CROSS-CULTURAL APPROACHES TO CONSCIOUSNESS: Mind, Nature, and Ultimate Reality 9781350238503, 9781350238534, 9781350238510

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CROSS-CULTURAL APPROACHES TO CONSCIOUSNESS

Also available from Bloomsbury: Comparative Philosophy and Method, edited by Steven Burik, Robert Smid and Ralph Weber Cross-Cultural Existentialism, by Leah Kalmanson The Bloomsbury Companion to the Philosophy of Consciousness, edited by Dale Jacquette Katherine J. Morris, Daniel Stoljar, Ted Honderich, Paul Bello and Scott Soames The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Ethics, edited by Shyam Ranganathan The Evolution of Consciousness, by Paula Droege

CROSS-CULTURAL APPROACHES TO CONSCIOUSNESS

MIND, NATURE, AND ULTIMATE REALITY Edited by Itay Shani and Susanne Kathrin Beiweis

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2023 Copyright © Itay Shani, Susanne Kathrin Beiweis and Contributors, 2023 Itay Shani and Susanne Kathrin Beiweis have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on pp. xi–xii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design by Louise Dugdale Cover image: Benjavisa / iStock All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3502-3850-3 ePDF: 978-1-3502-3851-0 eBook: 978-1-3502-3852-7 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

CONTENTS

L ist of F igures  N otes on the E ditors A cknowledgments 

and

C ontributors 

Introduction Susanne K. Beiweis and Itay Shani

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Part One  Consciousness and Ultimate Reality 1 On the Identification of Being and Consciousness in Advaita Vedānta Wolfgang Fasching 2 Cosmopsychism and Non-Śankaran Traditions of Hindu Non-dualism: In Search of a Fertile Connection Itay Shani

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Part Two  Emergence and Mental Causation 3 Consciousness, Physicalism, and the Problem of Mental Causation Christian Coseru 4 Abhinavagupta’s Svātantryavāda: Mental Causality, Emergentism, and Intuitionist Mathematics Loriliai Biernacki 5 Karma and Mental Causation: A Nikāya Buddhist Perspective George Wong Soo Lam

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CONTENTS

Part Three  Realism, Idealism, and Panpsychism 6 Consciousness as the Fundamental Reality of the Universe: A Master Argument for Buddhist Idealism Alex Watson 7 Huayan Buddhism’s Conceptions of the Realness of Reality: A Transformation from Subjective Idealism into Holistic Realism JeeLoo Liu 8 Converging Outlooks? Contemporary Panpsychism and Chinese Natural Philosophy Pierfrancesco Basile

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Part Four  Illusionism 9 The Magic of Consciousness: Sculpting an Alternative Illusionism Bryce Huebner, Eyal Aviv, and Sonam Kachru 10 Cognitive Illusion and Immediate Experience: Perspectives from Buddhist Philosophy Jay L. Garfield 11 Interrogating Illusionism Anand Jayprakash Vaidya

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I ndex 

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LIST OF FIGURES

6.1 The Three Views

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6.2 Representatives of the Three Views

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6.3 The Direct Realist View

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6.4 The Representationalist View

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6.5 The Idealist View

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NOTES ON THE EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS

Itay Shani is professor of philosophy at Sun Yat-sen University (Zhuhai, China). His area of expertise is the philosophy of mind with special emphasis on consciousness and the metaphysics of mind. In addition, he is passionate about general metaphysics, the history of philosophy, and the meaning of life. He has written extensively on panpsychism and is mostly known for his contribution to the development of cosmopsychism, a monistic position which seeks to explain individual consciousness with reference to a transpersonal cosmic consciousness. With Jonardon Ganeri, he has recently co-edited a volume of the journal The Monist dedicated to cosmopsychism and Indian philosophy. He is currently working on a book titled The Heart of the Matter: An Essay on Existential Meaning. Susanne K. Beiweis is currently a research associate in the Department of Philosophy (Zhuhai) at Sun Yat-sen University. Her main interests lie in the history of philosophy and ideas with a specific focus on the Renaissance and Early Modern period. She has published several articles on Marsilio Ficino and Renaissance magic. Wolfgang Fasching is the author of Phänomenologische Reduktion und Mushin and of several papers on the topics of consciousness, the self, and Indian philosophy. Christian Coseru is Lightsey Humanities Chair and professor of philosophy at the College of Charleston. He works in the fields of philosophy of mind, phenomenology, and cross-cultural philosophy, especially Indian and Buddhist philosophy in dialogue with Western (classical and contemporary) philosophy

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and cognitive science. Author of Perceiving Reality (2012), Moments of Consciousness (forthcoming), and editor of Reasons and Empty Persons (forthcoming), his research has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Australian Research Council. Loriliai Biernacki is in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her research interests include Hinduism, gender, New Materialism, and the interface between religion and science. Her first book, Renowned Goddess of Desire: Women, Sex and Speech in Tantra (2007) won the Kayden Award in 2008. She is co-editor of God’s Body: Panentheism across the World’s Religious Traditions (2013) and has a new book coming out with Oxford in 2022 on Abhinavagupta, panentheism, and New Materialism, titled The Matter of Wonder: Abhinavagupta’s Panentheism and New Materialism. George Wong Soo Lam is a lecturer at the Singapore University of Social Sciences in the Centre for University Core. His research interests focus on metaphysics, Buddhist philosophy, and comparative philosophy. He has published on metaphysics, specifically on causation, emergence, and material constitution. Alex Watson is professor of Indian philosophy at Ashoka University, before which he was Preceptor in Sanskrit at Harvard. He works on debates in mediaeval India between Buddhism, Nyāya, Mīmāṃsā, and Śaivism, especially those concerning the self, God, perception, self-awareness, and the status of the external world. He is the author of The Self’s Awareness of Itself: Bhaṭṭa Rāmakaṇtha’s Arguments Against the Buddhist Doctrine of No-Self (2006) and, with Dominic Goodall and Anjaneya Sarma, An Enquiry into the Nature of Liberation (mokṣa) (2013) as well as many articles on the history of Indian philosophy. JeeLoo Liu is professor of philosophy at California State University, Fullerton. She was named 2019 Carnegie Fellow for her research project: Confucian Robotic Ethics. She has authored Neo-Confucianism: Metaphysics, Mind, and Morality (2017), An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy: from Ancient Philosophy to Chinese Buddhism (2006). She also co-edited Consciousness and the Self (2012), and Nothingness in Asian Philosophy (2014). Her primary research interest is to reconstruct analytic Chinese philosophy, in topics such as Chinese metaphysics, Confucian moral psychology, and Neo-Confucian virtue ethics. Her current research topic is Confucian robotic ethics. Pierfrancesco Basile is lecturer in philosophy at the University of Bern and at the KSA Luzern, Switzerland. His research interests focus on metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and, most recently, the history of ancient philosophy. He

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has published on Bradley, Whitehead, Spinoza, as well as on panpsychism and the origin and development of analytic philosophy. His most recent books are Whitehead’s Metaphysics of Power (2017) and Ancient Philosophy (2021, in German). Bryce Huebner is Provost’s Distinguished Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Georgetown University. His research focuses on a wide range of issues across the cognitive, biological, and social sciences. And he has recently been examining the role of allostatic regulation in biological cognition, as well as attempting to integrate insights from Yogācāra Buddhism with models from computational and cognitive neuroscience. Eyal Aviv is an assistant professor at George Washington University in the Department of Religion. His research focuses on Buddhist philosophy and intellectual history in India and China. He has published on Buddhist intellectual history in modern China, Buddhist philosophy, and Buddhist pedagogy. His most recent book is titled Telling Pearls from Fish-Eyes: Ouyang Jingwu and the Revival of Scholastic Buddhism (2020). Sonam Kachru is an assistant professor at the University of Virginia in the Department of Religious Studies. A historian of philosophy, his research centers on the history of Buddhist philosophy in premodern South Asia. His first book is Other Lives: Mind and World in Indian Buddhism (2021). Jay L. Garfield is Doris Silbert Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy and Buddhist Studies at Smith College, the Harvard Divinity School, and the University of Melbourne, and is Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies. His research addresses questions in the philosophy of mind, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, Buddhist philosophy, and cross-cultural hermeneutics. His most recent books are Losing Ourselves: Learning to Live Without a Self (2022), Knowing Illusion: Bringing a Tibetan Debate into Contemporary Discourse (with The Yakherds, 2021), Buddhist Ethics: A Philosophical Exploration (2021), and What Can’t be Said: Paradox and Contradiction in East Asian Thought (with Yasuo Deguchi, Graham Priest, and Robert Sharf, 2021). Anand Jayprakash Vaidya is professor of philosophy and occasional Director of the Center for Comparative Philosophy at San Jose State University in California. His research focuses on the cross-cultural and multi-disciplinary study of mind, knowledge, and reality. His most recent works explore the nature of perceptual knowledge in Nyaya and Analytic epistemology and the nature of consciousness in Vedanta and Analytic panpsychism.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is the culmination of our efforts to determine whether consciousness can be conceived as metaphysically fundamental. In searching for possible answers, we looked first into the contemporary debates on consciousness. However, we soon discovered the potential and value of ideas about consciousness and fundamental reality found in East- and South-East Asian philosophical traditions (Buddhism, Chinese, and Indian traditions). We also realized that these Asian traditions have not yet been properly attended to. To fill this lacuna and to lay the ground for a potential cross-pollination between contemporary research into the problem of consciousness and the metaphysics of mind, on the one hand, and Asian philosophical traditions, on the other, we decided to organize a conference. The conference, “Consciousness and Fundamental Reality: Lessons from East Asian Philosophy,” was held on June 11–13, 2019, at the Department of Philosophy (Zhuhai), Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU). It laid the cornerstone for this volume. Over the three days, we had the pleasure of investigating the nature of consciousness and the fundamentality hypothesis with scholars working on the philosophy of mind or East- and South-East Asian philosophy. Most of the invited speakers also contributed to this volume; others joined the project at a later stage. We want to express our deepest thanks to all of them—presenters and contributors—for the stimulating discussions, insightful comments, and contributions. We also would like to express our gratitude to the Department of Philosophy (Zhuhai), SYSU, which enabled us to organize the conference in the first place. In particular, we would like to thank Christoffer Zhou, Luo Zhen, Danping Huang, Fang Tiange, and Yu’e Geng for their organizational support and tireless enthusiasm. We also wish to mention Ivan Ivanov, Kevin Lynch, Pauline Sabrier, Alexei Procyshyn, and Ke Zhao, who helped us to chair sessions and

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participated in the general discussion. Many thanks also go to Christian Coseru and Swami Medhananda for their support in this project. Here, we would also like to acknowledge our proofreader Mark Rogers. We are also very grateful to the three anonymous reviewers and to Colleen Coalter, Philosophy Senior Commissioning Editor at Bloomsbury Publishing, for her help and guidance. Finally, special thanks go to our family and friends for their support and patience with us. Zhuhai, January 2022 Susanne Kathrin Beiweis Itay Shani

Introduction Can Consciousness Be Reconceived as Metaphysically Fundamental? SUSANNE K. BEIWEIS AND ITAY SHANI

“Once Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Zhuang Zhou. Suddenly he woke up, and there he was, solid and unmistakable, Zhuang Zhou. But he didn’t know if he were Zhuang Zhou who had dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuang Zhou. Between Zhuang Zhou and a butterfly, there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things (Zhuangzi 2013: 18)”. The passage above, found in the ancient Chinese classic Zhuangzi, introduces a problem familiar to philosophers of mind: What is the nature of the Self? What is the nature of consciousness? How is it situated in the grand scheme of things? Indeed, Zhuang Zhou’s vivid imagery, which blurs the lines between reality and dream in a way that anticipates Descartes’s dreaming thought experiment and skepticism, introduces us to a concern for the fundamentality of consciousness. To the modern mindset it is natural to conceive of dreams as unreal. They represent a deviation from the true course of things, reality going on a holiday. Yet, apart from the plain observation that holidays, too, are part of reality, dreams offer us a more intriguing reflection, namely, that it’s possible for thematically rich streams of experience to unfold spontaneously, unregimented by external material stimuli. If consciousness has the ability to simulate a genuine sense of “being in the world,” such as Zhuang Zhou’s butterfly adventure, might it not be possible that that which we identify as waking reality, or  the “world” is,

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somehow, itself a projection of consciousness? (Whether such consciousness is of our own individual making, a collective and co-constructed consciousness, or perhaps an all-encompassing cosmic consciousness.) This concern for the ultimate nature of consciousness and its place in the grand scheme of things is a leitmotif of philosophy—in both the philosophy of the East and West. We see it take center stage, for instance, in British Empiricism, German Idealism, Buddhism, and Vedānta, although the latter traditions articulated the matter nearly two millennia ago. Yet, while consciousness remained a central topic of inquiry in India and East Asia well into the twentieth century, influential intellectual trends in Western thought, mainly associated with Behaviourism, Positivism, and classical Cognitivism, deemphasized its importance. One may appreciate Galen Strawson’s (2017) protest that there is exaggeration in the claim that consciousness research went through a hiatus of long “lost decades,” to be picked up again only at the closing of the twentieth century. Yet, even granting the point, it is hard to deny the reservation of attitude, and the relative marginalization of the subject, throughout large spans of the second half of the last century. And if consciousness itself was met with scruples, it is no surprise that there was little bandwidth of tolerance for entertaining the heretical idea that sentience and subjectivity might be irreducible and ontologically basic. Throughout much of the twentieth century, analytic philosophy of mind was dominated by materialist sentiments. Consequently, it was guided by the presumption that consciousness, to the extent that it is a worthy subject of study at all, must be conceived as a cosmic latecomer and a rare exception—a peculiar phenomenon, ultimately derivable from wholly insentient material and functional conditions. The contrary hypothesis that consciousness might be cosmically central rather than peripheral, primordial rather than derivative, was often dismissed as “fantastic” (Popper and Eccles 1977: 69), “outrageous” (McGinn 1997: 34), “absurd” (Searle 1997: 48), or simply too ludicrous to merit serious consideration (e.g., Edwards 1967). Such dismissals notwithstanding, the attitude toward consciousness in general, and more specifically toward the fundamentality hypothesis, has changed considerably over the last few decades, in which an unprecedented number of scholars in many different disciplines have turned to the study of consciousness. Significant milestones in the colossal revival of interest in consciousness research included Roger Penrose’s bestseller The Emperor’s New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and The Laws of Physics (1989); Francis Crick’s examination of consciousness in a neurobiological context in The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul (1994); and David Chalmers’s influential monograph The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (1996). Other landmarks included the inauguration of the conference series “Toward a Science of Consciousness” (TSC) held by the University of Arizona,

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and of the Journal of Consciousness Studies—both in 1994 (Hameroff, Kaszniak and Scott 1996), followed shortly by the establishment of the “Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness” in 1996. These contributions approached the subject of consciousness with new questions and methods across the humanities and the natural sciences, appealing to scholars and students working in philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and beyond. Within Western analytic philosophy, the revival of interest in consciousness followed the relaxation of the anti-metaphysical sentiments that had dominated Anglo-American philosophy around the mid-twentieth century. The renewed passion for metaphysics since the 1970s led naturally to an increased engagement with the metaphysics of mind. Even so, much of this intense engagement deliberately ignored consciousness while focusing instead on perception, representation, naturalized intentionality, mental causation, and supervenience—aspects of mind which were believed to be more tractable and capable of being treated independently of the question of conscious experience (see, e.g., Fodor 1990; Searle 1992). This selective focus was, in turn, influenced by the computational-representational paradigm in the cognitive sciences which treated mental states as abstract functional processes; hence, processes that could, in principle, be realized in the total absence of phenomenal consciousness. Yet, given the centrality of consciousness within the economy of mind, this deliberate neglect was problematic to begin with and ultimately unsustainable. A growing recognition of the importance of seminal contributions within the phenomenological tradition pertaining to consciousness, intentionality, subjectivity, and the embodiment of mind (by figures such as Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty) was also instrumental in catalyzing the change. Gradually, some notable philosophers began to theorize more openly and boldly about consciousness (e.g., Flanagan 1992; McGinn 1991/1993; Nagel 1974, 1986; Searle 1992). And when new technological advances in the neurosciences made it possible to map the neural correlates of consciousness with increasing precision and sophistication the reluctance to engage with consciousness quickly gave way to a spate of enthusiastic interest. Despite this wide appeal, and an increased willingness to explore a variety of alternative directions, the bias in consciousness studies in favor of physicalism and materialism persists, consisting in the assumption that consciousness is reducible to purely physical, in particular neurophysiological, properties. One of the attractions of physicalism is that it proffers a way of reducing consciousness to relations among processes or events that themselves lack phenomenal properties altogether. A popular attempt to pursue such reductionism is via the assumption (held, for example, by proponents of higher-order representational theories of consciousness such as Gennaro 2004, 2005; Lycan 1987, 1996; Rosenthal 1986, 2005) that rather than being understood in terms of its

