DREAMS AND REALITY: THE `SA^NKARITE CRITIQUE OF VIJ~NAANAVAADA
BY Chakravarthi Ram Prasad
Philosophy East and West
Volume 43, Number 3
P.405-455
(C) by University of Hawaii Press
P.405
In this essay, I concentrate on two significant
passages in `Sa^nkara's Brahmasuutrabhaa.sya: (1) a
few sentences from the introductory passage, and (2)
his critique of Vij~naanavaada. While I will not
directly examine the classical Advaitic doctrine
that Brahman alone is 'real', I hope to show that
`Sa^nkara adopts a sophisticated position on the
nature of the ordinary world extrinsic to the
subject of consciousness. This can be seen from a
study of his analysis of the claim that dreams
prompt suspicion about the nature of the world or,
at any rate, the veridicality of our cognitive
contact with it. The resultant position, which I
characterize as 'nonrealism' regarding the world, is
that while such a world must be accepted for the
purpose of conventional knowledge, since it alone
adequately explains the nature of our experience,
there is nothing in our experience, and the
reasoning based on it, that will enable us to say
that the world which is experienced is the sole and
determinate reality. Obviously, if there is no
philosophical foundation to the idea that this world
is the sole and determinate reality, there is at
least a prima facie case for considering the
soteriological possibility of Brahman-reality
against which this world can be set as indeterminate
in some significant way. I shall not pursue this
soteriological claim because (a) much of the
sustained argument for the plausibility of the
indeterminacy of the world was done by `Sa^nkara's
successors, and (b) because I think that the
soteriological argument is unpersuasive unless one
is committed to some acceptance of Brahman (or
indeed a Deity). I argue here that in his rejection
of the Buddhist use of dreams and in his qualified
acceptance of dreams himself, `Sa^nkara provided us
with sufficient material for an interesting
reconstruction of the Advaitic philosophical
position. The aim of this essay is to use the
material on the critique of Vij~naanavaada to
provide a `Sa^nkarite reconstruction of the role of
dreams in our understanding of the external world; I
will not attempt to make this an exegesis of
`Sa^nkara. The interest lies, I think, in the way in
which arguments rooted in a tradition can be
developed with regard to contemporary themes in
philosophy. I must emphasize at this stage itself
that the Advaitic view which I present here is
substantially at odds with the spirit of the
subschool exemplified by Padmapaada and Sure`svara,
which, on the basis of the philosophical positions I
give here, may more properly be understood as being
idealistic. My Advaitin is a reconstructed
`Sa^nkarite who owes a fair amount to the subschool
represented by Vaacaspati, and to the subtle
skepticism of `Srii Har.sa.
This essay is broadly in three parts. In the
first, I give an account of the way in which I view
the pramaa.na theory, and I provide a few com-
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ments on my use of the idea of transcendental
argument in the technical Kantian sense and on the
use of basic terms. In the extended second part, I
first reconstruct an Advaitic understanding of the
conditions required for ordinary experience (or
continuous cognition), and then examine the actual
Buddhist position regarding dreams together with
`Sa^nkara's attack on it. In the final part, I
speculate on a way in which the Advaitic acceptance
of the role of dreams could be reconciled with the
rejection of the Buddhist use in such a manner as to
provide a rationale for the ultimate soteriological
idea of the reality of Brahman.
I
1. The Pramaa.na Theory: A System of Validation. We
must now set the scene for the Indian metaphysical
project. The structure of the subject-object
relationship is formed by the pramaa.na theory. The
pramaa.nas are the means of knowledge, and provide
knowledge through such modes as perception,
inference, and testimony. The objects of knowledge
are called 'knowables' (prameya) and constitute the
order extrinsic to congition. Finally, the cognitive
act in which an object is grasped according to the
authoritative means of knowledge is an episode of
knowledge (pramaa). It can be used to refer to both
the true judgment that issues and the subject's
entertainment of it, as a consequence of the proper
use of the pramaa.nas. The pramaa may thus be called
a knowledge episode.(1) The importance of the
pramaa.nas lies, however, not just in the cataloging
of the modes of gaining knowledge-perception,
inference, testimony, and the like--but in the
metaphysically vital double nature they possess. To
gain knowledge is to use the pramaa.nas properly;
but usage is proper precisely due to the pramaa.nas
being the authoritative source of knowledge of the
objects of knowledge (prameyas). If the cognition of
a condition is veracious, the reason that the
subject gives for holding that cognition as
veracious will have to be just the legitimate reason
the subject in fact has, that entitles the subject
to so hold the claim, and which renders it true.
Using the scalpel properly just is getting the right
incision. In the Citsukhii,(2) it is claimed that
when veracious awareness arises (utpatti) , the
totality of causal factors that generate knowledge
will be the factors the subject appeals to in
claiming knowledge. The Indian skeptic Jayaraa`si(3)
agrees that certain conditions determine whether a
cognitive act is a knowledge episode. It must
(I.11):
(i) be produced by faultless causal factors,(4)
and
(ii) be free of contradiction.(5,6)
He also accepts the further Nyaaya definition(7)
that
(iii) there must be activity (prav.rtti) that is
efficient (saamarthyam) in the attainment
of a cognitive result (phalam).
Making use of Gilbert Harman's terms,(8) Matilal
dubs this the `cause/because' nature of the
pramaa.nas. It must be emphasized that this cause/
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because formulation is not an attempt to combine
Alvin Goldman's theory of knowledge(9) with Harman's
theory of inference.(10) Briefly, Goldman's theory
is that a judgment is true and delivers knowledge
only if it was the object of the judgment which
caused the cognition upon which the judgment is
based. Harman's theory states that a judgment
functions as a proper knowledge claim only if the
subject can provide, through inference of the causal
chain involved, the justification for that claim.
The cause/because theory, however, should be seen as
an attempt by the Indian philosophers to extract a
metaphysical relationship between knower and known.
The concept of the pramaa.nas in this context should
not be seen as a theory of inference, but as a
transcendental argument about the condition required
for knowledge (for a judgment to be true). It is not
so much an explanation of how I can come to know as
laying down what must be the case when I do.
In view of this understanding of the nature of
the relationship between knower and known, we may
say that the pramaa.nas become the crux of two
interdependent issues: the consistency of
justificatory procedures ('because') and the
metaphysical requirement ('cause') for the validity
(pramaatva) of such justification.
The relationship between the subject's incidence
of knowledge (pramaa) and its object (prameya) is
therefore structured by the pramaa.nas. That is to
say, the Indian metaphysical project was conceived
as an examination of how the pramaa.nas literally
held together the subject object relation evidently
presented in experience. An examination of what
epistemic activity resulted from and in experience
was an examination of the justification that was
used for knowledge claims in that activity; and if
the justification was to be held as successfully
made, then that success would prove that knowledge
'worked', that indeed we had access to the objects
of our epistemic activity. The idea is that any
state of affairs can be established in knowledge
only by the grasp of the instruments which render
cognition of that state of affairs valid. The
attainment of truth cannot be imagined to be
anything other than a grasp of the justification
conditions for the judgment, for what justifies that
judgment is its being the case that the state of
affairs is just as the judgment takes it to be. The
pramaa.na theorists concluded, therefore, that if
those conditions were known, that is, if the
pramaa.nas were established as delivering certainty
(nirnaya), then the truth of the matter could be
taken as established. The obvious objection is that
one could conceive of coherent justification that
would not deliver 'truth'. But that is to
misunderstand the notion of the pramaa.nas.
According to the theorists, it is not enough merely
to give reasons for holding a judgment in order for
it to be true. The force of the point about
justification and validity is this: suppose we
stipulate that a given judgment be taken as true.
Then, speaking from the point of view of epistemic
access, if that judgment is
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entertained and the subject is taken as having
knowledge, what else can the subject do to
substantiate that claim but catalog the procedure by
which such grasp was gained? From that it does not
follow that giving justification is all of what
knowledge consists in. But it can be said that
knowledge consists in possessing a grasp of that set
of factors which constitute the elements of the
causal chain from object to cognition. That is why
the pramaa.nas are not only justification procedures
but also those methods which match the causal chain
with the justificatory ones, so as to validate
knowledge claims. The idea is that one cannot simply
give a justification and leave it at that; that
justification has to be the one that traces the path
of contact between judgment and state of affairs but
in reverse. We have, then, the Validation Thesis of
the pramaa.nas (Vp):
(Vp) The establishment of the instrumentality of
the pramaa.nas is possible in virtue of the
authoritative source of the pramaa.nas;
therefore, the establishment of the instruments
of knowledge establishes, for the users of these
instruments, the cause of knowledge.
The Advaitic project is then taken to be as follows:
it is an exploration of the subject-object
relationship in the sense that it seeks (a) a
conception of an order, extrinsic to the cognitive
faculty, which is required for there to be an
epistemic life of systematic knowledge claims, and
(b) to determine the extent to which that conception
can be established as explaining the metaphysical
relationship between the cognitive order and the
order of objects cognized. We have discussed the
pramaa.na theory and settled on a fairly austere
interpretation of what, minimally, it is taken to
do: it lays down the condition that, through the
various instruments of cognition like perception,
inference, and testimony, there is a procedure for
validating the knowledge claims that can be
logically consequent upon a cognitive episode. This
procedure consists in determining the existence or
nonexistence of a justificatory chain from cognition
to its object (or alleged object). The arrangement
of the elements of the justificatory chain does not
deviate from the arrangement of the elements of the
causal chain that exists between cognition and the
relevant object in the case of a correct cognition;
it is merely claimed to exist when in fact there is
no such causal chain (or no such object) in the case
of an erroneous cognition. As such, the pramaa.nas
regulate the epistemic life of experience; their
systematic nature is held to be, minimally,
coexistent and contiguous with the systematic
arrangement of the experienced order. The
metaphysical issue, then, is what would be the
appropriate construal of this coexistence.
2. Transcendental Arguments One noticeable feature
of the present essay will be its characterization of
certain Indian arguments as transcendental' ones. A
transcendental argument, since the time of Kant, has
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been taken as one which attempts to show that the
world must be a certain way if the experience of it
is to be what in fact it is. To quote Kant on the
connection such a proof attempts to make between the
nature of experience and the nature of the
experienced world:
[I]n transcendental knowledge...our guide is the
possibility of experience.... The proof proceeds
by showing that experience itself, and therefore
the object of experience, would be impossible
without a connection....(11)
Conventionally, a transcendental argument is
supposed to show, a priori, what must be the case
for experience to possess the features it does. If
that can be accomplished, the doubt whether
experience is indeed of the ostensibly experienced
world is refuted. The argument is therefore held to
rely on demonstrating that certain things must be
necessarily the case for there to be experience.
Given the requirements of a priority and necessity,
it does not seem obvious that the concept of
transcendental arguments can be transposed to the
Indian scene, due to the absence there of the notion
of either of these requirements in a way easily
recognizable to philosophers of the post-Kantian
tradition.
But the situation is not so straightforward.
There are considerable problems in assuming that
successful transcendental arguments ought to be
built on these requirements. Before actually going
on to talk about that, let us examine a related
idea: that of 'descriptive metaphysics'. This is
basically the project of exploring the various
connections between the features of experience such
that an account of the world emerges which may be
held to be coherently related to these features.
This is a looser formulation of the metaphysical
program than the initial version of the
transcendental requirement. Obviously, both this
sort of metaphysics and transcendental arguments
work on the basis of the claim that we can form no
coherent or intelligible conception of a type of
experience which does not exhibit the features that
actual experience does.(12) It seems clear enough
that the Indian philosophers were indeed descriptive
metaphysicians. They strove to explain the nature of
cognition and knowledge on the basis of the objects
of cognition and knowledge. By having a theory about
the system of validation, they attempted to give an
account of how the cognitive life (meaning
experience, awareness, knowledge, and error) coheres
with one or another view of the nature of the world.
It seems only fair to take it for granted that
Indian metaphysics can, among other things, be
called descriptive metaphysics.
Now, it might be thought that transcendental
arguments are not the same as, or even part of,
descriptive metaphysics. It may be reasoned that the
two do not perform the same task. On the one hand,
transcendental arguments could be required to prove
that there cannot but be a world independent of our
grasp of it but of which we have experience. On the
other hand, descriptive metaphysics seems to be
content with
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the task of showing that, depending on the nature of
experience, the world's being a certain way would
best explain that nature. Such a descriptive project
does not seem to move from an awareness that
experience possesses the features it does to the
claim that those features are possessed only because
what is taken as experienced actually is as it is
experienced. If the latter has to be proved for a
metaphysical project to be successful, descriptive
metaphysics fails the task. Further, there is no
conclusive proof that experience does not actually
rest upon conditions of which we have no conception;
consequently, the world may not be how it seems to
be experienced.(13) There are, therefore, two claims
involved in the contention that the sort of
descriptive metaphysics described above is
inadequate. For one thing, it would fail to show
that there must be a world independent of the
experience of it. For another, it would not disallow
the possibility of a world which is not experienced
but which yet determines the nature of our
experience (as illusory).
This is by no means uncontroversial. There is
also a further point to be made. It could well be
the case that it is misguided to ask for a
transcendental argument to prove that there cannot
but be an independent world which is nonetheless
experienced. If this requirement is rejected either
for being logically impossible or for being an
unargued premise, then a case could be made that the
work of descriptive metaphysics is coeval with the
development of transcendental arguments. Peter
Strawson, the best-known contemporary proponent of
transcendental arguments, and the coiner of the
phrase 'descriptive metaphysics', has written that
the metaphysical project of description, including
as it does transcendental arguments, "remains valid
even if our transcendental arguments are not
strictly conclusive, i.e., do not successfully
establish such tight and rigid connections as they
promise."(14)
Now, there seems to be a prima facie case for
not separating descriptive metaphysics from
transcendental arguments. It may well be the case
that if transcendental arguments have to deliver on
their promise but fail to do so, and descriptive
metaphysics does not acknowledge the legitimacy of
that promise, then the two are different things. But
initially, if both are involved in the attempt to
explain why 'cognitive life' possesses the features
it does, and it is only later shown that it is
misguided to expect transcendental arguments to
deliver on their so-called promise, it seems
acceptable not to stipulate that there is a
difference between the two. Therefore, I assume that
when the Indian philosophers attempted to explain
the components of cognitive life in terms of the
cognized world, they were implicitly relying on
transcendental arguments. The proviso is that
transcendental arguments here are read as arguments
attempting to show what account of the world would
best explain the nature of that world, held as that
world is to regulate the commonly admitted system of
validation. They should not be construed as
arguments attempting to
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show what are necessary conditions for there to be
experience regulated by that system of validation.
