Dharmakīrti (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Dharmakrti (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dharmakiirti/[01/04/2015 10:26:03 AM]

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DharmakrtiFirst published Fri Aug 19, 2011

The life of Dharmakrti, a profound and rigorous philosopher of Indian Buddhism, is a subject of hagiographywith little solid data upon which we can confidently rely. If we go by Tibetan sources, he seems to have beenborn in South India and then to have moved to the great monastic university of Nland (in present day Biharstate) where he was supposedly in contact with other Buddhist luminaries, such as Dharmapla (530561 C.E.).Tibetan sources describe his life in very colorful terms. Indeed some make him out as initially a Mmsaka whothen broke with that non-Buddhist school; others depict him as extraordinarily skilled in debate and hint at adifficult and arrogant personality. Judging by the opening verses in his most famous (and by far his longest) work,the Pramavrttika (Commentary on Epistemology), Dharmakrti himself thought that his philosophy would not beunderstood by his contemporaries because of their small-minded vanity. At the end of the Pramavrttika, hewent further and prophesied that his work of unrivalled depth would never receive its proper recognition, butwould age in obscurity locked away in itself.

He was wrong about that, fortunately for us. His philosophy certainly did find recognition, at least it did in manyparts of Asia. He, and his predecessor Dignga (c. 480c. 540 C.E.), were responsible for a school of Buddhistthought that actually had no name in Sanskrit, although in Tibetan it was known as those who follow reasoning(rigs pa rjes su brang ba); in modern literature it is sometimes known by the convenient Sanskrit misnomerpramavda, or more simply, the Epistemological School. In any case, it is the Buddhist school that provokedthe most sophisticated and most important philosophical debates with non-Buddhist rivals. It representedBuddhism in the pan-Indian debates on problems of universals, philosophies of logic and language, and issues ofjustification, and had an enormous influence on Mahyna Buddhism in Central Asia, especially in Tibet. Finally,although its influence was relatively limited in medieval China (only a few of the works of Dignga weretranslated into Chinese, none of the works of Dharmakrti were translated), it has nonetheless becomeincreasingly important in modern Japan in supplying the epistemology for Buddhist thought.

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It is still undecided in the modern community of researchers on Dharmakrti whether one should place thisphilosopher in the seventh century C.E. or in the sixth. Part of the reason for this indecision is that a significanttime seems to have elapsed before Dharmakrti achieved notoriety in India, although it is unclear how much.Erich Frauwallner came out strongly for 600660 C.E. as Dharmakrti's dates, using an argumentum ex silentiothat is short of conclusivehardly more than one piece in the puzzle. One problem is that there may indeed besome counterevidence that would place Dharmakrti a half-century earlier, inter alia his possible connections withDharmapla, a sixth-century idealist philosopher who, according to Tibetan historians, was the monk thatordained Dharmakrti. Some have thought that there is even a reference to Dharmakrti in Dharmapla'scommentary to Dignga's lambanapark (Analysis of the object [of perception]). However, because thiscommentary is only available to us at this time in Chinese in an unreliable translation by Yijing, it is not clearthat the passage in question does in fact refer to Dharmakrti. Agnosticism on the matter of Dharmakrti's datesseems to be the only rational course at this time.

Leaving aside the question of dates, Frauwallner (1954) did most likely pin down the order in which Dharmakrticomposed five of his seven works, namely, and in this order, the Pramavrttika, Pramavinicaya(Ascertainment of Epistemology), Nyyabindu (Drop of Reasoning), Hetubindu (Drop of Logical Reasons),and Vdanyya (Logic of Argumentation). The two minor works, the Sambandhapark (Analysis ofRelations) and Satnntarasiddhi (Proof of Other Minds), are more difficult to place in the sequence. There isalso an autocommentary to the Pramavrttika, the Pramavrttikasvavtti. However, the hypothesis ofFrauwallner that there was a proto-text that later became the Pramavrttikasvavtti is still speculative.

In what follows, most of our discussion will center around the Pramavrttika, as it is by far the largest and mostimportant of Dharmakrti's works. It is an unfinished, highly philosophical, commentary on thePramasamuccaya (Compendium of Epistemology) of Dignga. At various key places in the text we see thatDharmakrti seems to have formulated some basic ideas as a reaction to now lost commentaries by Dignga'sstudents, the most important being the commentary on the Pramasamuccaya by varasena. A notable reactionto varasena is Dharmakrti's emphasis on certainty (nicaya) (see sections 1.4 and 3.1). There are alsoinnovations that, as far as we know, were not provoked by earlier commentators. Whether in metaphysics,epistemology or philosophy of language, causal theories carry considerable philosophical weight. These theoriesare probably to quite a degree original, not found in Dignga's own writings. In what follows, we will examinewhat we consider to be the most salient features of Dharmakrti's philosophy, bringing out inter alia theimportance of this causal stance. It is however impossible to discuss all the major themes that were traditionallycommented upon by Buddhist scholastic writers on Dharmakrti. Choices and exclusions had to be made. Forreaders who seek a comprehensive treatment of the historical development of Dharmakrti's positions in his sevenworks, the best reference to date is Eltschinger (2010).

1. Metaphysics

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1.1. Nominalism

1.2. Reality and momentariness

1.3 Two arguments for momentariness

1.4 A causal theory of properties

1.5 Humean and Dharmakrtian causality

2. Epistemology and philosophy of language

2.1 Pramas and justification

2.2 Aboutness: the theory of apoha

3. Logic and Philosophy of logic

3.1 Good reasons and the triple criterion

3.2 Inference-for-others

3.3 Opaque contexts

4. Religion and ethics

5. Editions and translations of the Pramavrttika

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1. MetaphysicsThe Dignga-Dharmakrti schoolcontrary to certain globally anti-realist Buddhist schools like theMadhyamakarecognizes that there are, indeed must be, some entities that are fully real. It is, however, a schoolthat is thoroughly nominalist. What is real for them is only the particular (svalakaa). By contrast, anything thatis a universal (smnyalakaa) is unreal; at most it is a conventionally recognized fiction needed for thought andlanguage. What demarcates the real from the fictional is that the former has causal powers and exists in a purelypunctual way, a new entity each moment. Both Dignga and Dharmakrti were, in their final positions, followersof the Yogcra idealism, although they clearly went to great effort to make their positions largely acceptable toproponents of external objects and to idealists alike. Indeed in Dharmakrti's case, most of his philosophy is



presented from a point of view in which external objects (bhyrtha) are (provisionally at least) accepted as real.Idealism only enters the picture after verse 194 of the third chapter of Pramavrttika. He certainly does havesophisticated arguments to prove idealism, that is, the view for him that there are no external objects, thateverything cognizable is internal (antarjeyavda), only mere data (vijaptimtra), and that subject(grhaka) and object (grhya) are not two distinct entities. Nonetheless, it is striking that the main thrust ofDharmakrti's metaphysicshis nominalism, his proofs of impermanence and his causal theories of propertiesis largely unaffected by the choice of external realism or idealism. Similarly for his epistemology, philosophy oflanguage and logic, with a few adjustments here and there. Even on matters of solipsism and other minds, thechoice of idealism makes little difference for Dharmakrti. In the Satnntarasiddhi, for example, he goes to greatlength to show that the Yogcra idealist can use the same arguments for other mindsi.e., the argument fromanalogyas the Sautrntika realist, and just as the realist can avoid solipsism so the idealist supposedly can too.For our purposes, essentially for simplicity and conciseness, we shall treat of Dharmakrti's philosophy asaccepting external objects, with the proviso that most of the same ideas can be reinterpreted to conform toidealism. Another way to put it is that we'll read the Pramavrttika along the broad lines of what Tibetansiddhnta (grub mtha') literature terms the position common to Sautrntika [external realism] and Cittamtra[idealism] (mdo sde pa dang sems tsam pa thun mong ba'i lugs).

