Candidate No.: Y3898820 Word Count: 4,00 0 University of York Department of Philosophy BA Third Year Summative Assessment, Autumn 2022/23 Buddhism as Philosophy (PHI00139H) Essay (4,000 words) Is it defensible to employ a semantic interpretation to understand the M ā dhyamika doctrine of śū nyat ā ? Introduction In Mah ā y ā na Buddhism, śū nyat ā (emptiness) asserts everything to be devoid of intrinsic nature (svabh ā va). In particular, the M ā dhyamikas emphasised the centrality of śū nyat ā in their doctrine. There has been a case (Westerhoff, 2009) for N ā g ā rjuna’s arguments as directed against the essentialism in earlier Buddhism. In this paper, I discuss whether a semantic interpretation of the concept of śū nyat ā is defensible. This will be a tripartite enquiry : (A) Is it a theory that can be cogently constructed ? (B) Can śū nyat ā , so construed, serve a soteriological purpose within the M ā dhyamika context ? I then move on to motivate why one should employ my interpretation, i.e., (C) What advantage does the semantic interpretation have over rival alternatives ? Preliminarie s Before our discussion of the defensibility of the semantic interpretation of śū nyat ā , I shall lay out the terms of the argument: what is śū nyat ā , and what is the semantic interpretation ? Śū nyat ā , as understood by the M ā dhyamikas, is the absence of svabh ā va, i.e. the intrinsic nature of things. Candrak ī rti, one of the most authoritative commentators on N ā g ā rjuna’s śū nyat ā , characterises svabh ā va with three essential features (Westerhoff, 2009) : 1. Svabh ā va is immutable 2. Svabh ā va is not originated from anything 3. Svabh ā va’s existence is not derived or constructed from something else Taking into account that N ā g ā rjuna sought to negate the premise of svabh ā va—more precisely, to postulate its absence —with śū nyat ā , we can form a tentative picture of his central doctrine : 1. Nothing can be immutable 2. Everything originates from something else 3. There are no independent things or concepts—everything depends on something else. 1 How should we interpret these three characteristics? I will be defending its semantic interpretation, speci fi cally where fi rst-order anti-foundationalism is paired with meta-level anti-foundationalism : (i) The semantic interpretation of śū nyat ā is opposed to its metaphysical variant. While the semantic interpretation is concerned with the nature of truth, the metaphysical interpretation is concerned with the nature of (supposedly existent) reality. (ii) The M ā dhyamaka framework entails an interpretation attributed with both fi rst-order- and meta- level- anti-foundationalism; i.e. emptiness of ontological foundations, with emptiness of foundational truths We have good reasons to think this is an appropriate reading. In M ū lamadhyamakak ā rik ā 22:11, N ā g ā rjuna claims emptiness itself to be empty. He writes , Here I have used a quanti fi cational approach, but the reasons for favouring it instead of other 1 approaches is beyond the scope of the paper. Justi fi cation for this reading can be found in Robinson (1967) and Westerhoff (2020:84). “‘Empty' should not be asserted ‘Nonempty’ should not be asserted. Neither both nor neither should be asserted. They are only used nominally.” (N ā g ā rjuna, 1995:280 ) This rejection of the four alternatives of the tetralemma can be read in juxtaposition with N ā g ā rjuna’s no-thesis view in Vigrahavy ā vartan ī , which Westerhoff (2009:183) summarises as the claim that one has no positions that are non-empty—i.e., all positions are dependent on others and cannot be grounded in itself. Taken together, we can see that emptiness (understood as dependence on other foundations) is characteristic of both the views we hold (from MMK 22:11), and the emptiness of such views (from the no-thesis view). We therefore have fi rst-order emptiness and metal-level emptiness, both being about the nature of truth In short, I will be defending śū nyat ā (i) interpreted as a semantic doctrine, and that (ii) both ontological foundations and the high-order foundations that ground them are characterised by the three features of śū nyat ā —of mutability, constructivism and dependence Can a semantic interpretation of śū nyat ā be cogently constructed ? Motivation s Nelson Goodman’s critique of world-making motivates a constructionalist picture of truth. Instead of construing Goodman’s project as an epistemological commentary, Leeten understands it as “an effort of mapping” (2012:37): philosophy is not concerned with discovering truths about the world, but with how we understand the world in the ways we do. On this account, the world (and facts about it) is constructed “all the way down”. Goodman means this in a radical sense: what we see as our world only exists as parts of reality we have conceptually constructed in our own ways; therefore, there are in fi nitely many “versions” of reality (Goodman, 1976)—each constructed from another