Get Real

 The ‘Real’ as used in metaphysics is a term that I have never been happy with.  I can understand ‘real’ butter, a real Rolex, or  a fake Rolex withal a real watch.  Why should that which is unchanging be taken to be truly real. I can see where the notion might have come from.  A changeful entity both is and is not what it presents.  This is its status as a particular, what it wears upon its face.  As the instantiation of a universal it borrows the clothing of a solid citizen of the substantial republic (res publica).  

Has something gone wrong in our thinking when we subject the world we encounter to such derealisation?  To put it in Platonic terms the flickering world of our projection shares with the realm of Ideas the fact of existence or of being.  Nouns and verbs are the fleeting active personal world pitted against the impersonal ‘real’ world.

This is a mistake

Advaita and the Paradox of Realism

 Advaita’s paradox is that what makes perception to be a reflection of the real world, what Adhvarindra calls perceptuality, is also that which derealises the evident.  What is true falsifies.  Realism inverts itself.  This is similar to the thought of Plato.  Our personal fire creates the shadow world but when we emerge into the ultimate fire of the sun that shadow world is annihilated in the light of Logos.  

What does ‘mithya’/false mean in the case of advaita?  Is it not false by stipulation if you talk false to mean uncontradicted in the three moments of time, past/present/future.  Like Parmenides they hold that what is changeful is unreal, it never really is or both is and is not.  This rigorism is balanced by the concept of the non-dual.  What is false is a world that is freestanding, self established.  Both levels of reality are symbiotically linked, they flow into each other.  There is the absolute (paramartha) and the relative (pratibhasika) the metaphysical and the conventional reality. 

To controvert that opposed categorisation of conventional and metaphysical you have the moment of supreme insight called akhandadara vritti, the unbroken mental modification which reveals the truth of how perception is possible.  We have, as it were, a window overlooking the metaphysical. It is the one through which we see.  Everything flows together in a unity of being that allows for realism within the bounds of ‘the cave’.Empirically there is always more to know, to find out but knowledge itself has realism as the default position.  Even getting things wrong proves it otherwise ‘wrong’,  pace neo-modernism, is a meaningless concept.  

Here I am weltering in a slough of mixed metaphors and analogies, windows, shadows, snakes, ropes, mirages.  ‘Is this a dagger which I see before me’?  

Recall the tantric saying: What is here is there, what is not here is not anywhere.

 .  

Sutra 2:4:11 of Brihadaranayka Upanisad with Sankara's Commentary

 

Brihadaranyaka Upanisad 2:4:11 

"As the ocean is the one goal of all sorts

of water, as the skin is the one goal of all kinds

of touch, as the nostrils are the one goal of all

odours, as the tongue is the one goal of all

savours, as the eye is the one goal of all colours,

as the ear is the one goal of all sounds, the

Manas is the one goal of all deliberations, as the

intellect is the one goal of all kinds of knowledge,

as the hands are the one goal of all sorts of work,

as the organ of generation is the one goal of all

kinds of enjoyment, as the anus is the one goal

of all excretions, as the feet are the one goal of

all kinds of walking, as the organ of speech is

the one goal of all Vedas."

Here then is the bird’s eye view, the forest view or being high enough up to be no longer in danger of missing the forest for the trees.  Yes I do know that the idiom is ‘missing the wood for the trees’  but in that locution is the germ of a typical equivocation which has consequences if that is not too portentous.  When was I ever afraid of the portentous, God help me.  Wood, as lumber, firewood etc.,  is a product of trees.  A wood is also a large number of trees growing in the same place. A forest is an even larger group of trees, co-located, as in the Black Forest and so forth.  This is the view that I want to focus on.  And while I am talking about ‘views’ let me assert before it is offered as a transcendental hypothesis, the ‘view’ in Sankara’s advaita is a Realistic one.  There is a world and it is independent of our knowledge of it and elements of it wholly unknown too also exist sheltering under the umbrella of being.  Unless that is kept firmly in mind the inquiry due to the pullulation of terms that relate to awareness, consciousness, illusion and so forth can beguile us into a species of Idealism.  In that direction lies Buddhism, Humean/Empiricist epistemology and other sloughs of error.

The forest view is the height of the sutra eye.  When you ignore all the differentiating factors of the modalities of sense you resolve them all into the category of awareness or consciousness.  Notice that this last sentence is the typical stepping off point into the thin air of Idealism.  Don’t walk that plank.  Reflect on the point also made by Sankara that Samadhi, taken to be the sine qua non of enlightenment by yogis, is also but another form of awareness.

Everything is pervaded by or its being is SatChit/BeingConsciousness.

“Moreover, it is not only at the time of its origin

and continuance that the universe, on account of its

non-existence apart from Pure Intelligence, is Brahman,

but it is so at the time of dissolution also just as

bubbles, foam, etc. are non-existent apart from water,

so name, form and action, which are the effects of Pure

Intelligence and dissolve in It, are non-existent apart

from It.” (from Commentary by Sankara on the sutra)

Paradoxically this ‘everything is consciousness/Brahman’ is foundational for the Realism of Advaita as expressed in the preamble to the Brahma Sutra Bhasya (Sankara’s Commentary) and also in succinct fashion by Dharmaraja Adhvarindra in his ‘Vedanta Paribhasa’.  I am referring to the concept of ‘perceptuality’ or the structure that underlies our experience of the ‘external’ world.  We see it as it is .  Error is possible but only from the standpoint of that default view.

