Perhaps no other classical philosophical tradition, East or West, offers a more complex and counter-intuitive account of mind and mental phenomena than Buddhism. While Buddhists share with other Indian philosophers the view that the domain of the mental encompasses a set of interrelated faculties and processes, they do not associate mental phenomena with the activity of a substantial, independent, and enduring self or agent. Rather, Buddhist theories of mind center on the doctrine of no-self (Pāli anatta, Skt.[1] anātma), which postulates (...) that human beings are reducible to the physical and psychological constituents and processes which comprise them. (shrink)

Is Buddhism’s attitude towards accepted forms of knowledge sceptical? Are Pyrrhonian scepticism and classical Buddhist scholasticism related in their respective applications and expressions of doubt? In what way and to what degree is Critical Buddhism an offshoot of modern scepticism? Questions such as these as well as related issues are explored in the present collection, which brings together examinations of systematic doubt in the traditions of Buddhism from a variety of perspectives. What results from the perceptive observations and profound analytical (...) insights of the seven essays is a rich and multi-faceted picture of two families of philosophical systems—scepticism and Buddhism—that seem both akin and at odds, both related and distant at the same time. (shrink)

On the basis of Nāgārjuna’s works, especially the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, this paper proposes a sceptic presupposition as the departure point of Nāgārjuna’s refutations. This presupposition invalidates perceptual knowledge, and thus the identities of existents can only be deemed as referents assumed by concepts. Then the “confinement principle,” a theorem tacitly applied in Nāgārjuna’s arguments, is justified, i.e., any definition or description of a concept would necessarily confine its assumed referent to an invariable and isolated state. This principle enables Nāgārjuna to deduce (...) contradictions between the static and isolated nature of the assumed referent, and the activity in which it must be involved. Notions of both a static identity and its activity are deep-rooted in all referential mental activities of sentient beings. Hence all concepts are found to be self-contradictory and therefore devoid of referents, namely, empty. Thus, Nāgārjuna is refuting the whole intelligible world, and his position can be identified as epistemological nihilism—nothing within our ken can possibly be. (shrink)

_ The Fifth Corner of Four: An Essay on Buddhist Metaphysics and the Catuṣkoṭi _, by PriestGraham. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. 208.

Models are the coin of the realm in current philosophy of science, as they are in science itself, having replaced laws and theories as the primary strategy. Logical Positivism tried to erase the older neo-Kantian distinction between ideal constructions and reality. It returns in the case of models. Nowak’s concept of idealization pro- vided an alternative account of this issue. It construed model application as concretizations of hypotheses which improve by accounting for exceptions. This appears to account for physical law. (...) But it raises the problem of uniqueness: is the result unique, as physical law should be? Neo-Kantianism failed this test. Its solutions were circular justifications for claims of uniqueness. Nowak inherited the problem without resolving it. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a growing interest in Buddhist thought as a potential source of alternative conceptions of the nature of the mind and the relation between the mental and the physical. This article considers and assesses three different models of what contemporary philosophy of mind can learn from Buddhist thought. One model, advocated by Alan Wallace, holds that we can learn from Buddhist meditation that both individual consciousness and the physical world itself emerge from a deeper, “primordial” consciousness. A (...) second model, supported by Owen Flanagan, maintains that we should accept from Buddhist thought only what is compatible with physicalism, and thus draws from Buddhism only insights into moral psychology and spirituality. Evan Thompson has developed a third, phenomenological approach, which derives from Buddhism a non‐dualistic account of the relation between the mental and the physical, dissolving the “explanatory gap” between them. I suggest that all of these models face significant challenges, and propose a different model derived from the Buddhist philosopher Nāgārjuna, which shows the potential to resolve some of the challenges facing contemporary theories of consciousness. (shrink)

This paper challenges the notion that there is a complete continuity between the thought of Nāgārjuna and the thought of Candrakīrti. It is shown that there is strong reason to doubt Candrakīrti’s gloss of Mūla-madhyamaka-kārikā (MMK) 2.1, and that Candrakīrti’s peculiar reading of this verse causes him to alter the context of the discussion in the four cases in which Nāgārjuna quotes MMK 2.1 later in the text—MMK 3.3, 7.14, 10.13 and 16.7. The innovation produced by Candrakīrti is next contrasted (...) to Nāgārjuna’s style of argument, and it is shown that these two author’s notions of emptiness, as well as their particular implementation of Madhyamaka logic, significantly diverge from each other. Finally, Candrakīrti’s reading of these verses is compared with his commentary on MMK 15 so as to suggest a possible subtle metaphysical position that is at the base of his thinking. (shrink)

