[Buddha-l] Prominent Neobuddhist proposes religion basedblacklisting for government jobs

[Richard Hayes]

On Jul 30, 2009, at 3:26 PM, Dan Lusthaus wrote:

> Veracity of experts (apta-pramana, aka sabda-pramana) was accepted  
> by Hindu
> and Buddhist alike, until Dignaga, following the Vaisesika,  
> abandoned it in
> favor of pratyaksa and anumana alone.

This is not quite accurate. Dignāga did not abandon āpta-vacana. He  
simply subsumed it under anumāna. His claim was that many of the ways  
of acquiring new knowledge that others regarded as distinct were in  
face better regarded as kinds of inference.

> Dharmakirti takes this limitation even more seriously than did  
> Dignaga.

Again, not quite so. Unlike Dignāga, Dharmakīrti devoted an entire  
chapter of his "commentary" on Dignāga's work to showing that the  
Buddha's words are authoritative. Rather than saying, however, that  
doctrines are true because the Buddha said them, he argued that the  
Buddha is an authority because everything he said can be shown to be  
true.

> Yet, I am unaware of any instance in which this epistemological  
> parsimony resulted in his challenging and subsequently rejecting  
> well-established Buddhavacana

The only well-established Buddhist doctrines that Dharmakīrti dealt  
with were the four noble truths and the doctrine of karma and rebirth.  
He claimed that the four noble truths could all be established  
empirically, and he said that arguments against rebirth are not  
compelling.

> -- so a tacit apta-pramana remains in force.

There is nothing tacit about it. It is the explicit subject matter of  
an entire chapter of Pramāṇavārttikam.

> That tacit remainder is the side of Dharmakirti that Richard finds
> less enthralling.

The side of Dharmakīrti that I find less than compelling is manifested  
in 1) his attempt to show that external objects do not exist, a topic  
to which he devotes quite a lot of space in his chapter on pratyakṣa,  
and 2) his defense of yogi-pratyakṣa in that same chapter.

> So, Curt, you seem to remind Richard of Dharmakirti -- high praise  
> from a
> Dharmakirti-scholar.

Curt does not remind me in the least of Dharmakīrti, and if he did it  
would not be high praise.

Aside from that, and you false claim that coyotes have used ad hominem  
arguments against you, and your incompetent analysis of Nāgārjuna, I  
pretty much agree with some of what you said.


Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes
rhayes at unm.edu