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intrinsic properties (e.g., phenomenality and subjectivity) consciousness must be rendered extrinsically, in terms of relations between mental states that do not exhibit any properties of the sort. Yet, physicalist conceptions of consciousness face a major difficulty in the form of the hard problem of consciousness (see Chalmers 1995; Nagel 1974), namely, the notion that phenomenal consciousness or qualia—the raw feel of experience— remains a mystery (see Searle 1990), unyielding to the regular explanatory schemes of scientific theorizing. The hard problem underscores the absence of an intelligible conceptual link between the physical and the phenomenal. To capitalize on the words of an early observer, given our canonical grasp of the physical (in terms of function, structure, and dynamic) and the phenomenal (in terms of subjectivity and the raw feels of experience) “the chasm between the two classes of phenomena … remains intellectually impassable” (Tyndall 1879: 18). Consequently, there seems to be no reason why any physical process-configuration, however powerful or complex, should constitute (or embody, or give rise to) conscious experience. This being the case, the contention that consciousness is strictly physical remains puzzling and mysterious (despite vigorous attempts by some of the sharpest minds in the field to mitigate the difficulties). While the problem is by no means a new discovery (see Huxley 1866; Leibniz 1714a, 1714b; Tyndall 1879) the unprecedented scrutiny it has received over the last four decades amassed mounting pressure on the reigning physicalist world picture which views consciousness as a late evolutionary emergent confined to negligibly small portions of the universe. In short, accounting for the emergence of consciousness from a physical base lacking the slightest modicum of sentience is an endeavor which shows the characteristic signs of a veritable cul-de-sac. Adding to the current crisis of physicalism is also a growing recognition that it is far from clear what “physicalism” stands for (Crane and Mellor 1990; Montero 2009), or indeed what is the true nature of matter or “the physical” (Mørch 2017; Strawson 2016). Physicalism is often conceived as aiming to align itself with the best available ontology proffered by science. However, as pointed out by Hempel (1969) the open-ended character and the neverending progress of scientific inquiry threaten to render such an association uninformative or, alternatively, shaky and erroneous. Uninformative, if one’s template is an ideal science of the future of which we know next to nothing. Shaky and erroneous if one’s measuring rod is the incomplete and imperfect science of the present, whose treasured propositions are bound to be eclipsed and superseded in the future. Aiming to address this problem, some urge a via negativa, associating physicalism with the denial of fundamental ontological status to such things as experience, value, and purpose (see Montero and Papineau 2005; Wilson 2006). However, at this juncture our ignorance of the intrinsic nature of matter

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becomes highly pertinent. A number of authors, many of whom are broadly associated with a position known in the current literature as Russellian monism (see the essays in Alter and Nagasawa 2015), have argued that while the physical sciences tell us a great deal about the mathematically describable structure of physical reality they do not “tell us anything at all about the intrinsic nature of the stuff that fleshes out this structure” (Strawson 2016: 3). Yet, if the natural sciences are confined to descriptions of function and structure, while remaining “perfectly and forever silent” (Strawson 2016) about the intrinsic nature of the entities over which their theories quantify, then it appears that we simply do not know what “matter” or “physical stuff” is in itself. Should this be the case, there are hardly any conclusive reasons for denying a fundamental ontological status to experience. For it could be that experience is the ultimate intrinsic ground of that which, viewed from the outside (i.e., observed and described from the third-person stance of empirical science), is identified as matter or physical stuff. Indeed, this contention is a major motive force behind the contemporary revival of panpsychism, the view that consciousness is ontologically primordial and that it permeates nature (Goff et al. 2021; Strawson 2006). To the accusation that such an idea is too farfetched one may respond with the observation that not only is conscious experience a perfectly good illustration of an intrinsic reality irreducible to external specifications, but that it is the only concrete example we have of the sort! Schopenhauer stated this “astonishing hypothesis” (to paraphrase Francis Crick) clearly and unequivocally, proclaiming that “the being in and for itself, of everything, must necessarily be subjective; in the idea of another, however, it exists just as necessarily as objective” (1887: 403). While Eddington, working his way in the opposite direction, concurs, stating that “science has nothing to say as to the intrinsic nature of the atom” (1928/2007: 130), and that “the stuff of the world is mind-stuff” (1928/2007: 139). In short, as things stand at present, physicalism—the reigning orthodoxy in the philosophy of mind—suffers an identity crisis, as well as mounting explanatory challenges, while a number of heterodox alternatives are stating their case with increasing confidence and sophistication. Some of these alternatives are explicitly open to the idea that consciousness is fundamental, to wit, a primordial feature of the cosmos—if not the absolute ontic background from which all things emerge and on which they all depend. Following a long period of decline and marginalization, the notion that consciousness is a fundamental feature of reality is yet again on the rise, enjoying growing attention and receiving careful consideration in professional circles (see Chalmers 1996; Goff 2017, 2019; Griffin 1998; Kastrup 2019; Skrbina 2005; Strawson 2006; Velmans 2000/2009). As mentioned above, an increasing number of authors see panpsychism, in its various forms, as an attractive alternative to orthodox physicalism on

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the one hand, and to dualism on the other (e.g., Chalmers 2015; Goff 2019; Tononi and Koch 2015). This is, perhaps, because it is often exercised in a spirit which strives, somewhat questionably, to remain loyal to a conceptual framework broadly defined by physicalism (see Albahari 2022). Be that as it may, other metaphysical positions, too, such as dualism, idealism, neutral monism, phenomenalism, and double-aspect theory—which have long been cast into the margins of academic interest and respectability, in part because they assign a central place to consciousness in the general scheme of things— are back on the table again, to be debated rather than debarred. The materialist assumption that consciousness is an evolutionary late-comer confined to negligibly small corners of the cosmos may still be orthodoxy in contemporary academia, but in recent years the dissenting voices have grown louder and clearer. In an important sense, this turn of events reconnects with the pre-modern roots of Western philosophy whose reigning metaphysical outlooks—from Platonism to Scholasticism and the Neo-Platonism of the Renaissance—viewed spirit (or spiritus) as a vital and holistic principle that resides in every part of the cosmos. To look back at these pre-modern roots, however, is to gaze across the broad gulf which separates us children of modernity from our remote predecessors. For although there have always been prominent thinkers who continued to carry forward this tradition of treating consciousness as metaphysically fundamental—Spinoza, Leibniz, Berkeley, the German idealists of the early nineteenth century, the British and American idealists of the late nineteenth century, Peirce, Bergson, Whitehead, and others—there is no doubt that the reigning currents in modern and post-modern philosophy, in particular as filtered by the trendsetters of twentieth century thought, are considerably alienated from the aforementioned tradition. We observe, in contrast, that in the intellectual traditions of East and South-East Asia there appears to be greater continuity insofar as the primary ontological status of consciousness is concerned. Questions about the nature of consciousness, its metaphysical status, and its various aspects/dimensions have been a central feature for millennia, generating an incredibly rich corpus of positions, debates, interpretations, and conceptual nuances (many of which have no clear equivalents in the philosophical tradition of the West). More specifically, the ontological primacy of consciousness, understood in particular as being pure (rather than empirically structured) and cosmic (rather than individual) is a prominent theme in Hinduism (e.g., the concept of Ātman), Buddhism (the Vijñāna of the Yogācāra school), and arguably also in Daoism and neo-Confucianism. Finally, an important dimension of this continuous preoccupation with consciousness in the context of the intellectual traditions of East and South-East Asia consists of the fact that such interest is not merely theoretical but, rather, retains a vital existential concern of a

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spiritual-transformative kind. As a result, the philosophies of East and SouthEast Asia offer unique and vast riches for students of consciousness, and more specifically for those interested in rethinking—seriously and creatively— the metaphysical status of consciousness in the light of the fundamentality hypothesis. Although the opulent legacy of thought concerning consciousness, ultimate reality, and their interrelations in Buddhism, Hinduism, and Chinese philosophy have largely been explored independently, there has seldom been an attempt to bring them into simultaneous dialog with each other as well as with contemporary western thought on the nature of mind and consciousness. The contributions in this volume aim to contribute to such an endeavor, while hopefully paving the way for similar studies in the future. They probe into prominent conceptions of consciousness found in these Eastern Traditions and bring them into a dialogue with each other, while exploring the conceptual bridges to Western philosophical traditions. In so doing, the present volume also serves as a valuable access point to the debates about the metaphysical standing of consciousness in contemporary philosophy of mind and the history of Western philosophy. The volume thus contributes to efforts to expand philosophy’s intellectual horizons through cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary work; it also addresses the way in which consciousness and its place among the constituents of reality is treated in philosophy—in both Eastern and Western traditions. We have therefore brought together scholars from different disciplines and philosophical traditions so that they can begin to articulate a more “holistic” understanding of consciousness through their interactions with different cultural and intellectual traditions as well as with one another. We hope that this approach provides readers with a unique overview of consciousness and fundamental reality from a cross-cultural perspective mindful of the global history, and the global future, of the subject. Aware that we cannot cover everything, we decided to focus on the four aspects of consciousness and its relation to reality we were most interested in, leaving other cognate issues for another time and place. The four aspects we highlight, therefore, in the present study, are: (I) consciousness and ultimate reality, (II) emergence and mental causation, (III) realism, idealism, and panpsychism, and (IV) illusionism.

PART I: CONSCIOUSNESS AND ULTIMATE REALITY As mentioned above, the revival of interest in radical metaphysical alternatives to orthodox physicalism ushered in a restored openness to the possibility that consciousness might be ontologically fundamental, that is, an ultimate feature of nature or perhaps even reality’s most basic principle. Consequently, there

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is currently a renewed taste for, and a lively competition between, numerous variants of dualism (some avowedly naturalistic), panpsychism, idealism, and double-aspect monism—all of which embrace the notion that consciousness is ontologically elemental. To these, one may add other positions such as neutral monism and panprotopsychism (the latter being the view that fundamental entities are, in some sense, proto-conscious) which, while not strictly speaking committed to the ontological basicness of consciousness, are sufficiently kindred in spirit to be considered close dialectical relatives. This resurgent willingness to reconsider the ontological status of consciousness, and possibly to accord consciousness a grander place in the general scheme of things, makes the idea of an East-West cross-cultural investigation an especially compelling imperative (for reasons to which we have alluded above). The contributions to the first part of the book represent attempts to focus such cross-cultural investigation on the relationships between consciousness and ultimate reality. Wolfgang Fasching has written extensively on Advaita Vedānta and its relevance for contemporary work in the philosophy of mind. His contribution to the present volume, “On the Identification of Being and Consciousness in Advaita Vedānta,” is a fresh attempt to articulate the Advaita Vedāntic outlook on consciousness and reality, and to plead its case. To Advaita Vedānta, being (sat) is identical with consciousness (cit). This implies that the latter is not some inner-worldly entity or property that somehow arises in the course of the development of the cosmos; rather, it is understood as the very dimension of existence/manifestation in which all phenomena have their respective appearance. Moreover, “our” consciousness—the consciousness of finite experiencing entities—is not distinct from such cosmic consciousness: On the contrary, it is nothing other than this very existence-dimension itself, manifesting the phenomenal contents that form the mind of an individual. Interestingly, Fasching’s depiction of the Advaita Vedāntic view is more realistic and less illusionist than is commonly presupposed. He explains and defends this interpretative choice toward the close of his paper. Itay Shani has made contributions to the literature on panpsychism and is one of the developers of cosmopsychism, a monistic approach which accords cosmic consciousness a fundamental ontological status and seeks to explain individual minds in relation to it. In recent years, various authors have commented on thematic affinities, as well as on some important differences, between cosmopsychism and diverse positions within Hinduism (see Albahari 2020; Ganeri 2020; Gasparri 2019; Maharaj 2020; Vaidya 2020; and the articles in a recently published volume of the journal The Monist (2022, Vol. 105 (1)). In his contribution to the present volume, “Cosmopsychism and NonŚankaran Traditions of Hindu Non-dualism: In Search of a Fertile Connection” Shani follows suit, arguing that his own variant of cosmopsychism has much in

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common with the Parādvaita (or absolute advaita) of Kashmir Śaivism as well as with Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Advaita. One of the points of attraction that Shani identifies in these two positions is their unabashedly world-affirming attitude, which he contrasts with Advaita Vedānta in the mold of Śaṅkara (hence taking a different interpretative stance on this matter to the one adopted by Fasching).

PART II: EMERGENCE AND MENTAL CAUSATION Mental causation is a fundamental problem of philosophy, reaching to the core of our conceptions of agency and free will. Naturally, it is also a central theme in contemporary philosophy of mind. The literature on the subject has, to a considerable degree, been dominated by the assumption of the causal closure of the physical, namely, the idea that any physical event has a sufficient physical cause, making the physical world causally self-contained and self-sufficient (Kim 1998). Combined with the reductionist assumption that the causal powers of all events reduce to the causal powers of their lowest-level micro-constituents, as well as with the physicalist presumption that fundamental reality excludes cognition and experience, the outcome is a picture which threatens to leave mental phenomena bereft of causal efficacy. Reductionists are opposed by non-reductionists, many of whom are emergentists. Among the latter, strong emergentists1 believe that novel causal powers arise naturally in physical systems as a function of increase in structural or organizational complexity. Many also believe that such powers can exert downward causal influence in ways that do not violate the causal closure of the physical world (see, e.g., Murphy 2006). This, they argue, opens up avenues for rehabilitating the causal relevance of mental phenomena. However, strong emergentism faces considerable challenges of its own (see Howell 2009; McLaughlin 1992), and the debate between the parties shows no sign of reaching a turning point. As big and significant as the differences between these views are, they are, for the most part, internal to the physicalist platform, which denies fundamental status to consciousness and mentality.2 But on the assumption that there are serious independent reasons to question physicalism and the nonfundamentality dogma it makes good sense to ask might there also be significant benefits to rethinking issues of mental causation in ways that are informed by alternative metaphysical frameworks. Here, too, cross-cultural investigations are promising. In moving beyond the comfort zone of a single entrenched intellectual tradition (however rich and variegated) we stand better chances to expose stifling blind spots, to identify promising yet hitherto underexplored possibilities, to widen the spectrum of issues or problems we judge to be worthy of investigation, and even to enrich our grasp of familiar topics. The thought

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traditions of East and South-East Asia offer plenty of opportunities in this regard: from Buddhist investigations of trope metaphysics and various issues of causation, to Śaivist and Śākta speculations about Śiva’s emanating power and its immanent manifestation in the world, to explorations of the putative causal relevance of karmic dispositions and much more. The contributions to the present section represent different attempts to take steps in this direction. In his paper, “Consciousness, Physicalism, and the Problem of Mental Causation,” Christian Coseru revisits the debate between the Buddhist philosopher Dharmakīrti and the Indian materialists of the Cārvāka school. Against the materialists of his day, Dharmakīrti advanced a non-materialist account of mental causation based on the postulation of irreducibly proto-mental atomistic elements (Dharmas) capable of forming continuous streams of experience in which effective causal influences are serially manifested. As Coseru emphasizes, such a position highlights the ontological irreducibility of subjectivity and urges the methodological legitimacy of the autonomy of the subjective. Such a stance, he argues, makes a vital contribution to the present debate on mental causation. A similar regard for preserving the autonomy of the subjective whilst respecting the desideratum to accommodate mental causation also guides Loriliai Biernacki in her paper, “Abhinavagupta’s Svātantryavāda: Mental Causality, Emergentism, and Intuitionist Mathematics.” Biernacki stresses the difficulty of reconciling the prevalent objectivist stance of contemporary science with concerns for deep metaphysical issues such as the reality of time, the irreducibility of subjectivity, the causal efficacy of the mental, and the existence of freedom of the will. The abovementioned metaphysical concerns, and the motivation to accord them their right of a place in the general scheme of things, she argues, find analogous expressions in surprising places: In the work of the eleventh-century Kashmir Śaivist seer Abhinavagupta, and in modern work in mathematical physics based on intuitionist logic and mathematics. Drawing in particular on Abhinavagupta and on contemporary physicist Nicholas Gisin she argues that the emergent picture forms an attractive alternative to the prevalent scientific image. In his contribution, “Karma and Mental Causation: A Nikāya Buddhist Perspective,” George Wong Soo Lam focuses on the concept of Karmic causation as understood within the theoretical corpus of Nikāya Buddhism (or the early Buddhist schools). Interrogating Karmic causation in light of the relevant Buddhist conceptions of causation, the self, perception, and action— and mindful of the vast differences in outlook between the Nikāya Buddhist perspective and regnant Western presuppositions concerning each of these categories—Wong argues that karmic causation does not fit neatly into the various standard positions of the mental causation debate.