This paper engages with Johaness Bronkhorst’s recognition of a “correspondence principle” as an underlying assumption of Nāgārjuna’s thought. Bronkhorst believes that this assumption was shared by most Indian thinkers of Nāgārjuna’s day, and that it stimulated a broad and fascinating attempt to cope with Nāgārjuna’s arguments so that the principle of correspondence may be maintained in light of his forceful critique of reality. For Bronkhorst, the principle refers to the relation between the words of a sentence and the realities they (...) are meant to convey. While I accept this basic intuition of correspondence, this paper argues that a finer understanding of the principle can be offered. In light of a set of verses from Nāgārjuna’s Śūnyatāsaptati (45–57), it is maintained that for Nāgārjuna, the deeper level of correspondence involves a structural identity he envisions between understanding and reality. Here Nāgārjuna claims that in order for things to exist, a conceptual definition of their nature must be available; in order for there to be a real world and reliable knowledge, a svabhāva of things must be perceived and accounted for. Svabhāva is thus reflected as a knowable essence. Thus, Nāgārjuna’s arguments attacks the accountability of both concepts and things, a position which leaves us with nothing more than mistaken forms of understanding as the reality of the empty. This markedly metaphysical approach is next analyzed in light of the debate Nāgārjuna conducts with a Nyāya interlocutor in his Vigrahavyāvartanī. The correspondence principle is here used to highlight the metaphysical aspect of the debate and to point out the ontological vision of Nāgārjuna’s theory of emptiness. In the analysis of the Vigrahavyāvartanī it becomes clear that the discussion revolves around a foundational metaphysical deliberation regarding the reality or unreality of svabhāva. In this dispute, Nāgārjuna fails to answer the most crucial point raised by his opponent—what is that he defines as empty? (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt a further elucidation and defense of some of the things I said in my article “Critical Reflections on Nāgārjuna’s Vigrahavyāvartanī” and a response to Professor Claus Oetke’s criticisms :371–394, 2012) of “a number of views which have been propagated” by me in my article. Although some additional issues have been raised, broadly, the themes addressed here are the same three as were the object of my investigation in that paper: namely, Nāgārjuna’s emptiness doctrine; his denial (...) that he has any thesis to advance or buttress; and his onslaught on the pramāṇa theory. Toward the end I argue that if I understand Nāgārjuna correctly, then what that thinker ends up providing is a criterion, not of reality, but of unreality, and that this stance, speaking philosophically, is tantamount to nihilism. (shrink)

In the following, it will be argued that Nāgārjuna adopts a Buddhist nominalism that encompasses not only a position towards abstract entities, but resonates with a nominalist perspective on the “social reality” of persons. Early Buddhist texts, such as the Suttanipāta, argue that human persons defy a classification in hierarchic “classes”, because there is no moral substance, e.g. of Brahmins. Differences between individuals do not exist by nature, since it is the individual that realizes difference according to the specific personal (...) realization of action and moral cultivation. Buddhist “nominalism,” therefore, has at least one of its central roots in a rejection of a socially privileged “selves,” a stratified social hegemony, and religious truth claims. Nāgārjuna, on his part, radicalizes nominalism as a threefold correlation of the “non-articulated self,” a “non-articulated” reality, and finally, a “non-articulated” dimension even within all concepts, names, and designations. In this vein, Nāgārjuna’s śūnyavāda can be seen as a consequent attempt to neutralize unwanted social and psychological consequences of ontological language-use. Nāgārjuna even self-critically questions the position that the workings of a Buddhist path of liberation can be articulated, which seems to be a remarkable parallel to certain roots of Western nominalism. (shrink)

The first Chapter of Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā offers a critique of causation that includes the Abhidharmic category of the ‘four conditions’. Following the South-Asian commentarial tradition, this article discusses the precise relationship between Madhyamaka philosophy and its fundamental Abhidharmic background. What comes to light is a more precise assessment of Madhyamaka ideas about viable conventions, understood as the process of dependent arising. Since this is primarily in the sense of conceptual dependence, it involves sentiency as a necessary causal element, and the (...) relationship between sentiency and conceptuality is highlighted by Nāgārjuna and his commentators. Viable conventions exclude the possibility of a non-contingent core, and the systems and categories that revolve around such non-contingent element (ātman) are discarded by the Madhyamaka even at a conventional level. (shrink)

The logical analysis of Nāgārjuna’s catuṣkoṭi has remained a heated topic for logicians in Western academia for nearly a century. At the heart of the catuṣkoṭi, the four corners’ formalization typically appears as: A, Not A, Both, and Neither. The pulse of the controversy is the repetition of negations in the catuṣkoṭi. Westerhoff argues that Nāgārjuna in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā uses two different negations: paryudāsa and prasajya-pratiṣedha. This paper builds off Westerhoff’s account and presents some subtleties of Nāgārjuna’s use of these (...) negations regarding their scope. This is achieved through an analysis of the Sanskrit and Tibetan Madhyamaka commentarial tradition and through a grammatical analysis of Nāgārjuna’s use of na and a- within a diverse variety of the catuṣkoṭi within the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. (shrink)

