowing occurs when the mind comes into a direct or indirect causal relation with an object such that, with other conditions in place, the next mental mome… By thus evaluating complex beliefs within various teleological contexts, Buddhist thinkers can accept some philosophical claims in one context, while rejecting them in another—a strategy that is central to Buddhist soteriology. In a perception, however, not only the previous mental moment but also the perceived object is contributing causally to the occurrence of the perception. Pre-Buddhist philosophical traditions, like western tradition, split between RATIONALISTS and EMPIRICISTS. They maintain that to achieve those ends, one must eliminate ignorance (avidyā ), a fundamental mental flaw that is suffering's basic cause. Buddhism is founded on elements of the Śramaṇa movement, which flowered in the first half of the 1st millennium BCE. . Fifth, the Buddhist epistemology and ontology interoperability, resulting in body awareness. That is, an instance of smoke is excluded from all those other entities that do not have the causal characteristics of smoke. The exclusion theory thus provides a seemingly analytical relation between the concepts employed in an inference, and inferences are therefore treated as intrinsically reliable. Most South Asian thinkers solve this familiar problem in the philosophy of language by positing the existence of real universals (technical terms for which include sāmānya, jāti, and ākṛti ). Most Buddhist epistemologists, however, do not pursue this controversial aspect of Dharmakirti's thought and instead leave such concerns to philosophers of the Madhyamika or Middle Way school. One might believe, for example, that the object on one's table is an unbreakable vase, although it is in fact fragile. https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/buddhist-epistemology, "Buddhist Epistemology II: The Epistemology of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. Objectivity in the sciences, especially the social sciences, is paired implicitly or explicitly with its opposite, subjectivity. Hence, perception must be a sheer apprehension of an object that is not linguistic or conceptual in character. Epistemology in Buddhist Philosophy is different from other schools of philosophy in India. Historically, Dharmakīrti was the main source for important Buddhist writers on epistemology from the seventh to ninth centuries as well as for the influential later Indian philosophers. Frauwallner, Erich. The word cow, for example, should refer only to a cow, and not to something different, such as a horse. Your current browser may not support copying via this button. 0. Besides perception, inference is considered an act of knowing. Buddhist epistemologists examine knowledge in terms of a knowledge-event or act of knowing (pramiti ). Instead, it bears an indirect causal relation to the object in two ways, namely, by way of the relations on which an inference relies and by way of the process of constructing universals. Buddhist philosophy rejects a number of traditional notions like those of atheism, theism, monism, and dualism. Hence, if the word cow were to stand in a direct relation to one individual cow, it should always refer only to that individual. Dignāga (c. 480–540) and Dharmakīrti (c. 6-7th century) were Buddhist philosophers who developed a system of epistemology (Pramāṇa) and logic in their debates with the Brahminical philosophers in order to defend Buddhist doctrine. Such would be the case because the word cow should never refer to something that is different from its proper referent, and if the proper referent of the word cow were a particular cow, then by referring to some other cow, the word cow would be referring to something different from its proper referent. That is, the axiology is explained by the epistemology which is explained by … More than any other introductory text, this one presents Buddhist philosophy in a way that will be familiar to analytic philosophers. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). It flattens out a number of the philosophical and exegetical differences between major Buddhist Epistemologists, concentrating primarily on Dharmakīrti's views. In some cases the evidence for the desired functionality is given with the cognition itself: for example, the sensation of warmth requires no other cognition to verify that one is feeling warm. Buddhist epistemologists examine knowledge in terms of a knowledge-event or act of knowing (pramiti ). Buddhist Epistemology as Apologetics: Studies on the History, Self-understanding and Dogmatic Foundations of Late Indian Buddhist Philosophy Although early Buddhism evinces a nascent epistemology, precise and sophisticated accounts of knowledge do not begin until adequate tools are developed by South Asian philosophers, primarily non-Buddhists, starting no later than the first century CE. Kantian philosophy is also known to have In short, these rivals claim that, for words to successfully refer to their proper referents, they must always have a relation to those referents and only to those referents. The obvious question here is: What warrants the sameness of all those determinations? Include universals relation as a mental moment Essay on Classical Indian theories of knowledge path. I look at these and similar questions from the angle of Buddhist Studies at the University of Lausanne in.... That will be familiar to analytic philosophers particulars, and that one seeks to warm one 's at... Mental moment that requires such confirmation is said to be intrinsically ( ). Refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list you could not be signed,. Tom J. F. tillemans holds the Chair of Buddhist texts in my project, I want to tell a! To any particular cow unique particulars, and nothing more but their theory of logical validity and grounded... Understanding the conventions that govern the use epistemology of buddhist philosophy concepts a personal essence judgment, `` that is, however is! Subsumed under thebroader enterprise of classification of epistemology of buddhist philosophy mind ” or “ mental episodes (., it is an excellent entry to Buddhist teachings, there have been in. 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