1.1. Nominalism

It [i.e., the universal] does not come there [from somewhere else], it was not there already, nor is it producedsubsequently, nor does it have any parts. [And even when in other places] it does not leave the previous locus.Oh my! It's just one disaster after another. (Pramavrttika I.152)

No doubt the fundamental intuition in Buddhist nominalism, just as in other nominalisms, is that universals areoccult pseudo-entities that should not be taken seriously by a responsible thinker concerned with ontology. As theabove quotation from Pramavrttika shows, Dharmakrti lists a series of anomalies: they don't come fromanywhere, they are partless, aren't produced, are in several places at one time, aren't seen, wouldn't seem to haveany discernible function, and so and so on. Such bogusness of pseudo-entities becomes a recurrent theme inBuddhist Epistemology. A later Indian Buddhist writer, Pait Aoka, inspired by Dharmakrti and Dignga,ridiculed real universals as follows in his Smnyadaa (Refutation of Universals):

One can clearly see five fingers in one's own hand. One who commits himself to a sixth general entityfingerhood, side by side with the five fingers, might as well postulate horns on top of his head.

The collection of intuitive anomalies and appeal to seriousness may very well be the most powerful strategiesnominalists East and West have, even though their realist adversaries will predictably maintain that they areuntouched because universals are not the kind of things that need to be in one place at one time, etc. However,

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there are other considerations for Dharmakrti besides the intuitive ones. There are metaphysical arguments andeven an underlying political stance behind his nominalism (see section 4). The recurring Buddhist metaphysicalargument against the reality of universals is that they would be subject to an intractable one-many problem:the universal, which would be one thing, would have to be somehow present in and share the nature of severaldifferent particulars. The problem for Dharmakrti would then be that because the universal would share themultiple natures of the various particulars, it too would itself have to be many different things. The alternativewhereby the universal would be a radically separate entity (arthntara) from the particulars and remain unitaryin nature is dismissed as irreconcilable with the obvious fact that we say that several things possess the sameproperty. Buddhists, not surprisingly, have to consecrate considerable attention to the Nyya idea that universalsare indeed such radically separate entities, but linked to particulars via an inherence (samvya) relation. Thecounter-arguments in Pramavrttika and Sambandhapark become technical, turning in part on the unrealityof relations, but again the intuitive Buddhist stance is clearly that inherence, like universals, is an occult entity,posited ad hoc and without any discernible effects in the world.

1.2. Reality and momentariness

What figures again and again in Dharmakrti's philosophical arguments against universals and other pseudo-entitiesand is a major innovation upon Digngais the principle that what is real must actually affect thingsand bring about a change. More exactly, the criterion for something being real is that it must have causalpowers (arthakriysamartha) and perform causal roles (arthakriykritva). And crucially, particulars havesuch powers and perform such roles while universals and other pseudo-entities do not. Pramavrttika III.3 (withManorathanandin's additions in brackets) summarizes his idea:

Whatever has causal powers (arthakriysamartha), that really exists (paramrthasat) in this context [i.e., whenwe examine reality]. Anything else is declared to be [just] conventionally existent (savtisat) [because it ispractically accepted through mere conceptual fictions]. These two [i.e., the real and the conventional] are[respectively] particulars and universals.

Things, properties, powers, whatever they may be, if real and causally efficient, must occupy just one location intime (kla) and space (dea) and have only a singular nature (svabhva), by which Dharmakrti means thatnothing real can span, or be present in, several distinct objects over different times and places, and possess themany natures of the various particulars. This not only rules out horizontal universals (tiryaglakaa), likeblueness, which would have to be present in several blue particulars at one time, but it also rules out verticaluniversals (rdhvatlakaa), or substances persisting throughout time, the numerically identical individual thatwould be present in each time-slice of a thing. It is only series of qualitatively similar moments that constitutewhat we conventionally take to be enduring objects, but there is actually nothing that remains numerically the

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same for more than one instant.

1.3 Two arguments for momentariness

Dharmakrti has two arguments for the momentariness (kaikatva) of all that exists, one quite obscure andunconvincing, which he inherited from previous writers like Vasubandhu (5 century C.E.), and the other morepromising. The first argument, which nowadays is commonly known as the vinitvnumna, or the inferenceof things perishing [spontaneously], turns on the long-attested Buddhist idea that perishing must be of theintrinsic nature of any object. Perishing due to its intrinsic nature, something will always perish as soon itexists. The point is that such moment by moment destruction is spontaneous (kasmika) and is the uncausedreal nature of things, because it cannot be an effect of any cause. The effect of such a cause, i.e., the absence of theentity, would have to be a type of non-being (abhva), and non-being is unreal.

A key underlying principle of the vinitvnumna is that negative facts, such as absences, are not part of theultimate furniture of the world, but are just fictional conceptual constructions, as they are devoid of causalpowers. Equally, a fiction lacking causal powers is not the effect of something else. While it is obviously impossibleto deny that hammers smash pots, the absence (abhva) of the pot, i.e., the non-existent pot, is not an effect, just asother non-existent things (abhva), like horns of rabbits, are not effects of anything either. Hammers and the likeare thus not actually causes of the pot's absence but of it turning into potsherds. That idea is perhaps defensible,in that arguably the mere absence of somethinga purely negative factmight be less real and less efficaciousthan the presence of other things. Nonetheless, the rest of the argument looks to consist in a number of non-sequiturs going from that difference in efficacy and reality between absences and presences to the idea thatperishing is somehow the real nature of things, that it must be intrinsic to them, and that therefore things mustperish spontaneously moment after moment. Let's grant the Buddhist view that the perishing of x is the realproperty of changing into a new thing, and not just x becoming absent. If it is accepted that hammer blows dochange pots into potsherds, then why couldn't someone skeptical about the Buddhist's arguments just take that asthe model of how things perish when they do?

There is, fortunately, a much better argument for intrinsic momentariness than the problematic vinitvnumna.This argument is known as the inference [of things' momentariness] from the [mere] fact of [them] existing(sattvnumna), and seems to be largely Dharmakrti's own invention, first developed in the second chapter of hisPramavinicaya. If anything exists and is a specific thing rather than another, it is because of its causal efficacy(arthakriy), or powers to produce such and such effects. Thus, the sattvnumna reasoning, concisely formulated,is that things are impermanent, i.e., are new things moment after moment, because they are always causallyefficient in some way. (Although not stated, it seems to be presupposed that real things are every moment causingsome or another different effect. The differences between effects would be subtle ones that often escape our

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perception.) The key step in the argument is that nothing causes new effects while itself remaining the same.Dharmakrti, in the opening passages of the Vdanyya, argues that if something were permanent (nitya), it wouldbe causally inert as it would neither produce its effects all at once (yaugapadyena) nor serially (kramena). Ofcourse, it is the second hypothesis that is the most attractive possibility for an espouser of permanently enduringthings: he would hold that a permanent unchanging cause would produce a series of different effects, not becausethe cause changes in any way, but simply because of the presence of new and different surroundingcircumstances.

Suppose it said that a permanent thing has successive concomitant circumstances in dependence upon whichit brings about a collection of effects serially.