That I think is a big enough bite for today.   Dinner will be the ‘chit jada granthi’, the knot between the inert and consciousness.  The ‘mind/Manas’ is not, you see, of its nature conscious.  Tomorrow.  Now I have to mow a lawn, a really real lawn.

Arthapatti/postulation, Adhyasa, and Vulcan

 

Arthapatti variously translated as ‘postulation’, ‘presumption’, ‘supposition’ is treated almost perfunctorily in the classic texts usually focusing on the simplest canonical examples of fat Devadatta who doesn’t eat during the day and the living Chaitra who is not at home.  A restricted diet of examples leads to intellectual starvation in that the inquiry can be led into the path of cliched thinking. Take the very topic itself ‘pramana’ usually translated as ‘valid means of knowledge’.  I seem to notice the error that ensues in the conviction that if valid knowledge does not ensue then there was no pramana employed which is bizarre considering that confusion/illusion/delusion is such a topic in Vedanta.  Perception, a primary pramana, was used but knowledge did not happen.  Therefore I must demur from the statement of Swami Satprakashananda in his ‘Methods of Knowledge’:

It is worthy of note that arthapatti is applicable only when there is but one alternative explanation of the fact to be explained.  When there are more than one possible explanations the assumption of any one of them cannot explain the fact assuredly (with certainty).  So this cannot be a case of postulation (arthapatti) which is a means to valid knowledge.

This is an elision of the use of arthapatti in science which proceeds by hypothesis and experiment.  In advaitic/non-dual metaphysics the adhyasa theory is the result of a transcendental hypothesis or arthapatti which attempts to solve the aporia of perception viz. how does that out there extended object come to be in my mind as a state of unextended consciousness.  This is the subject of the preamble to the Brahma Sutra Bhasya by Sankara about which I have written extensively.  It is noteworthy that this aporia only exists for a Realist epistemology, for the subjective Idealist there is only the presentment to the mind and the object drops out as at most an inference.  As Sankara says in his commentary we perceive objects, we don’t perceive our perceptions.  There is a non-dual (non-numerical identity) between that out there and this in here.  In fact the division into ‘out there/external’ and ‘in here/internal’ is a dubious one.  That’s another topic.

Vulcan, the home planet of Mr.Spock the eminent logician was proven to be an illusion by Einstein.  My Google AI friend has a succinct account:

Albert Einstein's theory of General Relativity played a pivotal role in debunking the existence of the hypothetical planet Vulcan. Prior to Einstein's theory, astronomers, including Urbain Le Verrier, proposed Vulcan to explain discrepancies in Mercury's orbit, which couldn't be fully explained by Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation. Einstein's theory, however, provided a more accurate understanding of gravity as the curvature of spacetime, eliminating the need for a hypothetical planet to explain the observed orbital anomalies.

Here's a more detailed explanation:

   The Discrepancy:

   Mercury's orbit showed a slight wobble, or precession, that couldn't be fully accounted for by the gravitational pull of the known planets in the solar system.

The Proposed Solution:

Le Verrier proposed that a planet between Mercury and the Sun, dubbed Vulcan, was causing the wobble.

The Hunt for Vulcan:

Astronomers searched for Vulcan during solar eclipses, but it was never found.

Einstein's Revelation:

Einstein's theory of General Relativity, published in 1915, explained that the precession of Mercury's orbit was due to the way spacetime is warped around massive objects, like the Sun. This warping effect was more pronounced closer to the Sun, making it unnecessary to postulate the existence of a hypothetical planet to explain the observed orbital anomalies.

The End of Vulcan:

Einstein's theory effectively eliminated the need for Vulcan, demonstrating that the observed precession could be explained by the curvature of spacetime, and not by the gravitational pull of a hidden planet.

Here arthapatti correctly employed produced the planet Vulcan.  Some people even mistook sun spots to be the transit of Vulcan across the Sun.  

Bernard Lonergan's Difficulty

 

Why is Bernard Lonergan’s ‘Insight’ so hard to read? Simple, it is irredeemably abstract and he tends to offer congeries of ‘places’ eg. in the 26th place.  When you offer a generalised Empirical Method anything as a good Aristotelian/Thomist that which is generalised must have been abstracted from a number of instances.  No actual instances are offered, you have to bring your own.  This is not mnemonic, indeed it has a stultifying effect. Just saying, but I will continue to dip in here and there and get back to you.

I image Etienne Gilson, that master of clarity had trouble with him on the matter of Realism.  The Critical Realism that seems to start with the mind was a bete noir of his:

“There is an empirical consciousness characteristic  of sensing, perceiving, imagining.  As the content of these acts is merely presented or represented, so the awareness immanent in the acts is the mere givenness of the acts”. (322-324 Insight)

‘Presented’ or ‘represented’ seems hedging or imprecision at best. ‘Content of the acts’ contrasted with the ‘mere givenness of the acts’.  How is that done?