In saying this, I want to avoid the criticism that
Stephan Korner makes of transcendental deductions of
any particular categorical framework: (15) it is
impossible to demonstrate the uniqueness of such a
framework, but a transcendental argument will not
establish metaphysical truths unless the
universality and necessity of the framework it
employs is demonstrated; and there are no good
empirical or philosophical reasons for thinking that
the unversality and necessity of any such framework
has ever been demonstrated. My point here is that
the descriptive approach I think most useful is one
which is light on framework and rather heavier on
empirical elements, and that, consequently, it makes
a claim not about the necessity but merely about the
plausibility of the account given.(16,17)
3. Basic Distinctions. We now stipulate what could
be termed the idealist realist distinction. The
idealist holds that the epistemic life is ensured
only if causal and justificatory chains do not run
between distinct orders but within a single one,
such that epistemic activity can be directed at
whatever occupies the content of cognition. As the
causal chain is held to run from object to cognition
and the justificatory chain from cognition to
object, if the chains ran within the same order, the
object of a cognition would not be distinct from the
cognitive act which presents it. The `cooccurrence'
of object and cognition is explained by the absence
of any ontological distinction between them.
The realist, on the other hand, thinks that if
epistemic activity is to be assured, the
justificatory chain must agree with what is in fact
the causal chain. But if there is to be such
agreement, the components between which there is
agreement must perforce exist. Such an agreement
therefore requires the existence of an order of
objects (for there to be a causal chain) and the
existence of a cognitive order (for there to be a
justificatory chain).
Into this situation comes the nonrealist. For
this person, the essential distinction that the
realist makes between the two orders is inescapable
because that is given in the content of experience
in a manner that cannot adequately be explained
away, and epistemic activity is aimed at the
ordering of the content of experience. On the other
hand, however, he or she thinks that more must be
said on how merely distinguishing between the two
orders in this way constitutes proof of an
ontological divide between them. The nonrealist
notices that alleged proofs regarding the existence
of a divide between the two orders seem to depend on
the content of one order, namely, the cognitive one,
and concludes from this that all that can be shown
is that an account of experience requires a
distinction to be made between the two orders. The
nonrealist maintains, however, that if any proof is
dependent on the content of the
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cognitive order alone, then such a proof will not
establish, as the realist wants, the divide between
the two orders via an argument that an independent
extrinsic order is somehow necessary for experience.
The proofs that are in evidence seem to depend on
the content of the cognitive order, and therefore
can only show that the features of that cognitive
order can be explained by recourse to the notion of
an extrinsic order alone. Nothing actually
establishes the nature of the extrinsic order as
distinct from, and totally independent of, the
nature of the cognitive order.(18)
II
1. Conditions for the Occurrence of Experience.
`Sa^nkara starts by referring to the subject and
objects that are distinct from one another.
Thereafter the conditions required for experience
(or 'empirical' experience as it is generally called
in Vedantic terminology, to distinguish it from the
putative experience of an ultimate reality) are
given: it is through a relation between cognitive
subject and object that one has a conception of
this, the natural experience of the world
(naisargiko 'yam lokavyavahaara.h). The fundamental
distinction required for cognitive activity (that
is, which must be made if there is to be any account
of cognitive activity) consists in this: a
subjective order whose content is given by its being
the recipient of an object's presentation (an
'objectee', it could be said) (asmat-pratyaya gocare
vi.sayinii); and an order of objects whose content
forms the accusatives of presentation
(yu.smad-pratyaya gocare vi.saya.h) (that is,
consisting of nonsubjective elements). it is clear
that it is appropriate to interpret 'yu.smad' here
not in the primary sense of 'you' but as 'other than
the self', where 'asmat' stands for 'I' in the sense
of the subject. Awareness is therefore structured by
ascription of characteristics to cognized
elements--including, fundamentally, that of being
extrinsic to the subject. The extrinsic nature of
objects is implied by the claim that the act of
cognition and its accusative are as different "as
light and darkness."(19) This last is important
because `Sa^nkara's claim is that there is no
getting around the source of the notion of
externality of objects (and in a generally
non-Cartesian way, their being extrinsic to the
cognitive faculty): it is derived from the content
of experience itself. Then, indubitable awareness is
partly constitutive of an order of awareness in
which awareness is awareness of something (namely,
objects are what the subject's experience is the
experience of). It is because of this that there is
an epistemic life. That is to say, there are claims
to 'know' what it is that is presented in
experience. It is with this claim with that he
begins the introduction to the
Brahmasuutrabhaa.sya.(20) Literally, the arrangement
and nature of these objects are a superimposition
(adhyaasa) on cognition.
The general Advaitic point is that
superimposition is the process by
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which there is ascription of an attribute or quality
(dharmaa.h) of the accusatives of cognition to the
content of cognition. As a result, there is an
interaction between the subjective state of
awareness, and the entities, extrinsic to that
awareness, which form its objects. That interaction
leads to such typical experiential states as taking
that "I am this" (aha.m ida.m) and "This is mine"
(mameda.m), and so on. So primarily, the Advaitin
thinks that there is a curious situation wherein
though the intrinsic state of awareness is
fundamentally different from entities extrinsic to
it, experience is itself constituted by a relation
between the intrinsic and the extrinsic, whereby the
intrinsic state of awareness is qualified by the
extrinsic state. Given the related Advaitic theory
of a unified self, I shall generalize from the
single subjective state, and talk of the subjective
or cognitive order; and given the commonsense
empiricism that there are objects of awareness, I
shall generalize from the single object of cognition
and talk of the order of objects or the extrinsic
order.(21,22)
Experience results in claims to know of objects,
and that implies a notion of what it is to have
knowledge (?vidyaa) and what it is to lack knowledge
(?avidyaa). That notion is in turn possible because
of a conception of what it is to distinguish between
claims where there are such objects as are presented
in cognition and claims where there are no such
objects. But the requirement for such a system of
validation and invalidation is itself derived from
what experience presents to the subject: an order of
objects whose arrangement the cognitive order must
correctly reflect, by explicating a justificatory
procedure which does not deviate from the causal
chain that must exist between the object and the
cognition of it. In short, the pramaa.nas are
experientially based.
The systematicity of cognitive life itself
provides a conception of the pramaa.nas, but it is
by the use of the pramaa.nas that the existence of
those conditions which constitute the systematicity
of experience (that is, the existence of valid
epistemic activity) can be postulated. That is the
significance of the pramaa.nas: if their
instrumentality is implied in epistemic activity,
that is, if they are used for justificatory
procedures, then so, too, is their causal role
implied, which is to say that the source of their
validation (the order of objects) just is the locus
on which epistemic activity functions. As noted in
section I, this form of empiricism, that is, a
thesis that the system of validation available to us
is one whose provenance is experience, was
consensually favored by pramaa.na theorists,
Naiyaayikas, Miimaamsakas, Vedaantins, and
Vij~naanavaadins alike; those like Naagaarjuna and
Jayaraasi who did not accept the pramaa.na theory
were altogether skeptical of the possibility of
knowledge and the giving of a theory of reality.
This fact must be kept in mind, because it is the
consensus on the experiential origin of the system
of validation which impels the discussion in the
direction it actually takes. `Sa^nkara is able to
emphasize the relation between the available system
of validation and the inelimin-
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able feature of experience in the way he does
because his opponents do not themselves challenge
the experiential derivation of the system of
validation.
2. The Dual Aspect: `Sa^nkara and Strawson's Kant.
`Sa^nkara says that the ineliminable feature of the
constitution of experience is in the form of a
'dual-aspect':
It is constitutive of the nature of things that
there is a fundamental distinction between the
subject of experience and what is experienced,
the subject of experience being the conscious
embodied person, while the experienced consists
of objects such as sounds etc.(23)
--he has an opponent say, before agreeing with him.
So, there is a subjective order of awareness,
intrinsic to a particular person, of an order of
entities of which there is awareness. I take the
liberty of calling that which `Sa^nkara calls
'objects', in the plural, 'the order of objects',
and the sequence of cognitions of a conscious
unitary individual 'the cognitive order'. It is from
this experiential situation that the systematic
nature of the pramaa.nas is derived, which in turn
implies the systematic arrangement of the order of
objects. Objects have to be that way, or else
experience would not be understood the way it is. It
is from experience that we get an idea of how the
world must be for experience to possess the nature
it does. if one can hazard a slogan, `Sa^nkara
relies on empirical material for a transcendental
argument.
It is with some trepidation that one brings up
the similarity between such an idea of the dual
aspect of experience and the one Strawson derives(24)
from his reading of Kant. There Strawson says that
experience must be conceived as the passage of a
subject through an objective world; this objectivity
consists of an order and arrangement which can yield
the formation of order and arrangement in the
epistemic grasp of different subjects, and which is
independent of any particular subjective grasp of
it. There is no denying that `Sa^nkara sees some
such distinction between an order of awareness and
an order of objects as a requisite for the
explanation of the conditions under which cognition
occurs. He gives, too, as we shall see, some idea of
what he thinks this grasp of objects should consist
in and what that implies about the nature of these
objects in a broadly 'empirical realist' way.
There are, however, significant differences. For
Kant, an 'object' implies 'objectivity', which is a
weightier notion than that of entities extrinsic to
cognition, and one which includes the concept of a
general independence of entities from the cognition
of them and their intersubjective (hence 'other
minds'-involving) stability. He attempts to achieve
this transition through the argument for the
necessary unity of consciousness, namely, the thesis
that experience of a unified objective order
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requires a unified consciousness. Strawson
interprets this as requiring a self-ascriptive, or
reflective, capacity for the awareness that that
unified subject possesses.
In `Sa^nkara, as in other Advaitins, there is an
interesting thesis of `self-illumination'
(svaprakaa`sa) held to be possessed by a unified
self or witnessing awareness (saak`si-caitanya). But
it is not entirely clear that the sort of
relationship found in the Kantian picture is
available. Here, it is related to the controversy of
what it is to know that one knows, and about a
nonregressive use of the pramaa.nas. Primarily, it
has a soterio-logical function, besides which there
are also notions of immateriality and personhood. As
such, I shall not be examining it.(25) Instead, what
we have here is a less weighty notion of objects: it
does not include the a priori concept of
objectivity, but just deals with a conception of
entities as distinct from the cognition of them and
which possess a complex of properties accessible
through the complex of cognitive instruments
possessed by the subject. For the purpose of
distinguishing this more austere interpretation of
objects than the Kantian one, I shall talk of an
'order of objects' or an 'extrinsic order' rather
than an 'objective order'. It will also emerge that
`Sa^nkara's construal of the dual aspect is one in
keeping with the nonrealism of Advaita.
3. `Sa^nkara: General Conditions for a Systematic
Cognitive Order. Before we examine the way the dream
analogy is used by Advaita, we must first establish
the nature of the 'empirically realist' nature of
the cognition-object relationship which the Advaitin
is willing to countenance. It is the
characterization of this nature that establishes the
fundamentals of the Advaitic view of experience.
`Sa^nkara lists, in the course of his critique of
Buddhist idealism, the general conditions of the
cognition-object correlation. He evidently takes the
existence of this range of correlative types to be
indicative of the explanation of the complex
character of experience. First, I present the terms
of my interpretation.
A cognition has content by representing an
object, and it is by virtue of this representation
that the cognition is characterized as the cognition
of that particular object (and no other). The
cognition is what it is because of the object
qualifying it. Therefore the object is the
qualificative of cognition, and the cognition is the
qualificand. The object gives content to the
cognition through the cognition being a
representation of that object.(26) For there to be a
cognitive order which constitutes a grasp of an
extrinsic order, these general conditions must hold.
I give here a substantially interpretative rendering
of a passage in which `Sa^nkara states the
conditions in terms of actual examples.(27) What
follows is a reformulation of this passage:
[And again, ] in 'cognition of a pot' or
'cognition of a cloth', the qualificative
distinctions occur with regard to pot and cloth,
but not with the substantive
P.416
qualificand cognitions, as, for example, in the
instances of a 'white cow' and 'a black cow';
whiteness and blackness are different qualities
but not [the principle of] 'cowhood'. And the
difference of the one [the principle] from the
other two [whiteness and blackness] is obvious,
as is the difference between the latter two and
the former; similarly, there is a distinction
between [cognized] object and cognition. So,
too, should be our understanding of the
perception of a pot and a memory of it, where
the substantive qualificands, perception and
memory, are distinguished, but the qualifying
[or qualificative] pot is [a] common [factor].
Thus, too, there are instances of the cognitive
states of smelling the milk and tasting the
milk, where the substantive qualificands 'smell'
and 'taste' differ but not so the qualificative
milk.(28)
(1) For objects a, b, c,...and for cognition C,
it must be the case that there is C(a), C(b),
C(c),...; and there should be individuation in
cognition where there are different qualificatives
(vi`se.sana) of cognition, a b, c,..., and a common
substantive qualificand (vi`se.sya), cognition
(j~naana)
(2) For any object a cognized at time t1 in the
form of perception P, and at time t2 in the form of
an episode of remembrance, that is, an act of memory
M, there should be individuation by cognition of the
difference between CPt1(a) and CMt2(a), where t1, is
the time of the presentation of the object,
requiring the presence (bhaava) of that object
located as represented, and t2 the time of the
episode of remembering the object, independent of
the presence (though `Sa^nkara puts it as actually
requiring the absence, abhaava) of the object, and
the qualificative a of cognition is common, though
there are different substantive qualificands,
cognition through perception and cognition through
memory.
(3) For any object a, for any two or more modes
of cognition, as in the perceptual types smell (S)
and taste (T), there must be individuation through
such cognition as CT(a) and CS(a), where again the
qualificative a of cognition is common and there is
difference between the qualificands, cognition
through the perception of taste and cognition
through the perception of smell.
The importance of these conditions is clear
enough. Condition (1) refers to the capacity of the
cognitive faculty to instantiate, over a variety of
particular instances of cognition, subjective states
of apprehension whose content is determined by the
characteristic nature (svabhaava) of whichever
object is represented (keeping in mind the episodic
nature of cognition, j~naana, as a particular state
of representation of an object). It is therefore the
most general condition required to characterize a
legitimate cognitive order of awareness. Condition
(2) talks of the continuity of that order by way of
the relationship between the episode of cognition
through presentation, and the episode of
remembrance, which confers dispositionality to the
cognitive faculty.(29) It therefore gives the
condition under which cognitive elements are
arranged as members of the cogni-
P.417
tive order.(30) Condition (3) adverts to the
interconnectedness of the instruments of the
cognitive faculty, and points to the complex matrix
of presentation and apprehension within which the
relationship between the two orders functions.
More detailed and perhaps more careful
formulations may be given to substantiate the
account of what the conditions are for the
cognition-object relationship, but we have here a
basic account of these conditions, simple as they
may seem more than a millennium later.