To this objection, Dharmakrti, and especially the later commentators like ntarakita and Kamalala, replythat if a would-be cause remained unchanged over time and if it was only the concomitant circumstances thatchanged, then it would have to be the new circumstances that were the actual cause. After all, the permanentthing would be present unchanged both when the putative effects are present and when they are absent, and thisfailure of the co-presence and co-absence (anvayavyatireka) conditions for determining cause and effect wouldshow, for Dharmakrti, that the ever-present thing is not the actual cause, but that something else is. This is notunreasonable. If an epidemiologist, for example, found that certain factors had been constant for quite some timebefore the outbreak of an infectious disease and remained unchanged at the time of the outbreak, he would tendto discount them as being responsible for the epidemic. And if he found that some new powerful factorsimmediately preceded the outbreak, he most likely would pin the causality on them rather than on what hadremained constant all along. The logic in these arguments against permanence can be generalized to variouswould-be entities, including notably the non-Buddhist idea of the permanent creator God (vara) who remainsthe same throughout time while producing a series of effects.

1.4 A causal theory of properties

We seem to have in Dharmakrti what would nowadays be termed a type of causal theory of properties.Particulars have causal properties, that is, powers (akti) or fitness (yogyat) to produce such and such results,in that they will produce those results when the right complete collections (smagr) of circumstances and otherproperties are united. And what makes any property what it is consists in the contribution it makes to thepotential causal behaviour of what has it.

The question then arises in what way particulars have properties or powers. It is important to emphasize that forDharmakrti and many other Buddhists particulars are not separate entities that own or have separately existingproperties/powers. Much of the argument here in Buddhist Epistemology (and in other schools of Buddhism) isessentially an appeal to perceptual evidence and common sense: particulars are real and must be objects of

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perception; nobody perceives a particular without its properties, and indeed nobody can see a difference betweenthe bearer of the properties and the properties themselves; hence any such distinction is unreal. These reasons arealso fleshed out into a fundamental position, initially strongly advocated by Dignga, that subject-predicatedifferences in language do not mirror a corresponding difference between substances and properties in reality(see section 2.2). Bare particulars that somehow have properties, or in which properties are instantiated, wouldthus be ruled out.

Are the powers themselves particulars or universals? It can be argued that Dharmakrti and his fellow Buddhistsare best understood as trope theorists: the powers/properties that make up particulars are themselves particularentities, differing according to each location in space and time (see section 2.2.2). Charles Goodman and othershave made a persuasive case that properties (dharma) for bhidhrmika Buddhists are indeed tropes, i.e.,properties that are particulara blueness, a heat, or a hardness specific to one place-time and not common toseveral. The Epistemologists' version of dharmas would be no exception in that respect of being particulars ratherthan universals. The causal theory, however, does make for significant differences from bhidhrmikas. Manyimportant bhidhrmikas, i.e., those of the Sarvstivda school, regarded dharmas from a complex doubleperspective: a) their intrinsic natures (svabhva), i.e., what they are, and b) their present causal activity (kritra)along with their capabilities (smarthya) to lead to effects when the appropriate circumstances obtain. Theintrinsic natures of dharmas are given in terms of categorical propertiesbeing blue, being square, being hard,etcand are treated like quiddities, what dharmas simply are in themselves. The activities and capabilities, on theother hand, are presented in causal terms, e.g., giving rise to perceptions of blue and square, producingsubsequent similar things, etc. Not surprisingly, there are involved Abhidharma debates on the relationshipbetween the intrinsic natures and causal activities/capabilities, a rather typically evasive Sarvstivdin response(i.e., that of Saghabhadra) being that they are neither the same nor different. The most radical way out of thisproblem of the relationship between the intrinsic and the causal is to say, as do Ngrjuna and his Mdhyamikafollowers, that there cannot really be any intrinsic natures at all: if anything had a quiddity intrinsically, asbhidhrmikas and others hold, it would absurdly need to have it completely acausallynothing could evercause a thing to be what it is intrinsically. A less radical strategy is a causal theory that makes no separation at allbetween what something is and what it does.

Let us grant that for Dharmakrti particulars are somehow identified with appropriate causal powers. Is it thenan essential or an accidental feature of a thing x that it will produce y under the appropriate conditions, and is itessential or accidental to y that it is caused by x? In a causal theory of properties these features are generallytaken to be essential. To what degree does Dharmakrti subscribe to that? The point needs analysis. On the onehand, Dharmakrti does very strongly advocate a type of essential connection (svabhvapratibandha) between cause and effect, and this connection will guarantee that there is a nexus where [the effect] will not bewithout [the cause] (avinbhvaniyama). Arguments invoking this nexus can, for example, be seen in thePramavrttikasvavtti's discussion of I.3447. He begins by introducing verse 34 as follows:

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Well, if observation and non-observation are no basis for knowing the co-presence and co-absence [of smokeand fire], how then does one know that smoke does not deviate (na vyabhicarati) from fire?

Dharmakrti then argues that whatever is smoke must have originated from fire in order for it to be smokeotherwise it's just a smoke-like thing, a pseudo-smoke. And he also says that if something like a termite tower(akramrdhan) does actually have the causal properties of firei.e., the fitness (yogyat) to produce real smokethen it indeed must be on fire (see Dunne 2004, 335338).

That said, on the other hand, there certainly is no development of a modal logic of necessity and possibility andtalk of possible worlds in Dharmakrti, nor in Indian philosophy generally for that matter. Although BuddhistEpistemologists do often talk of non-existent things, like rabbit's horns (aavia), it is far from clear that theywould predicate positive properties (say, sharpness) of them in such and such possible situations or worlds.What then is the force of the must in the smoke-fire cases, and more generally when terms have a nexus sothat one will not be without the other? Words that are typically used in these kind of Dharmakrtian discussionsare nicaya (certainty) and avyabhicra (not-deviating). Many modern interpreters have used the term necessityin interpreting these and related terms (See e.g., Dunne 2004, ch. 3; Iwata 2004); this might lead one to think thatwhen F and G have a nexus, it is a necessary truth (i.e., true in all possible worlds) that for all x, if x is F then x isG. A more likely interpretation, however, is that Dharmakrti is dealing with the actual world and that these keyterms are to be interpreted epistemically in terms of justification: given such and such essential connectionsbetween F and G, we can be sure that for all x, if x is F then x is G. Taking nicaya in this way, his point would notbe about metaphysical necessity throughout worlds but more about justified very strong confidence that auniversally quantified material implication holds without exception in the actual world.

1.5 Humean and Dharmakrtian causality

A final remark on causality. Hume had famously said in Section 7 of his Enquiry Concerning HumanUnderstanding: We may define a cause to be an object followed by another, and where all the objects, similar tothe first, are followed by objects similar to the second. Causal connections are said to consist in contingentregularities established by observation. What the above-cited passage from the Pramavrttikasvavtti suggests,however, is that for Dharmakrti such mere regularities are somehow not enough and that something stronger isat stake: there are features in the causal relata so that they have an essential connection(svabhvapratibandha). Indeed his causal theory of properties allows him to assert that fire, being what it isessentially, must cause smoke under the right conditions and smoke, being smoke, must be caused by fire. Thatsaid, there are important passages in Dharmakrti's works where he does speak of establishing causality becauseone observes an effect when there is a particular cause and does not observe it when that cause is absent. As in thecase of Hume, this too is an observation of regularities. It is the Indian method of observing successive co-

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presence (anvaya) and co-absence (vyatireka) and is a type of induction used throughout Indian philosophy toestablish connections between two types of things. Dharmakrti relies on a multi-step procedure that is sometimesexplained in terms of a threefold combination of observations (upalabdhi) and non-observations (anupalabdhi) andsometimes in terms of five. Thus we have the so-called triple or fivefold examination (trikapacakacint) ofcausality that is developed by later Buddhist writers, such as Dharmottara, Jnarmitra andMokkaragupta. Other provisos are also added in an attempt to rule out certain bogus circumstances thatwould vitiate the procedure (see e.g., Lasic 1999). The details and problems cannot be taken up here. This methodof anvaya and vyatireka has been profitably compared with J.S. Mill's Method of Agreement and Difference toestablish causation (see Matilal 1998,17; cf. Tillemans 2004, 265269).