Purpose of the article is to provide support for the contention that two fundamental treatises representing the teaching of Madhyamaka, viz. the Mūlamadhyamakakārikās and the Vigrahavyāvartanī, were designed to establish and justify a metaphysical tenet claiming that no particulars of any kind can exist on some level of final analysis and that this was the only primary concern of those works. Whereas the former text is in the first place dedicated to providing proofs of the central metaphysical thesis the major (...) objective of the second treatise lies in a defense of the claim against possible objections. A correlate of this view regarding the content of those two works is on the one hand that the philosophy of the founder of the Madhyamaka-school essentially consists in a metaphysical teaching implying a radical rejection of a stance propagated in earlier Buddhist schools according to which objects of ordinary experience could be reduced to or explained by the existence of other sorts of particulars that can be theoretically postulated. On the other hand the exegesis advocated in the article implies that theorems pertaining to the nature of language or the relationship between language and non-linguistic reality are not at all a predominant issue in the pertinent texts and presumably were not a major matter of concern of early Madhyamaka in general. Accordingly matters pertaining to questions of semantics attain relevance at best in the form of objective consequences which the metaphysical doctrine might entail. The paper focuses on the second chapter of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikās as well as the segment of the Vigrahavyāvartanī which deals with the first major problem, represented by the verses 1–4 and 21–29. The reason is that a detailed and thoroughgoing investigation of these two textual passages is suited to disprove a contention voiced by Western scholars who suppose that the teaching of the founder of Madhyamaka embodies a particular claim pertaining to the relationship between language and non-linguistic reality. (shrink)

In this paper, I would like to examine Nāgārjuna’s idea of the self and its contemporaneity interpretations in philosophy. As we know, Nāgārjuna examines the emptiness of various things in which the emptiness of the self occupies an important position in the Buddhist philosophical tradition. The main aim of this paper is to understand the meaning of emptiness to explain the nature of the self and to show how it is different from the substantial notion of self. However, Nāgārjuna’s idea (...) of the self is not identical with the contemporary materialistic notion of self. The paper is divided into five sections. In the first section, I would like to explain the nature of emptiness in relation to self and how it is different from the substantial self. The second section will focus on the constituents of the self. The third section will bring out the nature of self. In the fourth section and last section, I would like to bring out Nāgārjuna’s idea of the emptiness of the self with respect to the contemporary debates on the nature of self. (shrink)

In this paper, I take up the problem of the self through bringing together the insights, while correcting some of the shortcomings, of Indo–Tibetan Buddhist and enactivist accounts of the self. I begin with an examination of the Buddhist theory of non-self ( anātman ) and the rigorously reductionist interpretation of this doctrine developed by the Abhidharma school of Buddhism. After discussing some of the fundamental problems for Buddhist reductionism, I turn to the enactive approach to philosophy of mind and (...) cognitive science. I argue that human beings, as dynamic systems, are characterized by a high degree of self-organizing autonomy. Therefore, human beings are not reducible to the more basic mental and physical events that constitute them. I critically examine Francisco Varela’s enactivist account of the self as virtual and his use of Buddhist ideas in support of this view. I argue, in contrast, that while the self is emergent and constructed, it is not merely virtual. Finally I sketch a Buddhist-enactivist account of the self. I argue for a non-reductionist view of the self as an active, embodied, embedded, self-organizing process—what the Buddhists call ‘I’-making ( ahaṃkāra ). This emergent process of self-making is grounded in the fundamentally recursive processes that characterize lived experience: autopoiesis at the biological level, temporalization and self-reference at the level of conscious experience, and conceptual and narrative construction at the level of intersubjectivity. In Buddhist terms, I will develop an account of the self as dependently originated and empty, but nevertheless real. (shrink)

Although Candrakīrti has been a focus in the recent scholarly attention on conventional reality in Buddhist philosophy, the complexity of his discussions of the status of phenomenal world on the surface or conventional level has not been adequately explored. In cataloging the wide-ranging interpretations that Candrakīrti has offered, this paper identifies several clusters of connected ideas that are delineated here as dimensions of Candrakīrti’s conventional reality. It will be shown that his thoughts on the subject have divergent orientations, ranging from (...) commonsensical to technical. Thus, on the one hand, conventional reality represents the beliefs and consensus that ordinary people share about their world, while, on the other, traditional Madhyamaka, grammar, and Abhidharma discourses are used to provide linguistic and Buddhist doctrinal outlines of that same reality. The mobilization of available resources affords Candrakīrti several layers of articulation, as it does again for the eighth-century writers Jñānagarbha and Śāntarakṣita, who bring Dharmakīrti’s thought and Yogācāra philosophy to bear on the Madhyamaka theory of conventional reality. (shrink)

Several philosophers, both in Buddhist and Western philosophy, claim that the self does not exist. The no-self view may, at first glance, appear to be a reason to believe that life is meaningless. In the present article, I argue indirectly in favor of the no-self view by showing that it does not entail that life is meaningless. I then examine Buddhism and argue, further, that the no-self view may even be construed as partially grounding an account of the meaning of (...) life. (shrink)

The Chinese Mādhyamikas Seng Zhao 374–414, Jizang 549–623, and Zhiyi 538–597 try to demonstrate that the linguistic strategies in the textual transmission of the Buddha’s teaching give us access to a sense of “liberation” which reaches beyond language. For them, this ineffable sense is what constitutes the dharma in the shape of sūtra and śāstra. Liberation is considered the constitutive but hidden “root” of all the teachings transmitted via the canonical word, those again account for the Buddha’s “traces” guiding back (...) to the meaning of that root. The practitioner’s comprehension of the dharma must embrace this circular mutuality of “root and traces,” reconciling speech with silence. The article discusses two philosophical aspects: Chinese Madhyamaka semantics and pragmatics exploring the various signifying functions in our use of language, and the hermeneutical approach that the Chinese masters develop in their exegetical works to unravel such a sense of “liberation” in reference to the textual transmission of Indian Mahāyāna thought. (shrink)

This article offers an argument against solipsism, the view that there is only one mind that exists, my own, and that the world is a projection of my mind.1 We begin by offering a reductio ad absur...

