Title: Possibility, Self, and Illusion in Advaita Vedānta
#Possibility, Self, and Illusion in Advaita Vedānta
*Carl Johnson*
Ascending and Descending, M. C. Escher
> 'Tis an establish'd maxim in metaphysics, That whatever the mind clearly
conceives, includes the idea of possible existence, or in other words, that
nothing we imagine is absolutely impossible. We can form the idea of a golden
mountain, and from thence conclude that such a mountain may actually exist. We
can form no idea of a mountain without a valley, and therefore regard it as
impossible.
>
> Now 'tis certain we have an idea of extension; for otherwise why do we talk
and reason concerning it?
— David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature I.ii
> For they practically accept the general consciousness, which testifies to
the existence of an external world, and being at the same time anxious to
refute it they speak of the external things as "like something external." If
they did not themselves at the bottom acknowledge the existence of the
external world, how could they use the expression "like something external?"
No one says, "Vish*n*umitra appears like the son of a barren mother."
— Śaṃkara, Brahmasūtrabhāṣya II.ii.28
####Contents:
##Introduction
In the history of philosophy, it is not unusual for multiple thinkers to use
different means to reach the same conclusion or to use the same means to reach
different conclusions. In the passages cited above, Hume and Śaṃkara, though
separated by a thousand years and half a world, seem to suggest similar very
similar "metaphysical maxims" for use as a basis of argument. Hume uses the
principle that anything which is conceivable is possible to argue for the
extension of space (and against its infinite divisibility)[^], whereas Śaṃkara
uses a similar principle to argue against the Yogācāra denial of the external
world. Nevertheless, there are important differences between Hume and Śaṃkara.
The principle Śaṃkara is arguing from is not only that conceivability is
linked to possibility, but also that nothing appears like what is impossible.
The difference can be formalized by casting Hume's claim as
ClearlyConceives(x) → ◊x, and Śaṃkara's as ¬(AppearsAs(x) ∧
¬◊x) or its equivalents, AppearsAs(x) → ◊x and ¬◊x →
¬AppearsAs(x).
[^]: Interestingly, Hume seems to unintentionally use the converse of the
principle given by arguing that infinitely divisible space is impossible
because it is inconceivable. This principle (¬ClearlyConceives(x) →
¬◊x) is also sometimes defended but is logically independent from the
one he gives above.
An interesting aspect of Śaṃkara's version of Advaita Vedānta is his repeated
emphasis on the vanity of idle philosophical speculation and the importance of
a commonsensical view of the world. For instance, he writes,
> Whenever (to add a general reflexion) something perfectly well known from
ordinary experience is not admitted by philosophers, they may indeed establish
their own view and demolish the contrary opinion by means of words, but they
thereby neither convince others nor even themselves. Whatever has been
ascertained to be such and such must also be represented as such and such;
attempts to represent it as something else prove nothing but the vain
talkativeness of those who make those attempts.[^]
[^]: _Brahmasūtrabhāṣya_, II.ii.25.
Yet, at the same time, Śaṃkara holds to the title claim of *Advaita*, namely
the *non-duality* of self and Brahman: "Thou art that." This claim seems to be
a deeply counterintuitive and non-commonsensical claim about the nature of the
self. How could I be mistaken about the nature of my own self? As Śaṃkara
himself writes in order to attack the claims of those who hold a no-self view,
"the conscious subject never has any doubt whether it is itself or only
similar to itself."[^ibid] If I know my self, why should I not already
recognize myself as Brahman? As Śaṃkara has his rhetorical opponent exclaim,
"if Brahman is generally known as the Self, there is no room for an enquiry
into it*!*" To which he gives the answer, "Not so, we reply; for there is a
conflict of opinions as to its special nature."[^]
[^]: _Ibid_., I.i.1.
This paper will explore the place of Śaṃkara's maxim in Advaita Vedānta by
first noting some seeming counter-examples of the maxim then determining what
sort of modality is needed to keep the claims made by Śaṃkara plausible. On
this basis, an apparent contradiction between Śaṃkara's maxim and the
non-duality of the self will be demonstrated and defused through an
explanation of Śaṃkara's epistemological and metaphysical commitments.
##Exploring Śaṃkara's maxim
If we take Śaṃkara as arguing from the empirical claim that no one interprets
her perceptions as an instantiated impossible situation, then it is natural to
look for counter-examples to that claim, in which one looks at the world and
does mistake an actual situation for an impossible one. One possible case of
this might be optical illusions and the drawings of M. C. Escher. These
pictures involve the compounding of picture elements in such a way as to make
a scene that the mind either cannot interpret with any consistency (as in the
case of the Necker cube) or can interpret but instinctively offers imaginative
resistance to, such as Escher's _Ascending and Descending_, pictured above.
Graham Priest in "Perceiving Contradictions" argues that such figures, among
other things, are contradictions but can nevertheless be perceived as such,
which would seem to settle the empirical question--Priest at least might
mistake Vish*n*umitra for the son of a barren mother--except that Priest also
believes that contradictions are (sometimes) possible, which means that Priest
can assent without contradiction (though it is not clear that such would
necessarily be an obstacle to Priest) to both Śaṃkara's maxim that everything
appears as something possible and to the proposition that some optical
illusions are perceivable contradictions. Thus, while Priest might mistake
Vish*n*umitra for the son of a barren mother, this would only occur in the
case that Priest thinks it possible to be son of a barren mother.