To sum up: for there to be experience, there
must be a distinction between cognition and its
object. We must assume that cognitive life is a
primitive fact because subjects are logically
obliged to affirm it. But the content of cognition
is constituted by the representation of objects.
Such content itself represents objects as external.
The representation of objects leads up to the issue
of whether objects of cognition are correctly or
incorrectly represented; and this issue is addressed
through the requirement that conditions (1),(2), and
(3) hold in the case of correct cognition, or fail
to hold in the case of the purported object not
being correctly represented. It is the nature of
cognitive life--experience--that there is systematic
representation of extrinsic objects. To account for
this nature, we need an explanation for systematic
representation. This explanation is given by there
being an order of extrinsic objects distinct from
cognition, whose characteristics are represented by
cognition in a systematic way (that is, allowing for
discrimination between correct and incorrect
cognitions, and for appropriate representation) by
virtue of being regulated by the pramaa.na system.
4. Buddhist Idealism and the Dual Aspect. The
Advaitic picture, therefore, has the pramaa.nas
working within the framework of the dual-aspect
thesis. In the Bhaa.sya, we find `Sa^nkara
proceeding on the basis of the contention that the
epistemological deliverances of the pramaa.na system
are assured if there is a distinction such as the
one he postulates. His opponent here is the
Vij~naanavaadin Buddhist, who is an idealist in that
he does not wish to accept the extrinsic nature of
objects.(31)
A philosopher may think it misguided to take the
distinction between the two orders as a primitive
feature of the cognitive life and, indeed,
constitutive of that life, regardless of whether
that distinction is held to be either ontologically
established or transcendentally required to explain
pramaa.na-bound epistemic activity. Such a
philosopher would hold that there is no need to
include the assumption of such a distinction in an
account of the conditions required for the cognitive
life, let alone some 'transcendent' proof (in the
Kantian sense of depending on material not accounted
for from cognitive grasp) that there is such a dual
order. Such a position would involve the attempt to
do away with the distinction, having in its place
reference purely to the structure of the subjec-
P.418
tive order. This indeed is the view of the
Vij~naanavaadin Buddhist. At the very outset, one
philosophical point must be made. Buddhist idealists
like Vasubandhu adopted the position that no order
extrinsic to the cognitive exists. Sometime after
Vasubandhu, Di^nnaaga stated his own thesis that
every cognition had its own dual aspect: an object
aspect (arthaabhaasa) and a cognizing aspect
(svaabhaasa) . This was still an idealistic
rendering, for all it said was that the description
of a cognition must itself consist of the object
that the subject understood herself to perceive and
the subject's state of having that perception.
Post-Di^nnaaga writers called the objectival aspect
of cognition the object form (arthaakaara), which
was one of the elements constituting cognition. This
interpretation of cognition, therefore, put forward
the idea that since the form of the object was
intrinsic to a cognition, description of that object
form exhausted the description of what was the
object of cognition. "[I]nstead of saying with the
old Yogaacaarins [that is, the Vij~naanavaadins]
that the external objects do not exist, for nothing
but consciousness exists, one can now say... [that]
references to external objects are dispensable."(32)
This is perhaps a more sophisticated way of arriving
at the idealist conclusion. It does seem, however,
as if the interpretation that we could give of the
general critique of Vij~naanavaada found in
`Sa^nkara can actually encompass both positions. The
Vij~naanavaadin that `Sa^nkara has in mind looks
very much like Vasubandhu, or, at least, the
arguments `Sa^nkara has the Vij~naanavaadin give are
the same as Vasubandhu's. For this heuristic reason,
and without any particular historical justification,
we will consider Vasubandhu's own words in tandem
with `Sa^nkara's. In the Trisvabhaavanirde`sa,
Vasubandhu rejects the distinction between the two
orders:
What is the conception of that which is
nonexistent! [The answer is] 'mind' [mental
projection]/For by it, the nonexistents are
imagined; and inasmuch as the mind imagines
objects, they do not exist at all.(33)
What is it that is presented in cognition? The
nonexistent which is projected [or imagined].
How is that presented in cognition? In the form
of a twofold appearance [of the apprehender and
the apprehended]/What is it in cognition that
does not exist? That by which the twofold
appearance is affected.(34)
This position is defended in the Vi.m`satikaa
section of his Vij~naptimatraatasiddhi. Here he
argues that there is reason to reject the existence
of the extrinsic order as independent of subjective
construction (vikalpa) , which rejection is the
central tenet of idealism. However, his rejection is
tied to an atomistic conception of such an extrinsic
order, on which I shall briefly comment later.
5. Vasubandhu, Descartes, and Dreams. The way in
which the argument from the dream analogy is used is
interesting in its resemblance to and difference
from the way in which Descartes used it. It is
important to
P.419
make the comparison because the dream analogy has a
certain resonance in Western philosophy, and the
difference in usage has to be pointed out. We will,
therefore, briefly deal with the rich and
controversial Cartesian case in order to note the
points of resemblance and those of contrast.
In the First Meditation, Descartes notes that he is
often astonished to find that he had not actually
been sitting in front of the fire but had merely
dreamt that he had, and says, "my astonishment is so
great that it is almost capable of persuading me
that I now dream."(35) This is not to say that he
thinks he cannot know that he is not dreaming,
though much discussion has proceeded as though he
did. But the importance of dreaming is that the
senses can be deceived; a set of external objects is
presented to the subject, but there is no such set
as the 'experience' in the dream has it. This is the
initial lesson to be learned from erroneous
judgments, and that is what Descartes does. In the
Third Meditation, however, the malin genie
hypothesis is put forward. An evil demon may be
consistently deceiving me into thinking I have
experience of the world, so that cognitive life does
not in any way match the way the world is. It has
sometimes been argued that there is nothing new that
the evil demon hypothesis adds to the dream
scenario; it is all a question of lack of veridical
contact with the world.(36) It seems, however, as if
that can be argued only if the dream scenario is
strengthened in a certain way: it must become the
hypothesis that I may always be dreaming, in the
sense of not being in cognitive contact with the
world by being in a permanent dream state. That,
however, hardly sounds like a dream. On the other
hand, there may be something fundamentally different
between dreaming and being deceived by the demon,
where an instance of the former only points to the
impossibility of ruling out the latter. It has been
argued that dreaming itself can make sense only in
the context of being awake. There must in general be
veridical experience for there to be error;(37)
there must be real coins for there to be
counterfeits.(8) It might be legitimate to assume,
within Descartes' realist theory, that it is right
to correlate the presentation of external objects in
the waking state with veridical contact, and the
absence of such presentation in dreams with error.
As we shall see, this is not acceptable to the
idealist in any case, and in fact precisely the idea
he would seek to displace eventually. But in any
case, it will not do to make such an assumption.
Descartes does not seek to put forward the skeptical
scenario per se in the dream analogy, but the
possibility of being in error about the objects of
cognition. It is a further step from the admission
of this possibility to the hypothesis that a subject
can be in error about the whole cognized order of
objects. In this context, the reasoning that waking
is required for there to be dreaming is not useful;
it may even be circular. That is to say, to point
out the essential relational dissimilarity between
dreams and the waking state
P.420
will be beside the point. It was indeed something
that was clearly recognized by Descartes. The
question for him really was what guaranteed this
dissimilarity; that is, what guaranteed a veridical
contact with external objects such that the
difference between dreams and the waking state could
be made out?
So the real issue here is not about the falsity
of dreams (defined in terms of failure to be in
contact with the external order) vis-a-vis the
waking state, for that just opens up the problem of
contact with an external order in general. As Ralph
Walker says, "[w]hat is at issue is whether all my
sense-based beliefs about the world, and indeed all
my other beliefs as well, may not actually be false,
because produced in me by a powerful and malevolent
deceiver."(39)
The Cartesian argument starts with the
acknowledged case of dreaming. While dreaming, one
does not know that there is no such world as is
apparently spatiotemporally presented. Dreams show
that there can be cognitive instances where there is
no such world as there seems to be. Since no one
particular cognition can by itself show that it is
itself not erroneous, no particular belief can be
guaranteed to be true. An evil demon could well
control all of one's cognitions and create a
situation analogous to dreaming, with one having no
grasp of the external world, and a consequent
erroneous cognition and false beliefs. From the
experience of dreaming comes the idea that there can
be instances of cognition without objects, where the
subject is unaware that there are no such objects as
presented. In that case, consequent beliefs are held
to be false. If the evil demon were at work, then
all beliefs would be false.
The question that arises immediately is what
could render those beliefs false? Only within a
realist view is it possible to assume that there
should be beliefs about an external world even
though those beliefs could be false. This is the
central assumption that Descartes makes. His view is
that there is a world which is independent of all
subjective constraints and that knowledge is
possible only when there is (veridical) grasp of
that world. Only if there is an independent and
knowledgegiving external world can a failure to
grasp that world exactly render beliefs false. From
within the terms of his argument, nothing Descartes
says actually justifies the belief that there is an
independent and external world which alone ensures
the veridicality of cognition. Yet that assumption
is crucial because the Cartesian inquiry delivers
the skeptical conclusion only against the background
of the thought that there is an external world which
regulates cognition and consequently allows
knowledge of it. To put it briefly, it is because
Descartes starts with a realist assumption that he
arrives at the skeptical conclusion.
It was the absence of any immediate guarantee
that there can be any distinction between a
cognitive life (as in a dream) where there is
representation of an external world which is not
there and a cognitive life
P.421
where there is representation of an external world
which is there that led Descartes to the conclusion
that there had to be proof that there is such an
external world. This world is one which can
determine all cognition as false if cognition is not
of it. So it must be proved that the world in
cognition is that independent world. That proof for
Descartes, of course, was that there is a Cod who
could not be a deceiver, but we are not concerned
here with that.
6. The Interpretation of the Dream Case in
Vasubandhu's Text. With Vasubandhu, the argument
proceeds in the opposite direction. It would not be
proper to say that Vasubandhu advances a skeptical
hypothesis, that is, a hypothesis about the
breakdown in the regularity of epistemic activity,
unless one were ready to assume a realist position
about the requirements for epistemic activity.
Vasubandhu uses the dream analogy, and indeed the
hypothesis of systematic nonextrinsic cognitive
life, for the purpose of securing an idealist
epistemology. His argument is found in the
Vij~naptimatrataasiddhi (Treatise on the State of
Cognitive Construction).
Vasubandhu, too, sees that the experience of
dreaming raises a doubt about the external world.
But his approach to the issue is different from
Descartes'. While dreaming. one has systematic
experience (which is what leads the subject to
believe that she is awake). Dreams show that no
particular cognitive instance can guarantee that
there is an external object as is represented in
experience. There can therefore be experience
without external objects as represented, without the
subject being aware that there are no such external
objects. If a particular instance of cognition lacks
the guarantee that there is an external object, any
other cognitive instances would be similarly
infected. lf any cognition at all lacks the
guarantee. no cognition possesses it. If so, all
cognitions lack that guarantee. Vasubandhu concludes
that it is perfectly possible for cognition to occur
without external objects and without an awareness
that there are no external objects.
It does not follow from the representation of
external objects in general that there are such
external objects in general. Dreams demonstrate the
dispensability of external objects. There can be
cognition without objects, and there is no need to
correlate external objects with veridical contact.
But Vasubandhu does not stop there. He wishes to
explain systematic cognition, and therefore the
possibility of knowledge. According to him, the
appeal of dreams lies in the fact that dreaming
experience is systematic and apparently about
external objects. So he takes into account the fact
that experience is systematic and that it is
constituted by the representation of objects. What
dreams show is that both these feature of
experience-systematicity and the representation of
objects--
P.422
can be present even when there are no external
objects. From that he concludes that cognition
requires no external objects. But since objects are
undoubtedly represented in cognition and since a
knowledge of them is to be secured, he concludes
that systematic experience and the representation of
objects can occur as they do only if objects are not
external to cognition at all, but intrinsic to it.
To recap, for Descartes, if the content of
cognition is not representative of an independent
order, then there is a serious threat to epistemic
activity. For Vasubandhu, unless the content of
cognition is representative of a dependent and
constructed order, the account of how veridical
cognitions--and epistemic activity-occur is
incoherent. One may put the contrast thus: the
Cartesian concern is with how systematic perception
of the independent world is achieved; the
Vij~naanavaadin's concern is with the very coherence
of the idea that perception is systematically of an
independent world.
It is possible for Vasubandhu to conclude as he
does because of two moves at the heart of his
argument. One is the rejection of the idea that
there has to be an external and independent world
which alone can guarantee systematic cognition. In
the Vim`satika (verses 11-15), Vasubandhu takes it
that if there is any conception of an external
world, it must be an atomistic one, under which each
substance and each quality is constituted by its own
inherent atoms. Cognition for the atomist is
supposed to be accounted for by the causal power of
these constitutive atoms acting on the cognizing
subject/cognitive order, such that each cognition is
caused by the relevant atoms. Vasubandhu says that
if the extrinsic order is what is experienced or
cognized and such an order is atomistically
constituted, then the very idea of systematic
cognition becomes incoherent. He argues that if the
cognized order is taken to be an atomistic extrinsic
one, then cognition must be either (1) of single
wholes for each substance/quality represented, or
(2) of the totality of individual constitutive atoms
of the represented object of cognition. (1) It is
not the former because, even though, for example,
the demonstrative cognition 'this is white' ought to
occur (on the atomist's account) as a result of
being caused strictly and solely by the whiteness
atoms (quality atoms), the cognition in fact does
not represent just the whiteness distinct from the
substantial parts but an entire object which has,
among other qualities, that of whiteness. Thus, even
though the atomist analyzes the cognition as having
been caused strictly by the 'whiteness atoms',
leaving no explanatory space for the causal role of
other atoms, like those which are supposed to
constitute other qualities and substances, the
cognition of whiteness is always accompanied by a
representation of other features of the
object--features, that is, which must be accounted
for but cannot be on the atomist's causal account.
(2) It is not the latter because as a matter of
fact, cognition does not represent a swarm of
discrete atoms
P.423
but complexly conceived objects. To sum up, if the
world is an extrinsic and independent one, conceived
atomistically, then the features of cognition are
not accounted for. The most important feature of
cognition--the representation of complexly
propertied objects--cannot be explained by an
atomistic account.
The second move Vasubandhu makes follows from
this rejection of an extrinsic order: the assumption
that there can be the apparent representation of an
external world without such an external world, even
when there is veridical cognition. She Buddhist is
prepared to sacritice the apparent externality of
the world in order to assure himself that there is
systematic cognition and knowledge. If we see the
idealist move as an antiskeptical one, then it is
possible to conclude that the realist assumption of
an independent, albeit (for Vasubandhu) atomistic,
world is replaced with an idealist assumption that
veridical cognition can be intrinsic even if the
representation of objects as external continuants is
wrong. Vasubandhu moves from an antiskeptical
assumption to an idealist conclusion. Indeed, he
does so only because he cannot see how knowledge can
be guaranteed unless objects are intrinsic to
cognition.