There are remarkable parallels between Hume and Nagarjuna in their denial of substantiality and independence in objects and their subsequent attitude toward our ordinary world. Acknowledging a deep-rooted human tendency to take objects as independent entities, they both argue that there is nothing intrinsic in those objects that make them unitary and independent, and that those characters are, strictly speaking, merely fictitious, mental constructs. They nonetheless affirm the existence of our ordinary world as real. Although their main purposes of the (...) philosophical inquiry are different (epistemological for Hume, and soteriological for Nagarjuna), their accounts of the nature of our world allow us to accept it in the way we ordinarily believe with the deeper understanding of it. It is only in this world where we think, act, and interact with others that an epistemology grounded in human sentiment and experience (for Hume) or humans liberation (for Nagarjuna) is possible. (shrink)

Nāgārjuna, the famous founder of the Madhyamika School, proposed the positive catuṣkoṭi in his seminal work, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā: ‘All is real, or all is unreal, all is both real and unreal, all is neither unreal nor real; this is the graded teaching of the Buddha’. He also proposed the negative catuṣkoṭi: ‘“It is empty” is not to be said, nor “It is non-empty,” nor that it is both, nor that it is neither; [“empty”] is said only for the sake of instruction’ (...) and the no-thesis view: ‘No dharma whatsoever was ever taught by the Buddha to anyone’. In this essay, I adopt Gricean pragmatics to explain the positive and negative catuṣkoṭi and the no-thesis view proposed by Nāgārjuna in a way that does not violate classical logic. For Nāgārjuna, all statements are false as long as the hearer understands them within a reified conceptual scheme, according to which substance is a basic categorical concept; substances have svabhāva, and names and sentences have svabhāva. (shrink)

Jizang (549−623 CE), the key philosophical exponent of the Sanlun tradition of Chinese Buddhism, based his philosophy considerably on his reading of the works of Nāgārjuna (c.150−250 CE), the founder of the Indian Madhyamaka school. However, although Jizang sought to follow Nāgārjuna closely, there are salient features in his thought on language that are notably absent from Nāgārjuna’s works. In this paper, I present a philosophical analysis of Jizang’s views of the relationship between speech and silence and compare them with (...) those of Nāgārjuna. I first elaborate on Nāgārjuna’s doctrine of twofold truth and discuss his thought concerning the relationship between language and ineffable quiescence. I then examine Jizang’s interpretation of the doctrine. Thereafter, I distinguish silence qua teaching from silence qua principle and examine Jizang’s views on the relationship between speech and these two kinds of silence. It is shown that while Nāgārjuna leans toward affirming a clear-cut distinction between speech and the ineffable quiescence, Jizang endorses the nonduality of conventional speech and sacred silence. (shrink)

For Sengzhao (374−414 CE), a leading Sanlun philosopher of Chinese Buddhism, things in the world are ontologically indeterminate in that they are devoid of any determinate form or nature. In his view, we should understand and use words provisionally, so that they are not taken to connote the determinacy of their referents. To echo the notion of ontic indeterminacy and indicate the provisionality of language, his main work, the Zhaolun, abounds in paradoxical expressions. In this essay, I offer a philosophical (...) analysis and rational reconstruction of Sengzhao’s linguistic thought, with a view to exploring the rationale for and purpose of his use of paradoxical language. (shrink)

A number of analytical philosophers have recently endorsed the view that the world itself is indeterminate in some respect. Intriguingly, ideas similar to the view are expressed by thinkers from Chinese Madhyamaka Buddhism, which may shed light on the current discussion of worldly indeterminacy. Using as a basis Chinese Madhyamaka thought, together with Jessica Wilson’s account of indeterminacy, I develop an ontological conception of indeterminacy, termed ontic indeterminacy, which centres on two complementary ideas—conclusive indeterminability and provisional determinability. I show that (...) OI is well-equipped to tackle several issues of worldly indeterminacy. My overarching aim is to present a viable and sustainable perspective on the subject of indeterminacy to enrich analytical philosophers’ insights into the intricate nature of reality. (shrink)

_ Thinking and Being _, by KimhiIrad. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. Pp. xx + 166.