On the other hand, when Śaṃkara applied his maxim, he could not have meant
that no one ever mistakenly thinks that something which is impossible is
possible, since that is the sort of error that he accuses his opponents of
from time to time. Indeed, this would make teaching a logic class much
simpler, since one need only be able to perceive the equation in the right
manner to be guaranteed of its correctness. Similarly, in an idle moment,
though I have been told that Alice is barren, I may come to think that perhaps
she is Vish*n*umitra's mother because of their resemblance--at least until I
actively remember that she is barren. Unless Śaṃkara holds the position that
words which refer to the impossible are strictly nonsense, then it cannot be
enough for a picture to make us consider the existence of the impossible,
since by analogy the words "son of a barren mother" are intelligible because
its parts are intelligible, but as a whole phrase, it fails to refer to
anything, since it is impossible.[^] In the same way, a picture that merely
referred to the impossible, like a picture the contents of which were a series
of symbols representing a ≠ a would also present no challenge to Śaṃkara's
maxim. The only way a challenge could come from an image would be if the
content of image itself were enough to cause one to perceive what appears as
the impossible. Roy Sorensen in "Art of the Impossible" offers a $100 prize to
anyone who can produce such an image that "perceptually depicts a logical
falsehood" and preemptively rejects many possible contenders for the prize
such as optical illusions and other inventive incongruities on the grounds
that the images are not themselves truly contradictions *in perception*. Like
a negligent logic student, they bring together parts which are plausible in
isolation but dissolve under the scrutiny caused by the absurdity of their
totality. As M. J. Cresswell explains in "A Highly Impossible Scene," "In the
impossible picture case, parts of the picture are perfectly consistent but
they contradict other parts of the picture."[^]
[^]: The strategy for dealing with "the rabbit's horn" in Nyāya is to break
into parts with real referents, according to Perrett in "Is Whatever Exists
Knowable and Nameable?" p. 317. Presumably, Śaṃkara would also accepts such a
strategy.
[^]: Cresswell, p. 70.
Accordingly, we might propose scaling Śaṃkara's maxim back on the model of
Hume's, in which to be *clearly* conceivable is to be possible, and, if we
wish to reject dialetheism, dispute that Priest is really able to *clearly*
perceive the contradictions in the various illusions he offers in "Perceiving
Contradictions" and elsewhere. Take an example provided by William Boardman in
"Dreams, Dramas, and Scepticism":
> a character in a dream, or one in a play, might succeed even in squaring the
circle. Since, of course, one cannot intelligibly imagine a circle's being
squared, one's dream is not likely to focus on the details of how the feat was
accomplished. All that is needed is for various pieces of the story to fit
together in the way they might in actual life […] Moreover, even the details
of how the circle was squared might be dreamt. Though they will not in
actuality constitute a recipe for squaring the circle yet within the dream
they may be a complete recipe for squaring the circle. For to dream of
someone's squaring the circle is to dream of something which, *in the dream*,
is acknowledged by all to have been the squaring of the circle.[^]
[^]: Boardman, pp. 224–225.
While a dream about squaring the circle may possess many of the elements that
one would take to be the constituents of the act, they cannot contain a
coherent combination of those elements, since it has been shown mathematically
to be impossible to square the circle. Since as part of a dream, one naturally
lowers one's standards for clarity and coherence, one does not notice that the
elements fail to join into a coherent whole, and one may mistake an invalid
proof for a valid one, but this does not challenge the fact that it is
impossible to clearly and distinctly comprehend the whole of an invalid proof.
Indeed, even in our waking state, we may accidentally mistake an invalid proof
for a valid one, or vice-versa, but this is surely the fault of inattention to
the details rather than an assent to a thoroughly understood contradiction. We
may allow that AppearsAs(p) ∧ AppearsAs(¬p), but we will
nevertheless insist that ¬ClearlyAppearsAs(p ∧ ¬p) since ¬◊(p
∧ ¬p).
In the particular case of the argument against the Yogācāra, Śaṃkara might
claim that our perception of there being an external world is so coherent that
it cannot be a merely temporary lapse or relaxation of our standards that
causes us to believe in it. Even in cases like dreams where we imagine
ourselves as perceiving an external world, when we are not in fact perceiving
an external world, do not challenge the existence of the external world as
something that is otherwise possible if not at that time actual. As Śaṃkara
explains about dreams,
> It is not true that the world of dreams is real; it is mere illusion and
there is not a particle of reality in it.--Why?--"On account of its nature not
manifesting itself with the totality," i.e. because the nature of the dream
world does not manifest itself with the totality of the attributes of real
things.--What then do you mean by the "totality"?--The fulfilment of the
conditions of place, time, and cause, and the circumstance of non-refutation.
All these have their sphere in real things, but cannot be applied to dreams.[^]
[^]: _Brahmasūtrabhāṣya_, III.ii.3.
Hence for Śaṃkara, the "totality" of experience plays a role similar to that
of the "clarity" of an idea for Hume. If, for example, one were to examine
_Ascending and Descending_, it may appear like a circuit of stairs that
continues to rise (or descend) without end in defiance of geometric
possibility, but it only appears as such to an unsteady gaze, which is a sign
that our future perception of the image will never achieve the "totality" that
is necessary for a proper perception by which judgments about possibility can
be made. Śaṃkara's criterion of totality is not quite the same as the
criterion of clarity, since clarity in perception is a kind of gestalt, but
what Śaṃkara is arguing is that attempts to interpret the drawing as though it
were an endless staircase will lead to frustration in some future interaction,
when it is revealed not to be. It can be formulated as
¬(CoherentlyAppearsAs(x) ∧ ¬◊x). Nevertheless, that we
instinctively reject the image as lacking gestalt now is a sign of its destiny
of being contradicted later. However, it might be objected that Śaṃkara is
only shifting his burden from showing that something is possible or not as
such to showing that its perception is so stable as to guarantee its
possibility (or, if we can presume to use the maxim's converse, so unstable as
to guarantee impossibility), in which case the Yogācārins might argue that
both the external world and the Advaitin conception of the self are similarly
lacking in totality and doomed to eventual rejection as impossible.
Accordingly, before examining whether Śaṃkara's seemingly counter-intuitive
conception of the self runs afoul of his own maxim, we must examine what the
words "possibility" and "impossibility" could mean in his metaphysical system,
in order to tell when and where the mark of totality can be found.