So how are these passages in Dharmakrti and the commentarial literature to be taken? One interpretation mightbe to say that Dharmakrti, somewhat navely, thought he could arrive at a thoroughly watertight inductiveprocedure by ever more adroit qualifications of the observations and non-observations. Gillon (1991) is anattempt to show that Dharmakrti's philosophy, in attempting to do that, ran up against a problem of inductionthat wouldn't go away. Perhaps a more charitable exegesis is that for Dharmakrti the way we find out through aposteriori methods whether or not x and y are causally related is a quite different matter from what causality isthe latter, as we had remarked, involves facts about essential properties. Thus we might have to discoverempirically that fire will burn fuel under such and such conditions, but nonetheless that property is not one thatit could do without and still be fire. Causality could then be a connection due to essences, but one which isestablished a posteriori.

2. Epistemology and philosophy of languageHere is the basic epistemological stance that Dharmakrti inherited from Dignga's Pramasamuccaya. Just asthere are only two kinds of objects of knowledge, real particulars and fictional universals, there are only two typesof knowledge, or more exactly sources of knowledge (prama), viz., perception (pratyaka) and inference(anuma). Perception is always purely non-conceptual and non-linguistic whereas inference is conceptual,linguistic thinking that proceeds on the basis of good reasons. Particulars are the objects of perception anduniversals are the objects of inferenceone sees specific shapes, colors, but when one thinks red is a color thesubject and predicate terms range over several things. Perception has the special status of giving direct access tothe real, whereas conceptual thought is, in an important way, distorted (bhrnta) because it superimposesuniversals that aren't actually there in the particulars themselves.

For Dignga (and his successors) this split between perception and conceptual thought was part and parcel of atype of foundationalism. Perception is directly causally bound to particulars and fixed (niyata) by them: itsinternal representation (kra) of the object is causally determined by, and corresponds to, the particular itself. Itis for that reason that perception is the fundamental contact with the world upon which the superstructure of

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conceptual cognition rests; conceptual cognition, on the other hand, is not fixed in this way by particulars and canto a large degree think what it will about whatever it chooses. The separation between perception and conceptualthinking in Pramasamuccaya is thus radical indeed and yields what seems to be a counterintuitive consequence.For Dignga it would seem that one and the same object could never be both perceived and thought about. Non-Buddhist thinkers, such as Naiyyikas and Mmsakas, did not have this problem. They could cheerfully allowthat when one person sees a vase and another thinks about it, the type of understanding may be different but theobject is the same in that the conceptual thought grasps a real universal vaseness that inheres in the sameparticular vase that is perceived. But Dignga could not go that route as a nominalist. For him if the object ofthought is vaseness, that object is unreal and thus quite different from the real particular vases that one sees.

Two problems loom large in Dignga's account: (1) What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of a sourceof knowledge (prama) and when are we justified in thinking that these conditions are met? (2) Given that onlyperception has direct access to the real and is causally bound to it, how is it that conceptual thought could ever beabout real particulars at all and be considered a genuine source of knowledge? We'll take up the questions one byone.

2.1 Pramas and justification

Dignga had left the problem of the nature of pramas largely open, as he did with the issue of justification.These matters were left to Dharmakrti, who defines a source of knowledge in Pramavrttika II.1 as areliable (avisavdin) cognition (jna), by which he means that the cognition is right and reliable as a basis foraction. Some commentators, such as Dharmottara, have unpacked reliability as meaning that the cognitionleads to one obtaining (prpaka) the object one desires, a position which along with passages concerningarthakriy, might seem to reinforce the view of some modern scholars that Dharmakrti was a pragmatist (see e.g.,Powers 1994; Cabezon 2000; Katsura 1984). Tillemans (1999, 612) examines this would-be pragmatism,seeing the theory of truth in Dharmakrti as a weak form of correspondence. The pragmatism is better taken as apragmatic theory of justification rather than truth. We can justifiably affirm that a cognition is correct if we canconfirm causal efficacy (arthakriysthiti), by which it is meant that we come to understand that the object doesin fact have the causal powers we expected. We can justifiably conclude, for example, that we saw a vase and notsome vase-like illusion because after the initial perception we then confirmed that what we saw does really holdwater, as we expected and wished (ia). Note that while most sense perceptions are to be confirmed by subsequentperceptions or inferences, there is no infinite regress here: some perceptionse.g., those of very familiar objectsor of the capacity of such objects to produce effectsneed no subsequent confirmation. Logical inference tooneeds no ulterior confirmation. These are said to be intrinsically sources of knowledge (svata prmya) andare prima facie reliable in that they will be trusted as knowledge unless it is shown that some cause of error ispresent.

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It is important to emphasize, against a simplistic pragmatic interpretation of Dharmakrti's position, that areliable cognition is not one that just happens to be right and works to enable one to obtain what one seeks. Itmust also be a cognition that came about via a reliable route, i.e., an appropriate causal pathway or a set of goodreasons. Tibetan scholars will emphasize that to conceptually know P the knower must herself ascertain P (Tib.nges pa = Skt. nicaya, nicita) with a prama, and that this ascertainment must itself involve antecedent reliablecognitions (i.e., perceptual or conceptual pramas) in order to be genuine. Thus, for example, one ascertains P onthe basis of good reasons Q, R, etc., whose characteristics one has ascertained earlier. If, however, one rightlythinks P is the case, but did not [first] ascertain with a prama (tshad mas ma nges pa) the characteristics of Q,R, this is deemed to be, in Geluk (dge lugs) texts, a true presumption where the [character of the] reason was notdetermined (Tib. rgyu mtshan gtan la ma phab pa'i yid dpyod), or following the Sakya (sa skya) thinkers, a meredoubt that is in accord with the real (Tib. the tshom don mthun). For both these Tibetan schools, such anunderstanding of P is not itself a prama. This is a credible account of what Dharmakrti held. In short,pramas do work out as we wish, but only because they are cognitions that have followed the requisite reliableroute.

But does this talk of ascertainment then mean that the Buddhist Epistemologist adopts an internalist account ofepistemic justification? Is the Buddhist saying when you genuinely know something, you need to know that youknow it, i.e., be able to establish to yourself and others that you have the requisite justification? It is not at allclear that Dharmakrti or his Tibetan interpreters were internalists about epistemic justification. Nothing in hisown talk of ascertainment clinches an internalist interpretation that the person who infers must also himselfaccess the reason and ascertain with a prama that it does justify the inference. When the debater ascertains thecharacteristics of the reason, all this may mean is that a person making an inference must only in fact havefollowed a number of reliable procedures to initially determine the characteristics of the reason. It need not meanthat when one knows something inferentially one must also be aware of the justification basis, i.e., the reason, andknow that it does indeed justify the inference.

It might be retorted that Dharmakrti's idea of all awareness being reflexive awareness (svasavedana) showshis internalism. But reflexive awarenessoften termed self-awareness (even though for Buddhists it isemphatically not an awareness of a self and its states)will not get us all the way to internalism aboutjustification either. Following Williams (1998), Kellner (2010) and Arnold (2010), there seem to be to be two basicthemes in the positions from Dignga and Dharmakrti to ntarakita that all consciousness is non-conceptuallyreflexive: (1) that the mind perceives, with a second-order perception, that such and such data is being presentedto it; it is thus non-conceptually aware of all its own states; (2) that reflexive awareness is a condition of sentience:an experience is not just a material process (like, say, digestion), but can lead to subsequent memory andconceptualization because it is non-conceptually auto-illuminated. On both versions, however, while someonecould be aware that she is now inferring P in reliance upon a reason Q, it is hard to see that her simple second-order awareness of processes going on in her head would also mean that she herself would know that or why

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the inference was justified. Reflexive awareness is aware of whatever conscious processes are occurring, be theydelusions or reliable. So, while a person would be aware of the brute fact that thoughts were occurring, theircredentials are another matter.