In his article ‘The Structure of Emptiness’, 467–80. doi: 10.1353/pew.0.0069[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar]) Graham Priest examines the concept of emptiness in the Mādhyamaka school of Nāgārjuna and his commentators Candrakīırti and Tsongkhapa from a mathematical point of view. The approach attempted in this article does not involve any commitment to Priest's more controversial dialethic Mādhyamaka interpretation. The purpose of the present paper is to explain Priest's sketchy but very insightful interpretation of objects as non-well-founded sets in greater (...) detail. Some problems concerning his idea to model the Mādhyamaka claim of the emptiness of emptiness by means of this kind of framework will be noted. Moreover, we will also discuss the possibility to represent the Mādhyamika's denial of the existence of irreducible constituents of empirical reality within a well-founded system of set theory. Finally, some slight mistakes in Priest's mathematical construction need to be pointed out. (shrink)

Owen Flanagan's The Bodhisattva's Brain aims to introduce secular-minded thinkers to Buddhist thought and motivate its acceptance by analytic philosophers. I argue that Flanagan provides a compelling caution against the hasty generalizations of recent “science of happiness” literature, which correlates happiness with Buddhism on the basis of certain neurological studies. I contend, however, that his positive account of Buddhist ethics is less persuasive. I question the level of engagement with Buddhist philosophical literature and challenge Flanagan's central claim, that a Buddhist (...) version of eudaimonia is a common core conception shared by all Buddhists. I argue that this view is not only a rational reconstruction in need of argumentation but is in tension with competing Buddhist metaphysical theories of self, including the one Flanagan himself endorses. (shrink)

Some time ago I advanced on the pages of this journal a critique of the interpretation given by Jay L. Garfield and Mark Siderits (hereafter GS) of Nāgārjuna’s doctrine of the two truths (Ferraro, J Indian Philos 41(2):195–219, 2013.1); to my article the two authors responded with a ‘defense of the semantic interpretation’ of the Madhyamaka doctrine of emptiness (GS, J Indian Philos 41(6):655–664, 2013). Their reply, however, could not consider my personal understanding of Nāgārjuna’s notions of śūnyatā and dve (...) satye. My interpretation of these notions was in fact absent in the paper GS responded, and was only related in a second paper of mine (Ferraro, J Indian Philos 41(5):563–590, 2013.2), still unpublished at the time of GS’s drafting of their ‘defense’. Therefore, in the present rejoinder, I found it appropriate, rather than responding point by point to the passages of GS’s reply, to advance a comparison between the semantic interpretation and my ‘realist antimetaphysical’ understanding of Nāgārjuna’s thought. (shrink)

This article examines the translator, Rongzom’s, scholastic philosophical defense of early Dzokchen or “Great Perfection.” As our earliest instance of religious apologia in Tibet, this examination contributes to a growing body of knowledge about the Tibetan assimilation of post-tenth century of Vajrayāna Buddhism and the indigenous response to the forces of cultural transformation shaping the late eleventh/early twelfth century Tibet. Traditional authorities and academics have identified Dzokchen as a Tibetan tradition of Buddhism that drew intense criticism at the time from (...) renaissance agents. This paper explores the primary Tibetan response by describing Rongzom’s philosophical defense of Great Perfection. As such, it illuminates the intellectual and ideological context of the milieu as it evinces Rongzom’s innovation and mastery of Indian systems of logic, language, and epistemology in the Dzokchen approach to the Buddhist path. (shrink)

In this article I will try to demonstrate the existence of points in common between the eternalist instances of Parmenidean philosophy and the Buddhist formulations made by some parts of the Abhidhamma, Nāgārjuna, and the Sarvāstivādins. These three philosophies have numerous points in common with Emanuele Severino’s formulations from the point of view of what is defined as neo-Parmenidism. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that the points in common between these systems of thought are due to a (...) basic affinity which, despite having led them to emphasize different themes, present similar reasoning and logical consequences, which allow us to detect very strong points in common especially on issues related to the conception of reality as unique and indivisible in the form of an absolute totality, the eternity of Being, the interdependent nature of entities, and even the illusory perception of worldly reality. Since this text is only an introduction to the problem, I will examine the main issues, also analyzing the main problems to conclude with what I have found to be the actual points in common on which an interdisciplinary dialogue can be built between the problems raised by Severino through Parmenides and Nāgārjuna who from this point of view is more similar to the Sarvasarvādins than has been thought up to now. (shrink)

This paper examines four central issues prompted by Thompson's recent critique of the Buddhist modernism phenomenon: (i) the suitability of evolutionary psychology as a framework of analysis for Buddhist moral psychological ideas; (ii) the issue of what counts as the core and main trajectory of the Buddhist intellectual tradition; (iii) the scope of naturalism in the relation between science and metaphysics, and (iv) whether a Madhyamaka-inspired anti-foundationalism stance can serve as an effective platform for debating the issue of progress in (...) science. The main argument of this paper is that while the mind sciences may corroborate some aspects of the Buddhist model of mind, they also call into question some core Buddhist ideas. Hence, if Buddhism is to enter into a fruitful dialogue with the mind sciences, it must be shown to complement the empirical claims to knowledge for which scientific naturalism so far provides the most viable basis. (shrink)

