aaron
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Post by aaron on May 8, 2019 22:43:30 GMT
A forum seems like a much better medium for this sort of discussion (at least, the serious parts of it) than a discord, so here's this thread for at least the second half of this book.
Reading schedule for the remainder:
May 11: Chs. 6-7 (Abhidarma, Intro to Mahāyāna May 18: Ch. 8 (Yogācāra) May 25: Ch. 9 (Madyhamaka) June 01: Ch. 10 (Diṅnāga)
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Post by somestingray on May 11, 2019 18:25:58 GMT
So much going on in Ch 6! Too much ground covered for a proper summary, so I'm just going to list the topics he went over. There are bunch of arguments in each section, so feel free to start with any of them. But here's how the chapter went:
- Introducing Abhidharma arguments for mereological reductionism, criticism of the Nyāya view that the whole is distinct from its parts
- The nature of the dharmas - the ultimately real impartite entities. The Sautrāntika sub-school argues that these dharmas are not substances, but property-particulars / tropes
- How Sautrāntika goes from trope theory to impermanence, and the various arguments that start with impermanence and draw out momentariness as the conclusion. (My one criticism here is that Siderits doesn't go over the more sophisticated arguments for momentariness found in Dharmakīrti & Ratnakīrti)
- Vasubandhu's response to the Nyāya memory argument that uses the theory of replicating seeds to explain how recognition can occur without a persisting self
- Buddhaghosa's argument for how there can be experiences without the experiences being for someone, and how this relates to the Abhidharma view of the conceptual relationship between (fictitious) wholes and parts
- The time-lag argument against direct realism and for representationalism first made by Sautrāntika philosophers (Yogācāra will later use dream/illusion arguments for representationalism, and argue that the natural conclusion to draw from representationalism is idealism)
Let me know if I've missed anything!
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Post by fdc on May 19, 2019 3:30:14 GMT
I finally caught up and I have thoughts.
First just about the book then about its content:
I think this book is good and clear, but generally poorly written. There are bad sentences everywhere and the structure is lacking. Siderits constantly brings up issues and then just nonchalantly says "I won't discuss this. Instead, I will discuss this other thing." Moreover, he has to repeat himself more than anyone would like because he has failed to give appropriate context before discussing something he wants to discuss later. Some of those ordering choices are justified, but most of them aren't. I would have also liked a bit more in the beginning on non-Buddhist philosophy that Buddhism is responding to. There is that chapter on Nyaya philosophy halfway through which is really good and important, but it almost should have come much earlier with even more alternatives (presuming there are any, which seems certain). Also, while the immense use of primary material is good, there are block quotes that are literally two pages long that are barely explained. That's just lazy writing.
tl;dr, Siderits badly needs a competent editor.
The content of the book, however, is great as far as I can tell. Besides my earlier complaint, Siderits goes through each of the possible positions thoroughly and compellingly. He also relates the moves Buddhists make to familiar arguments in the European tradition and shows how and why they differ despite superficial similarities. This allows the reader to really understand the role of philosophers' aims and methods in philosophy more generally, which is exactly why I wanted to read about eastern philosophy in the first place. So I've definitely gotten my investment back.
The other great thing about the content of the book is how Siderits introduces the distinction between ultimate reality and conventional reality in chapter 3 and then just develops each of the possibilities a person pretty much already sees at the outset. From this, you can see some significant differences between that same approach elsewhere. In Ancient Greece, for example, that distinction was first made by Antiphon, and the response was ultimately to collapse all reality into the self. How that move developed in analytic philosophy is of course well known too, and is very different.
And despite this trajectory difference, there are important overlaps in the traditions. One is obviously this week's chapter. Yogacara philosophy is approaching the objective idealism of Kant (skipping over subjective idealism for obvious reasons), stopping just short because Kant's move is precisely the opposite of what the Buddhists want to accomplish, as Siderits makes clear. But it is also notable that a number of post-Kantians (such as the logical positivists) get *really* close to the Yogacara view. And yet, the slight differences mean that they still face different problems, which can be instructive for how we should develop our own responses to those criticisms.
I have some more specific thoughts about various arguments too, but I will leave it here for now.