##Possibility and impossibility
In the _Brahmasūtrabhāṣya_, Śaṃkara straightforwardly explains to his
Yogācārin opponent why the defense of their doctrine by means of arguments for
the impossibility of external world must fail, given the nature of possibility
itself:
> But--the Bauddha may reply--we conclude that the object of perception is
only like something external because external things are impossible.--This
conclusion we rejoin is improper, since the possibility or impossibility of
things is to be determined only on the ground of the operation or
non-operation of the means of right knowledge; while on the other hand, the
operation and non-operation of the means of right knowledge are not to be made
dependent on preconceived possibilities or impossibilities. *Possible is
whatever is apprehended by perception or some other means of proof; impossible
is what is not so apprehended.*[^]
[^]: _Ibid_., II.ii.28. Emphasis mine.
As in other classical schools of Indian thought, Advaita Vedānta holds that it
is "the means of right knowledge," or *pramāṇa*, by which we come to know the
world. The pramāṇas accepted by Advaitins are perception, inference,
testimony, comparison, non-cognition, and postulation, though Śaṃkara himself
refers to only the first three in his works.[^] In either case, Śaṃkara seems
to be arguing for a metaphysics in which ontology follows after epistemology.
Note the seemingly anti-realist tenor of this criticism of the Yogācārins:
[^]: Deutsch, p. 69.
> you maintain thereby that ideas exist which are not apprehended by any of
the means of knowledge, and which are without a knowing being; which is no
better than to assert that a thousand lamps burning inside some impenetrable
mass of rocks manifest themselves.[^]
[^]: _Brahmasūtrabhāṣya_., II.ii.28.
Ideas without at least the potential for being known by some means (be it
inference or testimony if not perception) cannot be considered to really
exist. If they did exist, then they should have some effect on the world from
which they could, at least in principle, be inferred. This is not to say
Śaṃkara truly was an anti-realist or that he thought existence ultimately
depends on knowability, just that he believes in the in-principle knowability
of all existing things. In "Dreams and Reality," Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad
summarizes the meaning of "exists" for Advaita:
> 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."[^]
[^]: "Dream and Reality," p. 438.
Elsewhere, Ram-Prasad labels Śaṃkara a "non-realist" as opposed to an
anti-realist. No matter his exact designation however, because of their
definition of existence, the school of Advaita Vedānta has traditionally been
classified as having a theory of intrinsic truth-apprehension
(*svataḥprāmāṇyavāda*) according to which being true does not depend on
anything other than being rightly perceived.[^]
[^]: Perrett, "Conceptions of Indian Philosophy," p. 26, Deutsch, p. 86, _et
al_.
With this epistemological background in place, let us return to the question
of what is possible. Under the definition of possible as "whatever is
apprehended," the definition of existent as possible to be known, and the
definition of truth as being rightly perceived, it might appear that there is
no way left for possibility to be different from actuality (and impossibility
from non-actuality).
Corroborating this conjecture is the fact that a difference between logical
impossibility and merely being unexampled was not always maintained in
classical Indian thought. For example, note this observation made by Arindam
Chakrabarti about Nyāya:
> Notwithstanding extremely sophisticated distinctions between
self-contradictions (such as the liar-sentence) and pragmatic self-refuation
(like "I am not aware of this"), the Naiyāyikas use "barren woman's son" and
"horn of a rabbit" as empty terms without distinction.[^]
[^]: "Rationality in Indian Philosophy," pp. 270–1.
In this case, we can see that the Indians made no distinction between the
impossibility of a logical contradiction (in the case of the son of a barren
mother) and the mere lack of actuality in an uninstantiated class (like
rabbits that have horns[^]). Chakrabarti follows Mohanty in speculating that
this is caused in part because for Indian logicians, "Soundness was more
important than mere validity."[^] No matter what the cause, the effect would
seem to be that whatever does not happen to exist ought to be counted by
Indian thinkers as being impossible. On the other hand, Paul Williams in "On
the Abhidharma Ontology" gives evidence that for the early Madhyamaka, the
rabbit's horn was "merely an unexampled term the occurrence of which was not
actually a logical contradiction."[^] Be that as it may, as Bimal Matilal
notes in _Logical and Ethical Issues of Religious Belief_,
[^]: One might make the case that a rabbits with a horn is also a logical
impossibility on the grounds that such an animal would not be a true rabbit,
but only a rabbit-like creature, perhaps a jackalope, but this defense appears
not have been attempted, and at any rate, other forms of impossibility will be
needed later in our account. See also Matilal's white crow, p. 129 and his p.
151 n. 1.
[^]: "Rationality in Indian Philosophy," p. 271.
[^]: Williams, p. 233.
> Possibility as a modal notion had very limited use in the whole of Indian
philosophy. Most possibilities are simply future contingencies, or a
possibility that has already been excluded or nullified by a contingency.[^]
[^]: Matilal, p. 150.
Accordingly, we may need to develop a novel interpretation of Śaṃkara's notion
of possibility if we run in to difficulties in its application.
To return to the issue of Śaṃkara's maxim, we want to interpret the maxim so
that it is most plausible, but if there is absolutely no distinction made
between actual and possible and not actual and impossible, then seeming
incongruities will result. One such incongruity is the collapse of all
impossibilities into one another. As Cresswell explains an example of Bertrand
Russell's, "the class of Chinese Popes and the class of golden mountains […]
are extensionally equivalent. But clearly they do not have the same
meaning."[^] Cresswell then suggests two ways of differentiating the two: in
terms of their simple parts or in terms of their possibility for fulfillment.
We have already seen that in the case of the phrase "son of a barren mother"
the parts of the phrase individual refer but fail to cohere as a totality,
like an optical illusion. In the same way, the phrase "my blue car" has parts
that refer and we would not ordinarily find anything impossible in the phrase,
but as Matilal writes,
[^]: Cresswell, p. 70.