It must be noted that `Sa^nkara himself rejects
atomism as incoherent.(40) As that is the case, even
though Vasubandhu argues against an atomistic
extrinsic world, the weight of his argument can be
discounted in the context in which we are
interested, for his Advaitic opponent in any case is
not interested in defending that sort of realism.
Thus, the attempt to demonstrate the failure of
atomism to account for the features of cognition,
while an important part of Vasubandhu's general
strategy, presents no problem to the Advaitin; the
latter's own conception of the extrinsic order is
based, among other things, on a similar rejection of
atomism. The apparently realist argument for an
extrinsic order which `Sa^nkara presents is entirely
different from the atomistic one which Vasubandhu
claims to have rebutted and which `Sa^nkara likewise
rejects. For this reason, I take the main argument
between the Buddhist idealist and the Advaitin to
lie elsewhere than in a discussion about the
coherence of atomism.
The Advaitic strategy that we are concerned with
here is to challenge, first of all, the idealist
assumption that there can be any intelligible
account of systematic experience and knowledge which
rejects the external world. The criticism of the
analogy of dreaming will center on the Buddhist
attempt to deny the relational dissimilarity between
dreaming and waking.
We will now examine the Vij~naanavaadin's
criticism of the cognitive order and its
(paradigmatically external, perceptual) objects,
adhering to the contours of the argument that has
been presented. Then, `Sa^nkara's rebuttal will
follow, including his analysis of the dream argument
and the inadequacy of its support to the idealist
thesis that there are no objects
P.424
as are perceived to exist externally. `Sa^nkara
himself gives an outline of the Buddhist idealist's
position in the Bhaa.sya.(41) It is clear, however,
that he must have had the Vi.m`satikaa or a similar
text in mind, for his treatment is quite faithful to
the Buddhist arguments. Where necessary, therefore,
some of Vasubandhu's own words will be discussed in
amplification of the points `Sa^nkara makes.
7. The Vij~naanavaadin: Dreams Can Prove There Is No
Extrinsic World. `Sa^nkara gives a concise
description of the Buddhist position. Quite simply,
the system of validation, that is, the means of
knowledge, the object of knowledge, and the result
of epistemic activity, can all occur in systematic
regularity only because they are constructively
represented in cognition. In `Sa^nkara's words,
For, even if it be the case that there is an
external object, there can be no application of
the system of validation [the pramaa.nas] unless
that object be located in cognitive content.(42)
The Buddhist is taken to hold that it is just not
possible (asa.mbhavaat) for there to be external
objects. The motivations for this view are many,
some quite obscure: broadly, they have to do with
the soteriological concern of interpreting the
Buddha's teachings regarding the transience of the
material world, and with the problems of building an
ontology with the philosophical categories available
to them. The latter lead to such issues as the
atomicity of physical bodies, the whole-part
relationship, and so on. They do not detain us here,
and we will take these motivations for granted.
Coming to the relevant argument, we find something
like this: the common feature of representation is a
cognitive state which is the enabling condition for
the presentation of objects. This condition is the
characteristic of experience (anubhava-maatram)
whereby, for each cognitive instance, there is only
that individual representation which exhausts the
description of what it is for there to be an object
of cognition. Obviously, the Buddhist view is taken
to deal just with cognized objects, for there would
be, for philosophers suspicious of entities actually
accessible to sensory grasp, no question of entities
beyond the ken of the senses. So it is understood
that the Buddhist view is that an object is
constituted by its being the sort of entity the
cognitive faculty has a capacity for representing in
an instance of awareness. Such identityspecific,
that is. 'particularized', representation would not
occur unless there was some unique feature to each
cognitive instance itself; if that is so, it must be
admitted that the form of the cognized entity (just)
is representation in the content of the cognition;
that is, cognition has the 'same-form' as the object
in its content.(43) This argument is also attributed
to Dharmakirti.(44) Identification of an object
(that is, the knowledge of it) consists in cognition
representing it appropriately. The presentation of
P.425
objects can be explained just in terms of the
contents of cognition; it is futile to posit an
external order (baahyaarthasadbhaava kalpanaa). In
this way, there is an assurance that a cognition is
a cognition of its object. The epistemic attainment
(of knowledge) is assured because there is a
correlation (or lack of difference) between the
occurrence of objects and the cognition of objects
(sahopalambhaniyamaadabhedo vi.saya-vij~naanayor
aapatati)
`Sa^nkara understands the Buddhist as arguing
that this correlation is explicable only in terms of
the object's being an element in the content of the
appropriate cognitive episode; there is no ontic
distinction between the state of objects and the
state of the cognitive series. If there were to be
some natural (or, more contentiously, 'real')
distinction between the two, it is puzzling,
according to the Buddhist, as to what would stop
(cause a hindrance to, pratibandhakaaranatvaat) the
object and cognition from ceasing to be correlated
in the way they evidently are in ordinary
experience.
That presentation in cognition can actually
include the feature of externality, and with it the
possibility of independence from cognitive states
even when the object is not extrinsic to the
cognition of it, is unproblematic to the
Vij~naanavaadin. Look at a dream. In a dream state,
all sorts of entities are presented; and although it
lacks an appropriate external object, there is a
substantive distinction between apprehension and the
apprehended.(45)
Likewise, it must be understood that the form of
apprehension (of objects) in the cognition of
pillars and so forth while awake is similar in
presentation (to cognition).(46)
`Sa^nkara's analysis is that the Vij~naavaadin
makes a claim to the effect that there is no
epistemic distinction between the representation in
cognition (pratyayaavi`se.saat) in the two cases.
And, indeed, Vasubandhu does take such a line. In
the course of doing so, he states some stock
objections to his use of the dream analogy, and
rejects their appeal. It is important to know how
Vasubandhu himself phrases these objections and
answers them, because a casual look at `Sa^nkara's
own critique may lead one to think that his
arguments are sometimes the same as the ones
Vasubandhu had dealt with and rebutted centuries
earlier. But this is not so. Indeed, it is in the
almost slippery formulations of `Sa^nkara that one
finds the fundamental theses of Advaitic nonrealism
explicitly argued for by Vaacaspati Mi`sra or `Srii
Har.sa.
Let us, then, examine Vasubandhu's own
formulation of the difficulties that he envisages as
threatening his version of idealism. If the content
of cognition does not represent (extrinsic) objects
(yadi vij~naaptir anarthaa), an opponent of the
Buddhist may say, there would be at least the
following three problems.(47)
First, there would be no spatiotemporal
regulation (niyamo de`sa-
P.426
kaalayo.h) .(48) That is to say, experience is
regular because it is determined by the stable
objects of the world, which occupy a certain place
and are cognized at just that time when there is
cognitive contact with them at that place. It is
their occurrence, combined with the cognitive grasp
of them, that causes experience at just the time and
place to satisfy that condition of occurrence and no
other. The Buddhist cannot ignore a causal theory of
cognition which implies the existence of the
extrinsic order.
Second, it would not be common to individual
subjective orders (santaanasyaaniyama`s ca) .
Experience, if it were a cognitive sequence
constructed by cognition itself, would not be, as it
in fact is, of objects not limited to being
presented to one subjective order alone, but
accessible to other subjective orders.(49)
Third, there would be no causal function on
action (yuktaa k.rtya-kriyaa na ca). Real food can
be eaten and real weapons can hurt, but one is not
satisfied by a dream apple.
It is clear that Vasubandhu advances these
objections really in order to express the idealist
ramifications of his argument. For, of course, it is
the idealist's aim to give an account of experience
that will mimic the conclusions of the realist So
Vasubandhu replies that as far as the first and
third objections are concerned, nothing in his dream
analogy will fail to cover these allegedly
problematic cases.
In a dream, Vasubandhu argues, all sorts of
things are 'seen' without those things being as they
are seen.(50) They are not seen randomly, in all
places but in specific locations (within the dream
scenario) ; and even these locations are not
presented indiscriminately (that is, are not
indifferent to systematic indexation) . This
spatiotemporal indexing (of dream images) is
obtained without allegedly external objects.(51) Of
course the occurrence of disconnected dreams does
not vitiate the force of the point that there are
regularities in dreams.
In much the same way,(52) action as a function
of the objects of experience can be obtained as in a
dream; for example, one could dream of running away
from a charging elephant. It is important that the
argument be that there is a parallel between
apparently real actions while awake and the merely
apparent actions in dreams. That is to say, in order
to preserve the force of his claim, Vasubandhu must
put the case that the waking life is as
self-contained as is the dream one, and that
consequently there is no relational dissimilarity
between the two. His example here is, however,
interestingly wrong. He argues that dreams can have
all the causal powers of alleged waking life, for
certain results can be brought about by dream
states. He illustrates his contention by pointing
out that there can be ejaculation (that is, in the
'real' or waking world) when there is a dream of
sexual union. But this just is an illustration of
the interpenetration of dreams and the waking state,
quite inapt for his purposes.
P.427
The simple solution he offers for worries about
causal efficacy and effective production is this: so
long as there can be apparent occurrences of such
events as causal regularity and subjective reaction
within dream scenarios themselves, the Buddhist can
reinforce the analogy by encompassing these events
within the ambit of dreams. The more there are
similarities between dreams and the waking state,
the more tactically advantageous it is for
Vasubandhu. Since he is not arguing that one may be
perpetually dreaming, the claim that dreams can be
described only in contrast to being awake does not
worry Vasubandhu, though, as we shall see, it
should. He must simply find reasons for why an
experiential order which lacks extrinsic objects is
plausible. In his argumentative strategy, though not
his motivation, Vasubandhu resembles Descartes.
The other objection is as to why it seems to a
subject that experience consists of
intersubjectively accessible objects. Rather like
Berkeley, Vasubandhu is concerned about the external
world, but not about other subjects. Of course,
Berkeley does argue for the necessity of a mind
other than one's own, but that is really God's Mind;
and if he did write about other minds, whatever he
wrote is lost. In Vasubandhu's case this absence of
suspicion about other subjects is at one with the
prevalent thought in the Indian tradition (apart
from the Lokaayata materialists perhaps) .
Soteriological conviction probably lies behind this
nonsolipsistic attitude.
In any case, Vasubandhu sets out to answer how
intersubjectivity, or common presentation to
different streams of cognition, is possible. He
refers to the Buddhist myth of hell,(53) which is an
experience of torment for the ghosts of evildoers.
It is held by the Buddhists that it is morally
unacceptable that the guards in that hell, who
oversee the tortures carried out in unspeakable
conditions, can themselves have done anything to
have deserved hell, nor can they be born in hell,
for creatures only enter the life cycle on earth.
So, argues Vasubandhu, these 'guards' are not real
creatures at all; and hell is not a place to be in.
Rather, it is the cognitive condition under which
evildoers have subjective states equivalent to
experience. That condition includes all the alleged
requirements of interaction with an extrinsic world.
These are four: (1) the spatiotemporal indexation of
each particular experience, (2) the presentation of
objects to cognition, (3) the intersubjective
constancy of objects of experience, and (4) action
as a function of causal efficacy.
That is to say, this hell is a hell for more
than just a single subject; it is just the same sort
of experience that soul which had committed similar
evils have, even though the experience is the
cognitive projection of each such soul. There are
specific such experiences: swimming in a river of
pus and filth is quite different from being pierced
with spears or being flayed, and these torments are
consequences of prior action, the pain that follows
a consequence of that torment.
P.428
Later on, Vasubandhu adds that loss of memory
(and dream visions) and other such states can be
caused by the manipulative consciousness of demons
and so forth.(54)
This hair-raising scenario can be seen as
something like one where Berkeleyan subjects are
manipulated by a Cartesian demon! The last
suggestion of Vasubandhu's indeed comes quite close
to the brains-invats scenario of Putnam(55) and
others.(56) As is well known, Putnam envisaged a
scenario where a mad scientist fixes up a brain in a
vat and has its nerve endings wired up apparently to
receive information of an extrinsic world. A
possibility raised is that we are all brains in
vats. The reading that one ought to give of the
Vij~naanavaadin's tale is that there can be
presentation to consciousness of the sort of
entities as are familiarly interpreted as objects
extrinsic to the cognitive faculty; this
presentation can conform to the pattern of features
that are associated with an extrinsic order, without
there being such an order. There cannot be a
substantive difference in the description one can
give from within one's experiential material of what
it is to have a genuinely extrinsic order, and what
it is to experience systematically a projective one.
If a substantive distinction cannot be made, from
within one's experience, between having experience
of a genuine extrinsic order and having a systematic
representation of objects intrinsic to the subject,
then there is nothing to stop the idealist from
denying any distinctive role for the extrinsic order
(postulated or real). The nonexistence of that order
does not lead to epistemic breakdown. Instead, only
if the presented order is intrinsically constructed
could there be any meaningful epistemic activity.
8. `Sa^nkara and the Extrinsic Order: The Buddhist
Analogy of Dreams Fails. `Sa^nkara's aim must
therefore be to show that the extrinsic order is
required to explain experience, contra Vasubandhu.
He must also try and show what the dream analogy
fails to achieve, and say to what extent it does
work. This latter aim is in a sense continuous with
his critique of Vij~naanavaada, for while the former
aim is directed at establishing the anti-idealist
basis of Advaita, the latter amounts to a statement
on its nonrealism.
`Sa^nkara starts off with the simple assertion
that external objects (paradigm-extrinsic entities,
available to perception) are not nonexistent,
because they are perceived (upalabdhe.h) . The
argument is directed at the Buddhist's contention
that the simultaneous occurrence of cognition and
its object, and the experience of the individuation
of an 'objective' element being invariably
correlated to cognition of it, prove the ontological
identity of cognized and cognitive orders. It is
usually thought that the opponent here is
Dharamakiirti. There is a famous saying of his:
Blue and the cognition of blue are not different
entities, for the one is invariably apprehended
with the other. One should recognize their
difference
P.429
as due to false cognition, as with the moon [the
double moon seen by an astigmaticl, which is
single.(57)
This conclusion is based on the reasoning that
there is no object which is unapprehended, even
though all objects are commonly defined as
cognizable entities; and there is no awareness of a
cognition in which there is no (cognizable)
object.(58) `Sa^nkara questions the correctness of
this analysis. The nature of perception of external
objects consists in the correlative occurrence of
the cognition and its object, yes. But that
cognition includes a representation of the
externality of that object correlated to cognition;
each object is cognized with its cognitive act.(59)
`Sa^nkara's conclusion is that it cannot be said
that the object perceived is absent.(60)
His reasoning is as follows. The Buddhist has
said that the waking world can be cognitively
self-contained as a dream is, for even without such
things as food, one can have the experience of being
satisfied for having eaten, within a dream.