Realism, the Mind/Body problem in Western and Advaitic thought.

 

“Now at the same time it is just those self-same things which his mind, as we say, perceives; and the whole philosophy of perception from Democritus’s time downwards has been just one long wrangle over the paradox that what is evidently one reality should be in two places at once, both in outer space and in a person’s mind. ‘Representative’ theories of perception avoid the logical paradox, but on the other hand they violate the reader’s sense of life, which knows no intervening mental image but seems to see the room and the book immediately just as they physically exist.”  (from ‘Radical Empiricism’ by William James)

In his clear way James has set out the aporia which in Advaita is called the chit jada granthi (the knot between the conscious and the inert).  It is the initial statement of the puzzleShankaracarya deals with in the preamble to the Brahma Sutra Bhasya.  He writes:

“Accordingly, the superimposition of the object, referable through the concept “you”, and its attributes on the subject that is conscious by nature and is referable through the concept “we” (should be impossible), and contrariwise the superimposition of the subject and its attributes on the object should be impossible.”

What he finds to be a difficulty that must be stated before his commentary on the body of the sutras is simply this: how does that out there a material object come to be in here in my mind as a subjective unextended state of awareness.

This is just that very ‘double entry’ problem that under various modalities keeps cropping up.  The problem of universals comes under that rubric, primary and secondary qualities thinking is coloured by it and it may even be that the hard wired moral tenets, the evolutionary adaptive, correspond to the really out there as against the ‘in here’ cultural mores.  To put it at its most general: is Realism a thing?

Aristotle and Plato thought so and got to it in their different ways.  Advaita as I have pointed out mentions the problem and via the pramanas assumes the truth of realism but its discussion of the problem is put to one side by the very practical problem of self-realisation.  That gives a Cartesian critical tinge to its philosophical investigations.  What is ‘kuthasta ‘, unchanging, as firm as an anvil?  It is Consciousness irradiated by self awareness, underlying that advice given by Nisargadatta’s guru - focus on ‘I AM’ and become liberated.

Earnest Advaitic seekers will demur claiming that none of this Western problematic exists.  It does but they are dazzled by the shiny object of confusion, summarised in the snake/rope analogy and are thereby led into interesting problems such as ‘how is error possible’  and the various fata morgana of Idealism.

Sankaracarya stated the central aporia in the preamble and therefore we must assume that the commentary on the sutras is a working out of a solution.  Essentially the answer is non-duality or how you can have non-numerical identity between consciousness and the objective world.  I have written several notes on this for anyone who is interested in following the subject topics/labels.

James Beattie: Selected Philosophical Writings (ed. James A. Harris)

 

I proceed, in the second place, to take notice of some of the more remarkable phenomena of Memory.

This is a faculty, which, if it were less common, and we equally qualified to judge of it, would strike us with astonishment. That we should have it in our power to recall past sensations and thoughts, and make them again present, as it were: that a circumstance of our former life should, in respect of us, be no more; and yet occur to us, from time to time, dressed out in colours so lively, as to enable us to examine it, and judge of it, as if it were still an object of sense: - these are facts, whereof we every day have experience, and which, therefore, we overlook as things of course. But, surely, nothing is more wonderful, or more inexplicable. (Beattie on Memory taken from ‘Selected Philosophical Writings’ ed. James A.Harris)

James Beattie (1735 - 1803)is less famous that his two near contemporaries Thomas Reid (1710 - 1796) and David Hume (1711 - 1776).  Both Beattie and Reid were opposed to the sceptical Hume particularly on consciousness and memory.

Thomas Reid:

Why sensation should compel our belief of the present existence of the thing, memory a belief of the past existence, and imagination no belief at all, I believe no philosopher can give a shadow of reason, but that such is the nature of these operations. They are all simple and original, and therefore inexplicable acts of the mind.

Further down:

Philosophers indeed tell me, that this immediate object of my memory and imagination in this case, is not the past sensation, but an idea of it, an image, phantasm, or species of the odour I smelled; that this idea now exists in my mind or in my sensorium; and the mind contemplating this present idea, finds it a representation of what is past, of what my exist, and accordingly call it memory, or imagination.

(from An Inquiry into the Human Mind, on the Principles of Common Sense by Thomas Reid)

Specifically on the odd idea that memory and imagination were distinguished by vivacity James Beattie writes:

Some philosophers refer to memory all our livelier thoughts, and our fainter ones to imagination: and so will have it, that the former faculty is distinguished from the latter by its superior vivacity. We believe, say they, in memory; we believe not in imagination: now we never believe any thing, but what we distinctly comprehend; and that, of which our comprehension is indistinct, we disbelieve. - But this is altogether false. The suggestions of imagination are often so lively, in dreaming, and in some intellectual disorders, as to be mistaken for real things; and therefore cannot be said to be essentially fainter than the informations of memory. (op.cit)

Beattie’s further ruminations on the difference between the two are closely observed  and follow the rubric of common sense realism that holds that we experience the world before we begin to reason about it and focusing on the ideas we have leaves us marooned on the desert island of solipsism castaway by the shipwreck of idealism.