> Suppose my car is red. This fact, a contingent fact, has already defeated
(excluded) the possibility of its being not-red. Does the "excluded"
possibility, then, join the group of impossibilities? No clear and explicit
answer emerges from the Indian philosophers except in their discussion ([eg.
by the later Naiyāyika] Udayana) of naming the non-existent or citing a
non-existent entity as an example.[^]
[^]: Matilal, p. 150.
Though the phrase "my blue car" has no extensional content, we may want to
preserve a distinction between this mere non-actuality and full impossibility,
particularly since preserving this distinction will prove helpful for making
sense of the pramāṇa of "non-cognition" employed by Advaita Vedānta and
others. In non-cognition one "sees" the absence of something by noticing that
it is not observed. Cresswell gives a contemporary example that may be taken
to be an instance of non-cognition:
> [W]hen the witness is shown the police files, his answer that the bank
robber was none of those, gives information to the police; even if not as much
as if his answer had been "yes" to one of the photographs. So although the
negation of a photograph cannot itself be a photograph, yet a photograph can
be used to say: things are *not* like that. We can therefore speak of the
negation of a photograph and its nature is quite simple. It is simply the set
of worlds not realized by the photograph.[^]
[^]: Cresswell, p. 77.
Hence, on Cresswell's explanation, the pramāṇa of non-cognition would operate
on the recognition of the difference between the actual world and a set of
possible worlds that contain the object the absence of which is noticed, which
means that we don't want to treat my blue car as an impossible object with
recognizable parts, but as a possible object that happens not to be actual.
This gives us one reason for attempting to refine Śaṃkara's treatment of
possibility, namely that without a sense of possibility that is broader than
mere actuality, non-cognition would be noticing the absence of an impossible
object, which might present difficulties under Śaṃkara's maxim.
Another reason to refine the notion of impossibility is that if what is not
the case is impossible, then, on Śaṃkara's maxim, perception should never go
wrong, since that would be a case of inferring an impossibility from
perception. However, perception clearly does go wrong. As Śaṃkara admits
"sometimes with regard to an external thing a doubt may arise whether it is
that or merely is similar to that; for mistakes may be made concerning what
lies outside our minds."[^]
[^]: _Brahmasūtrabhāṣya_, II.ii.25.
Of course, we have already limited the maxim to "coherently appearing as,"
which it might be argued, as the *right* perception, perception of totality,
can never goes wrong. The difficulty with this is that is merely tautological:
what makes a perception right is that it hasn't gone wrong. This might be
interpreted as strengthening the general acceptability of Śaṃkara's maxim
(since it is now merely tautological to say that in right perception one
perceives rightly), but this raises the question of whether the principle so
interpreted would be strong enough to do the work of refuting the Yogācārans.
If the meaning of "right perception" strays too far from the realm of common
sense, then it becomes an object of dispute instead of the grounds of dispute.
If Śaṃkara insists that we correctly perceive an external world, self, etc.
then the Yogācārans may insist that we do not, and the dispute will end at an
impasse. It would be better for Śaṃkara if his maxim is a (compelling)
axiomatic claim and not a logical truth, so that Śaṃkara can get his opponent
to concede that our perception of an external world is a totality. If he
claims instead that it is a right perception, his opponent will not assent to
the premise. Hence, it is no surprise to find that Śaṃkara does admit that
"perception" goes wrong:
> For instance, the ignorant think of fire-fly as fire, or of the sky as blue
surface; these are perceptions no doubt, but when the evidence of the other
means of knowledge regarding them has been definitely known to be true, the
perceptions of the ignorant, though they are definite experiences, prove to be
fallacious.[^]
[^]: _Bṛhadāraṇyakopaniṣadbhāṣya_, III.iii.1, p. 459.
As such, we may wish to refine Śaṃkara's treatment of impossibility, through
the use of what Arthur Prior has dubbed "Diodoran modality." According to
Prior,
> The Megaric logician Diodorus defined the possible as that which either
> is or at some time will be true, the impossible as that which neither is nor
> ever will be true, and the necessary as that which both is and always will
> be true. These definitions assume--as ancient and medieval logic generally
> assumes--that the same proposition may be true at one time and false at
> another; Dr. Benson Mates has accordingly remarked, in his recent study
> of Stoic logic, that Diodoran "propositions" are not "propositions" in the
> modern sense, but something more like propositional functions, and he
> represents them as such in his symbolic treatment of the Diodoran
definitions
> of the modal operators.[^]
[^]: Prior, p. 205.
This view of possibility has the advantage of cohering reasonably well with
Śaṃkara definition of possible as "whatever is apprehended by perception or
some other means of proof" (since one must merely insert the qualifying clause
"at some time"), while at the same time allowing for a notion of possibility
that can handle the case of non-cognition (at a prior time one saw the face of
the thief, so it is a possibility, and what one now notes to the police is its
current absence) and making the idea of mistaken perception more
understandable as a case of perceiving what is it is possible to perceive at
other times. We can formalize it as AtSomeTime(x) ↔ ◊x, which gives
us necessity as ¬AtSomeTime(¬x) ↔ □x. To see whether it is fully
capable of doing the work that Śaṃkara needs it to do, we must examine the
effect of this notion of possibility on the acceptability of Śaṃkara's maxim
in the larger context of his other theories.
##Applying Śaṃkara's maxim to the self
It is difficult to give general principles for deciding whether to adopt a
particular "metaphysical maxim," due to the inherent circularity in the
attempt at justifying such a maxim, but some of the key considerations must be
coherence, practicality, and (of course) truth. The third criterion is of
course the most important but also the most difficult to judge, so in this
paper, I will consider only the first two and (further limiting my scope), I
shall focus primarily on the implication of the maxim for the coherence and
practicality of the doctrine of the self in Advaita Vedānta.