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One interesting reason for the incommensurability highlighted by Wong is that the Nikāya tradition conceives of the mental and the physical as neither strictly distinct nor strictly identical: The line between the mental and the physical is blurred while the bond uniting them is tight. He therefore concludes that the Nikāya view of Karmic causation leans neither toward the phenomenalism and idealism of later Buddhism (Citta-mātra or Yogācāra in particular), nor toward the physicalism, whether reductive or non-reductive, of contemporary secular Buddhism.

PART III: REALISM, IDEALISM, AND PANPSYCHISM One fundamental distinction in the metaphysics of mind is the distinction between realism and idealism. In essence, this pertains to the question of whether or not there is an external reality apart from some experience. Realists affirm the existence of a mind-independent reality while idealists deny it. That said, the distinction invites an important qualification; for while all metaphysical idealists deny the existence of a wholly mind-independent reality they often disagree with each other regarding the interpretation of the key epithet “mind-independent.” Subjective idealists deny the existence of a reality independent of the perceptive and cognitive faculties of some human minds. In contrast, objective idealists willingly accept the existence of a reality ulterior to, and independent of, human perception and cognition while maintaining that such an independent reality is nevertheless of a mental character and therefore, ultimately, mind-dependent in a broader and more encompassing sense. Put somewhat differently, some important variants of idealism follow Bishop Berkeley in insisting on the inseparability of reality and perception while others qualify as idealists simply in virtue of insisting that concrete reality is made, so to speak, of mind stuff. To add to the complexity of the subject there are also epistemic idealists who, following Kant’s transcendental critique, pursue a constructivist agenda which focuses on the nature and limits of human knowledge while urging agnosticism vis-à-vis the noumenal realm. Finally, while such conceptual labels are staples of Western metaphysics, their translation into the philosophies of East and SouthEast Asia is far from transparent. To mention but one prominent example, it suffices to recall the widely different interpretations assigned to the terms “mind” and “consciousness” by, on the one hand, modern Western philosophy and, on the other hand, various strands of Tantra and Vedānta philosophy. For instance, advocates of Advaita Vedānta, or of Kashmir Śaivism, may balk at the suggestion that their view is idealist if this is taken to imply that mind is universal and fundamental, but they may accept the same label if interpreted as the notion that all is, ultimately, consciousness.

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That said, there is nevertheless sense in talking about the realism-idealism debate within the context of Eastern philosophy. For example, one finds such debates between different schools of Buddhism, and even within one and the same tradition over time. In the present section some important aspects of the struggle between realism and idealism are scrutinized—in particular as they took form in certain schools of Buddhism. Alex Watson’s contribution, “Consciousness as the Fundamental Reality of the Universe: A Master Argument for Buddhist Idealism,” tracks the debate on the nature of perception between three different positions elaborated within classical Indian philosophy: direct realism, representationalism, and idealism.  They were advanced by, respectively, Brahmanical realists (Mīmāṃsakas and Naiyāyikas), Sautrāntika Buddhists, and Yogācāra Buddhists. The bulk of Watson’s paper consists of detailed arguments against the direct realist and representationalist positions, informed by the Yogācāran idealist perspective. The dialectic motivates the conclusion that the contents of perception, namely, what we perceive when awake, may well be forms within consciousness, unsolicited by external stimuli. However, Watson ends his paper by raising some formidable challenges to the idealist stance, and by suggesting various ways in which the debate may continue to unfold. In her contribution, “Huayan Buddhism’s Conceptions of the Realness of Reality: How Huayan was Transformed from Subjective Idealism into Holistic Realism,” Jeeloo Liu focuses on Chinese Buddhism. Her paper aims at solving the historical mystery of why there exist contradictory and yet wellargued interpretations of Huayan’s metaphysical views, ranging from realism to objective and subjective idealism. Based on textual analysis, she offers the conclusion that Huayan Buddhism went through a steady gradual shift from subjective idealism to holistic realism, with each patriarch adding richer dimensions to the notions of reality, emptiness, and consciousness. Of particular interest, also, is the fact that this gradual transformation reflects a steady shift toward a uniquely Chinese Buddhism, achieved through reinterpretation of core Buddhist doctrines in light of the thinking modes of the environing Chinese culture. In postulating the ultimate dependency of matter on mind or consciousness, idealism stands opposed to both dualism and materialism. Recently however, a more popular opposition to dualism and materialism found its expression under the banner of another old “ism,” panpsychism. In contrast to emergentist physicalism, panpsychists deny that consciousness arises out of insensate matter. In contrast to traditional dualism, they deny the separability and ontological independence of matter and mind. Panpsychism shares with idealism the pivotal notion that experience is primordial. At the same time, it differs from idealism in that it involves no formal commitment to the claim that experience alone is primordial. Put differently, it does not entail the proposition that all fundamental properties are mental, or experiential, properties—being strictly

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committed, instead, only to the weaker claim that phenomenal properties are amongst the ultimate features of reality. At the present, there are pure panpsychists, whose position is effectively idealist in that they maintain the exclusive primacy of phenomenal properties, as well as impure panpsychists who merely insist that there is an element of consciousness in all matter (for the distinction between pure and impure panpsychism see Strawson 2020). The existence of such a bifurcation within panpsychism raises some serious questions regarding its status as an independent metaphysical genus: Isn’t panpsychism ultimately reducible to other typological positions such as idealism, property dualism, or double-aspect monism? It also raises the question which form of panpsychism—the pure or the impure— makes better overall sense. These issues, we fear, have not received sufficient scrutiny in the relevant literature on the subject. Be that as it may, it is worth stressing that in its impure form panpsychism is certainly distinguishable from idealism—in spite of some obvious resemblances. In his contribution, “Converging Outlooks? Contemporary Panpsychism and Chinese Natural Philosophy,” Pierfrancesco Basile raises the question: could contemporary thought on the mind-body problem derive inspiration from Chinese natural philosophy, in particular as it pertains to the concept of Qi (sometimes also written as C’hi), or cosmic energy? According to Basile, one major attraction of the Chinese outlook on nature, and the concept of Qi at its center, consists in the denial of a categorical polarization between mind and matter. Where modern Western metaphysics is predicated on the fundamental contrast between the mental and the physical, the Chinese outlook stresses continuity and the unity of a psychophysical nexus. Basile sees panpsychism, and the recent surge of interest in this position, as a similar attempt to transcend the traditional dichotomies definitive of the mind-body problem. His extended, sympathetic discussion of panpsychism ends, however, on a skeptical note: For all its virtues, the view seems to be engulfed in conceptual aporia. A new start may be needed, he argues, and the intuitive vision of the Chinese outlook on nature may prove valuable in this regard.

PART IV: ILLUSIONISM As noticed above, one reaction to the contemporary crisis of physicalism is an increased tendency to explore radical metaphysical alternatives such as panpsychism, idealism, double-aspect monism, and neutral monism. A  markedly different radical reaction to this foundation crisis of physicalism is the approach known as illusionism (see in particular Dennett 1991, 2005; Frankish 2016; Humphrey 2011). On this eliminativist view there is, strictly speaking, no phenomenal consciousness whatsoever. Instead, our minds perpetuate the illusion of a rich phenomenology through a series of cognitive

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ploys—tricking us into believing in the reality of qualia (or the raw feels of experience). Illusionism offers a solution to the hard problem of consciousness consistent with a hard-nosed physicalism, yet many would argue that it does so at the exorbitant price of throwing the baby out with the bathwater—denying that which seems most obvious of all, ergo, the manifest reality of subjective experience. But while opinions differ as to whether illusionism constitutes a viable outlet for physicalism or a reductio-ad-absurdum of the position, it is edifying to realize that the question of the illusoriness of consciousness has a history of discussion in Eastern philosophy, in particular within the ranks of Mahāyāna Buddhism (albeit without emphasis on the prospects and perils of physicalism …). In conversation with the contemporary literature on the subject but drawing on arguments borrowed from Buddhist philosophy, Jay Garfield (e.g., 2016 and 2017) has recently made a forceful plea for illusionism, arguing that the contents of consciousness, as well as phenomenal consciousness itself, are illusory. The move is intuitively surprising insofar as Buddhism is closely associated with a thorough investigation of consciousness, theoretically as well as practically, and it raises interesting questions of interpretation. The last part of the present volume is devoted to debating the question of illusionism within the context of Buddhist philosophy of mind, and to an exploration of its relevance for the contemporary debate on illusionism within present-day philosophy of consciousness. The contributions to this section represent different orientations on the subject, and together they form a closely-knit dialectical cluster. In their joint contribution “The Magic of Consciousness: Sculpting an Alternative Illusionism,” Bryce Huebner, Eyal Aviv, and Sonam Kachru compare contemporary illusionism to the illusionism they identify in the teachings and argumentations of the Buddhist Yogācāra school. They highlight some important differences, such as the broader compass of the Yogācāra illusionism (which, unlike contemporary illusionism, does not concern itself exclusively with phenomenal consciousness), and its emphasis on normative and transformative implications (which, needless to say, are entirely absent from the contemporary illusionist approach to phenomenal consciousness). Nonetheless, and despite the richly nuanced tapestry of their paper, Huebner, Aviv, and Kachru conclude on a strong note palatable to contemporary illusionists. Their paper highlights the interdependent, diffusive, conventional, context-sensitive, and constructive character of the ongoing flow of “experience.” Moreover, they conclude that from a Yogācāra perspective, there is nothing that experience is like intrinsically. How radically illusionist might a stance on consciousness be in a school that is also known as Vijñānavada (the doctrine of consciousness), embracing ālayavijñāna (“storehouse” consciousness) as the seed of all things, is a question which interested readers may wish to consider on their own.

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In some recent publications (e.g., 2015, 2016), philosopher and Buddhism scholar Jay Garfield argues that the thesis that phenomenal consciousness is but a sophisticated cognitive illusion receives intriguing support from a powerful analysis of experience found in various denominations of the Buddhist Mahāyāna tradition. In his present contribution “Cognitive Illusion and the Immediacy of Experience: Perspectives from Buddhist Philosophy” Garfield returns to this topic, presenting his case for radical illusionism with perhaps even greater detail. Garfield absorbs influences from important twentiethcentury figures in Anglo-American philosophy such as W.V.O Quine and Wilfrid Sellars, whose ideas he seamlessly synthesizes with arguments gleaned from Buddhism (in particular the Madhyamaka school and Zen Buddhism) and the writings of the likes of Candrakīrti, Śāntarakṣita, and Dōgen. Militating against the immediacy—and ultimately the reality—of phenomenal experience, Garfield concludes with Dōgen that all we have got to go with are illusions of illusions of experience, all the way down. Finally, a markedly different take on illusionism is propounded by Anand Vaidya in his paper “Interrogating Illusionism,” in which he directly challenges Garfield’s conclusions. Vaidya discerns four distinct illusionist tenets to which Garfield appears to be committed, which he describes as phenomenal illusionism, structural illusionism, foundational illusionism, and accuracy illusionism. Considering the latter to be relatively unharmful, the bulk of his paper consists of a sustained critique of the first three tenets and a defense of phenomenal realism. Drawing upon Vātsyāyana and Uddyotakara from the Nyāya tradition, as well as upon Wittgenstein, Fodor, Tyler Burge, Galen Strawson, and Kevin Falvey from the Anglo-Analytic tradition, Vaidya offers counterarguments to the “illusions-all-the-way-down” hypothesis (foundational illusionism). In particular, he challenges the contention that the subject-object dichotomy is illusory (structural illusionism), as well as the claim that experiential qualities are illusory (phenomenal illusionism). While consenting to an incompleteness illusionism, which has to do with our inability to exert a God’s eye view and to grasp the totality of facts, he finds this limited sense of illusionism to be entirely compatible with phenomenal (and indeed metaphysical) realism. Garfield’s paper, in turn, includes a concise response to Vaidya’s challenge.

NOTES 1

For the distinction between strong and weak emergence, see Bedau (1997).

2

Although, noticeably, some philosophers conclude that strong emergence may provide us with good reasons to rehabilitate substance dualism (see, e.g., Zimmermann 2010).

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REFERENCES Albahari, M. (2022), “Panpsychism and the Inner-Outer Gap Problem,” The Monist, 105 (1): 25–42. Albahari, M. (2020), “Beyond Cosmopsychism and the Great I Am: How the World might be Grounded in Universal ‘Advaitic’ Consciousness,” in W. E. Seager (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism, 119–30, New York: Routledge. Albahari, M. (2019), “Perennial Idealism: A Mystical Solution to the Mind-Body Problem,” Philosophers’ Imprint, 19 (44): 1–37. Alter, T. and Y. Nagasawa, eds (2015), Consciousness in the Physical World: Essays on Russellian Monism, New York: Oxford University Press. Bedau, M. (1997), “Weak Emergence,” Philosophical Perspectives, 11: 375–99. Chalmers, D. (2015), “Panpsychism and Panprotopsychism,” in T. Alter and Y. Nagasawa (eds), Consciousness in the Physical World: Essays on Russellian Monism, 246–76, New York: Oxford University Press. Chalmers, D. (1996), The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chalmers, D. (1995), “Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness,” Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2 (3): 200–19. Coseru, C. (2016), “Consciousness and Causal Emergence: Śāntarakṣita against Physicalism,” in J. Ganeri (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy, 360–78, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Crane, T. and D. H. Mellor (1990), “There Is No Question of Physicalism,” Mind, 99 (394): 185–206. Crick, F. (1994), The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul, New York: Charles Scribner’s Son. Dennett, D. C. (2005), Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness. Daniel C. Dennett (ed.), Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Dennett, D. C. (2016), “Illusionism as the Obvious Default Theory of Consciousness,” Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23 (11–12): 65–72. Dennett, D. (1991), Consciousness Explained, Boston: Little, Brown and Co. Eddington, A. (1928), The Nature of the Physical World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Electronic edition 2007. Edwards, P. (1967), “Panpsychism,” in P. Edwards (ed.), Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 5, New York: Macmillan. Flanagan, O. (1992), Consciousness Reconsidered, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Fodor, J. (1990), A Theory of Content and Other Essays, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Frankish, K. (2016), “Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness,” Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23: 11–39. Ganeri, J. (2020), Virtual Subjects, Fugivtive Selves: Fernando Pessoa and His Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Garfield, J. L. (2017), “Illusionism and Givenness,” in K. Frankish (ed.), Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness, 73–83, Exeter: Imprint-Academic Publishing. Garfield, J. L. (2016), “Illusionism and Givenness: Comments on Frankish,” Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23 (11–12): 73–82. Garfield, J. L. (2015), Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy, New York: Oxford University Press. Garfield, J. L. (2002), Empty Words: Buddhist Philosophy and Cross-Cultural Interpretation, New York: Oxford University Press.