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Post by somestingray on May 19, 2019 19:46:40 GMT
Okay, finally finished re-reading the chapter on Yogācāra. Siderits goes over Vasubandhu's arguments for idealism, which is basically representationalism + "the principle of lightness." Vasubandhu thinks spatial/temporal determination of perceptions & intersubjective agreement, can be explained by karma.
Vasubandhu then goes on the offensive and argues that both regular atomism and trope dualism don't make sense. One thing that bothered me about his argument against atomism is the idea for something not to be ultimately real - for it to have a "borrowed nature" - it's enough that it can be conceptually broken down into different components, even if it can't be physically broken down. Here I think the realist/atomist could just deny that this is a test for ultimate existence.
Regarding the question of how one mental stream can causally influence another, Siderits points out that Vasubandhu wouldn't have found this mysterious because for him (like most other Buddhists), causation is ultimately just constant conjunction.
The last section is on the conceptual vs non-conceptual perception. While I understand why Siderits introduced the subject here (its relation to Yogācāra soteriology), I think he could have waited until Chapter 10, the one on epistemology, to introduce it., because the reader is basically left wondering why exactly this is important, and the next section on Madhyamaka doesn't really cover it.
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Post by somestingray on May 19, 2019 19:52:53 GMT
I finally caught up and I have thoughts. First just about the book then about its content: I think this book is good and clear, but generally poorly written. There are bad sentences everywhere and the structure is lacking. Siderits constantly brings up issues and then just nonchalantly says "I won't discuss this. Instead, I will discuss this other thing." Moreover, he has to repeat himself more than anyone would like because he has failed to give appropriate context before discussing something he wants to discuss later. Some of those ordering choices are justified, but most of them aren't. I would have also liked a bit more in the beginning on non-Buddhist philosophy that Buddhism is responding to. There is that chapter on Nyaya philosophy halfway through which is really good and important, but it almost should have come much earlier with even more alternatives (presuming there are any, which seems certain). Also, while the immense use of primary material is good, there are block quotes that are literally two pages long that are barely explained. That's just lazy writing. tl;dr, Siderits badly needs a competent editor. The content of the book, however, is great as far as I can tell. Besides my earlier complaint, Siderits goes through each of the possible positions thoroughly and compellingly. He also relates the moves Buddhists make to familiar arguments in the European tradition and shows how and why they differ despite superficial similarities. This allows the reader to really understand the role of philosophers' aims and methods in philosophy more generally, which is exactly why I wanted to read about eastern philosophy in the first place. So I've definitely gotten my investment back. The other great thing about the content of the book is how Siderits introduces the distinction between ultimate reality and conventional reality in chapter 3 and then just develops each of the possibilities a person pretty much already sees at the outset. From this, you can see some significant differences between that same approach elsewhere. In Ancient Greece, for example, that distinction was first made by Antiphon, and the response was ultimately to collapse all reality into the self. How that move developed in analytic philosophy is of course well known too, and is very different. And despite this trajectory difference, there are important overlaps in the traditions. One is obviously this week's chapter. Yogacara philosophy is approaching the objective idealism of Kant (skipping over subjective idealism for obvious reasons), stopping just short because Kant's move is precisely the opposite of what the Buddhists want to accomplish, as Siderits makes clear. But it is also notable that a number of post-Kantians (such as the logical positivists) get *really* close to the Yogacara view. And yet, the slight differences mean that they still face different problems, which can be instructive for how we should develop our own responses to those criticisms. I have some more specific thoughts about various arguments too, but I will leave it here for now. I do agree that Siderits ends up repeating himself by bringing up issues, putting them aside, and then coming back to them later. In some cases I can see why he does this, in others it seems unnecessary. I didn't see any issues with sentence structure though - I wonder if this is just a matter of taste, or I'm just not tuned in to notice these kinds of things unless they're really really obvious, which I didn't see here. And yes, one of the things I appreciated about BaP was the large number of quotes from primary texts, but it's true that in a few places he blockquotes without explanation. |
