This is the other paper I wrote for the Buddhist Philosophy class, much in the same vein as the previous one. I didn't feel like I could move on to the content of the arguments in the texts without better understanding the manner of argument or reasoning. I still have a lot of work to do in that regard!
John Emmer
Buddhist Philosophy
Prof. Sumana Ratnayaka
SIBA, August, 2012
The Logic of the First
Debate in the Kathāvattu
According
to A.K. Warder, “In the Kathāvattu. . . we have the
earliest known Indian philosophical work which proceeds on the basis
of a set of established logical techniques” (287). If this is
so, the arguments of the Kathāvattu might therefore lend
themselves to representation in common systems of symbolic logic.
However, scholars have differed over the best way to to this. If we
attempt to represent the arguments in the Kathāvattu in terms of
western symbolic logic, what is the best way to do so? How can we
best represent the arguments of the text in a way that is revelatory
about our best understanding of their true meaning? I will look at a
few such attempts to represent the first argument of the text and
discuss their relative merits.
First, let us look at the initial argument, which represents an
exchange between a Theravādin and a Puggalavādin
('personalist', or someone who believes in a persisting soul, self,
or person). As translated by Aung and Rhys Davids, the exchange is
as follows:
Th: Is 'the person' known in the sense of a real and ultimate fact?
Pg: Yes.
Th: Is the person known in
the same way as a real an
ultimate fact is known?
Pg: Nay, that cannot truly be said.
Th: Acknowledge your refutation: If the person be known in the sense
of a real and ultimate fact, then indeed, good sir, you should also
say, the person is known in the same way as [any other] real and
ultimate fact [is known].
. . .In affirming the former statement, while denying the latter, you
are wrong.
(Italics and brackets in original, 8-9)
Kalupahana renders the same passages as:
Th: Is a person obtained
as an absolute truth, as an ultimate reality?
Pg: Yes.
Th: Is a person, as an absolute
truth, as an ultimate reality, obtained
in the same way that an absolute truth, an ultimate reality, is
obtained?
Pg: One should not say so.
Th: Admit your refutation.
If you say that a person is
obtained as an absolute truth,
as an ultimate reality, then you should also say that a person is
obtained as an absolute truth,
as an ultimate reality, in the same way that an absolute truth, an
ultimate reality, is obtained.
. . . What you state [, that one 'should say' the former and 'not
say' the latter,] . . . is wrong.
(Italics in original, brackets mine, 134)
I will compare three representations of this argument and see if we
can find reason to choose one over the others, or if perhaps there is
yet another preferred alternative.
I. The term-logical representation of Aung and Bochenski.
Matilal reconstructs the term-logical representation (the variables
range over terms, not propositions) of the argument from Aung and
Bochenski as follows:
If A is B, then A is C.
Therefore not both: (A is B) and not (A is C).
Therefore: if not (A is C) then not (A is B).
(36-37)1
In this representation, 'A' is 'the person', 'B' is the
characteristic of being found as a “real and ultimate fact”
or “as an absolute truth, as an ultimate reality”, and
'C' is the characteristic of being found in the same way as other
such realities are found - or in Kalupahana's account as any
such reality would be found (more on this later). Although
this representation does not match the structure of the presentation
of the argument from the text, it does seem to me on its face to well
represent the logical structure of the argument itself. That is,
there are clearly three distinct 'terms' being compared in the text,
and this logical formulation captures that fact and the stated
relations of those terms well.
II. Jayatilleke's propositional representation.
Jayatilleke claims that the term-logical account misrepresents and
obfuscates the argument (414-415), stating that it is better to
represent the argument using simple propositions as:
p
~q
p → q
├ ~p
(413)
Here p represents the assertion that 'the person is found as
an ultimate reality' and q represents that 'the person is
found in the same was as other/any ultimate realities'. As
Jayatilleke argues, this representation indeed has the advantage of
matching more closely the presentation of the argument in the text
(414-415). That is, the Puggalavādin is depicted first as
assenting to p, then denying q, at which point the
Theravādin asserts the connection between the two claims in
order to refute the Puggalavādin's initial claim. Jayatilleke
also argues that the Kathāvattu, like “the Buddhist
tradition as a whole” considers propositions as wholes rather
than breaking them down into terms (313, 414). However, even if that
be the case, the reduction of the statements to bare propositions
rather than term comparisons seems to me to obscure the nature of the
argument.
