Sankara and Colin McGinn on Existence and Possibility

 It’s analogous to the long cycle on the dishwasher, the one I never use.  Philosophy has its long cycles which never get things quite clear.

"If seven maids with seven mops

     Swept it for half a year,

Do you suppose,' the Walrus said,

      That they could get it clear?'

I doubt it,' said the Carpenter,

      And shed a bitter tear.

Ex nihilo nihil fit as the panpsychist motto, the impossibility of change of Parmenides, sat and asatkaryavada (non-difference of cause and effect and v.v.) and now from Colin McGinn:

is existence possible

The vanes of my brain are spinning.

McGinn’s tourbillon comes from the chilling quarter of paradox.  Existence is not possible because ..... Here I must recommend reading it for it is certain that my understanding of it is flawed.  He pauses on the brink of radical contingency, looks into that abyss and spies William Blake having tea with Nobodaddy.

To Nobodaddy

Why art thou silent & invisible,
Father of Jealousy?
Why dost thou hide thyself in clouds
From every searching Eye?

Why darkness & obscurity
In all thy works & laws,
That none dare eat the fruit but from
Thy wily serpent's jaws?
Or is it because Secrecy
Gains females' loud applause?

  He questions the endless series of entities that spawn each other:

"The first is that these entities come from nothing at all: they simply spring into existence de novo. Not even God plays a role, since he is an existent being (allegedly) for whom the same question arises: what explains God’s existence?

Introduce the Ontological argument into the cycle and we will never have a clean plate.  Just:

“O good looking one, in the beginning this was Existence alone, One only without a second.  With regard to that some say, “In the beginning this was non-existence alone, one only, without a second.  From that non-existence issued existence." ‘

He said, ‘O good looking one, by what logic can existence verily come out of non-existence?  But surely, O good looking one, in the beginning all this was Existence, One only, without a second.’ Chandogya Upanisad VI.2.1/2

McGinn writes:

“The first is that the same question will arise for the antecedent realm of existence: where do these possibilities come from? If possible worlds really exist, where do they come from—do they pop into existence from nothing? But second, and more decisive, possibilities have no tendency to turn into actualities; so they cannot play the role of existence generators.”

The word ‘pop’, if I’m not being captious, is an indication of the missing factor: time.  The acorn does not pop into an oak.   A possibility is not an actuality it is part of the process or a power.  The acorn falls on the ground.  Add time and the cosmos.  Voila!

Sankara’s commentary on the Chandogya text cited is suggestive:

“As in the world someone, who in the forenoon had seen a lump of earth spread by a potter desirous of making pot, plate etc., he, on perceiving in that very place different products like pot, plate, etc. while returning in the afternoon after visiting a village would say, ‘those pots, plates, etc. were but earth in the forenoon’, so also it is said even here, ' In the beginning this was Existence alone.’

That existence is existence now dense with duration a la Bergson.  McGinn discusses eternal elementary particles:

“Let’s assume they exist eternally: we still need to know why they exist at all, given that they don’t have to. Is their existence simply a brute fact with no explanation? But why these entities and not others—why the particular types of particles that populate our universe?”

That doesn’t quite work for him.  Interesting discussions on this and other topics on his blog.

Parmenides and Satkaryavada

((repost from 2011)

In A History of Philosophy Vol.1, Greece and Rome, Part 1 by Frederick Copleston S.J. the theory of Parmenides is described succinctly and with admirable clarity:

His first great assertion is that "It is". "It", i.e. Reality, Being, of whatever nature it may be, is, exists, and cannot not be. It is, and it is impossible for it not to be. Being can be spoken of, and it can be the object of my thought. But that which I can think of and can speak of can be, "for it is the same thing that can be thought and can be". But if "It" can be then it is. Why? Because if it could be and yet were not, then it would be nothing. Now, nothing cannot be the object of speech or thought, for to speak about nothing is not to speak, and to think faout nothing is the same as not thinking at all. Besides if it merely could be, then, paradoxically, it couldnever come to be, for it would then have to come out of nothing, and out of nothing comes nothing and not something. Being, then, Reality, "It" was not first possible, i.e. nothing, and then existent: it was always existent - more accurately, "It is".

In the Sankhya-karikas of Isvarakrishna we have this expression of the doctrine of Satkaryavada also known as the doctrine of the non-difference of cause and effect:

The effect already exists in the cause for the following reasons: what is nonexistent cannot he produced; for producing a thing, a specific material cause is resorted to; everything is not produced by everything; a specific material cause capable of producing a specific product alone produces that effect; there is such a thing as a particular cause for a particular effect.

As in the injunction frequently encountered on Irish building sites Think of the next man, this doctrine leaves much to be done in the way of ingenious exegesis by subsequent sages. We can however discern through the fog something of the form of a like insight to that of Parmenides. What is, is, and what is not has no traction on reality in order to come to be. It can't get started.
As mentioned in a previous note on this topic advaitic causality
this idea of causality comes from the narrow focus of what in the Aristotelian system would be termed material causality. In a curious way the materialist monism of Parmenides throws a light on the Satkaryavada doctrine which bundles together material and efficient causality and treats them as one. Because potential is wrapped up in the nature of the material which is then what is to be formed out of that material must somehow be in existence. Otherwise it could not come to be because it would be nothing and as we are told nothing cannot gain traction.

Satkaryavada is a confused likeness of the doctrine of the impossibility of change espoused by Parmenides in that it accepts change but only as mithya i.e. real as an appearance.

By knowing a single lump of clay, everything that is made of clay would become known. A modification begins with speech, it is a (mere) name. The clay alone is true i.e. real.

Commentary on Chandogya Upanishad VI.i.4

In the commentary of Shankara on the Brahma-Sutra-Bhasya the impossibility of something coming out of nothing is unequivocally stated.