In this paper I probe the narratively constructed self as a _proper object of negation_ in the Madhyamaka. The paper borrows idioms and tropes from Western theories of the narrative self to illuminate and contemporize the discussion. Since Mādhyamikas reject the two-tiered interpretation of the Buddhist two truths, they are philosophically unobligated to reduce the self. Although both Mādhyamikas and Ābhidharmikas would accept the conceptually constructed self as conventionally real, they would disagree about its ontological significance. For the latter, the (...) narrative self as a conceptual construct necessitates reduction. Mādhyamikas, who reject the _svabhāva-dharma_ architecture, can be less dismissive of the conventional self. Their conventional self is a narrative construct, but of what kind? The paper tries to answer that question by bringing Mādhyamikas into interlocution with select modern narrative self theorists. It divides into two sub-sections. Each pivots on a theme about the narrative self in contemporary discourse. The first asks how important is ethics for the constitution of the conventional self. The second discusses fictionality of the self in the Madhyamaka. (shrink)

The paper taps the agency of the imaginary interlocutor in the _Mūlamadhyamakakārikā_ of Nāgārjuna to delineate _existential anguish_ in the Madhyamaka. The paper asks whether the protestations of the imaginary interlocutor cannot be recast as _anguished_. It claims that an objection to emptiness (_śūnyatā_) can be voiced even after the metaphysical commitment to _intrinsic existence_ (_svabhāva_) has been relinquished. By interpolating _anguish_ into the Madhyamaka, the paper posits an unorthodox phenomenological objection to _śūnyatā_.

Two of the most fundamental distinctions in metaphysics are (1) that between reality (or things in themselves) and appearance, the R/A distinction, and (2) that between entities that are fundamental (or real, etcetera) and entities that are ontologically or existentially dependent, the F/D distinction. While these appear to be two very different distinctions, in Buddhist metaphysics they are combined, raising questions about how they are related. In this paper I argue that plausible versions of the R/A distinction are essentially a (...) special kind of F/D distinction, and conversely, that many F/D distinctions imply an R/A distinction. Nevertheless, while this does suggest that the F/D distinction is more basic than the R/A distinction, it does not favor a particular understanding of the F/D distinction. There are many kinds of existential or ontological dependence that cannot be meaningfully combined into a single notion, and reality does not force us to accept any specific kind of dependence as more fundamental. Consequently, what we consider to be ‘real’, ‘fundamental’, or ‘really existing’ is not entirely given by reality, but partially up to us. (shrink)

This article – which includes a complete translation of Mūlamadhyamakakārikā chapter 2 together with Candrakīrti’s commentary thereon – argues that notwithstanding the many different and often arcane interpretations that have been offered of Nāgārjuna’s arguments against motion, there is really just one straightforward kind of argument on offer in this vexed chapter. It is further argued that this basic argument can be understood as a philosophically interesting one if it is kept in mind that the argument essentially has to do (...) with whether a personal level of description will admit of an exhaustively impersonal explanation. (shrink)

Jan Westerhoff defends an account of thoroughgoing non-foundationalism that he calls “irrealism,” which is implicitly modeled on a Madhyamaka Buddhist view. In this paper, I begin by raising worries about the irrealist’s account of human cognition as taking place in a brain-based representational interface. Next, I pose first-order and higher-order challenges to how the irrealist—who defends a kind of global error theory—can sensibly accommodate an unlocalized appearance-reality distinction, both metaphysically and epistemologically. Finally, although Westerhoff insists that irrealism itself is not (...) an ontological theory and that the irrealist’s rejection of absolutely general quantification precludes his commitment to any ultimately true theories, I propose strategies inspired by the Svātantrika commentarial tradition of Madhyamaka for how the irrealist might develop a lightweight account of unrestricted quantification that could be used to advance a lightweight ultimately true theory. This, I suggest, may allow the irrealist to (i) preserve a commitment to an unlocalized appearance-reality distinction, (ii) underwrite a distinction between ordinary veridical states and metaphysically accurate epistemic states, and (iii) provide an explanation for the massive error that he claims characterizes ordinary cognition. (shrink)

Few would deny that something ontologically depends on something else. Given that something depends on something, what depends on what? Huayan Buddhism 華嚴宗, a prominent Chinese Buddhist school, is known for its extensive thesis of interdependence, according to which everything depends on everything else. This intriguing thesis is entangled with seemingly paradoxical claims that everything is not only identified with everything else but also contained within it. Moreover, the radical thesis of interdependence entails that dependence is pervasive and symmetric. In (...) this paper, I first develop a contemporary interpretation of Huayan interdependence by employing the definitional account of essence and the essence-based account of dependence. Through these contemporary resources, I elucidate and unify the theses of interdependence, mutual identity, and mutual containment within Huayan Buddhism. I then propose a unique framework of ontological dependence that suggests varying degrees of ontological dependence, aimed at accommodating and explaining away our intuitions against pervasive and symmetric dependence. By contemporizing Huayan Buddhism, I explore its potential and facilitate engagement between contemporary metaphysics and Huayan Buddhism. (shrink)

According to Zhiyi 智顗 (538–597), the founder of the Chinese Buddhist Tiantai school 天臺宗, “one object is all objects;” hence, all objects are profoundly interconnected. In this paper, I critically examine Zhiyi’s metaphysics of objects as presented in the historical Tiantai texts and subsequently develop a contemporary and accessible thesis of interconnectedness by integrating Zhiyi’s views with resources from contemporary analytic philosophy, particularly relative identity. By drawing on Zhiyi’s insights and incorporating contemporary philosophical ideas, I also illustrate how historical Chinese (...) Buddhism and contemporary analytic metaphysics can be mutually informing. (shrink)