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aaron
Junior Member
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Post by aaron on May 19, 2019 20:08:41 GMT
Vasubandhu then goes on the offensive and argues that both regular atomism and trope dualism don't make sense. One thing that bothered me about his argument against atomism is the idea for something not to be ultimately real - for it to have a "borrowed nature" - it's enough that it can be conceptually broken down into different components, even if it can't be physically broken down. Here I think the realist/atomist could just deny that this is a test for ultimate existence. My impulse is to agree with this (I've had similar worries when Nāgārjuna makes similar arguments in MMK), and I wonder what the assumptions are that get you to the view that anything ultimately real must be conceptually atomic. I think it must somehow be tied to the fact that that both the Yogacara and Madhyamaka Buddhists want to emphasize that all our judgments of identity, etc. are conceptual projections. Then you need to get from "X is not conceptually atomic" to "X is a conceptual projection". But again, why think that something ultimately real must give rise to an atomic concept? I dunno, man, I just dk. |
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Post by somestingray on May 26, 2019 12:16:53 GMT
Madhyamaka is easily the most interesting and provocative school of Indian Buddhism, so this chapter was a great read, as expected. Siderits goes over some of the arguments against intrinsic natures. My favorite ones are the regress arguments against the substance-property model, the problem Siderits raises for trope theory, and Nāgārjuna's regress argument against theories of causation involving causal powers. What does everyone else think - do they succeed? That goes for the other ones I didn't mention too - do all (or any) of them succeed?
The other major subjection of discussion is how to interpret the doctrine of emptiness. Siderits thinks it's exhausted by three possibilities: metaphysical nihilism (obviously false), the "reality is ineffable" interpretation, and finally, the semantic interpretation, which Siderits prefers. The idea here is that the very notion of their being an "ultimate truth" - the way things are in themselves - is a mistake. This dissolves the distinction between conventional and ultimate truth, which is crucial to Abhidharma philosophy. Now there is only conventional truth.
I think it's still worth asking why we should prefer the semantic interpretation over the "reality is ineffable" one. Siderits thinks there's textual evidence that it's what Nāgārjuna intended, and also goes over some of the soteriological reasons for believing it. But apart from that, I don't see why we should prefer it to the ineffability interpretation. I'm more sympathetic to the ineffability one, mostly because I just find it hard to shake the idea that there is no ultimate truth, and also because it seems entirely reasonable to me to suppose that if there is an ultimate truth, the concepts we use to understand/describe it are all fake. But I recognize that that's a statement of personal preference, not an argument :molyneux: . So I wonder what people who like the semantic interpretation think. Oh, also worth asking: do the three options Siderits presents exhaust the possible interpretations?
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aaron
Junior Member
Brékkek Kékkek Kékkek Kékkek! Kóax Kóax Kóax! Ualu Ualu Ualu! Quaouauh!
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Post by aaron on May 26, 2019 14:46:19 GMT
My copy of the book is now back in Pittsburgh so I can't check the arguments again. But I really like the Madhyamaka style of purely destructive metaphysics, where you take any position purporting to get at the ultimate constituents of reality and show that it entangles you in contradictions. A lot of it turns on the idea that something ultimately real must be simple and must have its causal effects in a context-independent manner, though, which I think might fail to work against a lot of the views in contemporary analytic metaphysics. Or, at least, more would need to be done to bring them in contact.
Regarding emptiness, I think I'm with Siderits on the semantic interpretation. On the ineffability interpretation, I take it, the view is that there's a way that things ultimately are, but that way can't be put into words, which always introduce convention. So language is always falling short of what it purports to describe. There's a commitment to the ultimate, even though not to ultimate truth. Thus, I think the ineffability interpretation loses a lot of the metaphysical bite. The semantic interpretation, by contrast, says that there really are (e.g.) tables, and atoms, and whatever else, in just the sense that there really is anything. But the sense in which there really is anything is far more stripped back than the Naiyayikas et al. want to say there is. You get a kind of common sense realism, but one you don't take too seriously. Basically, I think the difference is between metaphysical realism + epistemic anti-realism (ineffability) on the one hand and metaphysical anti-realism + epistemic realism (semantic) on the other. I find the latter a more plausible view.