`Sa^nkara plays on this example. What is the
cognitive state of subjects vis-a-vis the objects in
question? It is the perception that they are
extrinsic to the cognitive faculty. So the
Vij~naanavaadin cannot claim that there is no
perception that there are objects (that is, entities
extrinsic to the cognitive faculty). As for the
dream where one eats and is satisfied, it is a dream
of eating and being satisfied. That is to say, the
self-contained nature of the dream may well be akin
to the allegedly self-contained nature of the waking
state, for, remember, Vasubandhu is not trying to
say that we are perpetually dreaming. But it is the
nature of this waking state that it is one partly
constituted by a perception that one eats food and
is satisfied. If the Buddhist is to persist in
differentiating between the constitution of the
perception that he in fact has (that there is an
extrinsic order) and the claim that there is no
object of perception, then he must assert something
rather odd. As `Sa^nkara asks,
[H]ow can someone's words be acceptable ii he
says, "I do not perceive, and that object does
not exist," even while himself perceiving an
external object through sensory contact?(61)
This is rather like a man who, while eating and
experiencing satisfaction says, "Neither do I eat
nor do I get any satisfaction."(62) This is all just
to extract from the Buddhist the admission that it
is not as if there is no perception of an object (na
ka`scidartham upalabhe) but that there is no
ontological disjunction between the perceived and
perception of it (upalabdhivyatiriktam nopalabdha).
The immediate question `Sa^nkara asks is what
the disjunctive elements are. The fact is that
experience does not consist of a series of
subjective grasps of perception but of objects
perceived. The Buddhist
P.430
cannot make the case that the idealist metaphysics
adequately explains the structure of experience.
That experience is just not explained in terms of a
subject's ordering of various perceptual instances,
but rather of the subject's ordering of what gives
content and form to that perception. Two issues run
together here: (1) there is a claim for the need to
distinguish between perception and the object of
perception; and (2) there is a claim that the
perception of the externality of the object
perceived is the basis on which the distinction is
postulated. `Sa^nkara is making a case that the
latter claim is self-evident, thereby hoping to
substantiate the former. What he seems to say is
that it is a curious way of going about things to
conceive that people take their cognitive life to
consist of an apprehension of the sensory mode of
the presentation of an object, rather than the
apprehension of an object (usually) with an
awareness of what sensory mode it is by which that
object is apprehended.(63) Saying that the
perception of an object is correlated with its
object, and that the `grasp' of an object is nothing
more than the subject's perception of it, is not the
same as saying that that object is nothing else than
that perception. If it were the same, there would
not be any issue of the extrinsic nature of objects
being partly constitutive of the perception of
objects. One may put the Advaitic question this way:
if the essence of objects is their perception, what
is the essence of their perception as extrinsic to
the cognitive faculty? `Sa^nkara thinks that the
perception of this extrinsic nature is an
ineliminable feature of experience, and that
therefore the conditions required for experience
must be conceived in such a way as to include the
possession of this feature.
And that is why an ordinary person understands
these others [the Vji~naanavaadins] as assuming
the existence of an external entity even while
they deny it by saying."That which is only the
content of an internal state appears as though
external."(64)
`Sa^nkara here is quoting Di^nnaaga, who claims that
the object-based causal support (aalambana) of
perception is not given by external objects but is
the form given to cognition by its own internal
construction (antarj~neyaruupa).(65) He latches onto
the role of the concept 'as though external' in the
Buddhist explication of the conditions under which
experience occurs. This conception of externality is
important, because that is what plays a determining
role in regulating what are objects of cognition. It
is `Sa^nkara's contention that experience can be
made sense of only if the conception of an order
extrinsic to the cognitive faculty is entertained.
Once it is admitted that the conception of
externality (and of objects being extrinsic in
general) is fundamental to the explication of the
conditions required for experience, the force of the
idealist's rejection of the dual aspect of
experience and the purely projective nature of the
epistemic life is lost.
P.431
Accordingly, those who wish to accept truth as
what is experienced should admit the external
presentation of objects as they appear, and not
hold the notion that it is 'as if' objects are
presented externally.(66)
`Sa^nkara accepts the premise that truth is put in
terms of experience; he is not committed to any
realist notion of a truth (or notion of the nature
of the extrinsic world) independent of experiential
constraints. But all the same, even with that
nonrealist premise, he still concludes that the idea
of external objects must be admitted, unlike the
Buddhist. He wants both a conception of externality
and an experiential constraint.
The role of the material of experience is
therefore significant, as is evident in `Sa^nkara's
critique of the dream analogy.(67) But first, one
thing must be noted concerning his analysis of
dreams. It was suggested earlier that pointing out
the essential relational dissimilarity between
dreams and waking is not really very useful against
the Cartesian hypothesis. That was so because the
role of dreaming was only to bring attention to
error and thereafter to sketch the scenario of
pervasive error. In Vasubandhu's case, however, this
criticism does have some force. For him, the role of
dreams is to support the thesis that there could be
cognitive life sans objects. The argument in
Vasubandhu revolves around the absence of external
objects in dreams, where that absence is defined in
terms of its being the opposite of what objects are
when one is awake--present. There is thus an
ineliminable reference to the state of affairs when
one is awake, and this reference is important. It
has been suggested that Vasubandhu's example of real
ejaculation as a result of a dream of coitus fails
at just the point where it should not: it breaks
down the self-contained nature, which he wishes to
preserve, of each world, the waking one and the one
in dreams. `Sa^nkara remarks dryly at a later point
in the Bhaa.sya,(68) that if dream states were
claimed to have effect in the 'real' world, a man
dreaming of visiting the land of the Pa~ncaalas
would then have to wake up there. `Sa^nkara puts the
case in terms of the material of experience. There
is a contrasting perception of the presence and
absence of objects, which contrast enables
Vasubandhu to draw his analogy. But what is this
analogy based on? The answer: the material of waking
experience itself. And `Sa^nkara thinks it is quite
wrong for the Buddhist, who distrusts the experience
of the perception of externality, nevertheless to
want to use the case of his cognition in a dream to
cast doubt on the conditions under which there is
experience in the waking state. How can he at one
and the same time question the legitimacy of the
structure of experience and yet construct an analogy
whose logic is based on that experiential order
itself?
That being so, it cannot be asserted by a man
who comprehends the difference between the two
[states] that the apprehension of the waking
state is
P.432
false, just because it is an apprehension
resembling that in a dream. And it is not proper
for knowledgeable people to deny their own
experience.(69)
Moreover, because it will contradict one's
experience, one who cannot establish the lack of
objectual support possessed by cognition in the
waking state should not wish to establish such a
lack of objectual support on the basis of its
similarity to cognition in the dream state [for
that would itself contradict experience].(70)
The rule that `Sa^nkara explicitly evokes here is
one which states:
If a characteristic is not itself constitutive
of the identity of an entity, it cannot be
adduced as being possessed by that entity on
account of that entity's similarity to another
[entity which does possess that
characteristic].(71)
If nonexternality is not constitutive of the
identity of waking experience, it cannot be adduced
as being possessed by waking experience on account
solely of waking experience being similar to
dreaming experience (whose identity is indeed
constituted by the nonexternality of objects).
The argument here is tactically similar to the
antiskeptical one that one must have waking
experience to understand what is different about
dreaming. But the issue is different in this regard:
in the Cartesian case, the example is set up in such
a way that to be awake is to be in contact with an
extrinsic order, and therefore to have veridical
cognition; to dream is to fail to have such contact,
and therefore to have erroneous cognition. The
Cartesian argument equates the absence of an
external order with which to be in contact with a
failure to know; this can be done only against the
background of the assumption that to know is to be
in contact with an independent extrinsic order. If
so, it would be logical for a realist-minded skeptic
to say that one must have veridical cognition (that
is, be awake) to know what it is to have erroneous
cognition (that is, to be dreaming). Then, the
relevant question would be to ask how that
veridicality, realistically defined as contact with
an independent extrinsic order, is itself assured in
the first place (as it would fail to be so if the
demon deceives one). In the case of Vasubandhu,
veridicality is not defined as such contact. Here,
to dream is to have cognition without an extrinsic
order; therefore, if there can be cognition without
an extrinsic order, to be awake may also be to have
cognition without an extrinsic order. So, on
Vasubandhu's view, veridicality is not defined in
terms of what dreams fail to have vis-a-vis waking.
That is to say, dreams are not defined as failing to
be veridical by virtue of being out of contact with
an independent order, because the idealist thinks
that all cognitions occur without an independent and
extrinsic order anyway. Dreams do not lead the
idealist, unlike the realist (skeptic or
antiskeptic), to think that apparent contact with
the objects of cognition may be erroneous. The
idealist thinks, instead, that the objects of
cognition may not be external at all in
P.433
any case. If so, it is not futile to criticize the
idealist argument by saying that one must be able to
know what it is to be awake to know what it is to
dream.
The realist antiskeptic begs the question of how
veridicality is defined as contact with an
independent and external world, but he is not
vulnerable to the doubt as to how dreams are defined
vis-a-vis waking (for the realist defines dreams in
terms of an absence of contact and waking as the
presence of contact with a presumed external world).
The idealist is not guilty of begging the question
of veridicality (that is, he does not
question-beggingly define it in terms of a presumed
external world); but he does beg the question of
externality, that is, of how he came to presume that
he had access to this concept in the first place if
the externality-presenting features of waking
experience are to be rejected altogether.
Vasubandhu, of course, does argue against the notion
of external objects, which he takes to be conceived
atomistically by his realist opponent. Since he
finds the notion of atomistically constructed
external objects paradoxical, he rejects altogether
the possibility of explaining cognition in terms of
(even nonatomistically construed) external objects.
Vasubandhu then takes it that dreams disprove the
need for any notion of externality to explain
cognition, forgetting that the very notion of
externality (albeit a nonatomistic one, which is to
say, the notion with which the nonatomistic Advaitin
is concerned) which he questions is one he himself
gained only from waking experience. This criticism
of Vasubandhu would not, of course, establish the
externality of objects as the source of
veridicality. If the Advaitin claims that it does,
he would indeed beg the question himself. But the
Advaitin argues only for the requirement that there
be a conception of externality so that the
conditions under which experience occurs may be
explicated.
9. The Extent and Limitations of Transcendental
Arguments for an Extrinsic Order. `Sa^nkara's
criticism of the Vij~naanavaadin's denial of
externality, then, is based not on any proof of that
externality, but on the analysis of the conditions
under which there is presentation of objects to
cognition. Clearly, `Sa^nkara takes his commitment
to an extrinsic order to be established in some way
because of the structure of representation in
cognition. This may, I suggest, be equivalent to the
claim that the order of objects is constrained by
cognition for the Advaitin. The constraint is: the
order of objects must possess the characteristics it
does because that is what would explain why the
cognitive order is constituted the way it is by
representation of an arrangement of objects. Objects
are part of the extrinsic order, in the way they are
conceived to be, to the extent that the experience
of them can be accounted for in this way.
`Sa^nkara now has the Vij~naanavaadin claim a
nonempirical reason for his rejection of externality
(and by extension, the extrinsic nature of
P.434
objects). The Vij~naanavaadin says that he came to
the conclusion that there is nothing extrinsic to
the cognitive faculty because it is just not
possible for objects to exist, that is, to be
external entities. Presumably, this is based on the
consideration that if there is both a correlative
occurrence of perception and its object, and a real
distinction between them, then nothing could
adequately explain how these distinct entities--a
concept-loaded perception and a complexly propertied
object--are correlated invariably and systematically
as they are in veridical cognition (for, remember,
Vasubandhu thinks that if that object were an
atomistically constituted one, then the nature of
the perception of it would not be explicable).
`Sa^nkara's reply is not about the legitimacy of
the claim that no object could possibly exist
externally. His answer is best seen as an implicit
criticism of arguments based on 'transcendent'
reasoning: reasoning not legitimized by the
possibility of confirmation through cognitive grasp.
The criticism is that the Buddhist does not pay
attention to what experience presents, concerning
himself instead with an explanation based on what he
thinks experience must present (namely, a false
sense of extrinsic existence). Now it is doubtful if
the Buddhist always argues this way; the problem
with Vasubandhu only seems to be his interpretation
of the conditions of experience. However, it must be
admitted that the polemical writings do show this
tendency; for example, Vasubandhu says, in the
Madhyaanta-vibhaaga-kaarikaa: "The nonexistent is
imagined."(72) where there is no particular argument
to back up the claim. But then again the Advaitins
themselves are hardly miserly with polemical
statements. Be that as it may, this criticism should
more properly be interpreted as a pretext for
`Sa^nkara to state his own view on the relation
between the material of experience and systematic
epistemic activity.
The possibility or impossibility of the
occurrence of entities is determined in
accordance with the applicability or
nonapplicability of the system of validation
[the pramaa.nas], but the applicability or
nonapplicability of the system of validation is
not ascertained in accordance with the
[postulated] possibility or impossibility [of
the occurrence of entities].(73)
It is possible that that occurs which is
accessible through any one of the instruments of
valid cognition, such as perception; and that
which is not accessible through any of those
instruments of validation, it is impossible that
it exists.(74)
It is cunning of `Sa^nkara to accuse the idealist of
ignoring the constraint from cognition, when it is
the idealist who most wishes to deny any
entities--like atoms--which do not form the content
of the representations of the cognitive faculty; and
yet, it does seem justified. The Buddhist may wish
to deny that anything more than the content of
cognition is available to the subject, and that
therefore there is nothing more to the
P.435
conception of the objects of experience than that
content. But the content of cognition also provides
the subject with the conception of the externality
of these objects. To subordinate the presence of
that latter conception to the desired conclusion
derived from the former conception seems dishonest
to the Advaitin. The application of the system of
validation leads to the availability and requisite
acceptance of a proper (presumably nonatomistic)
conception of externality. To deny that (just
because one particular conception, the atomistic
one, seems problematic) is to transgress the rule
that one should not tailor the system of validation
to the ideological postulation of what is possible
and what is not. This is more than just a criticism
of the Buddhist; it is one arm of Advaitic
metaphysics. The order of objects is the one upon
which the system of validation is operative. Member
elements form the objects of epistemic claims which
can be validated or invalidated by the use of the
pramaa.nas. If claims were made that there are
certain objects or, in general, an order of objects,
and these claims cannot be validated by use of the
pramaa.nas, then it cannot be claimed that there are
such objects. From the available textual material,
it seems safe to say that this should mean that
there cannot be any epistemic activity if claims are
about entities taken as inaccessible to cognitive
grasp. It is wise not to read into this the claim
that `Sa^nkara says that only what is cognized is in
some sense 'real'. This latter interpretation would
be at odds with his hostility to the
perception-bound doctrine of the Buddhists.