It is interesting that among the moderns Margaret Anscombe is taken by the irreducibility of memory.

Writing in her essay on Memory and the Past Elizabeth Anscombe:

Then what makes my state or act of consciousness memory of the thing. Is it the mere fact that the thing happened and that I witnessed it? In that case there is nothing in the memory itself that makes it refer to the actual past event. And if so, why should the experience of memory have anything to do with actual past events or show one what it means for something to have happened?

She then in her consideration of the phenomenon of memory examines the present experience of which memory is supposed to be.

 

 But if I consider some present thing (which can, if you like, be a state of mind) and my future ability to speak of it, it is brought out more clearly how difficult it is to make out that anything I may attribute to my future mental state will make what I say refer to this.

Beattie is exceptionally readable.  The 18th.Century was one of prose as Matthew Arnold remarks in his essay on Thomas Grey.  There  is a fine handling of the long sentence with numerous parentheses which are immediately intelligible.  His remarks on the location of memories remind one of the fact that Neuroscience and its accomplices in Philosophy have not moved past the problems that he identified:

The human brain is a bodily substance; and sensible and permanent impressions made upon it must so far resemble those made on sand by the foot, or on wax by the seal, as to have a certain shape, length, breadth, and deepness. Now such an impression can only be made by that, which has solidity, magnitude, and figure. If then we remember thoughts, feelings, and sounds, as well as things visible and tangible, which will hardly be denied; those sounds, thoughts, and feelings, must have body, and, consequently, shape, size, and weight. What then is the size or weight of a sound? Is it an inch long, or half an inch? Does it weigh an ounce, or a grain? Does the roar of a cannon bear any resemblance to the ball, or to the powder, in shape, in weight, or in magnitude? What figure has the pain of the toothache, and our remembrance of that pain? Is it triangular, or circular, or a square form? The bare mention of these consequences may prove the absurdity of the theories that lead to them.

Nisargadatta on Idealism and Realism

 

Nisargadatta is not promulgating an ontology/epistemology.  He uses the existing philosophy of the enquirer as a means to attainment of a path that might lead to enlightenment.  The point is finding water by drilling deep not by a multitude of small holes.  Sifting through various approaches, realism or idealism, internal or external reality is beside the point for him.  Sincere seeking using the dialectical advaitic method of adhiropa/apavada or statement followed by retraction.  Maharaj challenges the Questioner’s implicit realism:

“M: The body appears in your mind, your mind is the content of your consciousness, you are the motionless witness of the river of consciousness which changes eternally without changing you in any way.  Your own changelessness is so obvious that you do not notice it.  Have a good look at yourself and all those misapprehensions and misconceptions will dissolve.  Just as all our little watery lives are in water and cannot be without water, so all the universe is in you and cannot be without you.”

The important thing is getting detached from the panoply of awareness to focus on the central fact which cannot be sublated, the I AM you are in the moment.  What are you at with your theories, you can only be distracted by them.  By being in the presence of a master one has other business than that.

On the face of it Maharaj seems to be offering a pure subjective idealism as a ‘final’ theory.  Such would be the western way of doing philosophy.  In advaita/nondualism the theory ends in the unsayable, the apophatic.  Move towards the ‘trikala abheda’ or that which is un-contradicted in the three moments of time;  past, present, and future.

Last word from Nisargadatta Maharaj:

“Don’t mentalise and verbalise.  Just see and be”

Etienne Gilson on Thoughts and Things

 As realists we abide in things not thoughts.  The thing comes first not the thought about the thing.  What you have in Descartes is certainty but its a dead certainty.  Nothing living can come from it.  It cuts us off from things and leaves us the world as a true hallucination as Taine put it.  

Etienne Gilson in his brilliantly clear ‘Methodical Realism’ which would be an offence to summarise has an essay of 30 paragraphs on the superiority of Realism to Idealism.  Realism is the true because what we do would be impossible if Idealism were the case.  Section 5 in the series is an example of his wit:

The knowledge the realist is talking about is the lived and experienced unity of an intellect with an apprehended reality. This is why a realist philosophy has to do with the thing itself that is apprehended, and without which there would be no knowledge. Idealist philosophers, on the other hand, since they start from thought, quickly reach the point of choosing science or philosophy as their object. When an idealist genuinely thinks as an idealist, he perfectly embodies the essence of a “professor of philosophy”, whereas the realist, when he genuinely thinks as a realist, conforms himself to the authentic essence of a philosopher; for a philosopher talks about things, while a professor of philosophy talks about philosophy.