constructed version of the world, which is constructed from yet another constructed world, and so on ad in fi nitum. There is no primordial base from which everything originates. Goodman postulated this constructionalist picture on the basis of scepticism about the reducibility of theories to one another, pairing this with a Kuhnian conception of epistemological “progress”— constrained by the fi nitude of our conceptual tools. What we can do is map the world we inhabit; not grasp it, but disclose aspects of the world that to which we want to attend. These unique mappings do not seek to grasp the world “in itself”, nor delude us into a false world of appearances, but make the world possible Everything that appears fundamental are merely fundamental within the framework of one “version” of many, which is itself constructed from another “version” which, too, is constructed; the search for fundamentality leads nowhere. This is an ontological picture where existence is “in fi nitely deferred, ever achieved” (Schaffer, 2010:62) Goodman’s theory can be read as a metaphysical one, but it can also be extended to semantics— given that he endorses an in fi nitely-regressive constructionalism, and that it is from the truth(s) governing our different versions of world-making where our metaphysical picture of the world emerges, we can easily infer the transitivity of the applicability of his theory. Since the theory, semantically construed, is where the metaphysical version of the theory is derived, i.e. the former interpretation encompasses the latter, we can now take it as a semantic theory. Constructing a cogent theor y What we have discussed so far is a motivation for supporting a semantic interpretation of śū nyat ā , understood as fi rst-order anti-foundationalism grounded in meta-level anti-foundationalism. But can such a picture be workable ? There is an abundance of literature on such systems. One of the most famed examples is Dipert’s non-foundationalist idea of the world as a graph (Dipert, 1997). Here, individuals are no longer de fi ned by their intrinsic nature, but seen as projections of complex relations that constitute the holistic web of being; in it; everything is “individuated solely by their graph-theoretic structural features” (1997:329). The rationale for the position was to argue for a holistic, relationalist picture of both metaphysics and semantics, in a structuralist vein, and equally to accommodate the fact that traditional logical representations have been found wanting in portraying human experience. Dipert divides his ontology into two parts, consisting of an “ontological inventory” of existent things and a structural system by which these things are related. In a graph, the former are represented as vertices, and the latter as edges connecting the vertices. To summarise his picture of world-as-graph : 1. “Every difference between two graphs’ descriptions entails a difference in structure, and vice versa” (Dipert, 1997:346); i.e., this supports a strongly supervenient relationalism wherein change in the individual entails change in the structure, and likewise change in structure entails change in the individual 2. Individuals in the graph have no internal structure—they are distinct by virtue of their unique structural relations to other individuals in the graph, not by virtue of some sort of intrinsic identity. It is easy to see that this portrays the world as a network of interdependent relations, where the individuals’ nature is never fi xed, but rather incessantly interacting with the structure (1) supports a holistic, interdependent picture of the world. Again, this can be extended to a semantic system, where facts that ground the graph-theoretic web of relations, too, follow a similar structural pattern. This is akin to Goodman’s “constructivism all the way down”. (2) is also compatible with, indeed lending credence to, the M ā dhyamika doctrine of śū nyat ā —understood as lack of svabh ā va in individuals, where everything is mutable, originated and dependent. With graph theory being a main fi eld of study in discrete mathematics, it is dif fi cult to argue against the cogency of Dipert’s structuralist picture, which was built from the tools of graph-theoretic structures. Objection s But Dipert’s proposal is not without potential problems. Foundationalist critics can formulate the below objections : 1. Our version of anti-foundationalism leads to an in fi nite regress, which may be of the vicious kind. Having proposed an in fi nitely-regressive constructionalism as a tentative view, I anticipate this objection, based on the incomprehensibility of the in fi niteness of dependent origination. 