2.2 Aboutness: the theory of apoha

At the heart of Dignga's and Dharmakrti's philosophies is the principle that particulars, i.e., what is real, areonly properly grasped by perception; the way they are in themselves is thus said to be ineffable (avyapadeya;Tib. bstan bya min), not an object of words (abdasyviaya). Now, obviously, we do in some way manage totalk about particularsotherwise language would be useless in daily life. But why then say that language andthought somehow fail to capture them? The answer is twofold. First of all, grammatical elements, like subject andpredicate, qualifier and qualificand, agent and action, etc., have no corresponding ontological features, asparticulars are unities admitting no distinctions between possessors of properties (dharmin) and properties(dharma). Dharmakrti puts the point as follows in Pramavrttika I.61:

In all cases words expressing substances and their properties just make this [conceptual] distinction. Thusthere is no difference whatsoever in the [object] to which they refer.

Secondly, and perhaps more decisively, the kinds or universals that we think and talk about are not features ofthe particulars themselves but are merely fictions. Of course, the fact that we do use terms like cow non-arbitrarily may easily lead us to think that the term must have corresponding real grounds for its application(pravttinimitta), and that cow particulars themselves are grouped in a natural kind due to their common essentialproperties. But the clear upshot of the Buddhist's nominalist position about universals is that there are no suchnatural kinds, and that the usage of terms is not explicable by matching up terms with them.

Ineffability thus unpacks as a thorough mismatch between representations due to thought and language on theone hand and what there is on the other. For Buddhist Epistemologists this mismatch means that they cannotadopt unnuanced the predominant Brahmanical approach of vykaraa, a grammatically oriented metaphysics inwhich genuine ontological features would be revealed by the features of Sanskrit grammar (such as case andgender accord between adjectives and nouns, connections between substantives via the genitive case, etc. Much ofDignga's philosophy of language is indeed an attempt to account for such Sanskrit grammatical phenomena, butwithout the realist baggage.) However, it also leads to a larger matter. The problem is that if the real world iscomposed only of particulars that are ineffable, it becomes difficult to see how language could nonethelesssomehow refer to real things or ever be about entities in the world. The Buddhist Epistemologists are, in effect, toborrow an idea of Donald Davidson (1984), subscribers to a rigid separation between a conceptual scheme and aperceptual content free from the scheme's additions and distortions, and their problem then becomes how tobridge that very scheme-content gap so that thought and language are still somehow about reality. To solve this

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problem of aboutness Dignga had devised the theory of concepts, i.e., apoha (exclusions). Dharmakrtireinterpreted this theory, once again, in terms of causal relations. Here are the broad outlines.

2.2.1 Dignga's apoha

Let us speak about two Buddhist approaches to bridge the scheme-content gap, top-down, or descriptive,approaches and bottom-up, or causal, approaches. By top-down we shall mean an account which maintainsthat it is because of some specific (and perhaps ingenious) features of the fictional proxy, or concept, that itpertains to particular things. Even though it does not have the ontological baggage of a real universal, thefictional proxy determines the reference of the words because the descriptive content it provides does in some wayhave its counterpart in the objects. Thus on a top-down approach, the fictional stand-in for a universal likeblueness would behave like a property, a sense or a meaning, that belongs to the conceptual scheme but wouldnonetheless qualify and serve to pick out the real blue particulars in the world. This can be accomplished,according to Buddhist Epistemologists, because the fictional proxies are, or can be analyzed to be, exclusions ofwhat is other (anypoha), a type of double negation which applies to particular patches of blue in the sense thateach such patch is non-non-blue. As Dignga had put it in his Smnyapark (Analysis of Universals):

A word talks about entities only as they are qualified by the negation of other things.

In fact, Dignga applied his analysis both to things and to the words that express them: non-non-blue is theuniversal-qua-object (arthasmnya) signified by the term blue, and non-non-blue is the universal-qua-word(abdasmnya) that applies to particular articulations of the word blue. For Dignga, the signified-signifier(vcyavcaka) relation holds between these two quasi-universals.

Why are they quasi and not full-fledged universals? The reasoning is not explicit in Dignga. However, it can beplausibly reconstructed. Buddhist Epistemologists generally subscribed to the principle that mere absences ofproperties are of a lesser ontological status than positive things. They would stress that negative facts, like x notbeing blue, heavy, etc., are constituted by our mere interests (i.e., we seek a blue thing at such and such a locationand come away empty-handed), and are less real than the fact that x causes perceptions of blue, a fact which iswhat it is objectively and independently of interests. It seems that it is this general Buddhist intuition of theunreality of absences upon which Dignga relied. As the exclusion of what is other is itself only a negativeproperty/absence of something rather than a presence, we are spared commitment to there being real universalsin addition to real particulars.

Dignga's approach in the fifth chapter of Pramasamuccaya is indeed top-down in that he relies upon thedescriptive content of the apoha to pick out the appropriate particulars. And top-down is also how the exclusiontheory (apohavda) is presented in the works of non-Buddhist opponents of Dignga, as well as in modern workstreating of the subject. Bimal K. Matilal interpreted the theory in this fashion (see Matilal 1971, 41), as did Hans

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Herzberger. Herzberger (1975), developed an ingenious logical strategy, using some possibilities offered by EmilPost's theory of twofold propositions, to come up with what he termed a resourceful nominalism, one thatwould explain how predicates applied non-arbitrarily to individual things, that would account for our navesemantic intuitions, and nonetheless avoid ontological commitment to universals. Every proposition would beanalyzable as an ordered pair of content and commitmentapohist double negation would affirm content butdeny ontological commitment. In what seems to be at least partially a top-down approach, Mark Siderits hastaken the relevant double negation as involving two different types of negation, choice and exclusion, so that it isthe combination of the two that picks out a class of individuals, all the while staying nominalistically unengaged touniversals (Siderits 1995; 2005). Finally, perhaps the most striking modern use of double negation as a way ofspecifying word-types and types of phonemes is to be found in the Cours de linguistique gnrale of Ferdinand deSaussure, although this 19 20 century Swiss structuralist was obviously unaware of 6 century parallels inIndian philosophy and was not motivated primarily by nominalist ontological worries.

It remains far from clear, however, how genuine nominalist mileage is to be gained on a top-down approach,ingenious as it may be. The usual charge against it by non-Buddhist critics, like Kumrila and Uddyotakara, iscircularity: if an understanding of blue is to be analyzed as an understanding of non-non-blue and any negationpresupposes understanding the negandum, then understanding what non-non-blue is would depend onunderstanding bluewe go round in circles. Hugon (2011) gives Dharmakrti's response to that charge, whichconsists essentially of a tu quoque argumentone needs to understand what a term excludes as much as what itapplies to. Hale (2011) reformulates the difficulty as being that the Buddhist seems to run counter to thecompositionality of language; he argues that the non-Buddhist criticism will thus remain. The problem isdiscussed intensely by Indo-Tibetan thinkers, like ntarakita (for further discussion, see the entry on him) andSa skya Paita (see Hugon 2008, 479485, 205210). What is striking is that while it can certainly be arguedasthese thinkers dothat a meaningful term presents both a class of things to which it applies and another to whichit does not apply, it is difficult to see how the latter would or should occupy a privileged place. Why would weunderstand words first and foremost by the via negativa?