We then come to what is effectively the other
arm of Advaita metaphysics (in the area which
concerns us here).
External objects are made accessible to all the
appropriate instruments of validation.(75)
This is crucial to `Sa^nkara's thesis. The analysis
of dreams is meant to establish the point that that
analogy does not work well enough to explain
experience without recourse to at least some
conception of externality. The critique of the dream
analogy has led to the expression of the role of the
pramaa.nas: (a) they work as a system of validation,
and (b) that system implies a constraint on the
cognized order. Now he claims that the very elements
of the cognitive order are characterized by the
fulfillment of two conditions:
(i) There is no representation in
(cognitive) content of an object if there is
no such requisite object.(76)
(ii) The externality of objects is simply (what
is) perceived.(77)
The second condition is important, for `Sa^nkara
argues that the conception of externality itself
cannot be argued away; there must be an explanation
for this ineliminable datum of experience. He does
not seem to think (it is sometimes unclear how much
of a realist he took himself to be) that he has
derived a proof that there must be an independent
P.436
extrinsic order in the realist manner. But it does
seem as if he is certain that experience cannot be
anything at all as systematic as is required for the
application of the system of validation, without
accounting for this sense of externality. And given
this feeling, it is clear that condition (i) must be
interpreted causally. That is to say, though there
is a correlation of cognition and object, they are
not ontologically identical. From the fact that when
there is cognition that there is an object, and
cognition includes a representation of that object
as extemal to it, it can be concluded that it is by
virtue of there being such an object that there is
the cognition of it. It should be noted that
`Sa^nkara once more adheres to the nonrealist line
on the conception of the extrinsic order. Such a
conception is not the same as the one Vasubandhu
rejects in,the Vim`satika, where he argues that
causal regularity is a feature of dreams as well.
`Sa^nkara's answer, in effect, is yes--but from that
it does not follow that causal regularity is not a
feature of (waking) experience; and the illusion of
regularity in dreams has itself to be explained,
especially when it has been shown that the
conception of the nature of experience is a
prerequisite for the understanding of the illusion
of experience in dreams.
The claim that is defended is that there needs
to be a distinction as described by the Advaitin.
`Sa^nkara says,
[So] it has to be admitted that the regularity
of the correlative appearance of cognition and
its object is due to a relation of means and the
goal, and not due to identity.(78)
Objects are just those entities toward which
cognition is directed; consequently, cognition and
objects are correlated because it is for the purpose
of grasping objects that there is cognition. With
this we conclude our discussion of `Sa^nkara's
critique of Buddhist idealism. He has attempted to
show that an account of experience and cognition
cannot dispense with the conception of an extrinsic
order: he is a 'realist' to the Buddhist idealist.
But this is only half the picture. In the next
section, we will consider what it is that makes the
Advaitin a nonrealist just as much as he is an
anti-idealist. The issue is best brought out in the
way the Advaitin accepts the analogy of dreams in a
certain way, even if it is not the way the Buddhist
does.
III
For the sake of historical accuracy, it should
be noted that `Sa^nkara was intent on establishing,
through scriptural interpretation and argument about
the legitimacy of scriptural testimony, the
existence of an `ultimate reality' (paaramaarthika
sattaa), the attainment of which is liberation
(mok`sa.h). My interpretation of the dream analogy
should not be taken as a denial of the importance of
his soteriological concerns. The attitude here is
that it is possible to examine the epistemological
and
P.437
certain metaphysical concerns of `Sa^nkara's which
place the philosophical emphases elsewhere, without
doing a disservice to the understanding of Advaita.
As such, the specific issue of the use of the dream
analogy leads up to the Upani.sadic doctrine of
liberation, but I shall be reading the text for that
part of the argument which does not lose its
legitimacy even if the scriptural underpinning is
not considered, and the purely metaphysical issue
alone is attended to. Perhaps, for one familiar with
the attitudes of the Indian philosophers, this is
one example of the coexistence of soteriological and
analytic concerns which characterizes so many Indian
texts.
1. The Legitimacy of the Analogy of Dreams. it has
been pointed out by Ingalls that despite accusations
that `Sa^nkara's views were not profoundly different
from those of the Buddhists he criticized, the fact
is that there are substantial differences between
the two.(79) Ingalls notes the fact that "`Sa^nkara
did not begin by denying the reality of the workaday
world..." (emphasis Ingalls'). He thought, instead,
as we have seen, that "the Buddhists completely
reversed this process." In this regard, Ingalls
comments(80) that Bhaaskara is misguided in
thinking(81) that `Sa^nkara implicitly adopts the
Buddhist position that dreams prove the nonexternal
nature of the world. Ingalls points out that while
his followers did slip into such arguments,
`Sa^nkara himself did not. He admits that even
though `Sa^nkara argues as a realist against the
Vij~naanavaadin, he also uses the argument from
dreams himself. Ingalls does not think that that
makes him inconsistent or hypocritical. He points
out that `Sa^nkara does not explicitly reject the
`realist' argument against the dream analogy, as he
would have to if he were an idealist. This does, of
course, still leave open the question of why he did
use the argument from dreams himself. We will
attempt to answer this question now. Nevertheless,
there is a valuable insight to be gained from
Ingalls' comments, even if it is not immediately
obvious. `Sa^nkara argues both against the idealist
use of the dream analogy, and for its legitimacy,
which is to say he does not himself argue against
the realist argument against the dream analogy. This
indicates that the points he wanted to make in his
rejection of the idealist use of the analogy, and
his acceptance of the use of that analogy, are
different but complementary. It is their combination
which makes his views 'nonrealist'. Ingalls'
suggestion was that for historical and psychological
reasons to do with the long history of
Buddhist-Vedaantin rivalry, `Sa^nkara would not
knowingly have adopted a Buddhist position. This
will be a more purely philosophical argument.
The Advaitin's view of what is legitimate about
the dream analogy is that it raises the possibility
of not being able to apply a general epistemic rule.
That rule, call it [RC], is as follows.
[RC] to have veridical cognition is to be able
to know that the extrinsic order is one which is
accessible to the subject, such that the object
of this cogni-
P.438
tion can be construed to be a member of that
order, and therefore an object of knowledge.
The application of [RC] is not supposed to show that
objects "really" exist, if `"really" exists' means
'proved, without appeal to the nature of experience,
to exist as an object'. Yet the whole issue is held
to be about what '"really" exists' means. For the
Advaitin, if an object "'really" exists', that means
something like that it is 'proved that the object
would have to exist if the experience of it is to
possess the features that it (the experience of that
object) does'. Notice that as far as the
metaphysical question is concerned, the Advaitin
would only be prepared to give a transcendental
argument about the conditions required for
experience, rather than a transcendent description
of the putative objects of the universe. Given this
disagreement about the nature of physical reality,
the question takes the form, not of whether objects
"really" exist, but of what can be the correct
explanation of the notion "'really" exists'.
What do dreams show, and what is the relevance
of what is shown? In waking life, one is defined as
knowing that there are no objects located and
individuated as presented in dreams. But it is not
known at the instance of dreaming that there are no
objects individuated as presented. The fact that
experiences in a dream are mere misperceptions is
not grasped by one in a dream.(82) It is therefore
not known while dreaming that one does not have
access to the extrinsic order. Of course one is held
to know that there is no access to an extrinsic
order in dreams because one knows that there is
access to such an order while awake. Given this
sense of 'know', it is clear that one has to be
awake to grasp what it is to dream and not have
access to an extrinsic order. But one does not know
while dreaming that there is no access; one knows
when awake that one does not know in a dream that
there is no extrinsic order. But the point has
already been proved. Knowledge of failure to cognize
the extrinsic order is available only in cognition
(when awake) relative to another cognition (while
dreaming). Relative to what is it that it is known
that there is an extrinsic order cognized while
awake? After all,
cognition with the stamp of conviction, supposed
to be attained through veridical perception,
does occur before waking, to an ordinary man
when he is asleep and sees things high and
low.(83)
What it comes down to is that there can be neither a
presumption that there is no independent extrinsic
order nor proof that there must be such an
independent order. So the logical possibility of an
uncognized order cannot be ruled out, and that is
what dreams eventually lead us to think. But does
this mean that the cognitive life may be an illusory
one, just because it cannot be ruled out that there
can be a currently uncognized order, just because
there are limits to empirical inquiry?
P.439
`Sa^nkara had argued in the critique of
Vij~naanavaada that any conception of what it is to
fail to be presented with objects (as in dreams) is
parasitic on the conception of what it is to be
presented with objects (when awake). Also, the
conception of a presentation of extrinsic objects is
an inelimnable constituent of the content of
experience. The system of validation, which the
pramaa.nas comprise, is derived from the structure
of the cognized order itself. Validity consists in
the justified procession of the representation of
the causal object (which is an element of the
cognized order), and the system of validation makes
available to cognition that justification by which a
cognition is determined to be valid For example, it
is the tree being green and tall that causes me to
see it as green and tall; but I can claim truly to
have seen--and thus know something about--that tree
only by being able to say of it that the tree I saw
was green and tail. So, being able to perceive the
tree (where perception is an instrument of pramaa)
is both the cause of my representation of it, and
the justification I give for claiming to represent
it veridically. Therein lies the regularity of
cognition, based as it is on the nature of its
objects.
Although the regularity of the cognitive order
is dependent upon the regularity of the cognized
order, the notion of the regularity of the cognized
order is derived from the regularity of the
cognitive order itself. This is a virtuous circle
that the Advaitin does not wish to break, and cannot
see how it can be broken. Returning to dreams: they
are held to be cases of erroneous cognition. That is
to say, we are able to apply the standards of
validity to dreams and find them invalid. Underlying
this judgment is the asymmetry between the dream and
the waking states, which I have called a relational
dissimilarity. Herein lies the explanation for our
understanding of the notion of invalidity, and of
the invalidity of dreams in particular.
For someone having cognitive activity while
dreaming, being bitten by a snake and bathing in
water are events perceived to occur. Should it
be argued that it is not true that such events
[as the perception of these occurrences] occur,
this is the reply: though it is not true that
the actual events such as being bitten by a
snake or bathing occur, there is comprehension
that such occurrences as illusory perception did
take place, for such awareness is not superseded
even when one is awake. For even when one knows
after waking up that the perception of events
like being bitten by a snake and bathing in
water were false, surely, one does not consider
it false that one had knowledge of illusory
perception.(84)
This is the essential point about dreams and the
invalidation of cognitions. Dreams are not
self-contained. Invalidation, as of dream cognition,
is possible only because there is a system of
validation, and the system of validation is
available only because of the content of waking
experience.
P.440
2. Two Conclusions from the Advaitic Use of the
Dream Analogy and Their Consequences. This leaves us
with two conclusions. (1) There can be cognitive
states purporting to represent an extrinsic order
even without any knowledge that there is an
extrinsic order. That is because there can be no
knowledge that there is an extrinsic order in
dreams, for no extrinsic order is presented in
dreams for any knowledge of that order to be
possible then; but there can be dream states. If
that is so, there is no general proof that there
cannot be a cognitive order which fails [RC] in the
realist sense. It cannot be ruled out that there
cannot be some other order of reality which is not
normally (currently) cognized. (2) The conception of
veridicality is dependent on the content of
experience itself.
Conclusion (2) is the backbone of the argument
that though we can discount dreams because we are
able to judge that no extrinsic world is involved in
it, we can so judge only because we have standards
for that judgment (the system of validation) derived
from experience-experience, that is, whose content
is explicable only in terms of a presented extrinsic
world. So if we use 'know' at all, we do so by
virtue of our experience of an extrinsic world.
Conclusion (1) is more complex. The realist, who
thinks that the extrinsic world is the sole and
determinate real order, must stand by the
requirement that cognition obey [RC] in a 'realist'
way; that is, the order of objects of which
experience is claimed is an order established to
exist independently of the nature of experience. The
Advaitic argument is that one cannot discount the
possibility of cognition failing to meet [RC] in the
realist sense. If there is an absence of proof that
there must be nothing other than the extrinsic world
(for that is what is meant by 'sole and determinate
real order'), then the possibility that there may be
a reality other than this extrinsic world cannot be
discounted.
In dreaming, we have no proof that the
'experience' we have cannot 'give way' to some other
sort of experience. When awake, we do see, by _ the
argument from (2), that that inability to present
proof of a sole and determinate dream world was
founded on the fact that there is an order or
reality to which we had no access while dreaming,
and that there is an experience (that of the
extrinsic world) to which dreaming 'gives way'. Now
confronted with our inability to prove that our
experience of the extrinsic world is the experience
of a sole and determinate reality, we must consider
the possibility of whether this inability is in turn
founded on there being an order of reality to which
we have no current access while awake, an order the
experience of which -our current experience could
'give way' to.
Can experience In the waking state be
invalidated for this reason? The Advaitin thinks
not. For the fact is that validity is a conception
which is available only insofar as there is
experience under conditions requiring the existence
of that extrinsic order which explains the current
structure
P.441
of experience. There is no proof that there is an
extrinsic order other than that it is required to
explain experience. But just for that reason, there
is no proof that there is a system of validation
other than that it explains the regularities of what
is currently experienced. The notion of validity is
available only because experience is in fact this
way, and is just of this extrinsic world. If there
were a state asymmetrically related to the waking
state, then its existence could not render cognitive
life invalid in any sense in which we use the term.
The precondition for the application of the system
of validity is the availability to experience of
that extrinsic order which is required if the
content of experience is to be what it is. If there
is an order of reality which is possibly
inaccessible to current experience, it would not be
the order which validates or invalidates that
experience. What would be the case if, say, there
were indeed to be another hitherto unexperienced
order and it is then 'experienced' (or there is some
analogous contract)? The answer is that it would
entail some `system of validation' (or some
analogous regularity-extracting system) which cannot
be said to possess the same sense of validation that
is currently available. After all, it is not as if
there is regular interanimation between this state
and the empirical one such as the one available
between dreams and the empirical state. Of course,
because of their belief in the authority of the
scriptures, the Advaitins do claim that there is an
'ultimate' experience of realization
(brahmaanubhava) which would not be recognizable, or
even describable, from current empirical states
(that is, experience). But simply for the reason
given, they also insist that the legitimacy of
experience as it is known in this world cannot be
denied, in the sense that there is no meaningful
construal of invalidation that can be given in that
case.