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Gasparri, L. (2019), “Priority Cosmopsychism and the Advaita Vedānta,” Philosophy East and West, 69 (1): 130–42. Gennaro, R. J. (2005), “The HOT Theory of Consciousness: Between a Rock and a Hard Place?” Journal of Consciousness Studies, 12: 3–21. Gennaro, R. J., ed. (2004), Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness: An Anthology, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Goff, P. (2019), Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness, New York: Pantheon Books. Goff, P. (2017), Consciousness and Fundamental Reality, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goff, P., W. Seager and S. Allen-Hermanson (2021), “Panpsychism,” in E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available online: https://plato. stanford.edu/archives/win2021/entries/panpsychism/. Griffin, D. R. (1998), Unsnarling the World Knot: Consciousness, Freedom, and the Mind-Body Problem, Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press. Hameroff, S. R., A. W. Kaszniak and A. C. Scott, eds (1996), Towards a Science of Consciousness: The First Tucson Discussions and Debates, Cambridge, MA/London: A Bradford Book/The MIT Press. Hempel, C. G. (1969), “Reduction: Ontological and Linguistic Facets,” in P. Suppes, S. Morgenbesser and M. White (eds), Philosophy, Science, and Method: Essays in Honor of Ernest Nagel, 179–99, New York: St. Martin’s Press. Howell, R. J. (2009), “Emergentism and Supervenience Physicalism,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 87 (1): 83–98. Humphrey, N. (2011), Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Huxley, T. (1866), Lessons on Elementary Physiology, London: Macmillan. James, W. (1890), Principles of Psychology, vol. 1, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kastrup, B. (2019), The Idea of the World: A Multi-Disciplinary Argument for the Mental Nature of Reality, Winchester, UK: Iff Books. Kim, J. (1998), Mind in Physical World, Cambridge: The MIT Press. Leibniz, G. W. (1714a/1989), “The Monadology,” in R. Ariew and D. Garber (eds), Philosophical Essays, Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett. Leibniz, G. W. (1714b/1989), “Principles of Nature and of Grace,” in R. Ariew and D. Garber (eds), Philosophical Essays, Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett. Lycan, W. (1996), Consciousness and Experience, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Lycan, W. (1987), Consciousness, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Maharaj, A. (2020), “Panentheistic Cosmopsychism: Swami Vivekananda’s SākhyaVedāntic Solution to the Hard Problem of Consciousness,” in G. Brüntrup, L. Jaskolla and B. Göcke (eds), Panentheism and Panpsychism: Philosophy of Religion Meets Philosophy of Mind, 273–301, Leiden and Boston: Brill Mentis. Mathews, F. (2011), “Panpsychism as Paradigm?” in M. Blamauer (ed.), The Mental as Fundamental: New Perspectives on Panpsychism, 141–56, Heusenstamm: Ontos Verlag. McGinn, C. (1997), Character of Mind: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. McGinn, C. (1991/1993), The Problem of Consciousness: Essays towards a Resolution, Oxford, UK/ Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. McLaughlin, B. (1992), “The Rise and Fall of British Empiricism,” in A. Beckermann, H. Flohr and J. Kim (eds), Emergence or Reduction? Essays on the Prospects of Nonreductive Physicalism, 49–93, Berlin: De Gruyter.

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Montero, B. (2009), “What Is the Physical,” in B. McLaughlin, A. Beckermann, and S. Walter (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind, 173–88, New York: Oxford University Press. Montero, B. and D. Papineau (2005), “A Defense of the Via Negativa Argument for Physicalism,” Analysis, 65 (3): 233–7. Mørch, H. H. (2017), “Is Matter Conscious? Why the Central Problem in Neuroscience Is Mirrored in Physics,” Nautilus, 47. Available online: https://nautil. us/issue/47/consciousness/is-matter-conscious. Murphy, N. (2006), “Emergence and Mental Causation”, in P. Clayton and P. Davies (eds), The Re-emergence of Emergence: The Emergentist Hypothesis from Science to Religion, 227–43, New York: Oxford University Press. Nagel, T. (1974), “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” Philosophical Review, 83: 435–56. Nagel, T. (1986), The View from Nowhere, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Penrose, R. (1989), The Emperor’s New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Popper, K. and J. C. Eccles (1977), The Self and Its Brain: An Argument for Interactionism, Berlin: Springer. Rosenthal, D. (2005), Consciousness and Mind, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rosenthal, D. (1986), “Two Concepts of Consciousness,” Philosophical Studies, 49: 329–59. Schopenhauer, A. (1887), The World as Will and Idea: Volume II, trans. R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp, Boston: Ticknor and Company. Searle, J. R. (1997), The Mystery of Consciousness, London: Granta Books. Searle, J. R. (1992), The Rediscovery of the Mind, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Searle, J. R. (1990), “Consciousness, Explanatory Inversion, and Cognitive Science,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 13: 585–96. Shani, I. (2022), “Cosmopsychism, Coherence, and World-Affirming Monism,” The Monist, 105 (1): 6–24. Skrbina, D. (2005), Panpsychism in the West, Cambridge, MA/London: The MIT Press. Strawson, G. (2020), “What Does ‘Physical’ Mean? A Prolegomenon to Physicalist Panpsychism,” in W. E. Seager (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism, 317–39, New York: Routledge. Strawson, G. (2017), “Consciousness Never Left,” in K. Almqvist and A. Haag (eds), The Return of Consciousness, 89–103, Stockholm: Axel and Margaret Ax: Son Johnson Foundation. Strawson, G. (2016), “Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery. It’s Matter,” The New York Times May 16, 2016. Available online: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/16/ opinion/consciousness-isnt-a-mystery-its-matter.html?_r=0. Strawson, G. (2006), “Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism,” Journal of Consciousness Studies, 13: 3–31. Tononi, G. and C. Koch (2015), “Consciousness: Here, There, and Everywhere?” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 370: 20140167. Tyndall, J. (1879), Fragments of Science: A Series of Detached Essays, Addresses and Reviews, London: Longmans, Green & Co. Vaidya, A. J. (2020), “A New Debate on Consciousness: Bringing Classical and Modern Vedānta into Dialogue with Contemporary Analytic Panpsychism,” in A. Maharaj (ed.), The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Vedanta, 393–422, London/New York/Oxford/New Delhi/Sydney: Bloomsbury Academic.

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Velmans, M. (2009), Understanding Consciousness, Edition 2, London: Routledge/ Psychology Press/Taylor & Francis. Velmans, M. (2000), Understanding Consciousness, London: Routledge/Psychology Press/Taylor & Francis. Wilson, J. (2006), “On Characterizing the Physical,” Philosophical Studies, 139: 61–99. Zhuangzi (2013), The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, trans, B. Watson, New York: Columbia University Press. Zimmermann, D. (2010), “From Property Dualism to Substance Dualism,” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 84 (1): 119–50.

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PART ONE

Consciousness and Ultimate Reality

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CHAPTER ONE

On the Identification of Being and Consciousness in Advaita Vedānta WOLFGANG FASCHING

1 INTRODUCTION In the view of Advaita Vedānta, being (sat) is identical with consciousness (cit). This implies that the latter is not some inner-worldly entity or property that somehow arises in the course of the development of the cosmos at some point in time; rather, it is understood as the very dimension of existence/manifestation in which all phenomena that constitute the world have their occurrence. “Our” consciousness—the consciousness of finite experiencing entities—is not distinct from this: It is nothing other than this all-pervading presence-dimension itself, insofar as certain mental contents which form the mind of an individual have their manifestation in it. In this paper, I wish to defend this kind of view as being at least not utterly implausible. In doing so I speak neither as a scholar (which I am decidedly not) attempting to provide a historically accurate account of the way the Advaitins presented their ideas nor as a “believer” who feels obliged to dogmatically accept every aspect of the Advaitic doctrines, but simply as a philosopher who is under the impression that there is something to the basic Advaitic idea and is trying to explain why.

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I will proceed in three steps: First I will elaborate on the Advaitic understanding of being (sat), then on the idea of consciousness (cit) as the manifestness of being, and finally on Advaita’s identification of the two. In an appendix I will then say a few words on Advaita’s thesis of the “unreality” of the world, that is, its infamous alleged acosmism. My main (but not exclusive) point of reference will be Śaṅkara.

2 SAT: BRAHMAN AS BEING The focal point of the philosophy of Advaita Vedānta is the idea of brahman. This brahman is something imperceptible, qualityless, formless, and atemporal. And this elusive “something,” of all things, which seems to be next to nothing, is supposed to be the very foundation of everything, in fact the only thing that is “really real,” with nothing else having any existence of its own. How is this to be understood? Advaita characterizes the essence of brahman by saying that it is sat (being). What is meant by that is not that it is a being among beings (one of the entia, to put it in Latin)—it is “not this, not this” (neti, neti), as it is said—not even the highest being which would somehow be the source of everything else. It is simply not an entity at all. Rather, I would suggest, what is meant is that brahman is being itself (being in the sense of esse), that is, not one of the existents, but existence itself, not something real but reality.1 Being in this sense is that which is invariable through all the manifoldness and the incessant change of things. While what respectively exists permanently changes (comes into being and ceases to be), being itself, reality as such, does not come and go (cf. e.g., Śaṅkara 1977: II.16). As the Danish philosopher Erich Klawonn formulates it: “Existence—or being—in itself does not get lost; yet events, states, etc. that are in possession of it, come and go—and the transition from existence to non-existence therefore takes place in the form of a ‘streaming’ change ‘in being’ which itself all the time abides as ‘standing’” (1991: 244). What is meant by being here is actuality as such. In the permanent change of what is respectively actual, invariably actuality takes place, forming the very being-dimension in which the coming and going of what is actual occurs: the abiding realm of reality as such (the “field of existence or actuality,” Klawonn 2009: 118). When we read that Advaita characterizes brahman as sat and are then informed that this sat is meant here as absolute being, as infinite, unconditioned, unchanging, and eternal reality, it might at first seem that what is understood by sat here is obviously something rather remote from the conditioned and temporal being of the things in the world, something transcendent: That there is on the one hand the transient and finite being of the worldly things and, on the other hand, in some inaccessible beyond, the absolute reality that is

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brahman. But, as we have seen, this is not quite the case. In some sense it is the very being of the world and all things and events in it—they do not possess any being apart from brahman, which is nothing but existence itself. The being of finite things is conceived as partaking of the one being, the one actuality-realm, which is brahman; the latter is their being, the very “is-ness” of everything that is. Śaṅkara writes: All this universe consists of a hierarchy of more and more subtle and comprehensive effects which stand as the material causes of whatever is grosser. And knowledge of this hierarchy leads to the notion of Being as its support. For although the notion of anything lapses with the lapse of the thing, it does so leaving the notion of Being intact. … Everything is invariably apprehended in association with existence, just as clay pots are invariably apprehended in association with clay. Hence the ground of the world, the Self [= brahman], must be apprehended as “Is.” (commentary to Kaṭha Upaniṣad II.3.12, Alston 1980a: 129)2 It could be asked what all this talk about the “one being” (actuality as such), in which everything partakes insofar as it is, is all about. One might be tempted to say that existence is simply an attribute that each thing has of its own, and naturally all things that exist have this attribute in common insofar and as long as they exist—yet this by no means implies that there is “one being” in which all things share, which rather sounds like an illegitimate hypostatization. Yet this will not do. As is well known (since Kant at the latest), existence is not an attribute, that is, a property of things. A thing must exist in order to have attributes (which themselves, then, exist), and an only-possibly-existing, that is, nonexistent, thing’s attributes are likewise nonexistent. According to the attribute-view, an only-possibly-existing thing would have the equally onlypossibly-existing attribute of existence. Yet then what should it mean to say that when a thing comes into existence this thing together with its attribute of existence comes into being, that is, gains the attribute of existence? It would have to gain the existent (and not only possible) attribute of existence, so this latter attribute of existence would again need to have the attribute of existence, etc. ad infinitum. This simply makes no sense. An existing thing can change its properties, but coming into existence and ceasing to exist is not the gain and loss of some property a thing undergoes—rather this thing simply comes to exist and ceases to exist, together with all its properties. The attribute-view takes the individual things as the basis (the “substrate”), with existence being an accident of them. Now, the Advaitic suggestion is to turn this around and start with being itself as the basis. There are not the individual things, which gain and lose the attribute of being, but rather there is being as such (which itself does not come into existence and ceases to be)

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in which things come and go. So existence is not a modification that things undergo; rather it would be more appropriate to say that things are, in some sense, modifications that being undergoes.3 Therefore, according to Advaita, the “basic stuff” (i.e., what is most fundamental, the ultimate substrate, adhiṣṭhāna) are not the things which have the attribute of existence, but existence as such, in which things transiently have their appearance: The dimension of actuality that does not come and go, but is the “primal realm” in which all coming and going takes place (cf. Malkani 1961: 20, 41; Mahadevan 1969: 122–3).4 Furthermore, the attribute-view cannot explain how it is that things partake of one reality. What makes them exist together (instead of just each having, in absolute isolation from each other, the attribute of actuality)? Simply having a property in common does not account for this. That is, in their being-actual, things not only have a commonality (the commonality of some attribute), but a togetherness, just as different properties of a thing have their togetherness in that very thing. Hence again: Being is not to be viewed as an attribute of things, but as their locus or substrate, that is, that “wherein” they are. It is, I think, at least partly in this sense, that the irritating Advaitic doctrine of the “unreality” of the world is to be understood. The basic misunderstanding (avidyā) to which we are normally subject is to view the worldly things as the ultimate, fundamental reality. This makes us blind to the realm of actuality as such which indeed cannot be found anywhere as some particular thing (and our everyday mind knows of nothing but things) but which actually is that in which all our encountering with things takes place. While we normally view things as substantival, independently existent, to Advaita what is substantival is being as such, all things having no existence independent of it (and in this sense being what Advaita calls “unreal,” namely possessing no independent, absolute reality—see the appendix below). That we are normally blind to what Advaita calls sat is only too understandable. One could say that sat is what remains when we imagine away all things. It might seem that what remains is simply nothing at all.5 But to the Advaitins this nothingness (or rather no-thing-ness) is simply being itself: It is not an entity, it has no qualities etc., yet it is that wherein everything that happens has its occurrence, the ultimate locus of everything that exists. As Vidyāraṇya says: “[W]hen all the perishable things are destroyed, what remains is that (i.e., the imperishable Brahman or Self). If the opponent objects ‘nothing remains’ after everything (name and form) has been destroyed, then we reply that what you describe as ‘nothing’ is the Self [= brahman]. Here the language alone differs” (1967: III.30–1; cf. also XIII.71). So brahman is, according to my interpretation, actuality as such, which, while one thing after the other becomes actual, abides as the dimension of being in which this very change takes place. Thus it has the character of a

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nunc stans. It is the now—not in the sense of the fleeting present moment that comes and then elapses (the nunc fluens), but as that which makes the respectively present moment present: Nowness as such. The being-dimension is the permanent nowness in which all reality takes place: Things come and go, yet it is permanently now. This permanence of the now is of a fundamentally different nature than the persistence of a temporal object. An object persists in time by having stages of its existence at successive moments in time, becoming actual one after the other. The now, in contrast, has no temporal stages which would successively become actual—it is actuality itself. There are no past and future nows, for to be past or future means precisely to be not now. The now is by no means one of the things that happened yesterday (and a fortiori it is not an event that could as well not have happened yesterday); rather, whatever happened yesterday did so by happening in the now. Hence, that it is always now does not mean that permanently new nows (or stages of the persisting now) take place (one of them being present—being now—respectively), rather, there is only one unchanging now that never sinks into the past. The now itself is “temporally indeclinable” (Klawonn 1991: 251), never coming to be, and never elapsing. It is nothing but the “stage” of existence as such where this coming and going, the very passage of time, takes place. The temporal indeclinability of sat (actuality or being) means that taken in itself, it is non-temporal: It is not something that takes place in time, either as coming and going or as endlessly persisting, having object-stages at all times— rather, it is that wherein the succession of things and events, the flow of time itself, takes place and which is thereby not subject to this flow. Viewed from the perspective of the succession of things and events, the non-temporality of being presents itself as the abidance of the now, and in this sense it is unchanging and permanent. Yet to speak of time at all (and therefore of permanence) only makes sense with regard to this succession that manifests itself in the being-dimension. Taken in abstraction from this succession, purely in itself, it is not “permanent” (or “everlasting”), it is sheer actuality pure and simple, a timeless now, as it were, and therefore eternal—“not … in the sense of persisting changelessly through time …, but in the sense of absolute timelessness” (Radhakrishnan 1962: 536–7). All this implies that the being-dimension is unoriginated: For something to come into existence means that it occurs “in reality,” that is, that it has its appearance in the field of existence. Hence it makes no sense to speak of reality itself as coming into existence at some point in time, for this would presuppose that which is supposed to originate. It is the very realm in which all coming to be and ceasing to be takes place and thus not itself something that could ever come into being. In the words of Malkani: “There is no absolute creation of being. All creation is within being, not creation of being” (1961: 36).6