2.2.2 Dharmakrti's causal version of apoha

On a bottom-up approach, on the other hand, the double exclusion plays a comparatively minor role, and thussome of the Kumrila-Uddyotakara criticisms may be less telling. Causal chains and error are what serve tobridge the scheme-content gap, rather than the descriptive content of the apoha. It is notable that such reliance oncausality seems to be entirely absent in Dignga: it is Dharmakrti's major contribution to the theory. The waywords link to things is thus primarily explained through the existence of a causal chain from particular things toperceptions to thoughts and to the utterances of wordsin short we have a type of causal theory of reference.While modern day causal theories of referencesuch as that of Saul Kripkeare typically used to explain howproper names can refer without descriptive content, the theory can be extended in various ways to kind terms.

th th th

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Such is the move of Hilary Putnam who emphasized that descriptive content, or at its simplest just what is inone's head, is not enough to distinguish between seemingly similar kinds. Dharmakrti's causal theory too is notrestricted to the reference of proper names, but also seeks to explain causally reference to kinds of things. Thecausal connection is needed to guarantee contact with the world, i.e., that language ultimately must rest uponperception, which is non-abitrary in that it is fixed by things. Dharmakrti thus explains how an individual (tobe called Jones) can think about and refer to such and such an object in the world through a complex and longcausal chain from the particular objects to the mental invention of a quasi-universal and the use of a word on aspecific occasion. Thoughts and talk of blue are thus about blue things because only blue things play theappropriate causal role in leading to the thought and finally the word.

Here are the bare bones of the causal account as we find it in the Pramavrttika: Jones sees particular bluethings and they cause perceptual images (kra) in his mind; these images (and often other factors, likelongstanding habits) cause him to make the same judgment (ekapratyavamara), This is blue, a judgment towhich appears an apoha, i.e., a generic representation of non-non-blue. Because the particular perceptual imagesall have the same effect in leading to the same judgment This is blue, they all therefore share a key causal powerand are grouped together. The judgments and resulting use of words are about blue things, and not red things,precisely because there is a causal chain from blue particulars and there isn't one from red particulars.

So much for causal connections replacing real universals to group entities. How then do words refer to groupedentities via a causal chain? And how does the causal chain get passed on over time in a community of speakers? Itlooks like we have something much like the two-fold process of reference-fixing and reference-borrowing thatfigure in causal theories of reference.

The initial reference-fixing is done at the time of [establishing] the convention (saketakle) by dubbing asample case with the words, This is blue. This dubbing is a purely causal event not dependent on anydescriptive content. It is an arbitrary choice, or speech-intention (vivak), of the dubber to designate a bluesample with the term blue rather than another. Other things will then also be grouped together under blueby the combination of perception and judgment described above. This initial reference-fixing is then preserved ina commonly respected convention that transmits the original intention and dubbing from speaker to speaker.Subsequently at the time of using [language] conventions (vyavahrakle) other speakers will rely on theirprevious habits, orimprints (vsan), and the earlier reference-fixing that is now a well-established conventionin the community. Although speakers could in principle use the word blue to refer to, say, the colour ofchocolate, practical considerations generally mean that they won't: if someone wishes to tap into the causal chaintransmitted from the initial dubbing, she will use blue for blue things exclusively.

Dharmakrti's version of the apoha theory is developed in long sections in several chapters of Pramavrttika. Nodoubt, many questions need a fuller treatment. Here are two of the main ones. (1) Given that this is a causalrather than descriptive account of aboutness, what role remains for the apoha, i.e., the double negations upon

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(1)

(2)

which Dignga had placed so much emphasis? (2) Wouldn't having the same powers to produce such and such ajudgment depend on having some common universals, or even itself be a common universal, and thus force us toreinstate realism?

Dharmakrti and his commentators constantly account for the mental content of thought in terms of genericrepresentations that are exclusions of what is other (anypoha), this from the time of [establishing] theconvention (saketakla) to the time when one uses the convention (vyavahrakla). But if aboutness isindeed assured causally, what is the theoretical interest of anypoha? Either Dharmakrti's theory ofreference is not purely causal, but is a hybrid theory involving both causal and descriptive elements, oranypoha is not there in Dharmakrti's theory to assure aboutness/reference but is his response to anothertype of concern. Although there certainly are modern hybrid theories of reference combining the causal andthe descriptive, it is not clear how (or if) Dharmakrti proposes to do that. What seems more likely followingPramavrttikasvavtti ad 6875 and ad 128 (see Dunne 2004, 134136 and 339352) is that anypoha isthere in the theory essentially to answer metaphysical worries. Granted that we think that the mentalcontent, i.e., the generic representation, has a distribution (anvaya) over several instances, is it genuinelydistinct from or the same as the instances? In the former case, it would not apply to them; in the latter caseit would itself be a particular and unable to apply to other particulars. The postulate of anypoha isdesigned to avoid that dilemma of a quasi-universal being the same or differentit is neither as it unreal.As Dunne (2004, 136) puts it: by relegating distribution to a negation, Dharmakrti blocks any attemptat raising distribution (or a distributed entity) to the level of ultimate reality.That multiple particulars all have the same power to produce the same judgment is not, for Dharmakrti,itself based on any underlying same intrinsic features that would explain why this is so. In PramavrttikaIII.7374 he cites a famous example of different plants that all have the capacity to alleviate fever, butwhere one cannot point out any features in common that would account for the fact that all the variousplants work as febrifuges. Similarly for particulars all causing the same judgment: there is no commonproperty that would explain why this happens. But can't one say that all of them having that capacityjust is possession of a common universal, i.e. having the power to produce the same judgment? Lacking thatcommon universal-feature, how could we judge that the particulars have the same power? This argumentshould seem dj vu for the nominalist. We've come full circle back to realist's basic worry: how could wegroup things without there being some real universal in common? Dharmakrti's response is to say that infact particulars don't really possess a common power, if one means by that a power that would itself be auniversal. The powers themselves are all particulars and differ from each otherthe way one plant works isnot the way the other works to cure fever and the way one blue particular causes the judgment This isblue differs from the way another does. These multiple ways exhibit no intrinsic properties in common thatwould explain why they all work to produce a desired common effect. At most there is just the negativegrouping of being distinct from everything which lacks the power, and that, as we know by now, is an apohaand not a real property.

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3. Logic and Philosophy of logicThe way the Dignga-Dharmakrti school represent the mental process of reasoning is that one thinks: A is Bbecause of being C, like D. More specifically, one invokes a logical reason C to prove the truth of the conclusionA is B; the example D, which is actually sometimes omitted, is a commonly acknowledged case of B-ness and C-ness that permits an individual to understand that all Cs are indeed Bs. The latter generalization is known aspervasion (vypti; Tibetan khyab pa) of C by Ba universally generalized material implication, for all x: if x is Cthen x is B, with the interesting feature that the quantification ranges over both actual and non-actual items. (Theindispensability or dispensability of the example for one to ascertain/establish the pervasion becomes a hotlydebated topic amongst later theoreticians. )

There is also an important variant where the truth of A is B is not being established, but only the fact that itwould follow from an acceptance (abhyupagama) of A being C. Thus a debater can present an opponent with aprasaga (consequence) of the sort: It would follow absurdly that A would be B, because of being C. Such aconsequence will constitute the key step in a proof by reductio ad absurdum, a proof that will culminate in a typeof contraposition, turning on modus tollens. When the pervasion in the consequence holds and the opponentunderstands that A is not in fact B, the opponent will then be led by a contraposition of the consequence(prasagaviparyaya, literally reversing the consequence) to understand that A is not in fact C because of notbeing B. Both these structures, i.e., proofs by logical reasons and consequences, are to be found in Indian andTibetan writing on a variety of subjects.

