LOGIC

Indian thinkers of many traditions, including Buddhism, often maintain that reliable knowledge is the key to spiritual liberation. By the fourth century c.e., many such thinkers were engrossed in an ongoing conversation focused on two interrelated questions: What constitutes reliable knowledge? And what types of reliable knowledge are there? The answers to these questions led to intricate debates on the nature of perception, reason, and language. Buddhists participated prominently in this conversation, but their contribution does not constitute a separate "school" of thought. It is, instead, a style of Buddhist philosophy that eventually gained much sway among Buddhist thinkers in India; Tibetan traditions continue to employ it vigorously to this day. Since Buddhists have no indigenous term for this philosophical style, Western scholars invented the term Buddhist logic to describe especially the formulations initially presented by Dig-n?ga (ca. 480–540 c.e.) and refined by Dharmakirti (ca. 600–670 c.e.).

Dign?ga gave the first systematic presentation of Buddhist logic, but Dharmak rti and his followers provided the form that became widespread in India and Tibet. Concerning the types of reliable knowledge, Buddhist logic holds that there are just two kinds, each with a corresponding type of object: (1) perception, which cognizes particulars, and (2) inference, which cognizes universals. A particular is a completely unique, causally efficacious entity that exists for only a moment. We know that particulars are real because they are causally linked, directly or indirectly, to our cognitions of them. Universals, the objects of inference, are concepts that are meant to apply to many particulars. They are causally inert; hence, although we imagine them to be real, they cannot in fact be the causes of any cognition. For this reason, Buddhist logicians maintain that only particulars are truly real; universals may seem real, but they are actually mental fictions that we create through a process of excluding everything that is irrelevant to the context at hand.

To understand the difference between particulars and universals, suppose that this dot ? is a unique particular. It may seem to be the same as this other dot ?, but that sameness is created by associating two unique sensory experiences with a single universal, the concept dot. Each specific instance may also seem to last over time, but the apparent stability of particulars over time is also an illusion created by associating them with a single universal. Moreover, only the actual dot on the page can cause a cognition; the universal dot cannot do so (we can see ?; we cannot see our concept of it).

Buddhist logicians further argue that an instance of reliable knowledge must be an efficacious cognition—efficacious because it enables one to achieve one's goal. Strictly speaking, then, reliable knowledge can be partially defective. For example, a cognition might falsely attribute qualities to a thing but still remain effective: While correctly identifying something as fire, one might incorrectly believe that the observed fire is exactly identical to all other fires. Nevertheless, that cognition is still efficacious because those false attributions do not obstruct one from attaining one's goal: If you seek to warm your hands, then it does not matter whether you falsely believe that the fire in front of you is identical to all others.

Buddhist logicians must allow that reliable knowledge may be partially defective because they must make use of language without accepting some characteristics implied by universals. The concept dot, for example, makes us falsely believe that all dots are one; nevertheless, we can successfully use this concept to speak of the (actually unique) dots on this page. Likewise, the concept person falsely makes me believe that I am identical to the infant that I was; nevertheless, we can use person to speak of one who suffers and seeks liberation.

This critical approach to universals creates problems when Buddhist logicians present their theory of logic, which is in fact a detailed theory of inference. Here, the form of an inference is "S is P because E," where the terms are a subject (S), a predicate (P), and the evidence (E). An example would be, "Joe is mortal because of being human." An inference is well formed if three relations hold: the evidence entails the predicate (a human must be mortal); the negation of the predicate entails the negation of the evidence (a nonmortal must be nonhuman); and the evidence is a quality of the subject (Joe is indeed human). For Buddhists who employ this theory of inference, two notable problems persist. First, the inference's terms must be universals, and since universals are strictly speaking unreal, how does one account for relations among them? And second, if one uses an inference to prove that a purely imaginary entity does not exist, how can that purely imaginary entity be the subject of that inference? That is, if one wishes to prove that "an absolute Self is nonexistent," how can an imaginary entity (the absolute Self) bear any predicate? This latter question is particularly acute for Madhyamaka thinkers who employ the Buddhist logicians' theory of inference.

See also:Madhyamaka School; Yog?c?ra School

Bibliography

Dreyfus, Georges B. Recognizing Reality: Dharmak?rti's Philosophy and Its Tibetan Interpretations. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997.

Stcherbatsky, Th. Buddhist Logic, 2 vols. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1992. Reprint of 1930–1932 edition.

Tillemans, Tom J. F. Scripture, Logic, Language: Essays on Dharmak?rti and His Tibetan Successors. Boston: Wisdom, 1999.

John Dunne