This dissertation investigates grounding, the relation of non-causal determination whereby one fact obtains in virtue of some other fact or facts. Although considerations of grounding have been central throughout Western philosophy, the last 15-20 years have seen a renaissance of systematic work on grounding in analytic philosophy. The aim of the dissertation is to contribute to our understanding of the nature of grounding and its relation to other central phenomena in metaphysics. -/- Chapter 1 of the dissertation provides a brief (...) presentation of grounding and introduces some distinctions of relevance to later chapters. Chapter 2 discusses the question of whether grounding can be reduced. Four reductive accounts – in terms of fundamentality and supervenience, essence, reduction, and metaphysical laws respectively – are considered. All of these accounts are found to be subject to objections and are consequently rejected. -/- Chapter 3 considers the relation between grounding and another important phenomenon in metaphysics, namely ontological dependence. The question of the relation between the two is approached through an investigation of their modal connection (or lack thereof). It is argued that on the common assumption that grounding is a factive relation, ontological dependence can be shown to be neither necessary nor sufficient for grounding. Furthermore, to get any form of modal connection between the two relations, one needs to move to a non-factive conception of grounding or consider generic ontological dependence and accept a potentially controversial principle about the modal behaviour of grounding. Even then, the modal connection between grounding and ontological dependence is weak and subject to qualifications. -/- Chapter 4 develops and defends the novel notion of metaphysically opaque grounding. It is commonly assumed that grounding is an especially intimate and powerful connection and enables a form of explanation that is particularly strict and illuminating. An arguably related idea is that grounding is necessarily connected with the core features of things – their essences or natures. Metaphysically opaque grounding constitutes a form of grounding that falsifies both of these ideas. Chapter 4 makes the notion of metaphysically opaque grounding precise, motivates the idea that there are genuine cases of such grounding, explores its consequences for the theory of grounding, and defends the notion from potential objections, concluding that there are currently no strong reasons to rule out opaque grounding. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate the phenomenology of awakening in Chinese Zen Buddhism. In this tradition, to awaken is to ‘see your true nature’. In particular, the two aspects of awakening are: (1) seeing that the nature of one’s self or mind is empty or void and (2) an erasing of the usual (though merely apparent) boundary between subject and object. In the early Zen tradition, there are many references to awakening as chopping off your head, not having eyes, nose (...) and tongue, and seeing your ‘Original Face’. These references bear a remarkable resemblance to an approach to awakening developed by Douglas Harding. I will guide the reader through a series of Harding’s first-person experiments which investigate the gap where you cannot see your own head. I will endeavour to show that these methods, although radically different from traditional meditation techniques, result in an experience with striking similarities to Zen accounts of awakening, in particular, as experiencing oneself as empty or void and yet totally united with the given world. The repeatability and apparent reliability of these first-person methods opens up a class of awakening experience to empirical investigation and has the potential to provide new insights into nondual traditions. (shrink)

For Jizang (549−623), a prominent philosophical exponent of Chinese Madhyamaka, all things are empty of determinate form or nature. Given anything X, no linguistic item can truly and conclusively be applied to X in the sense of positing a determinate form or nature therein. This philosophy of ontic indeterminacy is connected closely with his notion of the Way (dao), which seems to indicate a kind of ineffable principle of reality. However, Jizang also equates the Way with nonacquisition as a conscious (...) state of freedom from any attachment and definite understanding whatsoever. The issue then becomes pressing as to how we are to understand Jizang's notion of the Way. Does it indicate some metaphysical principle or reality? Is it actually a skilful expedient to lead one to the consummate state of complete spiritual freedom? How is this issue related to Jizang's conception of ontic indeterminacy? In this book chapter, I examine Jizang's key writings in an attempt to clarify his ontological position. (shrink)

The present PhD dissertation aims to examine the relation between modality and change in Aristotle’s metaphysics. -/- On the one hand, Aristotle supports his modal realism (i.e., worldly objects have modal properties - potentialities and essences - that ground the ascriptions of possibility and necessity) by arguing that the rejection of modal realism makes change inexplicable, or, worse, banishes it from the realm of reality. On the other hand, the Stagirite analyses processes by means of modal notions (‘change is the (...) actuality of what is virtual insofar as it is virtual’). In other words: to grasp what change is, one has to resort to the modal idiom of potentialities, while the fact that there is change is indicative of the fact that nature is full of modal properties. -/- Aristotle’s modal and kinetic realism finds a negative in the figure of the Megaric Diodorus Kronus. The polemical situation of Greek philosophy has indeed the dialectical advantage of not opposing the Aristotelian position to a sui generis straw man. Both in its reduction of modal judgements to temporal quantifications and in its dissolution of the reality of the state-of-being-in-motion in favour of a cinematographic view of processes, the philosophical figure of reductionist antirealism embodied by Diodorus constitutes an alternative that takes the opposite view of Aristotle’s realism. -/- The present study is structured as a discussion between these two positions. In the face of Diodorus’ antirealist challenges, Aristotle articulates modal and kinetic considerations: the answers he gives to Diodorus’ puzzles thus provide valuable insight into his metaphysics. Moreover, the examination of Aristotle’s and Diodorus’ metaphysics, because of their insight and originality, will not fail to interest the philosopher concerned with the metaphysical foundations of modern physics, insofar as the entanglement between modalities and processes is nowadays at the core of mechanics (phase spaces, path integrals, etc.). (shrink)