3.1 Good reasons and the triple criterion

Since T. Stcherbatsky's two volume study and translation of Dharmakrti's Nyyabindu, entitled Buddhist Logic(i.e., Stcherbatsky 1930/32), one often sees the Buddhist theory of reasons/indices designated as logic, a termthat sometimes has the unwanted effect of leading readers to think that good reasons for Buddhists are simplythose that are formally valid. In fact, the notion of formal validity (i.e., the conclusion's being guaranteed true,provided the premises are true) is not itself explicitly discussed by Buddhist theoreticians; it is in any case notdistinguished from other, more informal, considerations. Instead of formally valid reasons, Buddhist theoreticiansdeveloped the notion of a good reason (saddhetu, Tibetan rtags yang dag), i.e., one which satisfies a triple criterion(trairpya). These three criteria for goodness are given in the following fashion from Dharmakrti on:

pakadharmatva (the logical reason's being a property of the subject): the subject A is ascertained (nicita) ashaving the property C;

anvayavypti (pervasion [that is formulated] as co-presence ): C is ascertained as present in only instances similar

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(sapaka) to A insofar as they possess B;

vyatirekavypti (pervasion [formulated] as co-absence): C is ascertained as wholly absent from instances dissimilar(vipaka) to A insofar as they do not possess B.

True, in texts like the Hetucakra of Dignga (which was taken up in detail by Dharmakrti in Pramavrttika IVand Pramavinicaya III), a version of the triple criterion (trairpya) for good reasons and the operators partialpresence, complete presence, and complete absence were correlated to yield a series of nine types of reasons,types that are abstracted from content and subject matter. Not inappropriately, the great historian of logic,Innocentius Bocheski, in the chapter on Indian Logic in his History of Formal Logic, stated that the Hetucakrathus suggested an awareness of formal considerations. R.S.Y. Chi, in his Buddhist Formal Logic (Chi 1984), wentseveral steps further and attempted to show that the Hetucakra, taken in its formal aspects, might present anumber of interesting features to a modern logician. That being said, there is certainly much more to goodreasons satisfying Dharmakrti's triple criterion than simple formal validity. The term ascertained (nicita),when unpacked by Dharmakrti and his commentators, demands that good reasons must be sound (i.e., thepremises must in fact be true and the conclusion must follow from them), that their three characteristics must beascertained, and that the opponent have the appropriate desire to know (jijs) something new that he doesnot already know. This latter demand leads to a host of other requirements: in order to be convinced of somethingnew the opponent must have the requisite doubt, understand the terms and accept the subject of debate. In short,good reasons involve formal considerations (what follows from what?); factual considerations (what is so? what istrue?); epistemic considerations (what needs to be known in order for people to genuinely know something else?when is doubt possible?); and what can be termed rhetorical considerations (what is newly convincing towhom? when does the debate have a point and when does it fall flat?). The weighting of these aspects in thetheory of the triple criterion changes over history in complex fashions. At certain points what were factualmatters become epistemic matters, and this even leads to interesting reorientations of the triple criterion.

3.2 Inference-for-others

Later theoretical elaborations by Dignga, Dharmakrti, et al. about how to present publicly (i.e., verbally) a goodreason (saddhetu) to an adversary in a debate prescribe the use of complex verbal forms known as prayoga(formal reasonings). Thus, for example, the standard formal reasoning that Dharmakrti and his Indo-Tibetansuccessors prescribed was a two-membered form, known as an inference-for-others (parrthnumna):

All Cs are Bs, like D.

A is C.

Commentators make an explicit correlation with the triple criterion (trairpya). Thus the first statement

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perspicuously expresses the pervasion (i.e., the anvayavypti and vyatirekavypti) and the second expresses the factof the reason being a property of the subject (pakadharmatva). The statement of the conclusion, A is B, is omitted.Indeed it is explicitly ruled out in later prescriptive accounts of how Buddhists should argue. Dharmakrti's ownposition on this hardens over time to arrive, in the Vdanyya, at the view that stating the conclusion is actually apoint of defeat (nigrahasthna). The irrelevance of the conclusion is supposedly because the only function of aninference-for-others is to show provers (sdhana), and a conclusion cannot prove itself. Although A is B, i.e.,what is to be proved (sdhya), can be understood indirectly, it should not be stated. While the inference-for-others has often been thought to somehow formally resemble a syllogism in Aristotelian logic, it is apparent thatthe presence and absence of conclusions in syllogisms and inferences-for-others respectively as well as the idea ofwhat constitutes a prover for Buddhists, means that parrthnumna and Aristotelian syllogisms are accountedfor in terms of considerably different philosophies of logic (see Tillemans 1999, 6987).

3.3 Opaque contexts

While provers (sdhana), i.e., logical reasons and examples, can of course be expressed in words, as in a publicinference-for-others, they are not themselves words. Although Dharmakrti, et al. speak in terms of one state ofaffairs, or one entity (artha), proving another, in fact the picture has all the complex features of the scheme-content gap and its bridges: logical reasoning is a mental process that directly treats of fictional proxies, i.e.,concepts, which are in turn connected in apoha-fashion to real particular entities. Not surprisingly, the idea thatprovers are apoha-properties rather than words has its philosophical complexities. When do we have the sameproperty and when do they differ? When a pervasion is bidirectional (Tibetan: yin khyab mnyam), as in the case ofbeing impermanent (anityatva) and being produced (ktakatva), it's quite easy to see that the impermanentparticulars will be identical with the produced particulars. Given that the bidirectional pervasion analyzes as forall x, x is produced if and only if x is impermanent, the extension of the two concepts (i.e., the set of impermanentparticulars and the set of produced particulars) is the same for Buddhists. Nonetheless, substitutivity of one termfor the other would seem to lead to an invalid inference where the premises are true but the conclusion is not. Tobring out the problem, take the following tempting, but invalid, inference:

Being a product is a good reason for proving that sound is impermanent.Being a product is coextensive with being impermanent (i.e., for all x: x is a product if and only if x isimpermanent).Therefore (by substitutivity of identicals for identicals), being impermanent is a good reason for proving thatsound is impermanent.

We would seem to go from two true premises to a false conclusion, for it is clear that for a Buddhist (as for mostpeople) arguing that something is so simply because it is so is not giving a good reason. And yet we would also



seem to be using the acceptable principle of substitutivity of identicals for identicals salva veritate. What wentwrong?

Dharmakrti, in Pramavrttika I verse 40 et sq. and Svavtti, diagnosed the problem as one of bidirectionalpervasions (i.e., coextensive concepts) seeming to force us to accept pratijrthaikadeahetu reasons that are onepart of the thesis (e.g., when one says sound is impermanent because it is impermanent, then the reason beingimpermanent is also a part of the thesis that is being proved). He saw this undesirable consequence as one of themain challenges to logical thought, i.e., inference, being a source of knowledge (prama), for unless one cansomehow rule out the problematic substitutions in what I have called the tempting inference, we would besaddled with having to accept as good a huge number of singularly uninformative reasons.

The problem is recognizably the familiar one of substitutivity in referentially opaque contexts, such aspropositional attitudes and modal contexts. Talk of good reasons being ones where the debater has a desire toknow P but not an equivalent Q is indeed an opaque context. To analyse what goes wrong in the temptinginference, Dharmakrti, in effect, made a recognizable move by distinguishing between types of identities: beingimpermanent and being produced are extensionally identical, but somehow not intensionally sowhat heterms being the same concept, i.e., exclusion (apoha; vyvtti). And in the opaque context substitution could onlybe made between conceptually identical terms.