Empirical practice, conforming to all the
instruments of validation, cannot be discounted
unless some other 'order of reality' is
realized; for unless there is such an exception,
the general rules obtain.(85)
This is by no means a clear position. The greatest
uncertainty perhaps attaches to the issue of what
should be made of the cognitive constraint on the
system of validation. The reason for the problem,
apart from the purely exegetical one of not having
sufficient information in the text, is based on this
consideration: as part of its steadfast opposition
to the Buddhist theory that we somehow construct the
objects of cognition, Advaita seems to reject the
notion that physical reality is, in however
sophisticated a manner, precisely our construction.
Instead it seems to say that we cannot in fact think
other than as we do because how we think is derived
from how we have experience, and how we have
experience cannot be explained unless there is an
extrinsic order from which how we think is derived.
Yet what that extrinsic order is, we cannot say,
other than through whatever experience we have, and
therefore on the
P.442
basis of how we think. This leads the Advaitin to
combine two theses. One is that there could be an
order of reality which is not the one explained as
constituting a condition for the occurrence of
current experience. The other is that we cannot be
wrong about what we experience because what can be
wrong is something we can say only about what is
experienced, for wrongness is derived from what is
cognitively or experientially available.(86)
3.Securing the Extrinsic trough Transcendental
Argument: `Sa^nkara and Kant. The hypothesis
that we may lack all veridical contact with an
extrinsic order of reality may be advanced on the
basis of the admission that although we possess a
system of validation and a notion of invalidity,
there may be no experience of that order which alone
can render cognition valid. In rebuttal, however, we
may say that it is not clear how the conception of
invalidity, which is parasitic on the content of
experience, can be applied to the regulative basis
of this supposed order which is ex hypothesi not
experienced. If we understand the hypothesis because
we understand the notions of validity and
invalidity, we do so precisely because we have the
sort of experience we have. It would be
unintelligible to suppose that there can be any such
order, failure to cognize which renders cognitive
life invalid.
Alternatively, the hypothesis can be advanced
that there may be an unexperienced order of reality
and that that possibility cannot be dismissed. In
that case. the answer could be that that order
cannot be what constitutes the grounds for validity
or invalidity, because what is available as the
conception of validity is coextensive with what is
experienced. Therefore, there may be an
unexperienced order, but it would not affect the
validation or invalidation of cognition.
Albeit with much caution, some resemblance
between `Sa^nkara's strategy of tying the nature of
ordinary experience to the objects of experience and
Kant's must be mentioned. In the "Transcendental
Deduction, "(87) Kant asks what the objects of
representation are. On the one hand, they are
'nothing but sensible representations' and therefore
cannot be capable of existing outside the 'power of
representation'. But on the other hand, we speak of
objects as distinct from, yet answering to, our
concepts of them. The concept of what these objects
are comes from the experience of a systematic order
of perceptions, that is, the representation of these
objects. That is to say, the nature of experience is
such that that nature (of systematic interconnected
perceptions) gives us the ground for holding that
experience is of an order extrinsic to cognition of
them. Something has been said about what `Sa^nkara
requires of the cognition of objects, and the
systematic complex that he requires surely looks
like the sort of interconnectedness Kant talks
about. There is, of course, more to this in Kant
Having shown in the "Aesthetic" that
p.443
time and space are the forms of 'inner' and 'outher'
sensibility, he thinks that the representation of an
object in sense is nothing other that of what
appears to us. Objects as perceived, therefore, are
mere representations, not what they are without the
imposition of space and time on the representation
of them, thought this space, in itself "a mere form
of representation, has objective reality." There
must, however, be an object which corresponds to our
sensible knowledge of it, which is necessary to
prevent knowledge through the interconnected nature
of our experience "from being haphazard or
arbitrary": the thing-in-itself, the object x,
distinct from the representation of it and "nothing
to us." As emerges in the "Paralogism of ideality"
(in the first edition), and in the section on
dialectical inferences, this combination of sensible
representation and things in themselves is crucial
to the critique of idealism. Now, `Sa^nkara's claim
that there is no doubt that the content of
experience includes the representation of external
objects parallels that of Kant. Kant talks of
representated objects as those things "the
immediate perception [consciousness] of which is at
the same time sufficient proof of their
reality."(88) Further, in the intention that the
role of objects in the regulation of the cognitive
order and the inherent externality of objects of
experience must be used against their opponents, the
two are like-minded. But everything else looks
different.
Obviously, there is nothing in `Sa^nkara like
the categories, nothing like inner and outer sense.
His strategy is different as well. Kant's contention
that there is an immediate experience of external
objects is directed at the sort of
representationalist he calls the "transcendental
realist who....plays the part of empirical
idealist." The point that the representation of
objects in experience is of objects that are indeed
experienced is made in order to dismiss the view
that objects are merely inferred from the subject's
access to the core of perception alone. Kant's aim
is to counter the conclusion that it is uncertain
whether experience is directly of external objects.
`Sa^nkara's point, on the other hand, is aimed
primarily at what Kant would call a dogmatic
idealist who claims that external objects do not
exist. This aim of Kant's has to do with a more
serious point of divergence. Kant, after all, wants
to give an assurance that what is experienced must
be what is real, in that it is a requirement of his
metaphysical project that the order of objects must
be the one which causes experience. Which is why, of
course, things-in-themselves are central to his
position. Strawson has noted(89) that, in the
"Deduction" as elsewhere, Kant's thesis depends on a
perception which results in sensible
representations, but representations whose
regularity must be determined by the things which
have to be the way they are, even if how they are in
themselves cannot be known. Strawson contends that
there is no need to rely on a notion of a 'real'
order of independent objects, for which sensible
objects are a surrogate. It is quite enough to
accept that "this
p. 444
conception would be empty unless experience contained
such a ground for it as it does in that connectedness
which makes possible the employment of ordinary
empirical concepts of objects."(90) This is the
well-known deflationary reinterpretation of Kant,
which has been both defended and attacked, and I
shall not go into its plausibility. However, it
should be noted that, in a very important way, if
Kant is to be interpreted rather than reinterpreted,
then certainly the thing-in-itself is central to his
position. As he himself sets up the issue, dispensing
with them would push his position toward the sort of
idealism which depends on the world being somehow
constructed by spontaneous, subjective concepts or
out of phe nomenalistic entities. Both are offered as
views he actually held but, as with `Sa^nkara, only
by ignoring his hostility to that sort of idealism.
Things-in-themselves seem to have explanatory value
as regulators of perception in that judgments on
appearance must be in agreement with them; the matter
of the unverifiability of their nature cannot
discount their conceptual importance without an
extremely strong empiricist interpretation of
verifiability.(91) That is entirely in keeping with
Kant's own view that the problem with empiricism is
its refusal to go beyond the merely presented, and
involves the Kantian strategy of postulating just
what must be the case if the empirically available is
to be explained. It is controversial, then, whether
Kant, in postulating an order of
things-in-themselves, transgresses the limits he
himself sets.
Be that as it may, both the Kantian and the
Strawsonian strategies are concerned with stopping
skepticism about knowledge of an external order. But
the antiskeptical strategy is seen in both instances
as consisting of an argument which allows an external
order to determine, in one way or another, the
regularities of experience (this depends on giving
Kant the benefit of the doubt about his views on the
nonsubjective source of the concepts of objects);
that experienced order is the real (that is, the
veridically experienceable) order apart from which
there can be none other, and therefore experience
cannot be other than what it is.
Now, `Sa^nkara has nothing like a theory of
things-in-themselves. His view of presented objects
is altogether more austere than Kant's. He simply
believes that experience can only be explained in
terms of the apprehension of extrinsic objects, and
that, beyond the availability of a theory dependent
on that apprehension, there is no independent proof
that there must be such objects. He is in agreement
with the Kantian view that everything depends on the
nature of experience in the explication of the nature
of an extrinsic order of objects. He is nearer
Strawson in not seeking a hidden order of objects,
instead being content with there being such an order
as is experienced. But transcendental arguments of
the Kant-Strawson sort play a much more modest role
in `Sa^nkara's scheme of things. Experience as it
currently is cannot consist of anything other than an
extrinsic order if it is to exhibit the regularities
it
P.445
does and the systematic epistemic activity it
affords. But that cannot show that there must be
just that extrinsic order and that there must be
just this experience alone. These cannot be
guaranteed.
Either transcendental arguments do only what a
nonrealist takes them to do, and show that
experience can be accounted for the way it is only
if an extrinsic order consistent with the systematic
nature of that experience is postulated, or they can
go beyond experience in some manner by yielding
conclusions about how things are. But if
transcendental arguments actually involve the nature
of experience as the fundamental ground for
explication, any such argument will be tainted by
the nature of that experience and will not say
anything more than that experience allows that that
is how things are. It cannot, of course, merely be
presumed that there is no proof of an extrinsic
order or a world which accounts for how things are
independently of experience; but no such proof is at
hand. There may be proof that there can be an
independent order but would this show that it is
just that which is currently experienced? So long as
the material of experience is central to an
argument, the nonrealist will feel unsure about the
likelihood of anything more than what he has shown.
Perhaps there can be proof without experience, one
that would involve God, for example. But that is
another question altogether. And this is where
`Sa^nkara is so different from either Kant or
Strawson. He will not guarantee that the currently
experienced order is the independent extrinsic one,
only that such an order would explain why experience
reveals the system it naturally does. If any system
is available at all, it is one which is available
through the nature of experience as it is.
4. The Advaitin's Nonrealism. The conclusions we
examined earlier--(1) and (2) in part 13--thus
amount to this: there is no other notion of what it
is to have systematic experience than the one
available from that extrinsic order which is itself
currently available to experience. But because of
all that has gone before, it cannot be proved that
this must be the sole order of reality.
This is where the `Sa^nkarite wants to be for
soteriological reasons. Here is why: he wants to
claim two things.
(i) The reality of Brahman is not the
experiential reality of the world; to
experience the world is not to experience
the reality which is Brahman.
(ii) But at the same time, experience of the
world is not, at the time of experience,
illegitimate/invalid.
The usual challenge is to say that these are
contradictory theses. If Brahman is the reality,
then current experience is invalid. If current
experience has valid standards, then it cannot be
cancelled out in relation to Brahman.
P.446
The Advaitic strategy, then, is to secure a way
of combining these theses. The Advaitin must show
that
(i') Current experience is not of the sole and
determinate reality;
(ii') but the standards for the validation of
current experience are legitimate.
If (i') is correct, then it would be possible at
least to make the claim that experience of the world
does not exhaust what there is in reality, such that
the possibility of experiencing some other order of
reality-Brahman--can be entertained. If (ii') can be
defended, then the worry that all current experience
is somehow meaningless or empty--a skeptical and
self-defeating stance par excellence--can be met,
and accusations of self-refutation themselves
refuted.
Our reconstruction of `Sa^nkara's arguments
leaves us with two moves:
(i*) Nothing that is available in our
experience, that is to say, no knowledge
claim which can meet the standards of the
pramaa.nas, allows us to claim that what is
currently experienced can never be
invalidated. This is the real lesson of the
analogy of dreams. Dreams teach us that even
with a consistent system for the validation
of knowledge claims, nothing in what is
experienced will allow of the noninvalidable
assertion that what is currently experienced
is the sole and determinate reality.
Consequently, the soteriological claim, that
this world is indeed subsumed by the reality
of Brahman, cannot be gainsaid so easily.
(ii*) The system for the validation of claims
arising from experience itself derives its
authority from what is experienced. This
was what; the analysis of the pramaa.na
theory taught us. The system of validation
is legitimately applicable so long as that
to which it is applied is the very same
experienced world from which the system's
authority is derived. Since the prama~a
theory is understood in just, this way--as
being about the world from which its causal
authority is derived--the legitimacy of the
theory is limited to the currently
experienced world. If all claims are valid
or invalid because they succeed in or fail
the tests of the pramaa.na theory (the
system of validation), the validity of
experiential claims is circumscribed by
their being about the world that is
experienced. The reality putatively behind
the world would be legitimately and
coherently known only according to
standards derived from it, but these
standards--the standards of yogis and
realized souls--are currently unavailable
to ordinary subjects.
It is clear that (i*) addresses the issue of
(i'), and (ii*) that of (ii'). Alternative (ii*)
also points to why nothing philosophical can be said
about the nature of the ultimate reality: the
standards required to know it are simply unavailable
to us because we have not experienced that reality.
On the other hand, we do have some sort of
experience, which
P.447
the transcendental argument has shown is possible
only if it accords with the pramaa.na theory, and the
claims to know which we make on the basis of that
theory are perfectly legitimate ones so long as they
are about the objects of this currently experienced
world.
This is why the epistemic modesty of the
Advaitin ultimately leads to a quite radical
conclusion about the possibility of an unexperienced
order which will nevertheless not render empirical
cognition invalid. From the point of view of the
Kantian tradition, this leaves it as a matter of
decision whether what results is a skeptical or an
antiskeptical view of reality.
Concluding Philosophical Remarks
This, then, is the essential Advaitic position
as I have sketched it and which I think most
defensible. It may be characterized as being realist
from an idealist point of view, idealist from a
realist point of view, and skeptical about both
points of view. It is realist beacuse it asserts
that the cognitive life can be explained only
through the conception of an extrinsic, rather than
a cognitively intrinsic, order. It is idealist
because it holds that there is no proof that there
must be an extrinsic order in whose absence there
would be no cognitive life. Instead, it asserts that
the existence of a systematic cognitive order can be
ascertained only because there are, in general,
objects of cognition. Therefore, even if it is
logically Possible that there is an uncognized order
of objects. such an uncognized order will not be the
determinant of the validity (or invalidity) of
current cognition. If there is a determinant of such
validation, it must be a cognized order. Advaita is
skeptical of the idealist attempt to deny an
extrinsic order. It maintains that the idealist
disregards the extent to which cognition can go,
namely, beyond the immediate or the particular
cognitive instance. This is because the idealist
merely presumes that there cannot be an extrinsic
order. Advaita is also skeptical of the realist
attempt to affirm the realist order. It maintains
that the realist disregards the constraint on
affirming anything about the extrinsic order.
namely, that it is from the structure of the
cognitive order that the conception of the extrinsic
order is obtained; and that in turn is because the
realist just presumes that there is an independent
extrinsic order.
NOTES
I dedicate this essay to the memory of my
supervisor, Professor Bimal Matilal. I would like to
thank Professor Timothy Sprigge and Dr. julius
Lipner for their helpful comments.
References cited are listed in the Selected
Bibliography. which follows these Notes.
P.448
1 - Matilal. Perception, p. 22.
2 - Citsukhaacaarya, Citsukhii.
3 - Jayaraa`si Bha.t.ta, Tatvopaplavasimha.
4 - adu.s.takaarakasandohotpaadyatva.
5 - baadharahitatva.
6 - Numbering according to Eli France. Perception,
Knowledge and Disbelief.