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3 CIT: THE EXPERIENCE OF BEING AS AM-NESS What is the intrinsic essence of being? Can we say more about it? Famously, Advaita draws a close connection between the idea of being or the absolute (brahman) and that of our innermost self (the ātman): We find, the Advaitins hold, brahman within ourselves, at the core of our own existence. Here, within ourselves, we have an immediate experience of being, an experience of being “from within,” and it is this immediate revealedness of being from within which Advaita takes as its clue for understanding the very essence of being. Let us consider this idea more closely. That being or actuality “takes place”7 is not something we merely assume, something we just have more or less good reason to believe—it is the most evident thing of all. It is the always-already-disclosed, the foundation of all our experiencing. I immediately “feel” that being happens: It is directly experienced in the present moment as this present moment (i.e., as actuality)—not as some object standing opposed to me, as something “out there” (which would leave room for doubt as to whether I am merely imagining it, that is, whether it only seems as though actuality takes place “over there”), but in the intimacy of my own inwardness, as “my” being. That is: Being is immediately experienced in the “I am,” as am-ness. As Śaṅkara says: “[T]he existence of Brahman is known on the ground of its being the Self of every one. For every one is conscious of the existence of (his) Self, and never thinks ‘I am not.’ … And this Self (of whose existence we are conscious) is Brahman” (1962: I.1.1). One might be inclined to understand this as meaning: Very well, so there is at least one entity I know for certain exists—myself—hence there is no doubt that there is being, the realm of reality, whatever else it might contain. (But of course, one might add, it is only my own private being that is immediately revealed here, not being-as-such.) Interestingly, this is not exactly what Śaṅkara is saying. He says that brahman (which is, as we have seen, to be equated with sat) is my self. What should one make of this? It must be asked: What kind of entity is this “I” or “self” whose existence is immediately revealed? Actually, I would contend, it would be misleading to presuppose some entity here that is myself and whose existence is additionally given in an error-immune way. Rather, there simply happens the aforementioned immediate disclosedness of being or actuality, and this immediate disclosedness of being is my existence qua subjectivity, that is, the I in the most fundamental sense. So when we say that being is most originally experienced in the form of amness, this does not mean that I experience the existence of a presupposed entity that happens to be me—rather, the immediate disclosedness of being is amness. This being is not self-evident because it is my being, but, vice versa, this self-evidence constitutes “mineness,” the “inwardness” of subjectivity. “Being

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as am-ness” (in contrast to is-ness) means nothing other than this revealedness of being “from within,” that is, from the absolute non-distance, without any subject–object separation: There is not being “over there” and the I “here,” “looking” at the former, there simply occurs the immediate self-revealedness of being, and this is what I innermostly am. The I is this self-revealedness of being and therefore—given the aforementioned non-distance, that is, the nondistinctness of what is revealed and the to-whom of revelation—it is being itself in its self-revealedness. The inwardness of subjectivity is nothing other than the inwardness of being itself: Being-as-experienced-from-within. Yet, one might counter, is it not nonetheless quite obviously the case—even if one concedes that there is no I prior to its self-givenness—that it is only one’s own respective being that is immediately revealed to oneself, and in no way being-as-such, being as a whole? Let us consider more closely what we mean by that. What exactly is meant by “only my own being”? My experiential life consists in a flux of phenomenal contents being immediately given to me, and these form, in a way, “my” experiential field, the sphere of my subjective interiority. These are without any question particular occurrences which happen within the existence-realm and not the existence-dimension itself. However, I am not these contents. I am the one to whom these contents are experientially present, the experiencer of these contents (the “witness,” sākṣin, as the Advaitins put it). Now for Advaita Vedānta, this experiencer is nothing but the experiencing itself—consciousness—and not some entity that is conscious. Normally, we tend to think that appearing needs some entity (an “I”) for which this appearing takes place (to which the respective  contents are present). Yet Advaita (I  think, not implausibly;  cf. Fasching 2021) denies this. There simply happens appearing, and the “I” (or the “self,” as Advaita prefers to call it) is nothing but this taking-place of appearing. That is, consciousness is not conceived as a property or activity of some additionally existing I-entity that would therefore be the experiencer. The “witness” consists in nothing but the taking-place of “witnessing.” So what Advaita understands by consciousness is obviously not what one might call the “conscious mind” in the sense of the manifold conscious acts and states (the vṛttis), that is, the experiences (they are contents we are conscious of), but consciousness itself in the strict sense, that is, our being aware of any and all such contents. This is not itself one of the contents that are present to us, or some constellation of contents, or the sum of the contents (what I called the “experiential field” above), but the experiencing of these contents, that is, that which makes them experientially present: Presence itself. And this consciousness is not something that is somehow added to the experiences. The latter have their very existence in being experienced: Being experientially present is the mode of actuality of experiences. One could say that experiences have a subjective  ontology, they have their being in their for-ness. Yet

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“for-ness” is actually already too much, for, as we have seen, to Advaita there is no additional entity for which presence takes place (to which the respective contents are given). There is simply the taking-place of presence, which is nothing other than the mere thereness of the respectively present contents. The “I” is ultimately not an additional entity for which this presence happens, but simply this presence itself and thus: the mere actuality of the phenomenal. Hence my consciousness is the presence of the phenomenal contents I  experience, and it is the presence of manifold and permanently changing contents. What thereby changes (comes and goes) is what is respectively present, not presence itself. For the coming and going of the experiential contents consists precisely in their becoming experientially present and ceasing to be thus present (i.e. in that ever-new contents become manifest in consciousness), wherefore presence as such abides as the dimension of experiential actuality, as the existence-dimension of the phenomenal contents (cf. Zahavi 2005: 131–2). Therefore Advaita would not speak of a “stream of consciousness.” Of course there is a stream of experiences (the experiential flux), yet consciousness, as Advaita understands it, is not itself a flux, but the abiding dimension of phenomenal manifestation in which this flux takes place (cf. Fasching 2012: 175–7). In being what gives the respective phenomenal content its presentness, its actuality as a phenomenal content, experiential presence (consciousness) can be understood as “phenomenal nowness,” as Klawonn formulates it (1991: 258): the constant now (actuality) of experiencing, the now in which the experiential streaming takes place (for every change happens in the present, which therefore does not change). It is not something that happens in the now and therefore becomes present and absent, but the abiding now (presence) itself, “purely subjective ‘is-ness’, without any futurity or pastness” (Klawonn 1991: 258; cf. Zahavi 1999: 80).8 “Phenomenal nowness” means that it is (a)  the now of the phenomenal and (b) the phenomenality of the now, that is, of the abiding dimension of existence itself: It is the way the now itself qua the universal existence-dimension is manifest in and as our consciousness, “the specific phenomenal aspect of the universal-present being of reality” (Klawonn 1991: 258). So we are led back to our previous formulation that the I qua consciousness is nothing other than the self-manifestness of being as such and therefore being itself in its self-manifestness. My consciousness is simply being itself as such (reality, sat) insofar as these and those phenomenal contents have their occurrence in it (in the Advaitic language: it is brahman/sat as (seemingly) “limited” by the mental occurrences of an individual mind). That is: It is true that I experience only a limited realm of phenomenal contents at a given moment, but at the same time I experience myself as the consciousness in which those contents have their manifestation and therefore their existence, and this consciousness is not those contents or a quality of the contents; it is being itself

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as self-manifest. So the being we experience in and as our I is—paradoxical as this may seem—not something merely private: In a way it is the manifestness of actuality as such insofar as the respective phenomenal contents “partake” in it. I said that consciousness is not only the now of the phenomenal, but also the phenomenality of the now, that is, the manifestness of being: For in experiencing the phenomenal contents, I am at the same time aware that this experiencing takes place. As a matter of fact, I cannot be aware of an experiential content without simultaneously being aware of awareness itself. For the very occurrence of an experiential content is its being experientially present, that is, my consciousness of it. Hence, to be aware of the existence of an experience ipso facto means to be aware of experiential presence taking place. For example, to be aware of the taking-place of my present pain is to be aware of its being-felt, that is, of its being-experienced—my consciousness of it. It is only in the medium of the self-presence of consciousness that anything can be present “in it.” As Vidyāraṇya says: “As it is shameful for a man to express doubt if he has a tongue or not, so also it is shameful to say, ‘I do not know what consciousness is …’” (1967: III.20)—that is, it simply makes no sense to say that all sorts of things are given to me, but that I am not aware of any givenness taking place. This givenness of consciousness itself does not mean that it is to be found as one of the objects of consciousness, since, as we have said, the presence of consciousness is the very medium of the givenness of any object. Rather, experiential presence is its own disclosedness, without any subject–object or givenness–given distinction. This is what Advaita calls the “self-luminosity” (svaprakāśatva) of consciousness. It is, to use a favorite metaphor of Advaita’s, like the manifestness of light which is the source of the becoming-visible of any objects, yet is not itself brought about by the light’s being-illumined by another beam of light (or by bending the beam of light back onto itself); rather, the light’s shining or luminosity (its primal revealedness) is its very nature (cf. e.g., Śaṅkara 1920: I.3.22, 1992: I.15.40–1).9 To sum up: The I qua consciousness (experiential presence) is nothing but the self-disclosedness of actuality or being itself. So it is not fully adequate to say that in the “I am” I experience only “my” being, if one understands this as meaning the being of some presupposed entity—for the I is nothing other than the phenomenality of being itself. True, it is “my” being in the sense that we experience it as the presence of particular phenomenal contents (which are thereby experienced as “my” experiences). But this means, in the Advaitic view, that actuality as such is experienced insofar as it is the actuality of these particular contents. So although admittedly only particular experiential contents are given at a particular moment, simultaneously the actuality-realm in which those contents are given is itself given. And being or actuality is one and the same everywhere, that which differs are only the existents.

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4 SAT AS CIT: THE IDEALIST METAPHYSICS OF ADVAITA VEDĀNTA I have dwelt with some insistence upon the issue of self-luminosity because we are confronted here with being as identical to its own disclosedness. Our immediate experience of being is, we have stated, not a matter of a subject– object relation, of a registration of something “from the outside.” Rather, it is a matter of the immediate, distanceless self-manifestness of being. This is, I think, a crucial point for the philosophy of Advaita Vedānta and its reason for absolutizing consciousness. What Advaita does is that it derives its understanding of what being-in-itself is from the point where it is given “from the inside,” as it were, that is, where we experience its very essence in the utmost immediacy. And in this immediate givenness of being we are not only conscious of being, but being and consciousness coincide, that is, we experience it as consciousness (as presence). And to Advaita, therein lies the very nature of being-as-such: For Advaita, being is in itself the primordial principle of manifestness, of experiential thereness—and what we experience as “our” consciousness is something that happens within this universal self-luminous medium of manifestation (or rather: it is this very medium). Is this not quite a speculative leap? While this may very well be the case, to my mind it is not a totally absurd one. The obvious, common-sense objection is of course: True, for us as conscious subjects to be means to be conscious—yet this cannot by any means be transferred to the whole of reality. Quite obviously there are quite a lot of non-conscious entities, and their mode of being has to be conceived in a different way. How to reply to this? The crucial question is: How does the manifestness of being come about? Normally, we imagine this in roughly the following way: For billions of years, being takes place without “noticing” itself at all, completely “in the dark”; and then, at some point, organisms develop which have the ability to “register” what goes on around and within themselves, and this is where being starts to be disclosed (“represented”). Yet, as a matter of fact, this explains nothing at all. As we said above, the disclosedness of being that happens in our consciousness is not a matter of one process becoming “registered” through another. It is completely unintelligible how the “registration” of one in-itself unconscious process through another in-itself unconscious process (i.e., some causal interaction between such processes) should bring about the manifestness of being, that is, the emergence of consciousness (cf. e.g., Shani 2021, sections VII, VIII). Such an account only has some prima facie appearance of plausibility by virtue of equivocating about terms like “representation,” “perception,” “beingfor,” and so on. All true “registering” of anything in the sense relevant here (namely in the experiential sense, as the “bringing to light” of this something) has to occur within the medium of the primal disclosedness of being. That is, being must already take place as consciousness.

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So then perhaps one should say that the manifestness of being is not added to being “from without” (as an external registration relation), but “from within,” which is to say: Being becomes (one has to add: quite miraculously) modified to consciousness. Yet this raises the question of whether the talk of “modes of being” makes much sense at all. We have to keep in mind that by both being and consciousness we mean nothing but mere, in itself qualityless thereness, mere is-ness or actuality (consciousness is, we said, nothing but the actuality of the experiential contents qua experiential contents—they do not exist and then additionally get experienced). All possible changing qualities and modes belong to what is there in the actuality-realm, not to thereness as such. That is, it seems that all that can change and undergo modification are the manifold contents that occur within the abiding actuality-realm. Yet as we have seen, consciousness is no such content. And it is simply unintelligible how a particular content or constellation of contents that occurs within the actuality-dimension should be able to modify this very dimension to luminosity—or rather, and even more to the point: How the absolutely mode-free thereness-as-such can change its mode at all. And ultimately the question is whether we really have a positive idea of non-conscious thereness. We actually always only conceive of it negatively, as consciousness-free, unexperienced being (“mere” existence), but we have no idea at all as to what this should mean in positive terms. “The primary givenness of reality,” as Klawonn says, “is the most obvious paradigm for what it means that something is” (1991: 258): We have a totally clear idea of being as experiential presentness, for example, of what it means that a pain exists in the sense of being experientially present. The problem begins when we ask ourselves what consciousness-free existence or thereness might mean. Implicitly, I would contend, we always imagine being in terms of experiential contents. We conceive of the mere, consciousness-free existence of something as being something like the thereness of an experiential content, but only—as we then have to add—minus the being-experienced: It merely is without its being additionally experienced. The problem is: There never was any additionality. When we subtract the being-experientially-present from an experiential content, nothing remains—for there never was being plus consciousness: Being never meant anything other than consciousness here. It seems to me that this is implicitly the main reason for Advaita’s identification of sat and cit: That it is hard to see what being should mean at all, apart from “being-witnessed” (cf. Hiriyanna 1993: 360, 363; Malkani 1961: 43). Therefore I think there is indeed some reason to hold that the fact of the experiential self-manifestness of being which takes place in our consciousness is quite inexplicable unless we posit a principle of manifestation at the heart of being itself as such.10 And this is of course precisely Advaita’s view. Our question was: Whence comes, all of a sudden, the “light” that illuminates

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being? And the Advaitic answer is to regard this “light” itself as primary, as being identical to the realm of actuality as such. The inner essence of the actuality-dimension is the light itself (being is nothing but seeing, as it were), and the whole cosmos consists of processes that unfold within this primordial luminous realm of presence (and it is not some such processes that inexplicably suddenly “turn on the light”). Consciousness is not one of the existents popping up in reality at some point, it is existence itself. The “omniscience” ascribed to brahman does not mean that the things of the world exist, and in addition to this, brahman knows all about them—rather for something to exist means for it to be manifest in the presence-realm which is the existence-dimension itself.11 “On the supreme consciousness the world is drawn like a picture on a canvas” (Vidyāraṇya 1967: VI.289), it appears in brahman “like a dream” (Vidyāraṇya 1967: VI.211; cf. also XIII.86, XIII.90).12 And it is this existence/presencedimension which is our innermost “self,” our ātman: The ultimate subject of experiencing, that which ultimately “sees” in us; it is the seeing. So the Advaitic answer to the “hard problem of consciousness” (how consciousness arose out of non-conscious processes, cf. Chalmers 1996) would be: Consciousness did not emerge from the non-conscious at all, it was there all along. As conscious subjects we partake, as it were, in the ever-present luminosity which is identical to being itself. It is not consciousness as such that comes into being with us, rather our mind emerges within the self-luminosity of being. Being is consciousness, and “our” consciousness is not distinct from it, but simply this universal presence-dimension itself, (seemingly) modified by the mental processes that make up our mind. Seemingly modified because consciousness as such of course does not undergo any modification, for all that can ever change are exclusively the contents of consciousness13—so what is meant by modification here is that “our” consciousness is being/consciousness as such insofar as it is the presence of these particular mental processes. Hence, that our conscious mind emerges from primordial consciousness does not mean that the latter produces new consciousness outside of it—there is no outside of it. It is always one and the same consciousness, the one being. As Śaṅkara says: The jīva (the individual subject) “does not originate [from Brahman] but rather it is the highest, unmodified Brahman which exists in the form of the individual soul due to the admixture of limiting conditions” (Brahmasūtrabhāṣya II.3.18, quoted after Taber 1992: 33, bracketed addition by Taber). What comes and goes are ever-new contents of consciousness, that is, what is respectively present in consciousness, not consciousness itself. And this consciousness also does not “split” itself into many individual consciousnesses. Consciousness has no parts and it cannot split so that one part of it would be here and another one there. It is always the whole and indivisible consciousness that is present everywhere (in all experiencing).14 (This, I think, is the meaning of the Advaitic doctrine that the existence of individual subjects