Existence does not come out of non-existence. If something can come out of nothing, then it becomes useless to refer to special kinds of causes, since non-existence as such is indistinguishable everywhere.

(from B.S.B. II.ii.26)

This general principle is used extensively both in the discussion about material causality and the possibility of change and also as a method of refutation of the Buddhist doctrines of Annata and Annica. In this note I am concerned with material causality. An important citation on this topic is B.S.B. II.i.18 in which he states his views on potency:

Again, when some potency is assumed in the cause, to determine the effect, that potency cannot influence the effect by being different (from the cause and effect) or non-existent (like the effect), since (on either supposition) non-existence and difference will pertain to the potency as much as to the effect. Therefore the potency must be the very essence of the cause, and the effect must be involved in the very core of the potency.

Grasping these ideas is like lifting mercury with a fork because we are so primed with the Aristotelian concept of Cause & Effect. I'm not even sure that they conflict with Aristotle's views because they are more onto-theological than ontological. Brahman in the Vedic schema is the material cause of the universe. Brahman as pure act is the cause and the effect of all manifestation. Just as all the potential for items made of clay is in the clay, all the potential for what is, is in Brahman. There is a unity of act and potency in Brahman and because Brahman is the reality of anything whatever this non-difference of cause and effect is reflected in matter of all kinds.

It is not the case that Shankara ignores the idea of efficent causality claiming that everything just happens. He accepts the role of actors but still subordinates their causal importance to the material cause or the nature of things. That is the supervenient reality.

Moreover, if it be admitted that something can come out of nothing, then on the same ground even the indifferent people who are inactive should attain their desired results, for non-existence is clearly evident even there, and so a husbandman who does not engage in cultivation should get his crop, a potter who makes no effort for preparing the clay should get his vessels ready, and a weaver who does not make any effort for weaving the yarn should get a cloth just as much as one that weaves. And nobody need in any way strive for heaven or liberation. But such a position is neither reasonable nor is accepted by anybody. Therefore the assertion of something coming out of nothing is unjustifiable.

These topics of substance, identity and change refracted through a vedic medium are puzzling and pondering on them gives one a sense of how Plato confronted by Parmenides tried to save the appearances.

King on Early Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism

Even the author of the fourth prakarana (treatise) is an heir to the atman tradition which upholds permanence and constancy as the fundamental nature of reality. For the GK (Gaudapadiya Karika) as a whole the appearance of the world can only be adequately explained if there is some unchanging substratum supporting its manifestation. Reality must have an unchanging intrinsic nature or it could not be “reality”. This is clearly a Vedantic and not a Madhyamaka conception of reality, dispite the GK’s propensity for Buddhist arguments and terminology.

(pg.140: Early Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism by Richard King)

Would it be invidious to suggest that one might start with a Buddhist conception of non-origination and work one’s way out of it? My own sense of the Buddhist influence is the severely monolithic monism which declares:

GK IV.23 : A cause is not born of a beginningless effect ; nor does an effect naturally come out (of a beginningless cause). (Cause and effect are thus birthless); for a thing that has no cause, has certainly no birth.

GK:IV.26: Consciousness has no contact with objects so also it has certainly no contact with appearances of objects. For according to the reasons adduced, an object has no existence, and an illusory object is not separate from awareness.

This latter goes even further than Madhyamaka’s “for impermanence is never absent in entities”. There are no such things as entities for them to be impermanent. Their being is the being of the unborn (ajativada) and they cannot be other than such.

Existence alone. (Ch.Up. VI.2.1)

O good looking one, in the beginning this was Existence alone, One only, without a second. With regard to this some say, “In the beginning this was non-existence alone, one only, without a second. From that non-existence issued existence."

(Chandogya Upanisad: VI.2.1)

I have written already about the common features of the thought of Parmenides and that of the satkaryavada thesis of the non-difference of cause and effect.
parmenides
It is said that there are no proofs of the existence of God offered in Vedanta but that verse is surely an intuition about contingency. If there are no individual separable things that have existence in the initial stage prior to their creation then Existence or Being itself must be there. The idea is that out of nothing, nothing can come. There never is a complete void, the sarva sunya of the Buddhists that Sankara controverts in his commentary.

For the Buddhists imagine that the reality before creation is merely an absence of existence. But they do not stand for any other substance opposed to existence, unlike the Naiyayikas who hold that existence and non-existence mean ‘things as they are’, and the opposite of them , (respectively)

The Naiyayikas take this existence of things/non-existence of things in a logical polar way. Having the concept of the existence of anything implies having the concept of its non-existence. The Buddhists view is an ontological one. For them there can be pure non-existence of whatever subsequently comes into existence.

For the Advaitin the primary intuition about a thing is - ‘it is’. Then adjoined to that is - ‘it is this’.

Even now it is surely Existence. But now it stands qualified by name and form, and also as an object of the word and the idea ‘this’. Therefore it is termed as ‘this’. But before creation, in the beginning, this was only an object of the word and idea ‘Existence’. Hence it is emphasized that ‘in the beginning this was Existence alone’. For as in deep-sleep, so also before creation it was not possible to grasp this as possessed of name or form. As someone, after rising from deep-sleep, realises that in deep-sleep the thing that existed was mere existence, i.e. he realises existence alone, similar was the case before creation. This is the meaning.

Wnen I read this the other morning it occurred to me that in meditation when for a brief moment we are conscious but without thoughts and then move into some reverie, there is a similar transition. In one sense those thoughts were not there before but their consciousness was. Part of the point of meditation is to move the awareness away from the contents of consciousness and identification with that to consciousness as such or the standpoint of the Witness (Saksin).