Bergson as a Dualist

 

In the introduction to ‘Matter and Memory’ Bergson states that his philosophy is dualist but having read his rejection of both Materialism and Idealism we are inclined to say ‘yes Henri, it’s dualism but not as we know it.  He starts from the common apprehension of a primal division between subject and object.  It’s perfectly natural and inevitable but the aporiai that it spawns sends him in a new direction.  Let’s take it that there is an interaction between a sensitive actor, the subject, and the world of sensible inputs. It is this interaction which is experienced as a plenum but not from the vantage point of a subject.  The natural tendency to place this experience in the subject is what the Advaitins call adhyasa or superimposition.  In Bergson’s panpsychist analysis memory pervades this interaction and lays it up never to be forgotten.  Now the perception which is a function of the superimposed subject has its images in a direct way in contrast to memory which is non-temporal but can insert its input.  This I think is the source of the notion of reality as the ‘aggregate of images’.  There is a pooling together from both sources.

I have previously mentioned  my intuition of the metaphor of mirror and images as being a source for his philosophy.  Metaphors instead of being merely an illustration of a point to be clarified can themselves be a higher realisation which hovers on the edge of the inexpressible.

More anon on that.

Realism Clew

 Realism Clew:

Very well.  There doesn't seem any way out of it.  If you want realism, thourough going realism, you have to hold to the immateriality of consciousness and the intellectual faculties.  This is the thread running through all of the various versions.  Plato has the forms or ideas impressed on the mind from their special realm.  The immateriality of the mind allows this pervasion and assures us that what we know and what is 'out there' is one and the same.  Philosophy tries to clear up the distortions that occur.  Aristotle and the Scholastics are more grounded, finding the relationship between the mind and the object the source of knowledge.  Aristotle says in Bk.XII of the metaphysics - "Everything which has not matter is indivisible".  This is I presume the core of the insight that object and mind can interpenetrate, that the object can be in the mind in its subtle form as it really is.  The mind grasps the reality of the object.  If we do not accept this as the default position then as Maritain writes:

"But it also indicates that there is an incomparable unity, a unity deeper than that between a model and a transfer, between the thing and thought, thought in act, I mean. For if things were modified or changed in any way by sensation or intellection (I do not mean in the conditions in which they exist, in their way of existing, I mean in regard to those things that properly constitute them, in what they are), then there would no longer be any truth or knowledge. Then the theorist of knowledge could not even express himself by wagging his finger because in such a case there would be left but two equally impossible recourses: either to say that knowledge implies a relation to things but deforms those things, and as a result they are never known; or else to say that knowledge implies no relation to things and that it is an absolute unfolding of thought having only itself as object. This is a position which is quite incompatible with the fact of error and negative ideas." ( from 'The Degrees of Knowledge")

Advaitins likewise relay on the immateriality of consciousness with the joint theory of vritti (mental modification) and upadhi (form of limitation/object) allowing knowledge to happen.  As in all the various schemas of Realism the fine print can be intricate.

Realism is Gravity

  

À hidden but powerful teleological motivation also intervenes at this point,to which  idealism unconsciously obeys, so cheating at its own game. Idealism's concern is precisely that it be not led to a certain terminus; it aims to avoid a certain final conclusion. Now if, from the very start, things and the extramental stability whereby they regulate our thought are so carefully rejected, it is because of the fact, above all else, that owing to a secret instinct that is the more imperious in that it remains unconfessed, the mind does not want in the end to be forced to come face to face with a transcendent, supreme reality, an abyss of personality before which every heart lies open and which our thought has to adore. The bastions and fortresses of idealistic philosophy thus appear to be just so many vast defence-works against divine personality. (from 'The Degrees of Knowledge' by Jacques Maritain)

  

This is important enough for Shankara to turn his mind to Vijnanavada.  Ontology is Theology and those that are bogged down in ‘Is it Theology or Philosophy’ miss being serious and remain essentially light floating away from the earth.  Realism is Gravity.

Realism in Advaita part 1

 

Advaita throws the word ‘real’ and its antonym ‘unreal’ about freely leaving the casual reader or the sitter at the feet of Swamiji, guruji, and the internet oracle, confused.  Is Advaita a type of subjective Idealism which holds that the world is a dream or ‘like’ a dream in that it is experienced and vanishes on waking, an ‘insubstantial pageant’?  Fear not, let this mini-guru with more than a hint of tin in his water pot put you right.  One thing I have though, if not enlightenment, is a fair reading in general philosophy that allows one to sift the nuances of the levels of reference.  Am I then referring to the vyavaharika/pratibhasika (absolute/relative) distinction?  Not quite.  Let me first deal with the opening question purely from an epistemological point of view.  What are we aware of when we experience something?  Is it an internal occurrence in our minds  that by some process represents the external reality or is that an overly complex way of saying that we experience an object?  Effectively, experience of the object is the immediate thing and all else is an over elaboration of the febrile mind and a derealising distraction.  There is a tiny, shy, half-truth in that.  My counter would be that Adi Shankara catered to the seeker who requires rational clarification.