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is ultimately an illusion.) Just as there was not one part of my consciousness present yesterday and there is another part present now, but it is rather one temporally indeclinable consciousness (the abiding experiential actualityrealm) in which the experiential stream takes place, the various experiential streams of individual minds are not parts of the primordial consciousness— rather the manifold experiential streams manifest themselves in the one indivisible consciousness, so that it is one and the same consciousness (being itself, brahman) that is the ultimate “experiencer” of all experiential streams. “Whatever is seen anywhere, at any time, in any intellect, is seen by (the real ‘I’ ever present in) me. Therefore I am the Absolute, the supreme, omniscient and omnipresent” (Śaṅkara, Upadeśasāhasrī VII.1, Alston 1980a: 158). One might object that whilst it may be intelligible how there can be experiences in the past that are not present to me now but which were nonetheless experienced by me back then (i.e., present in the very same consciousness in which these other experiential contents are present now), it is hard to see how there can be experiences right now which are not immediately present to me right now but are nonetheless experienced by me (insofar as they are allegedly present in the very same unchanging universal consciousness which is also my own innermost self). Put in this way, this is of course simply paradoxical because it seems to demand that experiences are experienced by me and not experienced by me at the same time. Of course, for Advaita it is simply not true that those other experiences are not experienced by me, if we understand by this “me” the one consciousness (= brahman) which underlies all my experiencing; but it remains the case that the presence-of-these-contents (“my” present consciousness) and the presence-of-those-contents (“the other’s” present consciousness) are in some sense separated, that is, that these and those contents are not present together (as the manifold contents that form my present experiential field are united by being experienced together, in the unity of one encompassing consciousness), although they might be present at the same time—so what should it mean that they are present in the same consciousness?15 Yet actually I think this is not as incomprehensible as it might first seem. We have no big problem imagining travelling backwards in time so that we encounter our past self as another person. For example, if one believes in reincarnation, one can quite easily, it seems to me, imagine that one’s next birth happens earlier than one’s previous death, and even that those two incarnations overlap, so that “one time” one is the one person, “the other time” the other. One could say that in this case in subjective time one first experiences the one incarnation and then the other, even if in objective time both might occur simultaneously, and this is what resolves the seeming paradox. But now imagine that no memories or other traces of the one mind are left behind in the other. Then the talk of one life taking place “earlier,” the other “later” in subjective

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time loses all sense. There are simply two incarnations of one and the same consciousness happening at the same time (cf. on this question also Fasching 2016 and Fasching 2022, last section). I do not claim that this is apt to completely dissolve the impression that there is something enigmatic about how one and the same indivisible consciousness can be seemingly separated from itself in different finite minds, as Advaita holds—but at least I hope that it shows that the idea is not outright paradoxical and unintelligible and that this helps us to acquire an intuitive grasp of it.16

5 APPENDIX: THE QUESTION OF THE “UNREALITY” OF THE WORLD The question could be raised as to whether I have really provided a faithful account of the basic Advaitic idea, insofar as I ascribed to the world of plurality a much more robust reality than, it might seem, Advaita would be ready to do. True, I stressed that the worldly goings-on have no existence outside or independent of brahman/sat, but nonetheless I doubtlessly described them as something that has being in brahman, as something really happening, while the radical Advaitic doctrine famously states that actually only brahman, free of any internal differentiation, plurality or change, is real and all multiplicity unreal, a mere illusion. Yet all talk of reality and unreality does not mean much as long as we do not more closely consider what Advaita means by these terms. If one understands the Advaitic thesis as saying that no plurality has any existence in any sense, this simply, it appears to me, makes no sense and we could perhaps take note of it as a curiosity in the history of ideas, but would have no reason to take Advaita Vedānta seriously as a metaphysical partner in dialogue. There is no problem in understanding what it might mean that the world is not real in the sense of being a mere appearance with no reality apart from consciousness, like, say, a dream. Yet if we deny all plurality any kind of existence, stating that nothing exists but the absolute, multiplicity-free oneness of brahman, it is completely unintelligible how even the appearance that there is a world should ever come about. A dream-world might have no existence apart from the dreaming consciousness, but the dreaming itself with all its manifoldness of appearances must really happen, otherwise there is no dream and nothing ever appears.17 We would then have to say that it only seems as if it seemed that there is a worldly reality, and the same would hold for this seeming, and so on ad infinitum. This hardly makes any sense.18 Yet it seems to me that it is not so clear that one necessarily has to read Advaita Vedānta in this radically acosmic sense (to my knowledge this is something of an open question in Śaṅkara and Advaita scholarship), and if one wishes to philosophically reconstruct it as a metaphysical position that

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deserves serious consideration in current debates, one is well advised to stick to an interpretation that at least makes sense (which, of course, is also what the principle of charity demands of us). Therefore I wish to close with a few thoughts on what the Advaitic talk of the “unreality” of the world might mean other than asserting its absolute non-existence—whether this is a historically tenable reading is of course up to the experts to decide. I would suggest understanding this thesis as having two aspects: It refers (a) to the world’s dependent and impermanent existence and (b) to its phenomenal character. First of all, it seems to me crucial to bear in mind that Advaita has a highly emphatic concept of sat or reality. By reality, Advaita almost always means that which abides in all change, that which is absolutely permanent, that is, which is not the modification of something else and which does not come into being and ceases to be, but is simply being (reality) itself, the absolute substratum. In this sense, it is understood that the individual existents are “unreal,” asat, that is, they are not being itself. This does not necessarily mean that finite things “have no being,”19 but simply that their being lies in brahman alone. See, for example, Śaṅkara’s commentary on Bhāgavadgītā II.16 (Śaṅkara 1977): Heat and cold, etc., … are not absolutely real (vastu-sat); for they are effects or changes (vikâra), and every change is temporary. For instance, no objective form, such as an earthen pot, presented to consciousness by the eye, proves to be real, because it is not perceived apart from the clay. Thus every effect is unreal, because it is not perceived as distinct from the [material] cause. Every effect, such as a pot, is unreal, also because it is not perceived before its production and after its destruction. As Śaṅkara continues, even the material cause in the usual sense (e.g. clay) is something originated and is therefore not real in the ultimate sense (i.e. the reality). The only thing that is absolutely unsublatable and therefore the ultimate foundation of everything—that which unchangeably underlies all change, that is, that in which everything takes place and does not exist “in” anything else (as the modification of something more fundamental)—is being as such. So at least in this passage (and also in numerous others) there is no talk of the absolute nonexistence of the transient things in the usual sense of the word (this would clearly be a non sequitur); they are “unreal” insofar as they are temporary and have no existence independent of their abiding ground which is sat, being as such.20 As Radhakrishnan observes: “Whenever he [Śaṅkara] denies the reality of effects, he qualifies it by some such phrase as ‘different from Brahman’ or ‘different from the cause’” (1962: 586).21 “No new reality,” Śaṅkara says, “springs up from another reality. What, then, does happen? The one Being persists under a different configuration. It is like a snake assuming

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coils. Or like clay assuming different successive forms such as powder, lump, pot or potsherds” (commentary on Chāndogya Upaniṣad VI.2.2, Alston 1980b: 117). The “effect” (the world), so goes the basic idea, is non-different (ananya) and non-independent (avyatirikta) from the underlying (material) “cause” (brahman) (cf. Radhakrishnan 1962: 567). “All the created beings abide within the Purusha [= brahman]; for, every effect rests within its cause” (Śaṅkara 1977: 8.22). “Nothing whatsoever, no modification, transcends that Brahman” (commentary on Kaṭha Upaniṣad II.3.2, quoted after De Smet 2013: 219).22 So at a preliminary stage, Advaita regards the world as a modification of brahman or being: It rejects the view that the world is something outside brahman, that it “creates” it as something that independently exists (in contrast to the way, say, a potter is the cause of the pot, see Śaṅkara 1962: II.1.15). The “effect,” the world, is non-different from its “cause,” brahman, just as the pot is non-different from the clay it is made of or the snake’s coils are nondifferent from (i.e. have no existence apart from) the snake (or, in perhaps the most beautiful image Śaṅkara uses, just as ripples, waves, and bubbles are non-different from the water of the ocean in which they occur, e.g. 1962: II.1.13, 1992: II.1.19). So it might seem that brahman transforms itself into the world (pariṇāmavāda, the “transformation thesis”), quite in line with many Upaniṣadic sayings such as “He, the One, thought to himself: Let me be many, let me grow forth” (Chāndogya Upaniṣad VI.2.3, Prabhavananda/Manchester 2002: 78). Yet in a second step Advaita revokes this view and instead speaks of only apparent transformation (vivartavāda). While the clay obviously undergoes manifold transformations in assuming the form of a pot, a statue, or whatever, brahman does not undergo the slightest modification by the worldly goings-on, it remains totally unaffected by them. It is not really a material cause in the usual sense, like clay or even the materia prima (prakṛti), as the “stuff” all things are made of. As a matter of fact, the term translated as “material cause,” upādāna, has, as De Smet points out, a broader meaning: It “may be rendered etymologically as ‘subdatum’” and indicates “that ‘from which’ the effect derives its substantial reality,” its “immanent and reality-giving Cause” (De Smet 2013: 373–4). In what sense, then, is brahman the upādāna of the world, what is the nature of the latter’s dependence on brahman? This becomes clear when one realizes that for Advaita the essence of brahman/sat is consciousness (and not some material stuff), and this leads us to the second aspect of the unreality thesis: The world’s status as appearance. Existence-in-consciousness is something totally different from, say, clay-assuming-pot-form. Here the dream-analogy sets in: Neither does the dream-world have any existence apart from the dreaming consciousness in which it has its appearance, nor does the dreaming consciousness literally become the dream-world (qua consciousness it remains unchanged, no matter what has its manifestation in it—it is always only

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consciousness of its contents and never these contents themselves); and equally, the objects of the world are neither parts of brahman nor something outside it. Brahman is the immutable consciousness (the primordial manifestationrealm) in which the world-spectacle unfolds. As Śaṅkara says: “Nor should one raise the objection that there could not be any multiform creation in the one Absolute without the latter forfeiting its essential nature as One. For the  texts themselves refer to the  way in which multiform creations occur in the one soul of a person dreaming without his forfeiting his essential unity … ” (Brahmasūtrabhāṣya II.1.28, Alston 1980b: 77). “[T]he one who sees a dream remains one only, quite untouched in his real nature by the hypnotic effect of the dream” (Brahmasūtrabhāṣya, II.1.9, Alston 1980b: 78). In summary: As far as I can see, one does not necessarily have to interpret Advaita as implausibly claiming that the world is utterly nonexistent in the usual sense of the term (after all, the Advaitins emphasize over and over again that it is not unreal in the same sense as a hare’s horn, i.e. absolutely nonexistent). Rather, I would suggest, what Advaita is saying is that it has no independent existence, that its very existence lies in brahman/sat which is the primordial luminous presence-dimension in which all worldly goings-on have their manifestation and thereby their being.23

NOTES 1

“The idea that Brahman is Esse is not expressed [by Śaṅkara] by using the verb ‘to be’ as a noun” (De Smet 2013: 346); instead “he uses the participle sat (be-ing)”—“but his intention is similar to that of St Thomas Aquinas when the latter says that God is eminently Esse (Be)” (De Smet 2013: 371).

2

Cf. also Śaṅkara’s commentary to Bhagavadgītā XIII.14: “Everything has Being for its support because every judgement we make is accompanied by the idea of being. … Hence the Absolute is the support of all” (Alston 1980a: 197).

3

As will later become clear, the talk of modifications is not fully adequate and only preliminary.

4

Cf. for example, Vidyāraṇya 1967: II.64 and 68: “It is Sat which appears as ākāśa [space, the first creation according to Vidyāraṇya’s cosmogony], but ordinary people, and the logicians say that existence is a property of ākāśa. … Sat being more pervading, is the locus or substance; and ākāśa a content or attribute. When, by the exercise of reason or intellect, Sat is separated from ākāśa, tell me what the nature of ākāśa is (i.e., it is reduced to nothing).”

5

“Brahman, free from space, attributes, motion …, seems to the slow of mind no more than non-being” (Śaṅkara, commentary to Chāndogya Upaniṣad VIII.1.1, quoted after Radhakrishnan 1962: 538).

6

So it makes good sense when Śaṅkara states in Brahmasūtrabhāṣya II.3.9: “[O]ne should not suppose that the Absolute [brahman] … could arise from anything else …. For the Absolute is pure Being.” As he further explains, it makes no sense

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to suppose that it originated from pure Being, for what should distinguish pure Being (i.e. the existence-dimension as such) from the very pure Being in which it is supposed to occur? “[T]here could not be any relation of ‘original substance’ and ‘modification’ between the two.” “And neither could pure Being arise from any particular being,” for the latter presupposes the former, not the other way around. And of course it cannot originate from non-being, “for the latter is non-existent.” “[W]e find modifications arising from things that are themselves modifications,” but brahman is not a modification of something else but that wherein all modifications occur. “[I]f we do not accept some original (selfexistent) entity somewhere [i.e. something that does not occur ‘in’ something else but is the ultimate locus of all occurrences] we fall into infinite regress. And the original entity … is in fact none other than what our tradition calls the Absolute [brahman]” (Alston 1980a: 195). 7

As we have seen, being does not “take place” in the same sense as inner-temporal events do; yet nonetheless this term seems fitting to me insofar as being is not atemporal in the way abstract entities are, it is present right now in utmost concreteness—as this very now itself.

8

As Śaṅkara says: “[W]hen it is said: ‘It is me who now cognizes the present being, it is me who cognized the past … being and me who will cognize the future … being’, these words imply that, even if the object of cognition changes, the cognizer … does not change; for its nature is eternal presence” (1920: II.3.7, my emphasis). The term translated as “presence” here (vartamāna) designates amongst other things the grammatical category of the present (Lehmann 2019: 333)—so what Śaṅkara is saying here is not simply that the ātman is permanently present, but that it is the very present (nowness) itself: Presence as such.

9

In contrast, present-day higher-order representation theories of self-awareness (and comparably the paraprakāśa (other-illumination) view in classical Indian philosophy, as espoused, for example, by the Naiyāyikas) hold that we only become aware of consciousness by virtue of a second-order act of consciousness. To my mind, a fundamental problem with this kind of view is, as mentioned, that it makes the absolute indubitability of my present being-conscious incomprehensible. Even if one were to hold that—for whatever reason—the higher-order act guarantees the existence of its target-state, the question remains of how I should know that this higher-order state itself exists. This would require a further higher-order state, and so on ad infinitum.

10 I do not claim that this is a knockdown argument, for one could say that the fact that we do not know of any kind of being apart from consciousness does not mean that there is none. But the least one can say is that if (a) we do know being qua consciousness, (b) we do not even have a (positive) idea of any other kind of being, and (c) it is unintelligible how this unknown non-conscious being should give rise to or transform into being qua consciousness, this strongly suggests (if only in the name of ontological parsimony) doing without the assumption of such an unknown and unknowable mode of being in addition to the mode of being we do know (cf. e.g., Kastrup 2014). 11 “[K]nowledge is of the very nature of the Absolute …. [T]here cannot, either in the past, present or future, be anything separate from it … and unknown to it. It is in this sense that the Absolute is omniscient” (Śaṅkara’s commentary to Taittirīya Upaniṣad II.1, Alston 1980a: 183).