Probably the best way to determine the proper interpretation, however, is going to be soteriological. Which one makes better sense of the aims of Buddhist meditative practice? The ineffability interpretation might have an advantage here: it's easy to understand, on that view, how stripping away concepts will bring you into epistemically superior contact with ultimate, non-conceptual reality. But the semantic interpretation can probably hold its own. As I understand Zen meditation, for instance, which is downstream of Madhyamaka, there's an emphasis on seeing things for what they are (conceptual constructs) without necessarily stripping away those concepts. What's lost is the attachment to them. That fits better the semantic interpretation. So maybe you can't actually choose an interpretation on this basis. But, on the flip side, how you interpret it might matter to meditative practice (if you engage in it). I don't know how much we know about the details of Madhyamaka meditative practice, though.
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Post by somestingray on May 26, 2019 22:09:08 GMT
I think it's true that some of the arguments probably only work against a very "strong" version of intrinsic natures, if that makes sense. But I think those specific arguments might work against a number of positions in contemporary analytic metaphysics as well. Also, I really like the way you summarized it as metaphysical realism + epistemic anti-realism vs metaphysical anti-realism + epistemic realism. I think if we accept N's conclusion that there are no intrinsic natures, it's still not obvious what argument could be provided to pick one position over the other, without appealing to soteriology. As much as I hate to say it, it seems to come down to brute intuition when I say I find the ineffability thesis more plausible than the semantic interpretation. But you're right that as a matter of history, its probably soteriological concerns that led different schools to pick one interpretation over another,
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Post by somestingray on Jun 2, 2019 4:14:11 GMT
Last chapter! In Ch 10 Siderits goes over the epistemology in Buddhist thought, particularly the school that originated with Dignāga. This school doesn't take sides between Yogācāra (idealist) and Sautrāntika (representationalist) metaphysics, and is meant to be compatible with both.
When it comes to perception, both Yogācāra-Sautrāntika and Nyāya epistemology agree that what we usually call "perception" involves two stages: conceptual and non-conceptual. The difference between the two is the difference between seeing and seeing-as, seeing an object vs seeing the object *as a table.* The difference between the two arises because of the differences in their views on universals. Nyāya thinks universals are real and inhere in particulars. For Nyāyal, when we perceptually grasp objects, we grasp both the particular and the universal non-conceptually (which means we don't first grasp the particular as the particular, and the universal as the universal). In the second stage, we judge that the particular is a particular inhered in by a universal. This is where concepts get deployed, and we see (for example) the table as a table. Yogācāra-Sautrāntika on the other hand is committed to nominalism, since it thinks only momentary particulars are real. So for them only the first stage can really be considered "perception." Since universals do not exist, the second stage is an imaginative construction, although a very useful one. The objects of (non-conceptual) perception are momentary particulars.
This brings us to the Yogācāra-Sautrāntika theory of nominalism - apoha, or "exclusion." The basic idea is that when we categorize a set of objects as Xs, we ignore the differences between Xs and instead group them together as distinct from everything that is not an X. Our reason for doing this is ultimately pragmatic, we group these Xs together because they satisfy some of our interests and desires, even though they are ultimately all completely unique particulars. But how do they satisfy the same interests if they don't have the same set of causal powers? This is where Dharmakīrti's example of herbs is instructive: different herbs can all reduce fevers despite having completely different mechanisms. So we can group them together even without there being a universal "fever-reducing-ness" that inheres in all these herbs.
The last topic is the Yogācāra-Sautrāntika view that consciousness is reflexive. Another way to express this, as Siderits does, is that every cognition cognizes itself. Siderits presents us with Mokṣākaragupta's strategy for establishing this, which basically proceeds by ruling out all the alternatives. These include: each cognition is perceived by a subsequent cognition, each cognition is perceived by a simultaneous cognition, and cognition is not perceived but inferred. Siderits gives us Mokṣākaragupta's reasons for rejecting all these options. The argument I found least convincing was the one against the view that each cognition is perceived by a different, but simultaneous cognition. I wonder what everyone else thinks about this.
My only criticism of this chapter is that I thought it ended rather abruptly. And the fact that it's the last chapter of the book makes it a little more jarring. I was kind of hoping for some concluding thoughts or reflections. But still, that's a minor quibble. Really good chapter overall.
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