The other, frequently met with, counter to this question of epistemological stance is the Orientalist - ‘really this Realism/Idealism dyad is a Western preoccupation that does not apply in Vedanta’.  Again, Shankara took it seriously though Vedanta’s answer to the aporia (puzzle) is so to speak, non-binary.   What else does non-dual mean if not that?  In any case the attempt to navigate between the Scylla and the Charybdis of Internal and External has also a long history in Western thought from, I would hold, Plato and Aristotle to Henri Bergson and the modern revival of Panpsychism.

This is a long menu and the first item must be the neglected - what is the nature of the person, the mind/body complex that is in a world of objects?  

I’ll be back.

Advaitic Realism versus Buddhist Idealism (Vijnanavada/Yogacara)

 I have entered the whole section of B.S.Bh II.ii.28 (below) as it is worth reading in toto but here my focus is on the paragraph beginning ‘This conclusion is not honest’.

The Buddhist has a theory that holds that all cognition is internal  and is immediately self-luminous.  For him this supplies all that is required for experience and the very idea of an external object is a redundant and pointless fabrication that has no grounding in reality.  This is what he means by impossibility.

Sankara then examines this notion by resorting to the ontological position reminiscent of the Scholastic: what is is possible.  How do we discover what is (quid est)?  We ask ourselves whether the valid means of knowledge (pramana) can be applied to it and if so then it is possible (posse est).  What you cannot hold is the converse namely that possibility brings on a quasi existence.  ((Here come Zombies))

Vasubandhu’s (Vijnanavada/Yogacara teacher)  saying “The non-existent is imagined” is a variant of this possibility thesis.

Vijnanavada from B.S.Bh. II.ii.28:

Vijnanavadin:  (External objects are) not non-existent, for perceived.

Advaitin: It cannot be asserted that external things do not exist

Vijnanavadin: Why?

Vedantin: “Because they are perceived.” As a matter of fact such thingsas a pillar, a wall, a pot, a cloth, are perceived along with each act of cognition. And it cannot be that the very thing perceived is non-existent. How can a man’s words be acceptable who while himself perceiving an external object through sense-contacts still says, “I do not perceive, and that object does not exist”, just as much as a man while eating and himself experiencing­ the satisfaction arising from that act might say, “Neither do I eat, nor do I get any satisfaction”?

Vijnavadin:    Well, I do not say that I do not perceive any object, but all that I hold is ‘that I do not perceive anything  apart from the perception.

Vedantin: Yes, you do speak like that, since you have no curb) to your mouth; but you do not speak logically, for some­thing other than the perception has to be admitted perforce, just because it is perceived. Not that anybody cognises a perception to be a pillar, a wall, etc., rather all people cognise a pillar, a wall, etc. as objects of perception. And it is for this reason that all people understand those others (viz the Buddhists) as really assuming the existence of an external thing even while they deny it by saying, “That which is the content of an internal awareness appears as though external”. For they use the phrase “as though” in the clause “as though external” just because they too become aware of a cognition appearing externally in the same way as is well known ‘to all people, and yet ‘they want to deny any external’ object.   Else why should they say, “as though external”? For ‘nobody speaks thus: “Vistumitra appears like the son of a barren woman”. Accordingly, those who accept truth to be just what it is actually perceived to be, should accept a thing as it actually reveals itself externally, and not “as ‘though appearing outside”.

Buddhist. Since no object can possibly exist externally, I  come to ‘the conclusion that it appears as though it is outside.

Vedantin. This conclusion is not honest, since the possibility or impossibility of the existence of a thing is determined in accordance with ‘the applicability or non-applicability of the means of knowledge to it, but the applicability or non applicability of the means of knowledge is not ascertained in a accordance with the possibility or impossibility (of the thing) What is known through any one of the means of knowledge, direct perception etc., is possible, and what cannot be through any one of these means of knowledge is impossible.  In the case under discussion, the external things are known individually by the respective means of knowledge; so how can they be declared to be impossible by raising such alternatives as different, non-different, etc. For external things are perceived as a matter of fact. It is wrong to say that external things do not exist merely on the ground that cognition is seen to have the likeness of an object, because the very likeness of an object is not possible unless the object itself be there, and also because the object is cognised outside. So also it has to be admitted that  the regularity in the simultaneous appearance of the cognition and its object is owing to the relation of causality between them and not owing to their identity. Again, in (such forms of awareness as) “knowledge of a pot”, “knowledge of a cloth’ difference is seen in the two qualifying parts, pot and cloth, but not in the substantive part knowledge, even as in the case “a white cow” and “a black cow” we find that whiteness and blackness alone differ, but not so the cowhood. And the difference of the one (viz cowhood) from the two (whiteness, blackness) stands out clearly, as also the difference of the two from the one. Therefore an object and its knowledge differ. Similar should be our comprehension in the cases of the seeing of a and the remembrance of a pot. Here also the substantives. seeing and remembering differ, but not so the adjectival viz pot; this is just as in the cases of the cognitions, “the smell of milk”, and “the taste of milk”, where the substantives smell and taste alone differ, but not so the adjectival part milk.