###Metaphysics of Advaita
To begin our investigation into the self of Śaṃkara, we must provide the
background in which to present his theory of self. Unlike the Buddhists,
Śaṃkara takes the denial of the existence of the self to be self-refuting.
This conclusion is compatible with the maxim, since it appears to me that I
have something like a self hence it is possible that I do, but Śaṃkara goes
beyond that and argues for the existence of the self with an argument that has
been likened[^] to the *cogito*. Śaṃkara argues that a refutation of the self
is impossible, since it is the existence of the self which allows the working
of the pramāṇa that are to establish the self's existence:
[^]: Deutsch, p. 50, _et al_.
> But the Self, as being the abode of the energy that acts through the means
of right knowledge, is itself established previously to that energy. And to
refute such a self-established entity is impossible. An adventitious thing,
indeed, may be refuted, but not that which is the essential nature (of him who
attempts the refutation); for it is the essential nature of him who refutes.[^]
[^]: _Brahmasūtrabhāṣya_, II.iii.7.
However, it remains to be seen if what Śaṃkara means by "self" and what I mean
by "self" when I say "it appears to me that I have something like a self" are
the same thing. Even the most abstruse thinker can take up the mantle of
common sense if allowed to define what it is that common sense terms mean. To
return to our early quote of Śaṃkara, if "there is a conflict of opinions as
to its special nature," what does he take that special nature to be? As he
goes on to state, "the Lord is the Self of the enjoyer," that is, there is
only one self and that self is Brahman.[^] However, to be clear here, we need
to make a distinction between the terms *ātman* and *jīva*, both of which
might plausibly be translated as "self." Though the word ātman has the
non-technical meaning of "self" in Sanskrit, in Advaita Vedānta, it has the
specific meaning of the eternal, purely conscious self, which they maintain to
be one. Jīva, on the other hand, refers to the individual self. But as Eliot
Deutsch points out, the *cogito* given above "does not so much prove the Ātman
as it does the *jīva*--the *jīva*, which has the kind of self-consciousness
described in, and presumed by, the argument, and not the Ātman, which is pure
consciousness."[^] However, Śaṃkara has already anticipated this objection and
invites it, since the oneness of the self and Brahman is not a matter to be
proven by argument, but a matter of proper exegesis of the Vedas.
[^]: _Ibid_., I.i.1.
[^]: Deutsch, p. 51.
> In matters to be known from Scripture mere reasoning is not to be relied on
for the following reason also. As the thoughts of man are altogether
unfettered, reasoning which disregards the holy texts and rests on individual
opinion only has no proper foundation. We see how arguments, which some clever
men had excogitated with great pains, are shown, by people still more
ingenious, to be fallacious, and how the arguments of the latter again are
refuted in their turn by other men; so that, on account of the diversity of
men's opinions, it is impossible to accept mere reasoning as having a sure
foundation. […] The Veda, on the other hand, which is eternal and the source
of knowledge, may be allowed to have for its object firmly established things,
and hence the perfection of that knowledge which is founded on the Veda cannot
be denied by any of the logicians of the past, present, or future. […] Our
final position therefore is, that on the ground of Scripture and of reasoning
subordinate to Scripture, the intelligent Brahman is to be considered the
cause and substance of the world.[^]
[^]: _Brahmasūtrabhāṣya_, II.i.11.
Hence, the ultimate reason for Śaṃkara's claim of the non-duality of the self
is his exegesis of the scriptures,[^] since any merely intellectual argument
is subject to contradiction by some other intellectual argument. That these
arguments contradict each other does not leave us completely ignorant however.
That they exist at all is proof that there must be something behind reality
about which some or all of the arguments are mistaken. The oneness of the self
is the reason that the various pramāṇas work, but it is not subject to
illumination by anything other than itself.[^] Hence, we can see that the
concept of contradiction provides an important negative and positive
regulative role in Śaṃkara's thought: negatively, it warns us against trusting
any one argument, but positively, it tells us that there is a fact of the
matter about which we are mistaken which we must clarify by means of a more
reliable source, i.e., the Vedas. Śaṃkara's task is similar to Kant's quest
"to annul _knowledge_ in order to make room for _faith_,"[^] except that the
way that Śaṃkara uses the term "faith" to describe the liberation achievable
through the Vedas is significantly different from how Kant uses the term.[^]
[^]: The particular exegetical claim that the scriptures promote the
non-dualist view can be seen in various forms in many places. In particular,
see _Brahmasūtrabhāṣya_, II.i.21, "For Scripture declares the other, i.e. the
embodied soul, to be one with Brahman, as is shown by the passage, 'That is
the Self; that art thou…"
[^]: _Brahmasūtrabhāṣya_, I.iii.22, "Brahman as self-luminous is not perceived
by means of any other light. Brahman manifests everything else, but is not
manifested by anything else."
[^]: Kant, Bxxx.
[^]: Cf. _Bṛhadāraṇyakopaniṣadbhāṣya_, II.i.1, p. 254, "That faith is a great
factor in the realization of Brahman is another implication of the story…"
In order to understand how it is possible for the self to be non-dual, as
Śaṃkara takes the Vedas to claim, we need to understand the doctrine of
*adhyāsa* or superimposition that underlies this view about the positive and
negative role of contradiction. Suppose one mistakes a rope for a snake:
> Whenever we deny something unreal, we do so with reference to something
real; the unreal snake, e.g. is negatived with reference to the real rope. But
this (denial of something unreal with reference to something real) is possible
only if some entity is left. If everything is denied, no entity is left, and
if no entity is left, the denial of some other entity which we may wish to
undertake, becomes impossible, i.e. that latter entity becomes real and as
such cannot be negatived.[^]
[^]: _Brahmasūtrabhāṣya_, III.ii.22.
All aspects of ordinary existence are subject to negation with respect to some
other experience. However, there must be something behind the experience which
is the cause of the real thing that is obscured by the mistake, just as the
rope is the basis for the mistaken perception of the snake. Every illusion is
taken as having a basis in the real that is misunderstood through ignorance,
which is how ordinary people are able to mistake fireflies for fire and so on.