Matilal argues that the distinctive characteristic of “Indian
logic” as opposed to “Western logic” is that the
former includes epistemological issues, where the latter excludes
them (14). That is to say, the Indian approach did not emphasize the
distinction between formal validity and argumentative soundness:
It is now-a-days claimed that a logician's concern is with the
validity of inference, not with its soundness, which may depend on
extra-logical factors (the truth of the premises). This is the ideal
in [Western] formal logic. In India, however, this distinction was
not often made, for the philosophers wanted their “logically”
derived inferences or their conclusions also to be pieces of
knowledge. Thus, validity must be combined with truth. (17)
He
points out that a commonly used example in modern scholarly writing
about Indian reasoning, “Wherever there is smoke, there is
fire. There is smoke on the yonder hill. Therefore there is fire
there,” when presented in the ancient Indian texts was actually
formulated as “The hill is fire-possessing. Because it is
smoke-possessing. For example, the kitchen”
[emphasis added] (15-16). The Indian formulation has an example
demonstrating the smoke to fire relation as a central element of the
argument, relying on the analogy to the kitchen for the soundness of
the argument. If we accept this epistemological character of Indian
logic, then we may conclude that Jayatilleke's propositional
representation of the argument obscures the important fact that it is
indeed terms that are being compared. The Theravādin is arguing
that, once the Puggalavādin places the person in the category of
ultimate truths, he should also accept that the person should have
the other characteristics commonly associated with those truths –
in this first case, how they are known. It is significant in this
regard that the text continues on to compare the person to many other
'things known' and how they are known. Jayatilleke's representation
of the argument obscures this comparative or analogical
characteristic of the debate.
III.
Kalupahana's analysis of the argument
While
Kalupahana agrees with Jayatilleke that only two variables are needed
to represent the argument, and therefore that the propositional form
captures the structure
of the argument, he claims that both of these interpretations miss
the actual content of
the argument (134-136). Kalupahana suggests that, rather than p
and q,we would be
better served by seeing the propositions as
pTR (person in truth and
reality) and
TR (truth and reality)
(135).
Here
the full forms of these statements are given by Kalupahana as pTR:
“A person is obtained as an absolute truth, as an ultimate
reality” and TR: “An absolute truth, an ultimate reality,
is obtained” (135). In terms of the logical structure,
Kalupahana would presumably agree with Jayatilleke's representation,
so long as the substitutions of pTR
and TR for p and q
respectively have been made, giving:
pTR
~TR
pTR
→ TR
├ ~pTR
But
he argues that both the accounts we have looked at miss the actual
point of the argument. Kalupahana calls out two aspects of the text
that are not directly addressed in the other two accounts.
First,
which we have already alluded above, is his claim that the
Theravādin's second proposition, q
or 'A is C' or TR, is referring to the possibility of
attaining any absolute truth or ultimate reality
as opposed to comparing the nature of the person to other
accepted absolute truths. His
claim is that all the scholars we have looked at so far were mislead
by Buddhaghosa's interpretation of the Theravādin's second
question (135). Buddhaghosa's commentary interprets: “'In the
same way,' that is either as the factors of mind and body are
known, by immediate
consciousness, or under one of the twenty-four relation-categories”
(emphasis added, Aung 9n2)2.
Kalupahana's claim to the contrary is that the Theravādin is
actually asking whether any
ultimate reality can be obtained, and in this regard that the
peculiar nature of the Puggalavādin's reply is also significant.
This is his second distinction, that the Puggalavādin's “One
should not say so” is not a simple negation of a proposition,
but rather a claim that the category of ultimate reality is
unspeakable:
Both seem to assert that one should
not speak (na vattabbe)
of an absolute truth or ultimate reality (TR). Yet the Personalist
proceeds to assert a person as an absolute truth, as an ultimate
reality (pTR), while
the Theravādin does not. . . . This means that the Personalist
believes that “what cannot be spoken of” (na
vattabbe) can still be obtained
or experienced, whereas the Theravādin insists that what is
unspeakable is also not obtained or experienced. (136-137)
In
Kalupahana's view, the Puggalavādin and Theravādin are both
closer to his interpretation of early Buddhist non-essentialism than
the tradition has either of them, for in his view they both agree to
the unspeakable nature of the absolute, whereas the tradition has
them arguing over what phenomena fit in the category of the absolute,
with the battle against absolutism having already been lost or
abandoned.
Kalupahana
believes that Buddhaghosa “advertently or inadvertently”
introduced “absolutist or substantialist distinctions. . . into
the Theravāda tradition” (133). Because the Theravāda
tradition subsequently takes the Abhidhamma to be dealing in
'ultimate truths', when Buddhaghosa compares the 'way the person is
known' to the way these other specific truths are known, it leads to
the conclusion that the Theravādin of the Kathāvattu is
asking the Puggalavādin to compare his knowing of the person to
the accepted knowing of these other 'ultimate truths'. On the
contrary, Kalupahana argues that it is the very Kathāvattu that
evidences against this interpretation of the Abhidhamma, as “No
one reading the excessively long debate in the Kathāvattu on the
conception of a person can assert that the Abhidhamma deals with
ultimate realities (paramattha)”
(145). However, the Theravādin does
to assert that 'material quality' is known as a 'real and ultimate
fact' as well as the rest of the fifty-seven 'ultimates'. For
example, take the following question posed by the Theravādin:
“Material quality [rūpaṃ (Aung
15n3)] is (you have admitted) known as a real and ultimate fact.