Moreover, as regards two cognitions occurring successively, which vanish after self-revelation, there can be no logical appre­hension of the one by the other. And in that case will be nul­lified all the assertions made in the Buddhist scriptures them­selves about the difference among cognitions, momentariness and other attributes, individual characteristics, common charac­teristics, bequeathing of tendency by one cognition to the other, true, false, or mixed attributes arising from contact with nescience, as also about bondage, liberation, and so on.

Again, if one admits a distinction between knowledge and knowledge, why should not one admit external objects such as a pillar, a wall, and so on?

Buddhist:      A cognition is actually perceived.

Vedantin; External things too are perceived, and so they too should be admitted.

Buddhist:      Since cognition is a luminous thing it stands self-revealed like a lamp, but an external object is not like that.

Vedantin:    Then like assuming that fire burns itself, you assume that something can act on itself by itself, which is absolutely opposed to reason; yet you do not admit the well-known fact, bearing no contradiction, that an external object is known through a cognition which is different from the object. What a great display of erudition you make! It cannot be asserted that consciousness is known to itself as something apart from objects for the simple reason that there can be no action on oneself.

Buddhist. If a cognition has to be known by some entity other than itself, that second one will have to be known by another, and that one again by another. This will lead to an Infinite regress. Moreover, since cognition is an illuminator like a lamp, if you should imagine a second cognition (to know it), then since both the cognitions are similar there will be no revela­tion of the one by the other, so that this whole assumption will fall to the ground.

Vedantin: Both these arguments are wrong, for once an awareness of the cognition occurs, no further desire to appre­hend the witness of the cognition can arise; and so there is no possibility of infinite regress.  And since the witness and the cognition are different by nature, there can be a relationship of the perceiver and the perceived among them. Besides, the self-evident witness cannot be denied. There is another consideration. When you assert that cognition shines by itself like a lamp without requiring some other cognition, you virtually say that a cognition is not apprehended by. any other means of knowledge or by anything else, which would be like saying that a thousand lamps shine (unknown) within a massive boulder.

Buddhist:      Exactly so; for cognition being of the nature of an awareness (suggested by you), you have only approved the view that we hold.

Vedantin:      No, for it is seen that some other perceiver. having the eye etc. as his instrument, perceives a lamp etc. So it is understood that since cognition has equally to be revealed by some one else, it can be perceived like a lamp only when a distinct perceiver is present.

Buddhist:      By upholding the theory that the perceiving wit­ness is self-effulgent, you only accept under a different garb of words my own view that cognition shines by itself.

Vedantin:      Not so, for you admit many such distinctions for cognition as origin, destruction, multiplicity, and so on. And hence it is that we establish the apprehension of that cognition by some entity outside it, as in the case of a lamp.

Getting the Real Right

 

I am going to be more than usually tendentious in asserting that Realism is fundamental and Idealism a reaction to it.  What use are sacrifices, mantras, invocations, prayers, rituals etc. unless there is a reality corresponding to the performers intent?  Philosophy begins when that Realism becomes critical and considers the incorporation of error into experience.  Prior to that the fear of error gives rise to an immensely complex congeries of safeguards to prevent the priest from getting the Real wrong.

'Wrong' sort of Realism

((I left this comment on a post in electric agora. I'm posting it here for the record.))

Mark:
I went a bit metaphysical there on you for a bit but I do think that the sceptically vulnerable physical can get confused with it.. In good light and not having ingested psychotropic substances and facing the right way I can say with assurance - ‘there is an tree in the yard’. As a brain in a vat and as a subject trapped in a computer simulation I could say the same thing with the same assurance and be wrong. What would ‘wrong’ mean in this case? Is it not parasitic on the true ‘wrong’, the one that is open to correction? All observations are subject to determined scepticism and we can only stay calm and carry on.

However metaphysical realism is different. It relies on their being an ontological substratum which unites Subject and Object. This is the approach of Platonic, Aristotelian and Vedantic philosophy. It is coherent with the project of critical realism in the physical sense. We accept the truth of our observations as a default assumption. We could be wrong though, but this ‘wrong’ is a true ‘wrong’ i.e. one connected to the metaphysical reality of the unity of the substratum.

My point is that realism which tries to establish itself solely in the domain of observation is not on the ‘wrong’ track if you will forgive a paradox.

Animal Faith

Shankaracarya declares the natural and spontaneous faith of animals in objective reality.

Moreover, there is no difference (of the learned) from the animals (in regard to empirical behaviour). Just as animals and others turn away from sound etc. when these appear unfavourable after their ears etc. come into contact with them, and they move towards these when they are favourable; and just by noticing a man approaching them with a raised stick, they begin to run away thinking, “This one wants to hurt me”, and they approach another carrying green grass in his hands, similarly even the wise are repelled by the presence of strong, uproarious people with evil looks and upraised swords, and are attracted by men of opposite nature. Therefore the behaviour of men with regard to the means and objects of knowledge is similar to that of animals.

(from the Preamble to Brahma-Sutra-Bhasya)

As soon as I would put out my hand with an apple in it the pony in the field would come running over. Must I put Descartes before that horse?

Adhyasa/Superimposition as the key to Advaitic Critical Realism

“But availability for empirical experience depends on superimposition” (pg.419 numbered section 142: The Method of Vedanta by Sri S.S.S.)