Zeno’s Arrow and Nāgārjuna’s Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way Chapter 2 contain paradoxical, dialectic arguments thought to indicate that there is no valid explanation of motion, hence there is no physical or generic motion. There are, however, diverse interpretations of the latter text, and I argue they apply to Zeno’s Arrow as well. I also find that many of the interpretations are dependent on a mathematical analysis of material motion through space and time. However, with modern philosophy and physics (...) we find that the link from no explanation to no phenomena is invalid and that there is a valid explanation and understanding of physical motion. Hence, those arguments are both invalid and false, which banishes the MMK/2 and The Arrow under this and derivative interpretations to merely the history of philosophy. However, a view that maintains their relevance is that each is used as a koan or sequence of koans designed to assist students in spiritual meditation practice. This view is partly justified by the realization that both Nāgārjuna and Zeno were likely meditation masters in addition to being logicians. The works are, therefore, not works that should be assessed as having valid arguments and true conclusions by the standards of modern analytic philosophy—contrary to some of the literature—but rather are therapeutic and perhaps more appropriately considered as part of an experientially focused philosophy such as existentialism, phenomenology or religion. (shrink)

I examine the consistency between contemporary environmentalist ideals and Buddhist philosophy, focusing, first, on the problem of value in nature. I argue that the teachings found in the Pāli canon cannot easily be reconciled with a belief in the intrinsic value of life, whether human or otherwise. This is because all existence is regarded as inherently unsatisfactory, and all beings are seen as impermanent and insubstantial, while the ultimate spiritual goal is often viewed, in early Buddhism, as involving a deep (...) renunciation of the world. Therefore, the discussion focuses mostly on the Mahāyāna vehicle, which, I suggest has better resources for environmentalism because enlightenment and the ordinary world are not conceived as antithetical. Still, many contemporary green ideas do not sit well with classical Mahāyāna doctrines. Mahāyāna philosophers coincide in equating ultimate reality with ‘emptiness,’ and propose knowledge of this reality as a final soteriological purpose. Emptiness is generally said to be ineffable, and to involve the negation of all views. An important question is how to reconcile environmentalism with the relinquishing of views. I consider several prevalent themes in environmentalism, including the philosophy of ‘Oneness,’ and other systems that are often compared with Buddhism, like process thought. Many of these turn out to have more in common with an extreme view that Buddhism seeks to avoid, namely, eternalism. I attempt to outline an environmental position that, like the doctrine of emptiness, traverses a Middle Path between eternalism and nihilism. I conclude by proposing that emptiness could be regarded as the source of value in nature, if it is seen in its more positive aspect, as ‘pliancy.’ This would imply that what Buddhist environmentalists should seek to protect is not any being in its current form, nor any static natural system, but the possibility of adaptation and further evolution. (shrink)

Chief amongst the issues Toshihiko Izutsu broached is the philosophisation of Zen Buddhism in his book Toward a Philosophy of Zen Buddhism. This article aims to critically compare Izutsu’s reconstruction of Zen metaphysics with another metaphysical tradition rooted in Descartes’ cogito ergo sum. Putting Izutsu’s terminological choices into the context of Zen Buddhism, we review his argument based on the subject-object distinction and establish a comparison with the Cartesian cogito. A critical analysis is conducted on the functional relationship between subject (...) and object in Izutsu’s metaphysics of Zen. This is examined step by step from the perspective of Descartes’ Meditations. On the one hand, we focus on prima facie similarities in meditative and reflective methodologies used by the Zen and Cartesian approaches. On the other, we highlight some unequivocal differences in the metaphysical role of the subject: an indubitable foundation for the epistemological access to objective reality, and an introspective apprehension of the egoless void or absolute reality. (shrink)

This thesis is the attempt to find a logical model for, and trace the history of, the catuṣkoṭi as it developed in the Indo-Tibetan milieu and spread, via China, to Japan. After an introduction to the history and key-concepts of Buddhist philosophy, I will finish the first chapter with some methodological considerations about the general viability of comparative philosophy. Chapter §2 is devoted to a logical analysis of the catuṣkoṭi. Several attempts to model this fascinating piece of Buddhist philosophy with (...) the tools of classical logic shall be debunked. A paraconsistent alternative will be discussed but eventually dismissed. As a rejoinder, I shall propose a model for the catuṣkoṭi with the help of speech-acts. The remainder of this chapter will look at Chinese and Japanese forms of the catuṣkoṭi which I shall model in a quasi-recursive system. The third and final chapter will look at the Kyoto School's soku-hi dialectics which ties together the different threads of this essay. I will criticise an established, classical model of the soku-hi dialectics and offer an alternative with a second-order paraconsistent semantics. (shrink)