Feeling, too, is known as such. Now, is material quality one thing
and feeling another?” (17) Assuming we have an adequate
translation, it is clear in this passage that the Theravādin is
indeed assenting to there being 'real and ultimate facts', for he
states that feeling “is known as such” rather than asking
whether it is. One could still argue about the nature of 'real and
ultimate facts'. For example, are they absolutes, independent of
human experience, or just inevitable aspects of human experience?
But Kalupahana's position rests on the assertion that the comparison
to these other facts is not being made in the first argument, whereas
the rest of the text, independent of Buddhaghosa's analysis, would
seem to indicate that the comparison is indeed intended.
Conclusion
Given
the limitations I have outlined for the representations provided by
Jayatilleke and Kalupahana, but acknowledging Jayatilleke's argument
that the original term-logical representation obscures the structure
of the debate as presented in the text, I think the best
representation may therefore be a term-logical representation
rearranged to match the presentation in the text, that is:
Pg: A is B
Pg: ~(A is C)
Th: (A is B) → (A is C)
Th: ├ ~(A is B)
Here
we have the Puggalavādin first assenting to the person (A) being
an ultimate reality (B), but not being known in the way of other
ultimate realities (C), followed by the Theravādin's assertion
that the former implies the latter and therefore that the
Puggalavādin's original assertion cannot stand alongside his
second.
This
could perhaps be made more clear by rendering it in predicate logic:
Pg: (Ǝx)(Px · Rx) “Some person is known as a reality.”
Pg: ~(Ǝx)(Px · Kx)3 “No person is known in the way other realities are known.”
Th: (x)(Rx → Kx) “All realities are known in the way other realities are known.”
Th: ├ ~(Ǝx)(Px · Rx) “Therefore no person is known as a reality.”
This
rendering has the advantage of making the Theravādin's argument
more clear in that the third statement is more suggestive of why the
Puggalavādin's statements are contradictory. However, all we
have in the text are statements to the effect of “if you say
the person is known as a reality, you should say it is known in the
way other realities are known”, so the Theravādin could in
fact have reasons other than the belief that all realities must be
known in the same way for making this assertion. Also, to be more
accurate, we should probably introduce a particular for the known
person, for it is not clear that the Puggalavādin is arguing
about any notion of a
person as opposed to merely making claims about his own notion of
such.
Because
the predicate rendering opens up these additional questions, it is
perhaps best not to recommend it without further analysis of the rest
of the comparative arguments made in the text. For the present
therefore I propose the rearranged term-logical rendering as
preferable to the alternatives presented in the texts examined here
and leave the question of the predicate rendering for future study.
1 Matilal claims (37) that this is Aung's representation, but Aung's representation has four terms (If A is B then C is D; But C is not D; Therefore A is not B (xlviii)). Matilal says Bochenski “gave an improved version of the same” (37), and Jayatilleke says that Bochenski “seeks to reinstate” Aung's account but improves on it by using only three terms instead of four (Jayatilleke, 412 and n.4).Therefore, having been unable to obtain a copy of Bochenski to check for this paper, I am relying on Matilal's representation of the argument as being equivalent to that by Bochenski (against which Jayatilleke frames his discussion.)
2 Law's translation of this passage is “'In the same way'. . .here it means. . . 'Is the 'person' got at in the same way as a real and ultimate object is got at, because of its having either material form and the like, or because of the relation-categories and the like?'” (11).
3 Suber suggests (tip 18) that this would be better rendered as “(x)(Px → ~Kx)” (and similarly for the fourth statement), but I think the rendering I give here is easier to read as the English statements I have provided to approximate the claims as they are made in the text. Also, the existential rendering of the fourth statement is easier to see as the direct negation of the Puggalavādin's initial assertion, whereas the universal rendering requires a little more understanding of predicate logic on the part of the reader.
Works Cited
Aung,
Shwe Zang and Mrs. Rhys Davids. Points
of Controversy, or, Subjects of Discourse: Being a translation of the
Kathāvattu from the Abhidhammapiṭaka.
1915. Oxford: Pali Text Society, 1993.
Bochenski,
I. M. A History
of Formal Logic.
1956. 2nd
ed. Trans. I. Thomas. New York: Chelsea Publication Company, 1961.
Jayatilleke,
J. N. Early
Buddhist Theory of Knowledge.
1963. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1963.
Kalupahana,
David J. A
History of Buddhist Philosophy: Continuities and Discontinuities.
1992. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1994.
Law,
Bilma Churn, trans. The
Debates Commentary.
London: Humphrey Milford, 1940.
Matilal,
Bimal Krishna. The
Character of Logic in India.
Eds. Jonardon Ganeri and Heeraman Tiwari. Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1998.
Suber, Peter. Translation Tips. Department of Philosophy.
Earlham College. n.d. Web. 22 Aug. 2012.
<http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/courses/log/transtip.htm>
Warder,
A. K. Indian
Buddhism.
3rd
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