In fact, though, it could be said that the usual idea of an intensional identity (one that is understood to holdbetween properties F and G when the biconditional for all x: x is F if and only if x is G is true in all possible worlds)will not get us very far out of the woods, as being impermanent and being produced are arguably identical in thatway, and it would thus seem that if that is what conceptual identity is about for a Buddhist Epistemologist itshould be possible to make the substitution in the opaque contexts under discussion. Dharmakrti's idea ofconcepts F and G being identical thus demands a much stronger criterion than the necessary truth of thebiconditional for all x: x is F iff x is G. In his Svavtti ad verse 40 and in considerable detail in the Tibetan Geluk(dge lugs) Collected Topics (bsdus grwa) literature and commentaries on Pramavrttika, we find the makingsof an idea of conceptual identity/difference (Tibetan ldog pa gcig/tha dad) such that to each meaningful subjector predicate term in a language there is a different conceptsynonyms, for example, will express differentconcepts. Interestingly enough, although this individuation of exclusions/concepts might seem to lead to anundesirable proliferation of strange ultra-intensional entities, at least certain Epistemologistse.g., ntarakita,Kamalala and very clearly the twelfth-thirteenth century Tibetan Sa skya Paita (in the first chapter of hisTshad ma rigs gter)emphasized that concepts were just fictions, faons de parler for different states of mind, andeven that concepts were not to be reified as any kind of object (viaya; Tibetan yul) at all. The states of mind couldbe individuated unproblematically, and so derivatively we could somehow perhaps individuate the concepts toowithout committing ourselves to a plethora of occult objects, one for each word. It remains to be seen, however,whether shifting the burden to states of mind gets us out of the woods or still leaves us with subsistent entitiesthat should make ontologically scrupulous nominalists cringe in horror.

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4. Religion and ethicsFinally, what of the Buddhist religion? While Dharmakrti has sometimes been depicted as a dry practitioner ofan essentially secular philosophy, this seems hardly defensible. Technical logical and epistemological discussionson sources of knowledge were not just pursued for their own sake. They were also used to establish Buddhistreligious doctrines, like the Four Noble Truths, the proofs of the Buddha being an authoritative/reliable person(pramapurua, Tibetan tshad ma'i skyes bu), the law of retribution of acts (karman), reincarnation, compassion,omniscience, the innate Buddha-nature, absence of real personal identity, etc. All these topics are treated inextenso in the second chapter of Pramavrttika, and some form the subject of independent treatises by laterEpistemologists. There is also a concern with direct perception of religious truths and the methods leading to thatextraordinary type of knowledge. In the third chapter of Pramavrttika and in the perception chapters of theNyyabindu and Pramavinicaya, for example, Dharmakrti seeks to explain and rationalize the perception of ayogin (yogipratyaka). He advocates a quite remarkable method of meditationmore literally cultivation(bhvan; abhysa) in which philosophical analysis plays an indispensable role (see e.g., Taber 2009).

The whys and wherefores of Dharmakrti's philosophy of religion are no doubt partly explained by the historicalcontext in which he lived, one in which Buddhist institutions and power were confronted with forceful challengesof a reinvigorated Brahmanism. Indeed, not just on matters of Buddhist doctrine but also on manymetaphysical issues was there a religious dimension to his arguments. In the latter half of the first chapter ofPramavrttika, Dharmakrti proceeds to a detailed attack on the authority of the Vedas, the Brahmins thatexpound them, the Brahmanical ideas about the efficacy of mantras, and the system of caste (see Eltschinger2000). It is noteworthy that a frequent Sanskrit term for universal, kind, i.e., jti, is also the term for caste.As Eltschinger (2000) shows, the discussions on the unreality of universals and the unreality of caste were relatedfor Dharmakrti, and were explicitly taken to be related by commentators like kyabuddhi and Karakagomin.Castes were natural kinds explainable through universals for non-Buddhists, and were not arbitrary or man-made conventional distinctions. An obvious pay-off of Dharmakrti's nominalism, then, was that Buddhists couldfurther distance themselves from Brahmanical principles of social organization and ethics by attacking themetaphysical foundations of caste.

The debate with Brahmanical schools on specific doctrinal questions naturally moved to long and involveddiscussions on issues of scriptural authority, such as the Mmsaka school's justification of the Vedas as beingeternal, uncreated by humans (apaurueya) and hence authoritative because free from any human influence. (TheBuddhist retort is essentially that if per impossibile scriptures were uncreated, they would be incomprehensible,for there would be no speakers' intentions.) On the role of scripture Dharmakrti actually had a nuanced position.In Pramavrttika I.213217 et sq. and in IV.48108 he maintains that scripture shouldn't be used on factual orrationally decidable matters; perception and logical reasoning trump the scriptures of one's own school; one is not

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to be faulted for rejecting one's school's scriptures when reason dictates it; on rationally undecidable matters,however, that is on so-called radically inaccessible things (atyantaparoka), like the specific details of the law ofkarman (exactly what actions in past lives lead to what results in the future?), scriptural accounts need to be reliedupon because of the absence of any other means (agaty) (I.216). Scripture, if it passes certain conditions, can bedesignated as being an inferential source of knowledge, but is always fallible and not to be considered a full-fledged source of knowledge, as it has no claim to certainty (nto nicaya), unlike bona fide inferences (Svavttiad I.318). The eighth century commentator kyabuddhi summarizes things interestingly in his commentary toI.216: scripture is simply needed by (indeed, indispensable to) those who wish to set out upon the spiritual path(pravttikma), but it is not grounded in any objective facts (vastutas) (Tillemans 1999, ch. 2).

This is a surprisingly fallibilist and pragmatic position for a deeply religious thinker. Taken further, it wouldhave major consequences for Buddhist ethics. The use of appeals to radically inaccessible facts to justify ethicalpositions was recognized by Dharmakrti to be flawed in public debate. Indeed he seems to have been quite awarethat invoking such purely scriptural positions would fall flat outside the context of convinced Buddhists. Thelesson could have been that Buddhists should genuinely privilege rational considerations debatable by all, ratherthan heavily weighting proofs that were for the faithful. Unfortunately, however, over history the later Indo-Tibetan Buddhist scholastic apologists transformed the Dharmakrtian view on scripture, indeed all of hisreligious philosophy, into an increasingly rigid edifice. Dharmakrti became the defender of the Buddhist faiththe lord of reasoning (Tib. rigs pa'i dbang phyug). It is regrettable that much of the thought of this highlyinquisitive and subtle philosopher often became, in later Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, a series of unquestionedformulae to secure Buddhist fundamentalism.

5. Editions and translations of the PramavrttikaFor a comprehensive bibliography of editions and translations of all of Dharmakrti's seven works and thecommentaries, the reader should consult Steinkellner and Much (1995). We will limit ourselves here to what weconsider to be principal editions and translations of Dharmakrti's main work, the Pramavrttika.

The Sanskrit and Tibetan texts of the verses of Pramavrttika are edited in Miyasaka (1971/72). The Sanskrit ofthe autocommentary (Svavtti) is edited in Gnoli (1960). Chapter I and autocommentary are partially translated inseveral publications: I.110 plus autocommentary is translated into English in Gillon and Hayes (1991); I.151plus autocommentary are translated into English in Mookerjee and Nagasaki (1964). For a German translation ofChapter I.40185 plus autocommentary, see Frauwallner (1932; 1933). Eltschinger (2007) gives a Frenchtranslation of I.213268. Dunne (2004) gives English translations of I.3437, 6875, 137142, 214223. Parts ofChapter II are translated into English in Franco (1997), Dunne (2004), van Bijlert (1989), and into German inVetter (1990). Chapter III is translated into Japanese in Tosaki (1979; 1985); Dunne (2004) translated III.110,194224. Chapter IV.1148 is translated into English in Tillemans (2000). For other partial translations of

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Pramavrttika and passages from its Indian commentaries, see also the table in Dunne (2004), p. 333334.

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