As Roy Perrett explains in "Truth, Relativism, and Western Conceptions of
Indian Philosophy," this theory in conjunction with the Advaita theory of
truth has important effects on what it is that Advaitins count as being true:
> Advaita [identifies] truth with uncontradictedness (*abādhitatva*), where
this is understood to mean the property of never being contradicted. However,
as Advaita recognizes, an implication of this is that only the knowledge of
Brahman as ultimate reality is true and no empirical knowledge is ever
ultimately true.[^]
[^]: "Conceptions of Indian Philosophy," p. 27.
Here we see the other analogy of Śaṃkara to Kant: both attempt to show
something about the nature of the ultimate through the refutation of various
attempts to identify it with any object of experience, while at the same time,
attempting to defend a kind of direct realism about the application of the
sense to matters of ordinary experience. Chakrabarti describes Śaṃkara as
"distinguishing the practical and noumenal level"[^] and summarizes his
position thusly:
[^]: "Metaphysics in India," p. 321.
> Śaṃkara, while rejecting subjective idealism, takes up the Upanisadic idea
that only the ever-present and the changeless must be real. Being lumpy or
shaped as a cup or pulverized are states which come and go (like the illusory
mirage-water) whereas clay--the generic stuff--remains ever present. The only
ever present stuff ultimately is pure consciousness (which is not to be
confused with some*one* or someone's awareness *of* something). The plurality
and objecthood displayed by the world are neither as real as this ever
unnegated consciousness which is called *brahman* (All) or *ātman* (self) nor
as unreal as an unpresentable impossibility. It is a presented falsehood or
*māyā* which literally means magic.[^]
[^]: _Ibid_., p. 322.
The illusion of *māyā* has seduced our senses with ignorance. Nevertheless,
this error is also a vital intellectual resource:
> The mutual superimposition of the Self and the Non-Self, which is termed
Nescience, is the presupposition on which there base all the practical
distinctions--those made in ordinary life as well as those laid down by the
Veda--between means of knowledge, objects of knowledge (and knowing persons),
and all scriptural texts, whether they are concerned with injunctions and
prohibitions (of meritorious and non-meritorious actions), or with final
release.--But how can the means of right knowledge such as perception,
inference, &c., and scriptural texts have for their object that which is
dependent on Nescience?--Because, we reply, the means of right knowledge
cannot operate unless there be a knowing personality, and because the
existence of the latter depends on the erroneous notion that the body, the
senses, and so on, are identical with, or belong to, the Self of the knowing
person.[^]
[^]: _Brahmasūtrabhāṣya_, I.i.1.
Thus, it is by means of our primal ignorance that the self identifies itself
with the body, and then comes to learn about the means of practically getting
around in the world.[^] Nevertheless, inferring that our bodies are our
selves, though of pragmatic value, is not only "the cause of all evil"[^ibid]
but a mistake:
[^]: To be clear, there is a dispute within later Advaita about whether the
ignorance is of the *jīva* or of Brahman, but Śaṃkara apparently has not left
us enough evidence to clearly determine his position on the question.
> It is a well-ascertained truth that that notion of identity of the
individual Self with the not-Self,--with the physical body and the like--which
is common to all physical creatures is caused by *avidyā* [ignorance], just as
a pillar (in the darkness) is mistaken (through *avidyā*) for a human being.
But thereby no essential quality of the man is actually transfered to the
pillar, nor is any essential quality of the pillar transfered to the man.
Similarly, consciousness never actually pertains to the body; neither can it
be that any attributes of the body--such as pleasure, pain, and
dullness--actually pertain to Consciousness, to the Self; for, like decay and
death, such attributes are ascribed to the Self through *avidyā*.[^]
[^]: _Bhagavadgītābhāṣya_, XIII, 2.
Hence our true selves do not have any of the properties we commonly take
ourselves as having except for its inherent properties of consciousness and
enjoyment. Yet, it appears that this contradicts the maxim on Diodoran
grounds. Since there was never a time when our selves were non-enjoyers and
there never will be, we are justified, under a Diodoran modality, in
concluding that it is impossible for the self to be a non-enjoyer. However, it
sometimes appears to us that the self is sad or happy or whatever. But on the
maxim, no one mistakenly infers the impossible. Formally, the argument can be
given as:
* 1\. CoherentlyAppearsAs(I am sad) from
a particular experience
* 2\. ¬AtSomeTime(I am sad) from the
Vedas
* 3\. CoherentlyAppearsAs(I am sad) → ◊(I am sad) from Śaṃkara's maxim
* 4\. ¬AtSomeTime(I am sad) → ¬◊(I am sad) from Diodoran modality
* 5\. Contradiction: ◊(I am sad) and ¬◊(I am sad) from 1 & 3 and from 2 & 4
Hence, we must deny at least one premise in order to maintain coherence.
Indeed, as Chakrabarti noted, it is vital to Śaṃkara's entire project that
there be a difference between the plurality of the world and an "unpresentable
impossibility."
###Resolving the contradiction
As seen above, on textural grounds, Śaṃkara cannot deny the premise that at no
time is the self truly sad. One might therefore suggest the argument rests on
a conflation of ātman and jīva. It appears to my jīva that I am sad, but at no
time is my ātman (The Ātman) sad. However, if this objection were made, the
argument could just be re-run with the x term being "It appears my
ātman is my jīva," and the contradiction could be produced again.
Another tactic to defuse the contradiction is to suggest that perhaps it only
seems to coherently appear to us that we are sometimes sad due to ignorant
superimposition, but it does not actually appear to us. However, normally, we
think of ourselves as having privileged access to knowledge about our selves
and their internal states, such that we can never doubt or be wrong about what
appears to us. From various passages,[^] it is clear that Śaṃkara would also
accept a well-formulated claim of personal indubitability. At the same time,
however, there is ground to say that on an Advaitin account our first person
current mental state beliefs are (almost) *never* correct, since they
attribute various temporal states to the eternal, unchanging consciousness.
