[Buddha-l] Realism, anti-realism and Buddhism #1

[Richard Hayes]

On Fri, 2008-05-23 at 08:01 -0400, Dan Lusthaus wrote:

> Syadvada and anekantavada are themselves subject to numerous
> interpretations, which we can take up separately in other postings. The
> two-valued logic I was referring to is one in which (1) only two opposing
> options are considered viable, and thus all-inclusive, and (2) that reduces
> reality to propositions.

The second clause is entirely irrelevant to this discussion, so it is
better left aside. As for bivalent logic, it is explicitly stated as the
standard by every classical Indian thinker I have ever read. 

>  The catuhskoti entertains four alternatives, three
> of which are considered potentially viable (neither/nor is invariably
> "false").

The catu.sko.ti is perfectly bivalent. There are only two truth values,
not four. A statement may be true or false. (That makes two, so far as I
can see.) It can also be true in some respects and false in others.
(Still two truth values, but with the provision that propositions
sometimes refer to complex states of affairs that.) Or it may be neither
true nor false. (Still just two truth values, but with a provision that
some propositions are ill-formed or depend on untenable presuppositions
and therefore cannot be assigned either of the two.)

>  Syadvada, as you know, adds three additional options

Yes, it adds different ways of assessing complex states of affairs that
resist absolute assignment of one of the two (and only two) truth
values, namely, true and false.

>  In fact, the last three are explicitly formulated
> as indicating the non-expressibility of the subject. Western treatments tend
> to treat these last three alternatives as either superfluous or mysterious.
> They are not.

I'm not sure which Western treatments you are thinking of, unless you
are going back to the times of A.B. Keith. Everybody I know of who has
treated Jaina logic during the past sixty years agrees with you that
there is nothing mysterious about the seven ways Jaina logicians had of
guarding against precipitant and absolute assignment of truth values in
complex situations. But the truth values that can be assigned are
exactly two, making Jaina logic commensurate with Aristotle's laws of
thought.

> Let me briefly sketch this out. If a realist is defined as X, then
> everything which is not X must be non-realist. But it is being formulated
> for us as "anti-" realist.

Dummett is very careful to say that there are many forms of what he
calls anti-realism. He notes that when he was a young fellow studying
philosophy, it was received wisdom that on many different issues there
were realists and people who opposed realism in some way, but that
"realism" meant something different in each case. So there were realists
opposed to nominalists, realists opposed to phenomenalists, realists
opposed to idealists, moral realists opposed to moral relativists,
epistemological externalists opposed to inernalists and so forth. What
Dummett tried to do was to show that there is a core set of similarities
in all these forms of realism; each of them is opposed in some way, but
there is less similarity in the forms of opposition to realism than in
the manifestations of realism itself. He acknowledges, therefore, that
it does not make a great deal of sense of speak of anti-realists as a
whole, but that it may not hurt to use the term as a heuristic. 

>  The realist is one who
> assumes that all propositions are either true or false, and they would be so
> because they correspond to a state of affairs otherwise called "reality."
> This, arguably, is just a formalized version of naive realism.

Not only is naive realism so described, but also sophisticated and
principled realism. Peter van Inwagen is a good example of a realist who
is far from naive and who offers a number of arguments in defense of
realism.

> The proposition "A tree is outside my window" is true if something we call
> "tree" can be found in that location. Hence the statement corresponds to a
> state of affairs. If one looks through the window and cannot see something
> corresponding to the word 'tree" there, then the statement is false.
> (Incidentally, Asanga embraces this position in the Tattvaartha chapter;
> when a tattva is demonstrable, it is bhaava; when absent, abhaava. To this
> he adds a third option: being "liberated" or "free from" [vinirmukta] from
> bhaava or abhaava, i.e., non-dual [advaya], the unexcelled Middle Way
> [madhyamaa pratipad]. The tattva for this third option is what is cognized
> [j~naanam] by all Buddhas, and is the knowledge toward which the Bodhisattva
> path aims.)

I have no idea what it could possibly mean to be liberated or free from
bhaava or abhaava. The only sense I can make of such a seemingly bizarre
claim is that it has nothing at all to do with ontology or logic and has
everything to do with psychology. So I can imagine someone being an
ontological realist (and and epistemological externalist) and then
saying that the proposition under discussion, while in fact having a
truth value and perhaps even having a knowable truth value, is not a
proposition to which it is worth becoming attached to. Imagine, for
example, that there is a yellow taxi numbered 361 in Albuquerque's fleet
of taxis (actually, I think there are only two taxis in Abuquerque, and
one of them is being used as a flower pot of Hector Gonzales's front
yard). Now a realist might say "At this very moment, either taxi 361 is
heading east on Lomas Boulevard or it is not. I don't know whether it is
going eastbound on Lomas or not. And I don't care." The addition of that
last autobiographical statement about her emotional investment in the
truth of taxi 361's whereabouts is a claim of her being psychologically
liberated from the issue. As I understand Buddhist practice, much of it
is aimed at developing exactly that sort of psychological liberation
from being emotionally invested in disputes about ontology. So Buddhists
do not have an alternative brand of logic but rather a studied
indifference to ontology.

Or so it seems to me.


-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico