Abstract
Though perhaps a dubious honor, Dharmakīrti (fl. c. 550–650 C.E.) is the first philosopher in any tradition to explicitly recognize the epistemological threat of solipsism, devoting an entire essay to the problem—The Justification of (the very idea of) Other Minds (Santānāntarasiddhi). This essay revisits Ratnakīrti’s (990–1050 C.E.) Doing Away with (A Justification of) Other Beings (Santānāntaraduṣaṇa) as a diagnosis of Dharmakīrti’s attempt to reconstruct the very idea of other beings, with particular attention to Ratnakīrti’s sensitivity to the conceptual preconditions for a genuine threat of solipsism. Along with the diagnosis of the conditions for the emergence of a problem of genuine solipsism, this essay takes as its focus Ratnakīrti’s criticism of attempts to meet with the problem. In particular, I shall stress an insight Ratnakīrti adduces in the course of his diagnosis. Attempts to meet the problem of solipsism head on, Ratnakīrti shows us, obscure what the preconditions for a genuine problem reveal: the fact of our possessing two incommensurable conceptions of mind, one of which is intrinsically and entirely first-personal—in a sense to be clarified in the course of this essay—and the other not. I conclude this essay with an inconclusive sketch of the difficulties that remain when considering what Ratnakīrti would have us conclude from his own diagnosis.
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Notes
Adapting Peter Strawson’s sense of ‘a genuine issue’ in Strawson 2011, 87.
For two reasons. First, varieties of methodological solipsism influenced by Carnap involve replacing inferred entities (and concerns with the justification of inferences to such entities) with logical constructions; and, secondly, such constructions, or, equivalently, the reduction of statements about minds and other cultural objects to statements about experiences, concern ‘unowned’ experiences. See Hacker (1975, 187–8). Contrast this with the way in which genuine solipsism becomes a puzzle in Russell (1923). But see Arnold 2009 for the possibility of methodological solipsism in the tradition of Digṅāga..
Perhaps first reconstructed as a single doxographical tradition by Bhāviveka, Eckel (2009, 64-65). For surveys of the different paradigms of arguments, see now Arnold (2008), Kapstein (2014), Kellner and Taber (2014), and Finnigan (2017). For some sense of the range of possible ways of formulating a restriction to the mental (including ways couched within the meditative horizon of an individual, and subsequently generalized), see Harrison (1988), 3–4.
This is a rough-and-ready paraphrase of La Vallée Poussin (1928, vol. I., 430–31). See Wei Tat (1973, 523); Scharfstein (1998, f19, 421); Wood (1991, 95); Williams (2008, 98); Schmithausen (2005, 52). A similar denial is also found in Kuiji’s (K’ue-chi’s) Comprehensive Commentary on the Heart Sutra, as translated in Shih and Lusthaus (2001, 26): ‘Consciousness only (vijñapti-mātra) shows that there are definitely no dharmas apart from the mind. However, this does not mean that nothing exists except the mind, because worthy friends, causes and effects, noumena and phenomena, and conventional and ultimate are not nonexistent.’
Cf. Gold (2006), for a similar problem attending the interpretation of other technical terms, such as ‘grasper’ and ‘grasped,’ or terms of art such as ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ in pre-Digṅāga Yogācāra.
The concession may be found in Xuanzang’s response to an earlier question, as translated by Tat (1973, 523), paragraph 7: “Who says that another person’s mind is not the object of one’s own consciousness? We only deny that it is the immediate and direct object.” See also La Vallée Poussin (1928, Vol. I., 430); See Wood (1991, 95). That is, whereas the interlocutor wants to consider other minds (and other persons) to be categorically distinct from, or at least, irreducible to, the category of intentional content, Xuanzang’s response, in effect, reiterates the sense that something counts as available only given its serving as content, and preserves other beings by appealing to a non-evident, tendentious and distinct variety of “indirect” or “remote” intentional content. On this very difficult issue of remote content, see Schmithausen (2005), taking account of views in Lusthaus (2002).
It is perhaps only with Prajñākaragupta (fl. eighth century C.E.) that you get explicit mention of a thesis to this effect, given the semantic thesis that what it is ‘to exist’ means ‘being taken up as intentional content’ (as expressed in phrases such as upalambhaḥ satteti vyavasthā, upalambhaḥ satteti vyavasthā, tata upalambhaḥ sattocyate, and more, discussed in Inami (2011, 191, n49). But we can ascribe the preconditions for such a view earlier, perhaps as early as when Digṅāga takes intentional content to be entirely explicable by an inner gerundive (to adapt talk of ‘inner accusatives’ in epistemology to track Digṅāga’s talk of antar-jñeya) as in Ālambanaparīkṣā 6a–c (Frauwallner 1982, 182). For a comparative sense of the weight of Prajñākaragupta’s semantic thesis, see Ayers (1986).
Given Xuanzang’s concession to something in the neighborhood of the semantic thesis that to exist is to count as intentional content, it is unclear at best whether he can justify his impatience by relying on Vasubandhu’s discussion of what, if anything, knowledge of other minds might consist in at verse 21 of the Viṃśikā (the context for Xuanzang’s discussion, as recognized already by La Vallée Poussin 1928, Vol. I., 431). For one thing, it seems to me that Vasubandhu would not concede anything to the semantic thesis. For another thing, when Vasubandhu denies that our acquaintance with our own mental states counts as knowledge in a strict sense, he might be shown to reject the preconditions for the generation of the particular problem to which Xuanzang is responding. See Kachru (2015, 333–348, 539–557); Tzohar (2010).
I have found helpful in this respect the distinction James Conant draws between two (ideal-typical) varieties of skepticism, Cartesian and Kantian. See Conant (2012, 5–7). Also compare the distinction Avramides (2001) draws between epistemological and conceptual versions of the problem of other minds. Note that Avramides thinks that the conceptual problem went unrecognized until Wittgenstein, given that ‘on our conception of mind there is nothing in Reid’s work (Avramides 2001, 8).’
The phrase ‘epistemic reduction’ is intended to invite comparison with ‘phenomenological reduction,’ while encouraging an appreciation of important differences. It is important to note that what is disclosed through Dharmakīrti’s argument is intended to serve as an evidentiary court of appeal in the epistemic justification of empirical beliefs, and is not, perhaps, entirely inconsistent with empirical descriptions of mental events as causally describable particulars.
Against the thrust of such mereological arguments as are directed by Śāntarakṣita, for example, against phenomenal content, when such content is a candidate for being a concrete particular; see verses 22-49 of Madhyamakālaṃkāra, in Ichigō (1989, 199-207). I remain unsure that the best way to render this emphasis on the non-dual character of the phenomenological manifold is to say that the space of awareness—phenomenological presence—is a single kind of stuff, or mass of awareness, phenomenally variable. I do not think we should think of it as stuff at all, and thus, I do not think we should take it that Ratnakīrti would have us treat ‘mind’ as a peculiar variety of mass noun. But, I reserve this issue for the conclusion of this essay, as it will depend on what we think Ratnakīrti’s rejection of any argument that purports to show us a valid construction of the idea of other beings might mean.
As one can paraphrase Ratnakīrti’s comment at the close of his essay: ‘And the way out of the dark night of Vedānta is indicated by The Commentator (Prajñākaragupta), given just so much as the possibility of manifold intentional content (Translation mine, Thakur 1957, 142).’ To appreciate Ratnakīrti’s emphasis, it is helpful to consider Vedānta’s views of consciousness as such being non-intentional and contentless, part of the source of Ratnakīrti’s pun on the word ‘dark.’ See Mohanty (1988), Ganeri (2007, 208). The historian of Buddhist philosophy might also wish to consider how such a criticism might be a deflection from the more intimate provocation provided by the views of the Buddhist Ratnākaraśānti, a philosophically trenchant characterization of whose debate with Ratnakīrti’s teacher, Jñānaśrīmitra, on just this issue may be found in Tomlinson (2018). Of course, the Buddhists seem only to have Advaita Vedānta in mind. For non-advaita views available in Vedānta, see Bilimoria and Padaki (2003). I am grateful to the editor for this reference.
Note, that this question, prima facie justified on the basis of an epistemic reduction, is not one that Ratnakīrti thinks can be coherently sustained, given that it helps itself to the intelligibility of the idea of other beings. See below.