William Alston in "Varieties of Privileged Access" divides indubitability into
three categories--"logical impossibility of entertaining a doubt,
psychological impossibility of entertaining a doubt, [and] impossibility of
their being any grounds for doubt"[^]--and argues quite cogently that the
first two kinds of indubitability are only of epistemic import when they
entail the "normative indubitability" of the third category. The matter at
hand is whether there can be a ground, and the absence of doubt is only a mark
of groundlessness. On this basis, Alston eventually defines thirty-four
different possible ways to cash out the "self-warrant" claim for first person
current mental state beliefs. For our purposes, perhaps the most useful is
such beliefs are "always warranted in normal conditions."[^] Such a definition
coheres with the Advaita theory of *svataḥprāmāṇyavāda*, under which, as
Deutsch describes it, "An idea is held to be true or valid, then, the moment
it is entertained […] until it is contradicted in experience or is shown to be
based on defective apprehension."[^] Of course, the difficulty is in defining
"normal conditions," since it "normally" seems that it appears to me that my
self has a body, emotions, temporal states, etc. However, it also normally
seems to appear that the steps in "Ascending and Descending" are continuously
rising. Perhaps, as in that case, the mark of the conditions of warrant is
totality. However, is it possible that first person current mental state
beliefs could lack "the conditions of place, time, and cause, and the
circumstance of non-refutation"? To explore this possibility, we must look at
the case of living enlightenment, *jīvan-mukti*.
[^]: Eg. _Brahmasūtrabhāṣya_, II.ii.25, "the conscious subject never has any
doubt whether it is itself or only similar to itself," and II.i.14, "The man
who has risen from sleep […] does not on that account consider the
consciousness he had of them to be unreal likewise."
[^]: Alston, p. 226.
[^]: _Ibid_., p. 240.
[^]: Deutsch, p. 86.
Śaṃkara repeatedly emphasizes that enlightenment cannot come about as a matter
of religious work (*karma*). Nor, as in many forms of Protestant Christianity,
is salvation purely a matter of faith. Moreover, we have already seen that
Śaṃkara dismisses the idea that enlightenment can be achieved through
reasoning. In the end, "the entire body of regular rites […] serves as a means
to liberation through the attainment of Self-knowledge."[^] P. George Victor
summarizes,
[^]: _Bṛhadāraṇyakopaniṣadbhāṣya_, IV.iv.22, p. 755.
> According to Śaṃkara, action helps one to get purification of mind and leads
to the knowledge of Brahman through renunciation. So it is indirectly but not
directly an aid to liberation.[^]
[^]: Victor, p.137.
Enlightenment is nothing other than the removal of ignorance and seeing the
true nature of the self. However, the nature of ignorance makes it
incompatible with knowledge and thus inexplicable and not subject to removal
by rational argument. Deutsch explains,
> Knowledge destroys ignorance, hence from the standpoint of knowledge, there
is no ignorance whose origin stands in question. And when in ignorance, one
cannot […] describe the process by which this ignorance ontologically comes to
be.
>
> The Advaitin thus finds himself in *avidyā*; he seeks to understand its
nature, to describe its operation, and to overcome it: he cannot tell us why
it, or the mental processes which constitute it, is there in the first place.
With respect to its ontological source, *avidyā* must be necessarily
unintelligible.[^]
[^]: Deutsch, p. 85.
Since ignorance is so pervasive in our ordinary experience, it limits our
field of possible experiences in both a negative and positive sense. On the
negative side, ignorance is a lack of awareness, but on the positive side, it
creates the framework in which the pramāṇas operate. Again, Deutsch summarizes
the Advaitin argument,
> "To know" requires self-consciousness […] The self cannot, on this level of
its being, ever fully grasp itself as a subject apart from objects or objects
apart from the self as a subject. […] A realistic epistemology is thus
philosophically necessary but ultimately false. It is restricted only to a
portion of human existence.[^]
[^]: Deutsch, p. 97.
To return to Boardman's argument, "to dream of someone's squaring the circle
is to dream of something which, *in the dream*, is acknowledged by all to have
been the squaring of the circle."[^] In the same way, for Śaṃkara, to know
something through the pramāṇas is to know something which, in ordinary
experience, will not be contradicted by a further experience. Certain forms of
such knowledge, like the evidence of first person current mental state
beliefs, will be "always warranted in normal conditions," but normal
conditions are not the only conditions. Śaṃkara explicitly uses the language
of the dream to explain how the limited scope of the pramāṇas is accounted for
by his theory.
[^]: Boardman, pp. 224–225
> Other objections are started.--If we acquiesce in the doctrine of absolute
unity, the ordinary means of right knowledge, perception, &c., become invalid
because the absence of manifoldness deprives them of their objects; just as
the idea of a man becomes invalid after the right idea of the post (which at
first had been mistaken for a man) has presented itself. […]
>
> These objections, we reply, do not damage our position because the entire
complex of phenomenal existence is considered as true as long as the knowledge
of Brahman being the Self of all has not arisen; just as the phantoms of a
dream are considered to be true until the sleeper wakes.[^]
[^]: _Brahmasūtrabhāṣya_, II.i.14.
Thus, when Hume asks, "Now 'tis certain we have an idea of extension [and
other conceivables]; for otherwise why do we talk and reason concerning it?"
Śaṃkara has answer: Because it is pragmatically useful in the domain of
ignorance of the true nature of the self.