Even though the Swami is talking about mutual superimposition of the Self and the non-self I think that a tangential truth is expressed about what Vedanta Paribhasa calls perceptuality. In other words, superimposition is the fact whereby the stone out there as an object comes in some sense to be in me, the subject.

Why do we not take the experience in here as a bounded subjective domain in the manner of Idealists (both subjective and objective) and Representationalists/Scientific Realists? Because for Vedantins the Vedas have an intrinsic ‘aboutness’. The language that they are expressed in is eternal, capturing, for all time, and in every eon, universals (vedic words). The action of the enjoined sacrifices is real and effective.

Starting from that foundation a metaphysics is promulgated which can sustain the non-numerical identity of object and mental modification (vritti). In his own way Aristotle squared that circle also.

What about illusion? Does that not break the upadhi link? It was a witty metaphysics that used as a founding analogy the fact of error. It is still the case though that our default assumption is of perception as veridical. Further experience may prove us wrong and we can accept this. We may even test our experience in an experimental fashion: Come let me clutch thee/I have thee not and yet I see thee still. Our realism is critical (krites/judge).

Prelude to Reality

The challenge of realism is to show that we experience reality even if this experience has limitations. There is always the possibility of error and there is always more to know. Contrasted with this is idealism which is never naive perhaps because it is all naive. Idealism turns our conviction that we are experiencing reality into an experience of experience and the perception of perception and reduces 'common' sense into a complete mystery which arose we know not why from we know not where. Obviously there is an 'internal' side to experience, neuronal traffic and the like, and there is an 'external' side, the conceptual, the common. Wittgenstein ought to have put paid to the excessive weight that idealism puts on the internal beam of the scales with his beetle in the box but like a powerful virus it is a cunning adversary that mutates. However I don't think that it is the business of philosophy to deal with every manifestation of ontological error however solidly empirical it seems. Don't panic, it's perfectly safe to remain in your armchairs.

There is that perennial conundrum – if you can pose the question, can you not by that very fact resolve the question? Yes I would reply if you accept realisation as a comprehension. The aporia of how there can be a non-numerical identity between the experience and the reality is resolved by the fact of poetry.

Nor should this, perchance,
Pass unrecorded, that I still lov'd
That exercise and produce of a toil
Than analytic industry to me
More pleasing, and whose character I deem
Is more poetic as resembling more
Creative agency. I mean to speak
Of that interminable building rear'd
By observation of affinities
In objects where no brotherhood exists
To common minds.
.....
......
To unorganic natures I transferr'd
My own enjoyments, or, the power of truth
Coming in revelation, I convers'd
With things that really are, I, at this time
Saw blessings spread round me like a sea.

(The Prelude Book II. 396 foll.)

Realism 1

Realism was the firstest with the mostest. Everything springs from it and is a reaction to it. Because it is the intuitive position and philosophy earns its keep by countering folk metaphysics some thinkers like to characterise it as 'naive'. To me that is to substitute rhetoric for reasoned analysis. Were Plato and Aristotle, Aquinas and Shankaracarya naive realists?

What is the initial encounter that gives realism its primal force? Of anything we can say 'it is and it is something'. Being meets being one might say but when you turn on that tap aporiai begin to flow. Sheltering as they did in the pleroma the pre-socratic and vedic sages could utter:

Om. That (Brahman) is infinite and this (universe) in infinite. The infinite proceeds from the infinite. (Then) taking the infininitude of the infinite (universe), it remains as the infinite (Brahman) alone.

(from Brh.Up.V.i.1)

“Nor is it divided, since it is all alike;/ and it is not any more there, which would keep it from holding together,/ nor any worser, but it is all replete with What Is./ [25] Therefore it is all continuous: for What Is approaches What Is (B 7.1)

(Parmenides)

Early in both encounters with being there emerged the puzzle: how could being emerge from non-being, how could something which was not cause something which is. The satkaryavadathesis emerged as an early answer within the vedic tradition and was very influential. My note on this theory fragmentary though it is I will post separately.

At this point someone will say that there is no real connection between the pre-socratics and the vedic sages other than that they reside within the ambit of my mind. That for the anti-realist would be perfectly real enough within the meaning of the word. My view is that neither of these groups comes from Mars and that the ingenuity of their individual responses can be analogous. However I would reject outright assimilation. Nobody then knew that they were realists.

But since there is a furthest limit, it is perfected/ from every side, like the bulk of a well-rounded globe,/ from the middle equal every way: for that it be neither any greater/ [45] nor any smaller in this place or in that is necessary;/ for neither is there non-being, which would stop it reaching/ to its like, nor is What Is such that it might be more than What Is/ here and less there. Since it is all inviolate,/ for it is equal to itself from every side, it extends uniformly in limits.

If they weren't realists can they be said to be monists? A commonplace interpretation has been that they both ignore diversity and cling to the nostrum which declares 'all is one'. Not true but there is the difficulty of accounting for the 'many' where there is such a powerful intuition of the 'one'.