2. Similarly to the conceptual inconceivability in (1), the position defended entails a peculiar mereology. Surely constructions require the unconstructed at some point? How can wholes be related to their parts in such a way that the wholes’ nature is at least supervenient on their parts, on this account ? Both of these objections are grounded on premises that are false. The presuppositions are, namely : (a) In fi nite regresses are necessarily vicious. (b) Atomism is true: there is a simple, basic constituent into which everything can be broken down (c) The mereological relations between simples and compounds are binary and hierarchical: it is a fact of matter that there are compounds, which arise from different con fi gurations of simples None of these premises hold true, especially within M ā dhyamika ontology. This is because in fi nite regresses need not be vicious—in fact, the only reason why it could be problematic is due to another presupposition: that there is a certain feature (understood as svabh ā va) to be inherited from earlier constituents, to be replicated in the compound. In an illuminating paper, Trogdon (2018) argues against the idea of inherited being. She instead proposes thinking of existence as emerging from dependent chains—without any intrinsic existence being inherited. We can then draw parallels between Trogdon’s suggestion and M ā dhyamika ontology (and by extension soteriology, but I leave this to the next section): everything is dependent on other things. Indeed, with the doctrine of śū nyat ā , there is no intrinsic nature that can be inherited at all. With these considerations in mind, presuppositions (a) and (b) cannot hold true: in fi nite regresses are not problematic structures, given there is no inheritable svabh ā va—and indeed the notion of such inheritance is, fi rst and foremost, logically inconsistent (Trogdon, 2018). This can also be utilised against atomism, because it shows that there is no problem in accepting the opposite view; and therefore, presupposition (b) is unfounded at best, and at worst, in utter con fl ict with M ā dhyamika ontology Given the relational structuralism I proposed earlier, it becomes evident that presupposition (c) is not true: the latter posits a monadist mereology, where the construction of the world is based on monadic relations; while my proposed solution is one where our world is governed by relational reality with dyadic vertices—we are characterised by how we are related to the rest of the structure. Presupposition (c), like presuppositions (a) and (b) therefore, cannot be defended by the M ā dhyamikas. We have to reject all of these presuppositions, making the objections, too, invalid Does the semantic interpretation of śū nyat ā fi t into the M ā dhyamika soteriological picture ? But why might someone accept or endorse this theory? This is a crucial step, as a workable solution is not necessarily one that we are tempted to defend. In order to defend the semantic, doubly anti- foundationalist interpretation, I shall demonstrate how it fi ts in with, and indeed helps the case of, M ā dhyamika soteriology. Characterising M ā dhyamika soteriolog y Before proceeding, I shall summarise N ā g ā rjuna’s central dialectic brie fl y. His soteriological picture consists of three interrelated, interdependent features : (i) The absolute lack of intrinsic nature/ svabh ā va , 2 (ii) Relationalist, non-dualist conception of truth, an d (iii) The primacy of negativeness (not to be con fl ated with negativity or negation ) 3 Or universal—in the sense that it includes all members existing in the set of the world. 2 While the difference between negativeness and negativity is clear enough, the one between 3 negativeness and negation may necessitate a clari fi cation. By negativeness I mean a positive assertion of absence (i.e. “there is non-svabh ā va”), as opposed to a negative assertion of presence (i.e. “there is no svabh ā va”) in a negation. This is an important distinction, as N ā g ā rjuna makes claims about semantics/ the nature of truth (“there is no thing/ reality of which intrinsic properties can be predicated”), rather than a metaphysical consideration of what exists in the world (“There are no intrinsic properties”)—evidently, the latter is not the interpretation we are after. While this characterisation can work as an epistemological and/or metaphysical claim, what matters in our present discussion is speci fi cally the implications when you consider the above statements in semantical terms. It will become clear why this is important in upcoming sections. I now assess our account based on whether it is soteriologically defensible, given the above characterisations The semantic interpretation vis-à-vis M ā dhyamika soteriolog y As I touched on in the introduction and preliminary notes, the doctrine of śū nyat ā is the central concern of the M ā dhyamikas: to show that svabh ā va does not exist; that there is only emptiness, conceived as in fi nitely changeable, derivable and dependent—which extends also to the (apparent) truism of emptiness Recall the earlier quotation from MMK 22:11 that rejects all four alternatives of the Catu ṣ ko ṭ i. Curiously, in MMK 18:8, N ā g ā rjuna also af fi rms all four alternatives : “Everything is real and