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12 So while for the jīva (the individual subject) the difference has to be made between objects that have real existence (vyāvahārika) and objects that only exist insofar and as long as they are perceived by this subject (like e.g. dream objects) and are therefore merely phenomenal (prātibhāsika) (cf. Hiriyanna 1993: 350–1), with reference to the universal presence-dimension itself, “there is only one type of reality in place of the two found in the case of jīva; and that is of the phenomenal or prātibhāsika type. For by hypothesis whatever is, is known to Īśvara [brahman qua universal witness] and no part of it lasts longer than the time during which it is experienced. In this sense, Īśvara may be described as an eternal dreamer” (Hiriyanna 1993: 367). 13 “The objects of knowledge … are different from each other because of their peculiarities; but the consciousness of these, which is different from them, does not differ because of its homogeneity” (Vidyāraṇya 1967: I.3). 14 “[T]he soul must be considered a part of the Lord. … By ‘part’ we mean ‘a part as it were’, since a being not composed of parts cannot have parts in the literal sense” (Śaṅkara 1962: II.3.43). 15 Hence I disagree with Gasparri when he states that Advaita Vedānta does not at all face the “decombination problem” that cosmopsychism faces, because, in the Advaitic view, individual subjects are “illusory appearances” and not real (Gasparri 2019: 138) so that no account of how they arise has to be given. This is simply not an overly illuminating answer as long as there is no proper analysis as to what “illusion,” “appearance,” or “unreality” are exactly supposed to mean and how they can come about, which Gasparri does not perform and only states as a desideratum (Gasparri 2019). 16 Cf. also Kastrup 2014, Mathews 2011, and Shani 2015 for promising proposals with regard to this topic. 17 This is also one of the arguments of the Viśiṣṭādvaitin Rāmānuja against Śaṅkara’s illusion thesis (whether the objection is based on a fair and correct interpretation of Śaṅkara is of course another question). 18 In her (I must stress: very insightful) 2019 paper, Albahari proposes an account in this direction: The world is, as it were, just a dream, and even the dreaming is only dreamt and therefore unreal—so there is no problem of how there can be any appearance of plurality, although, according to “perennial idealism,” as she calls it, nothing apart from “unconditioned consciousness” exists (2019: 29–30). If I understand it correctly, her solution with regard to the seeming paradoxicality of such a view (the world is just a dream, and this dream never happened) is, in a nutshell (I hope I do her justice): There is no such thing as an objective standpoint whence the relationship between the exclusive reality of unconditioned, multiplicity-free consciousness and the world of plurality could be assessed. From the standpoint of the former there is simply no multiplicity to be explained, and from the standpoint of the individual, enworlded subject (from “within the dream”) it is of course not true that nothing exists but unconditioned consciousness. And there is no third, “outside” standpoint, so the problem of how to reconcile the two contradictory statements (no multiplicity whatever exists—the world appears) never arises, from any possible standpoint (Albahari 2019: 30–1). Perhaps I am too slow-witted for this kind of reasoning, but I have a hard time seeing it as anything other than mere sophistry. It is not clear to me how,

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then, a statement such as “The dreaming itself is only dreamt” is even possible, a statement which seems to be precisely a claim, even if an incoherent one, about the relationship between the sole reality of unconditioned consciousness and conditioned consciousness. For whom should this be true? From the perspective of individual subjectivity it simply makes no sense; and when it comes to unconditioned consciousness—well, I suppose it does not do much philosophy, so it will not hold this thesis either. And besides I do not think that I am overly objectivistic when I find it impossible to admit the possibility that my present manifold experiencing is, in some ultimate sense, nonexistent merely because there is some consciousness—even if, with all due respect, it is “the absolute”— which is unaware of it. 19 “[O]f which we are conscious cannot but exist” (Śaṅkara 1962: II.2.28). 20 “Does it not follow that everything that is perceived is non-being (asat) …? No, that is not our position. For we hold that it is invariably real Being that is perceived, only it is perceived under the distinctions of duality and hence as different from what it really is. Thus we do not maintain that anything anywhere is non-being. … [I]t is parallel with the normal worldly practice of thinking of the lump of clay … and the clay pot … as different from the clay and calling it ‘the lump’ and ‘the pot’ respectively” (Śaṅkara’s commentary on Chāndogya Upaniṣad VI.2.3, Alston 1980a: 193–4). 21 Cf. for example, Śaṅkara’s commentary on Taittirīya Upaniṣad II.1.1: “[T]he things spoken of as effects are unreal. Apart from the cause, there is indeed no such thing as an effect really existing” (Sastry 2007). 22 And accordingly, in no way does Advaita hold that for a person who overcomes avidyā the world literally vanishes (as Gasparri claims: 2019: 135). It would be hard to see how, for example, Śaṅkara could wander around, teach, author books, establish monasteries, while experiencing nothing of the world, living in the mere void of brahman. As Vidyāraṇya says: “When the ideas of Jīva and Jagat (the world) are negated, the pure Ātman alone remains. By negation it does not mean that the world and Jīva cease to be perceptible to the senses, it means the conviction of their illusory [i.e. non-‘real’] character. … Otherwise there would not be such a thing as liberation in life” (1967: VI.12 ff.; cf. also ibid., VI.239, VII.176, 180, XIII.46; and Śaṅkara’s commentary to Gauḍapādakārikā I.5, Jones 2014: 45). 23 I wish to thank the editors and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this chapter.

REFERENCES Albahari, M. (2019), “Perennial Idealism: A Mystical Solution to the Mind-Body Problem,” Philosopher’s Imprint, 19 (44): 1–37. Alston, A. J. (1980a), Śaṃkara on the Absolute. A Śaṃkara Source-Book. Volume I, London: Shanti Sadan. Alston, A. J. (1980b), Śaṃkara on the Creation. A Śaṃkara Source-Book. Volume II, London: Shanti Sadan. Chalmers, D. J. (1996), The Conscious Mind. In Search of a Fundamental Theory, New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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De Smet, R. (2013), Understanding Śaṅkara. Essays by Richard De Smet, ed. I. Coelho, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Fasching, W. (2012), “On the Advaitic Identification of Self and Consciousness,” in I. Kuznetsova, J. Ganeri, and C. Ram-Prasad (eds), Hindu and Buddhist Ideas in Dialogue. Self and No-Self, 165–80, Farnham: Ashgate. Fasching, W. (2016), “The Non-Plurality of the ‘I’: On the Question of the Ultimate Subject of Experience,” Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23 (1–2): 140–57. Fasching, W. (2021), “The I: A Dimensional Account,” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 20: 249–60. Fasching, W. (2022), “On the Ātman Thesis Concerning Fundamental Reality,” The Monist, 105 (1) (special issue “Cosmopsychism and Indian Philosophy,” ed. J. Ganeri and I. Shani): 58–75. Gasparri, L. (2019), “Priority Cosmopsychism and the Advaita Vedānta,” Philosophy East and West, 69 (1): 130–42. Hiriyanna, M. (1993), Outlines of Indian Philosophy, London: George Allen & Unwin. Jones, R. H. (2014), Early Advaita Vedanta Philosophy. Volume 1: Plain English Translation of the Gaudapada-karikas with a Summary of Shankara’s Commentary, New York: Jackson Square Books. Kastrup, B. (2014), Why Materialism Is Baloney. How True Skeptics Know There Is No Death and Fathom Answers to Life, the Universe, and Everything, Winchester, Washington: Iff Books. Klawonn, E. (1991), Jeg’ets ontologi. En afhandling om subjektivitet, bevidsthed og personlig identitet, Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag. Klawonn, E. (2009), Mind and Death. A Metaphysical Investigation, Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark. Lehmann, R. (2019), Stiller Zeuge—Bewegtes Leben. Selbstbewusstsein in Phänomenologie und Advaita-Vedānta, Freiburg/München: Karl Alber. Mahadevan, T. M. P. (1969), The Philosophy of Advaita, Madras: Ganesh & Co. Malkani, G. R. (1961), Metaphysics of Advaita Vedanta, Madras: The Indian Institute of Philosophy. Mathews, F. (2011), “Panpsychism as Paradigm,” in M. Blamauer (ed.), The Mental as Fundamental. New Perspectives on Panpsychism, 141–55, Frankfurt et al.: Ontos. Prabhavananda, S. and F. Manchester, eds (2002), The Upanishads. Breath of Eternal Life, New York: Signet Classics. Radhakrishnan, S. (1962), Indian Philosophy. Volume II, New York, London: Macmillan, George Allen & Unwin. Śaṅkara (1920), Die Sûtra’s des Vedânta oder die Çârîraka-Mîmâṅsâ des Bâdarâyaṇa nebst dem vollständigen Commentare des Çañkara, trans. P. Deussen, Leipzig: Brockhaus. Śaṅkara (1962), Vedânta-Sûtras with the Commentary by Śankarācārya, 2 vols., trans. G. Thibaut, Delhi, Patna, Varanasi: Motilal Banarsidass. Śaṅkara (1977), The Bhagavad Gita. With the Commentary of Sri Sankaracharya, trans. A. M. Sastry, Madras: Samata Books. Śaṅkara (1992), A Thousand Teachings. The Upadeśasāhasrī of Śaṅkara, trans. S. Mayeda, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Sastry, A. M., trans. (2007), The Taittiriya Upanishad. With the Commentaries of Sri Sankaracarya, Sri Suresvaracarya and Sri Vidyaranya, Chennai: Samata Books. Shani, I. (2015), “Cosmopsychism. A Holistic Approach to the Metaphysics of Experience,” Philosophical Papers, 44 (3): 389–437.

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Shani, I. (2021), “Eden Benumbed. A Critique of Panqualityism and the Disclosure View of Consciousness,” Philosophia. Available online: https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11406-021-00377-9. Taber, J. A. (1992), Transformative Philosophy. A Study of Śaṅkara, Fichte, and Heidegger, Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications. Vidyāraṇya (1967), Pañcadaśi, trans. Swāmī Swāhānanda, Mylapore: Sri Ramakrishna Math. Zahavi, D. (1999), Self-Awareness and Alterity. A Phenomenological Investigation, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Zahavi, D. (2005), Subjectivity and Selfhood. Investigating the First-Person Perspective, Cambridge, MA, London: The MIT Press.

CHAPTER TWO

Cosmopsychism and Non-Śankaran Traditions of Hindu Non-dualism: In Search of a Fertile Connection ITAY SHANI

Imagine a spring that has no source outside itself; it gives itself to all the rivers, yet is never exhausted by what they take. (Plotinus, The Enneads, III.8.10).

1 INTRODUCTION In the spirit of the present volume, this paper seeks to bring cosmopsychism—a contemporary metaphysical position on the nature of mind and consciousness— into contact with the rich philosophical tradition of Hinduism. The connection suggests itself naturally. Cosmopsychism is predicated on the idea that cosmic consciousness lies at the root of all particulate phenomena, and more specifically that such consciousness undergirds the experiential reality of all lesser subjects. Needless to say, such a conception is a staple of Hindu philosophy since the times of the Upanishads. In exploring thematic connections of this sort

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there would be, to be sure, also other traditions to turn to such as Chinese philosophy, Buddhism, Sufism; Christian mysticism, and the idealist tradition in western philosophy (from Neo-Platonism to late nineteenth-century British Idealism), and more. However, sustained engagement with the definitive theme of cosmopsychism—namely, cosmic consciousness and its relevance to our understanding of ordinary experience—is nowhere more conspicuous than in the predominant philosophical tradition of the Indian subcontinent. Although cosmopsychism is still fairly young, having gained recognition as a distinct position over the last decade only (see Goff 2017; Jaskolla and Buck 2012; Mathews 2011; Nagasawa and Wager 2017; Shani 2015), it has recently stimulated various works that investigate its potential constructive connection to different strains of Indian philosophy (see Albahari 2020; Ganeri 2020; Gasparri 2019; Maharaj 2020; Vaidya 2020; Velmans 2021).1 Using the present occasion as a platform, I wish to contribute to this trend from the perspective of someone who is neither a critique of cosmopsychism, nor an expert on one or another school of Indian philosophy, but who is, rather, a card-carrying cosmopsychist with a growing interest in Indian philosophy and in the possibility of benefiting theoretically from tapping into its vastly affluent resources. Precisely because, on certain key points, cosmopsychism’s outlook (at least as understood in my own attempts to articulate and defend the position) bears considerable similarity to important strands of Indian philosophy it stands to reason that it has much to gain from engaging constructively with it. In looking to derive insight and aid from such an engagement, I shall focus on two motivating factors that shaped my own thinking on the subject: 1. The need to identify and clarify the metaphysical underpinnings of cosmopsychism. 2. The obligation to address the critical challenge known as the individuation (or ‘decombination’) problem. In a recent paper (Shani 2022) I dealt primarily with the second issue, arguing that cosmopsychism need not fall victim to the individuation problem, and that no irremediable incoherence ensues from the assumption that all finite subjects are grounded in a single cosmic consciousness. While that paper also touches upon the metaphysical commitments and character of the cosmopsychist platform, the discussion takes the back seat relative to the individuation problem. In the present work, I plan to reverse course: The individuation problem will be discussed but only succinctly (in section two and in the conclusion), while the metaphysical status of cosmopsychism will assume center stage (see the extensive discussion in Section 4). Barring further qualifications, talking about metaphysical “status,” “character,” and “commitments” is, of course, vague. My concerns, however, are somewhat more specific. In particular, I shall focus on the question what

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form of metaphysical monism is best suitable to serve as a general scheme for a robust articulation of cosmopsychism. Stated more accurately, the concern of this question is token-monism, that is, the view that only one concrete entity exists or, alternatively, is truly ontologically fundamental (see Schaffer 2018).2 Cosmopsychism is a tokenmonist stance since its adherents proclaim either that cosmic consciousness is the only concretum there is, or, more plausibly, that it is the most fundamental of concreta (see below). Following an influential distinction made by Jonathan Schaffer (Schaffer 2010a) it has become customary to distinguish between two alternative token-monist positions: Existence monism and priority monism. Existence monism is the view that only one concretum—the maximal being, typically identified with the cosmos as a whole—truly exists. Consequently, the multiplicity of infra-cosmic entities is interpreted as less than fully real. Sometimes, such entities are deemed illusory, as the eighth-century Indian sage Adi Śaṅkara seems to have held. Other times they are judged to be mere quasi-objects congealed within the whole as localized sub-compartments (as per Horgan and Potrč 2000). In contrast, priority monism is the view that only one concretum, the maximal being, is ultimately fundamental but that alongside (or rather within) this most fundamental being there exists a plurality of non-basicyet-perfectly-real concreta. The majority of cosmopsychism’s advocates adhere to priority monism.3 The One, they maintain, is an indubitable first, but the many are true and respectable denizens of the grand totality. Yet, even within the priority monist camp there is room for substantive diversity. Schaffer’s preferred image of monism is that of organic unity (2010b: 342): A unity-in-diversity in which the One subsumes the many in its midst while the many are integrally woven and interrelated—depending on each other as well as on the overarching context defined by the all-inclusive whole. I will call this monistic outlook mereological monism to designate the fact that on the metaphysical picture it conveys the One is depicted as an interweaved meshwork of interrelated proper parts.4 There is, however, an alternative monistic outlook, one which denies the axiom that the One and the many are necessarily coexistent. Instead, this alternative standpoint’s defining feature consists of the assumption that the many are generated from and sustained by the One, to wit: An ultimate reality whose primordial nature is that of an undifferentiated singleness. We may properly tag this sort of outlook as generative monism. A major claim of the present paper is that generative monism is an attractive alternative to Schaffer’s mereological framework, both as an abstract metaphysical template and, more specifically, in the context of priority cosmopsychism. Section 4 provides a preliminary account of generative monism and stresses its virtues as a monistic metaphysical scheme of interpretation, as well as its significance in the context of defending and developing cosmopsychism.

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Two theoretical desiderata were mentioned above: (i) addressing the individuation problem; and (ii) finding out what sort of monism best fits cosmopsychism and its explanatory aspirations. In regard to both there is much to be gained from constructive engagement with Indian philosophy. In attempting to do so, I chose to focus on two positions that I find closest in spirit to my own understanding of cosmopsychism: The parādvaita of Kashmir Śaivism, and the integral (or realistic) advaita of Aurobindo. Noticeably, these two forms of advaita differ considerably from the celebrated school of advaita vedānta and the teachings of Śaṅkara, which are so often taken as representative of Hindu philosophy. In Section 3 I consider how these two decisively nonŚaṅkaran variants of Hindu non-dualism portray cosmic consciousness, and how they relate it to lesser subjects as well as to the manifest reality in which such subjects find themselves immersed. The point of this exercise is not to provide a proper exegesis of either of these views, a task which exceeds my competence, but rather to identify certain important respects in which they tally with cosmopsychism, or provide it with valuable pointers for growth and inspiration. In succeeding sections, I return to consider these selected respects in light of the specific topic discussed in each section: Monism (Section 4), and the individuation problem (Section 5).5

2 COSMOPSYCHISM: A BRIEF EXPOSITION In order to inquire into the metaphysical foundations of cosmopsychism, as well as to discuss the relevance of parādvaita and integral advaita for contemporary work on the subject, one must first say a little more about cosmopsychism itself. Cosmopsychism is a holistic-monistic variant of panpsychism.6 Like other forms of panpsychism it maintains that consciousness is both ontologically fundamental and pervasive. By “fundamental” is meant that rather than being a cosmological latecomer, emergent from insensate matter, consciousness is primordial and lies at the very foundation of things. By “pervasive” is meant that consciousness presides everywhere (hence the ‘pan’ in panpsychism), a statement which must, however, be qualified and explained. Panpsychism does not necessitate the idea that all things are conscious themselves: For all we know, corkscrews and pebbles and many other things we call “inanimate” may lack any inner lives of their own. Rather, the pervasiveness thesis consists in the claim that all concrete entities are either conscious beings themselves or are ultimately constituted of conscious beings.7 On this picture, corkscrews and pebbles (if indeed non-conscious) belong to the second category: Although ultimately constituted of things that are conscious, they lack integral consciousness on their own.