7 - Vaatsyaayayana, Nyaaya-Bhaa.sya.
8 - Harman, Thought pp. 130 ff.
9 - Goldman, "Causal Theory of Knowing, " pp.
357-372.
10 - Harman, Thought, pp. 130 ff.
11 - Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 783 (1st ed.),
B 811 (2d ed.).
12 - Strawson, Bounds of Sense, p. 271.
13 - Walker, Kant, pp. 21-22.
14 - Strawson, review of Transcendental Arguments
and Science, p. 50.
15 - Korner, Fundamental Questions of Philosophy, p.
215.
16 - I wish to thank an anonymous referee at
Philosophy East and West for bringing Korner's
writing on the subject to my attention.
17 - In construing transcendental arguments in this
way, I have left aside another significant way
in which the term `transcendental argument' can
be used: as the application of concepts to a
transcendent reality, concepts borrowed from
the "immanent" world of "supreme principles
governing... belief about the world of
intersubjectively interpreted experience," as
Stephan Korner puts it, in Metaphysics: Its
Structure and Function (p. 47). Korner argues
that philosophers of different kinds have
denied that such a conceptual grasp of reality
is possible: by skeptics who deny any
rationally justifiable grasp beyond subjective
experience, by "antimetaphysical mystics" who
hold such an application of concepts to be
wholly inadequate, and by "metaphysical
mystics" or "aesthetic metaphysicians" who
think that conceptual application is at best
metaphorical (p. 137).
18 - One further distinction must be mentioned: the
one between 'representation' and
`presentation'. The representation of an object
is what the subject 'makes' of that object
(with the ambiguity about the ontological
status of the object untouched). Representation
is thus the subject's ordering in cognition of
an object. The presentation of an object is the
location/orientation of the object itself, such
that it
P.449
is accessible to the cognitive grasp of the
subject. Presentation is therefore the ordering
of the object such that the subject can cognize
it. There can be representation even when there
is no presentation (for it may appear to the
subject that there is an object when there is
no object there).
19 - `Sa^nkara, Brahmasuutrabhaa.sya.
20 - lbid.
21 - More on this later; here I only wish to mention
the harmless step I take from the singular to
the plural so as to convey the sense of
continuity betokened by talk of the two orders.
22 - Before going any further, I must note that the
notion of super imposition was a controversial
one in the tradition. The issue broadly was
this: if there was a general requirement that
there be objects for there to be cognition, how
was error explained? More precisely, how was
the possibility of cognition without its
appropriate object (i.e., as in error)
reconciled with the general requirement? Allied
to this was another matter: a theory of how
error occurred would elucidate the relationship
between cognition and objects in general; if
so. any such theory would lead to its own
position on the nature of the cognized order of
objects and as such result in a thesis on the
metaphysical status of the world with regard to
its independence from or dependence on, the
order of experience. In Vaacaspati, we find a
discussion of error and superimposition as,
too, of the sort of metaphysical status that
consequently must be assigned to the order of
objects.
23 - prasiddho hy ayam bhokt.r-bhogya-vibhaago loke
bhoktaa cetana.h `saariiro bhogyaa.h
`sabdaadayo vi.sayaa iti (`Sa^nkara,
Brahmasuutrabhaa.sya II.i 13)
24 - Strawson, Bounds of Sense, p. 104 passim.
25 - This is not to deny that there may be
interesting ways of relating the svaprakaa`saa
thesis to the issue of a unified self, building
as one could on the formulations Matilal has
given regarding the views of the various
schools on the issue of self-awareness; see
Matilal, Perception, chap. 5.
26 - If the object were to be in the content of
cognition itself, then the idealist thesis that
objects are cognitive constructs would hold.
27 - Using `Sa^nkara, Brahmasuutrabhaa.sya II.ii.28,
pp. 552-553.
28 - (api ca) gha.taj~naana.m pa.taj~naana.m api
vi`se.sanayor eva gha.ta-pa.tayor bhedo na
vi`se.syasya j~naanasya yathaa `suklo gau.h
k.r.snor gour iti `sauklyakar.snyayor eva bhedo
na gotvasya, dvaabhyaa.m ca bhedaikasya
P.450
siddho bhavaty ekasmaat ca dvayo.h, tasmaad
arthaj~naanor bheda.h. tathaa gha.tadar`sana.m
gha.tasmara.nam ity atraapi pratipatdvaya.m
atraapi hi vi`se.syor eva dar`sana-smara.nayor
bhedo na vi`se.sanasya gha.tasya. yathaa
k`siiragandha.h k`siiraraseti vi`se.syayor eva
gandha-rasayor bhedo na vi`se.sanasya k`siirasy
etad iti (`Sa^nkara, Brahmasuutrabhaa.sya
II.ii.28).
29 - By dispositionality I mean the tendency/ability
of a subject to persist in taking some entity
to be a particular, e.g., the disposition on
the part of the subject to call that
four-legged thing a horse through remembering a
prior learning episode. The continuity implied
by condition (2) is thus a continuity between a
cognitive episode, where a four-legged creature
is identified as a horse, and the disposition
to continue to identify such a creature as a
horse. In this way, a cognitive element--a
horse-identifying episode'--becomes part of the
cognitive order or, better still, becomes an
ability to pick out certain other cognitive
instances as having a horse as the identified
object.
30- There is much in the literature on memory, but,
as with the issue of self-awareness to which it
is closely related, it is beyond the purview of
this essay.
31 - Of course, given the range of traditional
scriptural issues with which `Sa^nkara was
concerned, he has plenty of other opponents as
well whom he sees fit to criticize in the
Bhaa.sya, but we are not concerned with them
here.
32 - Matilal, Perception, p. 151.
33 - asat-kalpo `tra ka`scitta.m yatas tena hi
kalpyate yathaa ca kalpayaty artha.m
tathaatyanta.m na vidyate (Vasubandhu,
Trisvabhaavanirde`sa, verse 5; see also
Kochumuttam, Buddhist Doctrine of Experience).
34 - tatra ki.m khyaaty asatkalpa.h katha.m khyaati
dvayaatmanaa/tasya kaa naastitaa tena yaa
tatraa `dvayadharmataa (verse 4).
35 - Descartes, Philosophical Works, vol. 1, pp.
145-146.
36 - E.g., Nakhnikian, "Descartes' Dream Argument,"
p. 268.
37 - Cf. Kenny, Descartes: A Study, p. 25.
38 - Ryle, Dilemmas, pp. 94-95.
39 - Walker, Coherence Theory of Truth, p. 44.
40 - `Sa^nkara, Brahmasuutrabhaa.sya II.ii.11ff.
41 - Ibid., II.ii.28-32.
42 - satyapi baahye `rthe buddhyaaroham-antare.na
pramaa.naadi-vyavahaaraanavataaraat (ibid., p.
549).
P.451
43 - naasau j~naanagata-vi`se.samantare.nopapadyate ity
ava`sya.m vi.sayasaaruupya.m
j~naanasyaa^ngiikartavyam (ibid., pp. 549-550).
44 - Ingalls points out in "`Sa^mkara's Arguments
Against the Buddhists," that this argument is
found in the Pramaa.navini`scaya, which is
preserved only in the Tibetan. It is also
partly found in the Pramaa.navaarttika II.354.
45 - vinaiva baahyenaarthena graahya-graahakaakaaraa
bhavanti (`Sa^nkara, Brahmasuutrabhaa.sya,
p.550).
46 - evam jaagarita-gocaraa api stambhaadi-pratyayaa
bhavitumarhantiity avagamyate (ibid.).
47 - Verse 2.
48 - Perhaps 'indexation' would be an appropriate
translation, as there is a sense of the
definition of an event like a cognitive episode
on the basis of its being determined by the time
and the place in which it occurred.
49 - I say 'subjective order' so as to indicate the
Buddhist bundle theory of self, which
characterizes `individuals' as 'streams
(santaana) of consciousness'.
50 - Verse 3.
51 - na sarvatra; tatraiva ca de`sa.h kadaacid
d.r`syate, na sarvakaalam iti. siddho vinaa
`pyarthena de`sa-kaala-niyama.h (Vi.m`satikaa,
prose section of verse 3, p. 20).
52 - Verse 4.
53 - Verses 4-5, and prose sections.
54 - sm.rtilopaadikaa anye.saam (svapna-dar`sana~n
ca) pi`saacaadi-manova`saat (verse 19).
55 - Putnam, Reason, Truth and History, chap. 1.
56 - E.g.. Nozick, Philosophical Explanations, pp.
167 ff.
57 - sahopalambha-niyamaad abhedo niilataddhiyo.h/
bheda`s ca bhraantivij~naanair d.r.syetendaav
ivaadvaye (traced to the
Pramaa.navini`scaya and the Pramaa.navaarttika
by de la Valee Poussin [Museon, 1901]; see
Ingalls, "`Sa^mkara's Arguments," p. 300 n.
16).
58 - Cf. Dharmakiirti, Pramaa.navaarttika,
Pratyak`sa pariccheda, verse 389; and Matilal,
Logic, Language and Reality, pp. 238, 252-253.
59 - upalabhyate hi pratipratyaya.m baahyo `rtha.h
(`Sa^nkara, Brahmasuutrabhaa.sya, pp. 550-551).
60 - nopalabhyamaanasyaivaabhaavo bhavitum arhati
(ibid.).
P.452
61 - tadvad indriyasannikar.se.na svayam
upalabhamaana eva baahya.m artha.m naaha.m
upalabhe na ca so `sti iti bruuvan katham
upaadeyavacana.h syaat (ibid., p. 551).
62 - yathaa hi ka`scid bhu~njaano bhujisaadhyaayaa.m
t.rptau svayam anubhuuyamaanaayaam eva.m
bruuyaan naaha.m bhu~nje na vaa
t.rpyaamiiti(ibid.).
63 - See part 6 above.
64 - ata`s caivam eva sarve laukikaa upalabhante
yatpratyaacak`saa.naa api baahyaartham eva
vyaacak`sate "yad antarj~neyaruupa.m tad
bahirvada-vaabhaasata" iti (`Sa^nkara,
Brahmasuutrabhaa.sya, p.551).
65 - Di^nnaaga, AAlambanapariik.saa, in Tola and
Dragonetti, "Di^nnaaga's
AAlambanaparik.saa-v.rtti," pp. 126-127.
66 - tasmaad yathaanubhava.m tattvam
abhyupagacchadbhir bahirevaavab haasata ity
uktam abhyupagantu.m na tu bahir vad
avabhaasata iti (`Sa^nkara,
Brahmasuutrabhaa.sya, p. 551).
67 - `Sa^nkara, Brahmasuutrabhaa.sya II.ii.29.
68 - Ibid., III.ii.3.
69 - tatraiva.m sati na `sakyate vaktu.m mithyaa
jaagaritopalabdhir upalabdhitvaat
svapnopalabdhivad iti ubhayor antara.m svayam
anubhavata a na ca svaanubhavaapalaapa.h
praaj~namaanibhiryukta.h kartum (ibid.,
ll.ii.29, p. 556).
70 - api caanubhavavirodhaprasa^ngaat jaagarita-pratyayaanaa.m
svato niraalambatam vaktum a`saknuvataa
svapnapratyaya-saadharmyaad
vaktumi.syate(ibid.).
71 - na hi (ca? ) yo yasya svato dharmo na
sa.mbhavati so `nyasya saadharmyaat tasya
sambhavi.syati(ibid.).
72 - abhuuta-parikalpito `sti (1.2) ; cf.
Trisvabhaavanirde`sa, verse 2: yatha khyati sa
kalpitah (that which appears [is
presented/perceived] is imagined).
73 - pramaa.na-prav.rttyaaprav.rttipuurvakau
sa.mbhavaasa.mbhavaavadhaaryete na puna.h
sa.mbhavaasa.mbhava-puurvike
pramaa.na-prav.rttyaaprav.rttii (`Sa^nkara,
Brahmasuutrabhaa.sya, pp. 551-552).
74 - yaddhi pratyak`saadiinaam anyatamenaapi
pramaa.nenopalabhyate tat sa.mbhavati, yat tu
na kenacid api pramaa.nenopalabhyate tan na
sa.mbhavati(ibid.).
75 - sarvaireva pramaa.nai.h baahyo `rtha
upalabhyamaana.h (ibid., p. 552).
76 - asati vi.saye vi.sayasaaruupyaanupapatte.h(ibid.).
77 - bahir upalabdhe`s ca vi.sayasya (ibid.).
P.453
78 - ata eva sahopalambhaniyamo 'pi
pratyayavi.sayayor upaayopeyabhaavahetuko
naabhedahetuka ity abhyupagantavyam (ibid.).
79 - Ingalls, "`Sa^mkara's Arguments."
80 -Ibid., p. 302.
81 - In his own work, also called the
Brahmasuutrabhaa.sya.
82 - na ca pratyak`saabhaasaabhipraaya.h tat kaale
bhavati (`Sa^nkara, Brahmasuutrabhaa.sya
II.i.14,p.467).
83 - suptasya praak.rtasya janasya svapne
ucchaavacaan bhaavaan pa`syato ni`scitam eva
pratyak`saabhimata.m vij~naana.m bhavati praak
prabodhaat(ibid).
84 - svapna-dar`sanaavasthasya ca
sarpada.m`sanodakasnaanaadi-kaarya-dar`sanaat.
tatkaaryam-api an.rtam eveti ced bruuyaat, atra
bruuma.h: yadyapi svapna-dar`sanaavasthasya
sarpad.m`sanodakasnaanaadi-kaarya.m an.rta.m
tathaapi tadavagati.h satyam eva phala.m;
pratibuddhasyaapyabaadhyamaanatvaat. nahi
svapnaadutthita.h svapnad.r.s.ta.m
sarpada.m`sanodakasnaanaadi-kaarya.m mithyeti
manyamaanas tad-avagatim api mithyeti manyate
ka`scid (ibid., II.i.14, p. 568).
85 - nahi aya.m sarva-prama.na-siddho lokavyavahaaro
`nyat tattvam-anadhigamya `sakyate `pahnotum
apavaadaabhaava utsarga-prasiddhe.h (ibid.,
II.ii.31, p. 558).
86 - Cf. Korner, Fundamental Questions of
Philosophy, p- 219: "It is possible that man
will one day apprehend the world in a manner
which is as different from what we call
'thinking' as is our thinking when compared
with the manner in which, say, an earthworm
apprehends his environment. I have no
conception of what such super-thinking might
be. But what is inconceivable to me may
nevertheless be possible."
87 - Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (1933), A 104.
88 - Ibid., A 371.
89 - Strawson, Bounds of Sense, p. 91.
90 - Ibid.
91 - Walker, "Empirical Realism," p. 174.
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