is not real, Both real and not real , Neither real nor not real This is Lord Buddha’s teaching.” (N ā g ā rjuna, 1995:250 ) Westerhoff (2020) reads this as portraying the gradedness of reality—everything can be true at the same time, nothing can be true at the same time... all at once, as the tetralemma lays out, because the M ā dhyamikas do not follow the standard semantical picture governed by classical, non-fuzzy logic. Now, we can think about this non-dualism (as in feature (ii) above) in conjunction with the absolute absence of svabh ā va (as in feature (i)): because it is by virtue of absolute śū nyat ā , which strips things of the very intrinsic nature and bearer of which attributes can be predicated, that things cannot have intrinsic properties; we can say that feature (ii) is grounded in feature (i)—and understandably so, since śū nyat ā is the central doctrine of the M ā dhyamika school. The non-dualist concept of truth can be demonstrated in a passage from MMK 23:13-14 , “If to grasp onto the view ‘the impermanent is permanent’ were an error , Since in emptiness there is nothing impermanent, how could that grasping be an error ? If to grasp onto the view ‘the impermanent is permanent’ were an error , Why isn’t grasping onto the view ‘in emptiness there is nothing impermanent’ an error?” (N ā g ā rjuna, 1995:288 ) Ames (1988:12) understands this passage to posit the rejection of the existence of independent entities, of which either permanence or impermanence can be predicated. At the same time, it is possible that both permanence and impermanence to be predicated of an entity, because the “truth” of śū nyat ā , too, is empty. And therefore we can see how the seemingly contradicting assertions in MMK 22:11 (the rejection of all alternatives) and 18:8 (the af fi rmation of all alternatives) can be reconciled. What further soteriological implications can this entail? Will it not merely descend into relativism and consequently, nihilism? Not to be confused with relativism, what N ā g ā rjuna is proposing is a relationalism, something that has more in common with a phenomenological approach than any nihilist, anything-goes strategy. In the previous section I gave an account of a relationalism N ā g ā rjuna could have endorsed; but what soteriological lessons can we draw from this ontological fact ? Features (i) and (ii) in fact substantiate N ā g ā rjuna’s account of the nature of our world-making: both the lack of intrinsic existence and semantic non-dualism point to the indexical nature of experience, a suchness . Since truths are interwoven in a contextual criss-crossing, similarly to how grammar functions within language games in Wittgenstein, we no longer have reasons to cling to any conceptual construction. This is not to say these constructions must be abandoned, however—the point is the support for perspectivalism that arises out of emptiness, coupled with the fact that we exist in relation to the web of constructions in which we dwell. Siderits (2007:315) compares this to the workings of fi at currency—perfectly operational even though we no longer have a gold standard to “ground” it. The M ā dhyamikas remark that sa ṃ s ā ra itself is nirvana. Given the constant interweaving, unweaving and reweaving of interrelations in the nexus of being, and that fact that everything has dependent origination, the dichotomy of opposites is now depicted as a mere construction; but as a useful fi ction, nevertheless. It is in this context that both clinging and suffering become mundane facts Feature (iii), which posits the primacy of negativeness, also strengthens the current position. Emptiness, interpreted semantically as “emptiness of emptiness”, can be seen as thoroughly subversive and deconstructive. Since even the soteriological “truth” of śū nyat ā is a self- deconstructive concept, we are led to be liberated from the inclination to render experience a ground for desires and clinging. N ā g ā rjuna takes an innovative approach, in abandoning talk of resolving the question of the ultimate truth of reality, and instead drawing our attention to gaining an insight which illuminates the non-dualist nature of existence, as well as of the facts from which the former are constructed. With perspectivalism, we come to understand that since there are no foundational truths onto which we can cling, we also come to appreciate better the suchness of others’ experiences. It can be thought of as the seed from which compassion, a puri fi ed love of the world germinates, and indeed the requisite tool for liberation Since none of N ā g ā rjuna’s assertions about truth and/or reality is to be interpreted with a standard semantics, founded on metaphysical realism , we can read N ā g ā rjuna’s view as a rejection of a 4 correspondence theory of truth. Recall that earlier, Goodman equated world-making with map- making, where in the world in question is already a map of an earlier-mapped world, in a constructivism-all-the-way-down