For a recognition of the difference this might make, and the comparative consideration of Berkeley and Dharmakīrti on arguments not based on analogy, see Henkel (2012). The argument is elicited from Dharmakīrti’s interlocutor in verses 4–9 (Stcherbatsky 1969, 86–88); step 3 is discussed at length in verse 11 (Stcherbatsky 1969, 88); and the last steps in 4 are discussed by Dharmakīrti beginning in verses 13 on (Stcherbatsky 1969, 89-), taking up extremely interesting terrain concerning the presentation of semblance of actions (the general case of automata) which students of skepticism will no doubt be interested in here but which I ignore, as I do the challenge discussed in Henkel (2012), of showing the availability of this argument to both epistemological realists and idealists.
For Abhinavagupta’s criticism of Dharmakīrti’s commitment to the phenomenologically implausible idea of evident but unplaced actions, see Ratié (2007).
On Ratnakīrti’s designating types (such as a type x) by the locution x-mātra, see Patil 2009, 215, n44. Technically, this type is what Ratnakīrti calls a ‘horizontal general type’ (tiryag-sāmānya), on which an item is understood to be excluded from items belonging to a different class. See Patil 2009, 215–216, n44.
Ontological solipsism would include any thesis to the effect that there exists only one mind, a conclusion entailed by the thought that there exists at least one mind, and that no other minds can be creditably thought to exist. Typically, those who have taken this route do not interpret that last claim as showing us that perhaps our criteria for making sense of the very idea of minds in ‘other minds/mental persons’ are lacking. See for example, Inami (2001), which would have it that Ratnakīrti, as far as other minds/mental persons go, in some straightforward sense ‘denies their existence.’ See also the introduction to Kajiyama (1965), when he says of the Saṁtānāntara-dūṣaṇa that it ‘unreservedly declares solipsism as the final destination of idealism.’ The solipsism I think he has in mind involves an ontological thesis.
This is delicate. It is not clear whether or not Ratnakīrti might allow for a concept of inner space to count as an instance of a ‘vertical universal.’. I think not—for that would still require for its sense the exclusion of other particulars of the same type, which is just what Ratnakīrti thinks cannot be given a sense based on the manifest evidence of inner space. See Patil 2009, 216.
I say ‘diagnostic’ to get at Ratnakīrti’s stance towards the problem of solipsism (and more about which below.) I do not, however, also mean to say that Ratnakīrti’s diagnostic stance is necessarily therapeutic, which seems at the very least to require that one links the error exposed by analysis to some further psychological factor (cf. Hacker 2007 on Gordan Baker’s therapeutic interpretation of Wittgenstein). One might adduce here Ratnakīrti’s suggestion in the Sarvajñāsiddhi that analysis ‘will also, however…in conclusion, remove the morbid and irrational longing (dohada) for sarva-sarvajña (paryante tu, sarvasarvajñadohadamapyaneṣyāmaḥ (Goodman 1989, 121; 158)).’ To link a philosophical category to a kind of irrational yet deep-seated (and psychologically recognizable) craving seems to me indicative of a therapeutic stance, but Ratnakīrti does not announce such a claim with respect to his analysis of the preconditions of solipsism as an ostensibly genuine problem.
Cf. McDermott (1969, 9), who maintains that Ratnakīrti subscribes to solipsistic idealism from ‘a translogical or absolute point of view.’ I am not sure what work the qualifier ‘trans-logical’ is meant to do—it might be interesting if it is meant to indicate that we must consider the relationship between ‘intelligibility’ and ‘justification.’ Another meaning might be that all structures of justification and evidence belong to the sphere of what is conventional.
At the time of this writing, I do not know if Jonardon Ganeri, speaking of Ratnakīrti’s conceptual solipsism (Ganeri 2012, 212–213)—a locution I find attractive—would agree with this way of putting it. For he also speaks of ‘a great mass of undivided cognition,’ and of consciousness which is pure and incapable of sustaining a first-personal stance (Ganeri 2012, 205). We are necessarily trading metaphors here, but I do not think that on my view, we could say with Ganeri that there is some kind of mass of consciousness, or single stuff (as in Ganeri 2007, 209).
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Kachru, S. Ratnakīrti and the Extent of Inner Space: an Essay on Yogācāra and the Threat of Genuine Solipsism. SOPHIA 58, 61–83 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-019-0707-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-019-0707-8