The emptiness of the pramāṇas also explains why it is that reasoning alone is
insufficient for enlightenment. Because the pramāṇas are the means of knowing
under the assumption of a subject-object duality, there is no way that the
pramāṇas themselves would be able to undermine that duality and reveal the
non-dual nature of the self. Ram-Prasad takes this as the moral of the dream
cognition for Śaṃkara, not that everything might not be external as the
Yogācārins take it, but that what seems now to be a coherent appearance may in
fact turn out not to be:
> 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.[^]
[^]: "Dream and Reality," p. 439
Ram-Prasad further argues elsewhere that,
> no knowledge-claim which can meet the standard of the *pramāṇa*s allows us
to claim that what is currently experienced can never be invalidated. […] 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 *pramāṇa* theory is understood as being about the world […],
the legitimacy of theory is limited to the currently experienced world.[^]
[^]: _Advaita Epistemology and Metaphysics_, p. 90. This argument reminds us
of Hilary Putnam's in "Brains in a vat" that we cannot be brains in a vat,
since what the word "vat" refers to cannot be outside of the world we are in.
In the same way, pramāṇa theory cannot refer to what is beyond it.
Ram-Prasad's own formulation deliberately parallels Kant's argument concerning
the noumena.
With this background in place, we can also see how Śaṃkara's maxim naturally
falls out of the metaphysical system he establishes. If the ordinary pramāṇas
are the arbiter of what it is possible to perceive in totality in usual
experience, then it is natural to suggest that these pramāṇas are not capable
of presenting what is impossible. As we have quoted Śaṃkara's before,
"Possible is whatever is apprehended by perception or some other means of
proof; impossible is what is not so apprehended."[^] Thus, while not a wholly
analytical truth, the maxim is a natural corollary to the rest of the system
Śaṃkara presents. To return to Alston's classifications, what cannot be
doubted by ordinary psychology also cannot have a ground for doubt, since the
existence of a ground depends upon the ability of the ground to be known
through a pramāṇa.
[^]: _Brahmasūtrabhāṣya_, II.ii.28.
To return to the central question of the contradiction of Śaṃkara's maxim,
since I am still mired in ignorance, I do not yet have grounds to deny premise
one. However, since I am not enlightened, I also do not yet have the basis to
say that I know premise two either, since it cannot be known apart from
enlightenment, only trusted through faith in the Vedas. If I were to become
enlightened, then premise two would arise and premise one would fall away, and
so the contradiction would dissolve.
The only remain question is whether his position as reconstructed can still
bear the weight against the Yogācārins that Śaṃkara wants it to without
self-dealing. Whether or not Śaṃkara is being fair to the full range of
possible Yogācārin counter-arguments, his argument against them can be
constructed like so: If the Yogācārins are using a Diodoran notion of
impossibility, then they will want to argue that an external world is
impossible, since it at no time exists.[^] However, doing so contradicts
Śaṃkara's maxim as in the formalization above, since even the Yogācārins admit
that it appears as though an external world exists. However, unlike Śaṃkara,
they cannot beg off the contradiction by temporarily denying premises (other
than the maxim), since it is through the ordinary pramāṇa that the
non-externality of the world is conceived and not through some extraordinary
pramāṇa like self-knowledge.[^]
[^]: Vasubandhu also argues explicitly for the impossibility of the external
world in the _Viṃśatikā_, but I am not attempting to give a full portrait of
the Yogācārin position here.
[^]: There may still be other ways for the Yogācārins to wriggle out of the
contradiction, but this is what Śaṃkara takes their problem to be.
Śaṃkara's core conflict with Yogācārins is that they use the pramāṇas of
inference and perception in order to build a chain of reasoning that shows
that it is impossible for there to be an external world, but such a claim
could never be confirmed, since it conflicts so sharply with the ordinary
findings of the pramāṇas. Hence Śaṃkara's claim that, "we certainly cannot
allow would-be philosophers to deny the truth of what is directly evident to
themselves."[^] The difficulty for the Yogācārins is that they claim both that
it is impossible for there to be an external world and that it appears that
there is one. Śaṃkara does not claim that it appears that the self is one,
since this is known only in enlightenment. The Yogācārins, however, have
claimed that through reasoning we can know that the external world is
impossible, which means that the contradiction derived above can be run
against their system. Their fundamental problem is that they need to show that
the external world is impossible--since otherwise the dream example would give
no traction to their theory as it only proves the possibility of being
mistaken about the externality of experience not the impossibility of
externality--but within the realm of the ordinary pramāṇas, there is no
evidence that can overturn a common verdict of the senses. However, by the
same token, there can be no evidence about what may be the case according to
an extraordinary pramāṇa, hence Śaṃkara is safe in his claim that the self is
non-dual and this is not to be proven by any source other than self-knowledge
which is cultivated on the basis of the Vedas but ultimately transcends them.
Hence his denials are not couched at the level of ordinary experience or meant
to overturn common sense, but only to lead us toward true, ultimate-level
knowledge of the self. Hence, Śaṃkara is able to withstand the blunt charge of
contradiction through the emphasis of the subtleties of his system.[^]
[^]: _Ibid_., II.ii.29.
[^]: Another possibility, not explored here, is to construct a notion of
possibility more foreign to Śaṃkara, but which can nevertheless support the
non-dualist position. In such a system, "possible" might mean "possible in
some world if subject-object duality were real" or something similar.
##Conclusion
Has Śaṃkara managed to defend both his maxim and his metaphysics successfully?
Based on our investigation, we have seen that Śaṃkara's system can be
interpreted coherently. However, his system still has the problem that for
those who do not accept the authority of the Vedas, the non-duality of the
self cannot be rationally shown to be the case. Śaṃkara's only claims that it
cannot rationally be ruled out, a kind of Fideist position. Similarly, as we
have interpreted it, Śaṃkara's maxim is not a tautological claim but one with
strong intuitive support and a central position within the framework of
Advaitin metaphysics. As such, the further burden is on the Advaitin to
demonstrate through their lives that the Vedas are true and enlightenment is a
goal really worth pursuing. We must be given reason to hope if not know.
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