manner. We are thinking of a much more complex picture of the world, not dictated by mere correspondence of our beliefs to a mind-independent reality. Again, this reinforces my proposal that śū nyat ā should be construed as a semantic claim, not a metaphysical one about what exists in “reality” A worry: can we assert the centrality of emptiness on our understanding ? We now consider a potential worry. In a paper concerning the soteriological purpose of śū nyat ā for the M ā dhyamikas, Siderits (2003) writes that the role semantic emptiness plays in attaining nirvana is ancillary, compared to non-self. Here, śū nyat ā serves only to rectify errors in the ways we approach non-self, for example a “clinging that may grow out of one’s appreciation of the doctrine of non-self” (Siderits, 2003:15). In other words, śū nyat ā builds a theoretical framework where one comes to understand how an impersonal view of personhood can be possible On Siderits’s reading, śū nyat ā is no longer a central doctrine. But clearly this cannot be, considering we started the discussion emphasising the centrality of śū nyat ā in M ā dhyamika philosophy. If this is The view that there is a mind-independent reality. 4 true, the semantic interpretation we sought out to defend would be unsalvageable. What can be done in order to avoid this ? Siderits responds to himself in this way : “The doctrine of emptiness is said to be the remedy that purges itself along with the cause of one’s lingering illness. One sometimes senses that critics of the semantic interpretation believe it would be just too disappointing if this turned out to be all there were to the doctrine of emptiness. Perhaps the feeling of disappointment is a sign that emptiness is doing the purging work for which it was intended.” (Siderits, 2003:20) But is this good argumentation? I think not, and we should not settle with this non-solution. It commits the fallacy of petitio principii , where one argues against the opponent by assuming, from the outset, that he/she has already accepted the premise (i.e. in this case, that he/she is happy to settle with such disappointment). Siderits describes this sort of disappointment as “the remedy that purges itself along with the cause of one’s lingering illness”, but by saying his opponent is right to be disappointed and should accept it, is already presupposing his position My respons e What other alternatives are there? Here are two candidates : 1. Śū nyat ā may not always have been the central doctrine in Buddhism, especially in its earlier stages, but at (and from) the time the M ā dhyamikas started theorising, it has become a central doctrine. This position is constructed from Siderits’s response with some interpretative leeway —since there is a sequentiality implied in his account—but extending its teleological bent. 5 N ā g ā rjuna would argue that it was what has become central during the inception of the M ā dhyamakas. On his account, given the attachment to svabh ā va of the Abhidharma school was the problem preventing them from attaining nirvana even after having understood (though not tacitly internalised) non-self, śū nyat ā has, from that point, gained centrality within Buddhist soteriology 2. A more obvious response is that Siderits had misconstrued śū nyat ā as a view, while in fact, when interpreted semantically, it is really a philosophical methodology. I have hinted at this earlier, but śū nyat ā seems not to be a doctrine, but a deconstructive tool, instrumental in our gaining insights on the world and in our attainment of liberation from suffering. This account is not in con fl ict with Siderits’s (unfortunately underspeci fi ed) solution—it does provide a theoretical framework from which we can work to understand and attend to the world in our own ways, and, as we established from our earlier discussions, this framework is a necessary fi ction if we wanted to form a view at all, indeed for a world to be possible. In this sense, śū nyat ā preserves its centrality within M ā dhyamika soteriology; Siderits merely committed a category mistake of thinking of śū nyat ā as a doctrine, and not as a constructed framework Is our present account better than its alternatives ? In the preceding sections, we discussed whether one has reasons to endorse a semantic interpretation of śū nyat ā , both in terms of its cogency and whether it is compatible with M ā dhyamika soteriology. But we have not yet answered the titular question, of why someone Siderits’s account of the path to nirvana is teleological: one has to fi rst attempt to understand non- 5 self, then utilise the methodological tool of emptiness to rid themselves of any erroneous inclinations, and only then do they really understand non-self. should defend this. I endeavour to do so now, by comparing my account to its alternatives, thereby establishing its superiority over rival theories Comparison to the metaphysical interpretatio n Once again, a metaphysical theory would be a commentary on the nature of reality, as opposed to the nature of truth (as in a semantic theory). This would mean positing a theory of an ultimate reality, which one would by now fi nd to be logically dubious. Śū nyat ā is N ā g ā rjuna’s deconstructive tool, and so it would be contradictory to claim that N ā g ā rjuna was putting forward any sort of doctrine which sacralised an ultimate truth of emptiness; since this would be entirely contrary to the M ā dhyamika project, of illuminating the suchness of our experience and conditions. Another edge the semantic interpretation has over its metaphysical variant is the challenge it poses for the two-truths scheme. A non-dualistic semantic picture was precisely where N ā g ā rjuna’s teaching of śū nyat ā was driving at; had we adopted the metaphysical interpretation, we will have to accept truth as correspondence to a mind-independent reality—this is far from ideal, as it results in a dogmatic scheme which assumes that conventional truths ultimately point to a beacon of truth, defying the N ā g ā rjunian spirit of deconstructive, relationalist emptiness. If one has understood N ā g ā rjuna’s teaching, he/she would realise that N ā g ā rjuna was theorising about the nature of truth and its higher-order grounding He/she would have to adopt a semantic interpretation, not a metaphysical one. Comparison to the pairing of fi rst-order anti-foundationalism with meta-level foundationalis m But why should one defend śū nyat ā all the way down ? Can we not, instead, argue for just a fi rst- order anti-foundationalism, and then ground it with some foundational truth ? We can establish from our previous discussions that the latter does not sound quite right. For N ā g ā rjuna, dependent origination is an in fi nite chain, and therefore what holds of emptiness—the fact of emptiness, is also what holds on for the emptiness of emptiness. Structurally speaking, the latter view does not mirror N ā g ā rjuna’s approach. Additionally, the premise of ultimately true theories cannot be defended even in isolation, without any soteriological concerns. Westerhoff details how this is so (2020:257-295), and I will now discuss two of his arguments: from (a) semantic contextualism, and (b) the impossibility of quantifying over everything (a) Semantic contextualism: the very idea of meaning without any background assumptions that can be used to modulate our communication is de fi cient. Consequently, there can be no such thing as a literal meaning. This is again a structuralist picture. Reminiscently of Saussurean linguistics, it claims that signs we use in our communication have no intrinsic meaning, and that (arbitrary) meaning only emerges within the linguistic system wherein the sign is a node. Now, given that there can be no literal meaning, it follows that there is no ultimately truth theory of the world—by extension, there is also no ultimately true theory about the “facts” of the world. First-order anti-foundationalism paired with meta-level foundationalism cannot be a comprehensible combination (b) The impossibility of quantifying over everything: talk of the world necessarily gives rise to higher-order discourse, which exponentially increases the existent abstract entities that we can quantify over—talking about ontological reality (producing metaphysical claims) begets semantic claims, and talking about these semantic claims gives rise to meta-level claims about semantics. Meta-language never ceases to get more meta, and therefore full generality is impossible. It follows that ultimate truth is unattainable, given we must fi rst be able to quantify over the things we talk about to form a theory about it This leads us back to Goodmanian constructionalism, only changing the direction and construing meta-languages as going higher-order than the language it is concerned with, rather than grounding the foundational grounds of the language as a structural foundation. This view therefore further reinforces my position Conclusio n I have argued in favour of a semantic reading of śū nyat ā . I fi rst considered whether it is possible, by asking if it can be constructed cogently; I then gave soteriological grounds from within the M ā dhyamika framework, of why someone might choose to endorse such a position. Lastly, I compare my account to its alternatives, establishing that my version of interpretation is the best candidate for a workable reading that promotes the M ā dhyamika notion of śū nyat ā I hope to have responded to the essentials of N ā g ā rjuna’s teachings; of śū nyat ā , posited as a positive absence; perspectival, non-dualist view of truth; and the primacy of negativeness. In the end, what the semantic reading of śū nyat ā achieves is a much more innovative solution to the “problem” of emptiness—directing us in better understanding non-self, subsequently developing a universal compassion of the world. Bibliograph y Ames W. L. (1988). 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