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In addition to the commitments to the fundamentality and pervasiveness of consciousness there is yet another important principle by which most panpsychists abide, namely, the notion that the subjective phenomenal lives of non-fundamental subjects are intelligibly grounded in the conscious subjective actuality of the most fundamental beings, whatever they are. This assumption, which we may call the phenomenal grounding hypothesis (PGH, for short), is crucial in order to “save the phenomena,” that is, to ensure the relevance of a panpsychist metaphysic to the explanation of ordinary experience, where by “ordinary experience” I mean the subjective streams of perceptions, feelings, moods, attitudes, cogitations, imaginations, etc. that routinely animate our own person under normal circumstances, and which we readily grant our fellow human beings as well as (at least to a degree) many other biological species. Like the fundamentality hypothesis and the pervasiveness hypothesis, PGH is shared by cosmopsychists and micropsychists (viz., micro-reductive panpsychists) alike.8 However, what sets cosmopsychism apart from other panpsychist creeds is the contention that there is only one fundamental concretum—a conscious entity of cosmic proportions often identified simply as the cosmos, or universe (see, for example, Goff 2017: 234), but which I shall call Cosmic Consciousness, or CC for short (see also Nagasawa and Wager 2017). On this view, all nonfundamental concreta are, ultimately, ontologically (and asymmetrically) dependent on CC. More specifically, it is not merely the physical attributes of individual objects that are grounded in the primal reality of CC; rather, as stated in PGH, the very subjectivity and phenomenal reality of particulate subjects of experience ought to be intelligibly traced to the subjective character and experiential nature of CC itself. In the context of micropsychism, PGH gives rise to a challenge known as the combination problem, whose most formidable formulation pertains to the combination of subjects, namely, “how could microscopic subjects combine to constitute an ordinary macro-level subject?”9 In the context of cosmopsychism, PGH gives rise to an inverse challenge which some, myself included, have labeled the “decombination problem” (see Albahari 2020; Miller 2018; Shani and Keppler 2018). However, I now believe that the term individuation problem (IND for short), first coined by Freya Mathews (2011), constitutes a superior choice.10 Be that as it may, the problem consists in the quandary “how could CC individuate into a plethora of lesser subjects, each with its own distinct self?” It is important, however, to be clear about the nature of the challenge. Significantly, the problem does not consist, in the first place, in the absence of a fully satisfying explanation of the precise actual manner in which ordinary subjects are grounded, qua subjects, in CC’s elemental consciousness—for philosophy rarely succeeds in (and is arguably unfit for) providing detailed, adequate, causal or procedural explanations. Rather, the

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real and more pressing challenge is to demonstrate that such phenomenal grounding is a viable, coherent possibility, or to put it negatively: To ward off the accusation that the grounding of ordinary subjects in CC is an incoherent and hopeless notion.11 In a recent paper (Shani 2022) I addressed IND and the incoherence challenge in detail, militating against the commonly held assumption that IND is but a “combination problem in reverse” (Mathews 2011: 145), that is, a mirrorimage of the combination problem afflicting micropsychism. Furthermore, I argue that once this symmetry assumption is refuted it can be established that, in contradistinction to the havoc which the combination problem inflicts upon micropsychism, IND does not infect cosmopsychism with any insurmountable obstacle.12 Interested readers are welcome to examine the argument and make up their own minds but here we must leave this thorny issue aside and focus on the problems that motivate the present paper (I return to this topic briefly in Section 5). Much more could be said about cosmopsychism, and I have done so elsewhere (Shani 2015, 2022; Shani and Keppler 2018), but for our present purposes what has been related is sufficient in order to, first, provide a rough sketch of the view and, second, motivate a discussion of its potential affinity to certain metaphysical conceptions within the Hindu philosophical tradition.

3 COSMOPSYCHISM’S EASTERN COUSINS: KASHMIR ŚAIVISM, AND AUROBINDO’S INTEGRAL ADVAITA “The indescribable is the ground of all names and forms, the support of all creation” (Atharvaveda: X, ix, 1).13 Having articulated the general idea behind cosmopsychism, the present section proceeds to discuss two world-affirming cosmopsychist perspectives developed within Hinduism, namely, Kashmir Śaivism and the integral advaita of Sri Aurobindo. Since world-affirmation is a pivotal motif in linking these Hindu philosophies to contemporary cosmopsychism, I begin by commenting on the prima facie problematic status of such linkage given the prevalent tendency to identify Hindu philosophy with the illusionist non-dualism of Advaita Vedānta. 3.1. The Specter of World-denialism As mentioned earlier, most work on cosmopsychism is animated by a worldaffirming sentiment, namely, by the conviction that even though CC alone is ontologically primary there are countless other perfectly real concreta. On this picture, neither ordinary subjects, nor their natural and social environments,

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are deemed illusory. This being the case, such an attitude must be borne in mind in any attempt to bring cosmopsychism into fruitful contact with Hindu philosophy (a point made in several recent works, see Gasparri 2019; Medhananda 2021; Vaidya 2020). This observation is especially pertinent given the occidental tendency to identify Hindu non-dualism with the illusionist acosmism championed by Śaṅkara and his followers—as found, for example, in the influential writings of Indologists such as Max Müller and Paul Deussen (see Radhakrishnan 1927: 16–7). On the assumption that Hindu non-dualism pertains exclusively to advaita vedānta in the mold of Śaṅkara the most reasonable conclusion is that it is largely incongruous with contemporary western cosmopsychism, “despite the semblance of similarity evoked by the shared sympathy for a worldview featuring an all-embracing ‘cosmic’ consciousness” (Gasparri 2022: 77). While it would be a mistake to conclude that such disparity implies that cosmopsychists have nothing of value to learn from a close study of the advaitic standpoint, the rift over the cosmismacosmism divide counts heavily against any temptation to consider the two outlooks true allies.14 Although the identification of Hindu non-dualism with Śankaran advaita remains influential to this day, a growing number of scholars are pushing back against it by stressing the existence of powerful forms of world-affirming alternatives within the Hindu monistic tradition (see Ganeri 2020: chap. 16; Medhananda 2022a, chap. 9–10; and Vaidya 2020).15 The fact that such alternatives exist is important on many different levels, not least of which because we sometimes tend to forget that the orthodox advaitic position is, itself, but another historical interpretation of Hinduism’s sacred texts, and, as such, that it may not represent its source with unfailing accuracy.16 Since one should be wary of pronouncing on matters that transcend one’s expertise I shall only relate humbly that my own experience of reading the Upanishads resonates firmly with Radhakrishnan’s assertion that: “There is hardly any suggestion in the Upanishads that the entire universe of change is a baseless fabric of fancy, a mere phenomenal show or a world of shadows” (1927: 186; for a similar though somewhat more nuanced assessment see Hiriyanna 2014: 93). 3.2. Objective Idealism in Kashmir Śaivism and the Integral Advaita of Sri Aurobindo Kashmir Śaivism (KS for short) is a Śaiva (i.e., Shiva worshipping) school of thought, developed in Kashmir in northern India, that reached its zenith in the 9–11 centuries AD. Its philosophical outlook is known as Pratyabhijñā (the principle of recognition) or parādvaita (absolute non-dualism). As the term “parādvaita” indicates, KS is committed to an unabashed monism, denying the existence of any irreducible fragmentation within the structure of being.

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Instead, all particulate phenomena are seen as manifestations of a single cosmic consciousness identified as Paramaśiva (the highest Śiva) or Anuttara (the Supreme).17 This absolute CC has two complementary aspects: A transcendent and changeless dimension associated with Śiva in its state of repose, and an immanent dynamic dimension associated with Śakti-Śiva’s energy, or creative power. To these two complementary aspects corresponds also the distinction between prakāśa, the inner light of consciousness, and vimarśa, the capacity of consciousness for reflective self-reference. It is through self-reflection, often likened to mirroring (see Pandit 1997: 19; Singh 1985: 18), that the cosmic consciousness—Śiva-Śakti—gives rise in its midst to a world of manifest plurality (objective as well as subjective). KS is thoroughly monistic in that it insists that the entire created universe is a manifestation of, and within, Śiva. There is nothing outside of, or apart from, absolute CC. All lesser beings, including all other subjects, appear as internal differentiations within the cosmic playground of absolute consciousness: They can be thought of as reflections in Śiva’s creative mirroring, or as moments in a spontaneous process of self-individuation. In this respect, another significant concept is that of spanda, the self-stirring of consciousness. On the KS view of things, consciousness is inherently dynamic and vibratory: It may be calm and repose but it is always potentially active, just as a calm ocean contains the potential to give rise to stormy waves and whirlpools. It is due to spanda, the intrinsically pulsating nature of consciousness, that the creative display of a manifest multiplicity is rendered possible (see Dyczkowski 1987: chap. 3; Pandit 1997: chap. 6). It is interesting to observe that, from KS’s perspective, the reality we identify with the familiar world of subjects, objects, and actions is an outgrowth of Śiva’s pure consciousness. The cosmological picture at play is one which emphasizes a gradual outwardly movement: From the inwardness of an undifferentiated pure ‘I’ toward increasing levels of differentiation and absorption in particulate form, culminating in an explicit manifestation of diversity in which subjects and objects exist side by side as co-determinants.18 Ultimately, then, the monism which KS stands for is a form of objective idealism. The universe, with its diverse plurality of existents, is seen as a real projection of Śiva’s cosmic substance; it is not an illusory fanfare. In other words, KS is emphatically world-affirming. At the same time, the noumenal and the phenomenal, the undivided and the divided, the single and the plural, are seen as two poles of an overarching totality— the introverted and extroverted movements of spanda, respectively (see Pandit 1997: 17). Such totality consists, in its entirety, of cosmic consciousness: There is nothing in it—neither substance, nor aspect, nor property—which isn’t itself a manifestation of consciousness. A kindred form of monistic objective idealism is found in the “realistic,” or “integral,” advaita of the twentieth-century Indian philosopher-sage Aurobindo

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Ghosh. In Aurobindo’s synthetic approach, Brahman, the supreme, is identified with Saccidānanda—existence-consciousness-bliss. This eternal and infinite being is both personal and impersonal, both saguna (with qualities) and nirguna (without qualities). Although in its furthermost reaches it is ultimately indescribable, the highest positive expression of Brahman is Saccidānanda: An all-encompassing conscious force whose natural and intrinsically motivating condition is a state of pure bliss.19 Influenced by traditional Śaiva and Śākta schools (Raju 1985: 544) as well as by the teachings of the nineteenth-century Bengali sage Sri Ramakrishna (Medhananda 2021), Aurobindo conceives of the divine along two complementary dimensions: The transcendent Brahman, and its immanent force śakti. Consciousness, cit, is therefore an active, creative force in which, and through which, the cosmic drama unfolds. As in KS, this cosmic tale is no illusion. In fact, Aurobindo spends a considerable amount of time arguing against illusionist interpretations of being—both Buddhist and Advaita Vedāntic—and in favor of the notion that the universe, with all its diverse manifold of phenomena, is a real expression of Brahman. Perhaps the most unique feature of Aurobindo’s philosophy is the merging of a Hindu worldview with a thoroughgoing evolutionism. Yet, in contrast to materialist theories of evolution, for Aurobindo “evolutionism” pertains, above all, to the evolution of consciousness. It is, of course, not consciousness per se which evolves for CC is the seed and substance of all there is, a precondition of evolution and not its consequence. Rather, what evolve side by side with the ascent of complexity in biological life are forms and qualities of particulate types of consciousness. In fact, evolution is but one side of a two-sided narrative, the complement of which is the concept of involution. At first, the Lila or dynamic joyous play of Saccidānanda consists of cosmic descent. Voluntary selfconcealment and auto-limitation effectuate an increasing fissure in the primal unity of the One and a growing attachment of consciousness—captured in its own play of hide and seek—to particulate limiting conditions. In short, the descent is marked by increasing ignorance. Lost in its self-imposed limitation, the invested consciousness is trapped in a positive feedback loop which keeps hurling it further downward, toward states and conditions of lesser and lesser awareness. In the end, it hits rock bottom and assumes the form of the simplest, most elemental, material entities, where all traces of consciousness seem to have disappeared.20 Yet, all the while, and despite the descent into ever more fragmented, ineffectual, self-absorbed, and inwardly coiled forms, the immanent presence of consciousness remains the definitive underlying reality. Thus, guided by a dim longing for its lost primal unity this submerged and obscured conscious force begins its long journey home. A journey which sways it in the opposite direction of ontic ascent: Toward ever-increasing complexity of material organization; growing sensitivity, discernment, and adaptive control;

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intensified intelligence and depth of experience; and ultimately, recognition of its oneness with the divine source and with all of one’s fellow beings.21 Thus, whereas KS identifies the unfolding of our universe with an outward movement of consciousness, Aurobindo identifies it with the descent and ascent of the involution-evolution cycle. Clearly, then, in these two heterodox advaitic systems one finds vivid articulations of a sumptuous cosmopsychist edifice. Both argue for an uncompromising monism in which all created beings are seen as emergent modes of a single CC—an absolute idealism which is, at the same time, panpsychist in character. Furthermore, both offer rich accounts of how such undivided CC gives rise to a manifest universe populated with a stupendous plurality of beings, including, of course, individual subjects of various stripes. Finally, both stress that while CC is the alpha and omega of reality, created beings and their co-constructed worlds are nevertheless authentically real in their own right. My own work on cosmopsychism, inspired in part by mystical outlooks of various denominations, converges onto a similar perspective—a world-affirming, monistic, panpsychist idealism—which is why I accord special pertinence to the views surveyed in this section. It goes without saying that the convictions and sympathies which incline me in the direction of such Hindu sources are not necessarily shared by other advocates of priority cosmopsychism (for a cosmopsychism of a markedly different orientation see Goff 2017). In any event, more needs to be said if one wishes to make the case that cosmopsychism stands to benefit in particular matters by attending to Aurobindo and the medieval seers of Kashmir Śaivism. In the following two sections I try to show that what they have to say is quite relevant for important foundational issues such as the question of what sort of monism best fits cosmopsychism (Section 4), and the individuation problem (Section 5).

4 THE CASE FOR GENERATIVE MONISM ‘In the Beginning all this Was Self alone’ (Brihadâranyaka Upanishad: 1.IV.1). As explained earlier, cosmopsychism is a form of metaphysical monism. Most contemporary advocates of cosmopsychism adhere to priority monism, which, translated to the specific context of cosmopsychism, is the view that CC enjoys ontological priority over all infra-cosmic beings, including all infracosmic subjects. In contradistinction to existence monism—the view that only the universe as a whole has real being (or translated to cosmopsychism: That only CC itself exists)—priority monism commends realism with regard to such sub-cosmic parts. It holds that while CC alone is metaphysically fundamental, the partialia in its ambit are nevertheless ontologically real. But “priority

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monism” is a generic term, equally compatible with two distinct species of monism: Mereological monism, and generative monism—as I propose to call them. The difference between the two is, I believe, profound and merits the attention of metaphysicians. So far, however, the distinction has not (to my knowledge) been properly borne out. The present section is an attempt to articulate what is at stake and to begin to fill this conceptual lacuna. In the next and final section, I comment briefly on how this issue bears upon our understanding of cosmopsychism and its explanatory ambitions. a. Priority Monism: Mereological or Generative? By “mereological monism” (MM) I designate the view that concrete reality is, fundamentally, an organic unity in which (a) the One and the many, the cosmic whole and its proper parts, coexist and are ontologically interwoven; and (b) the priority of the whole over the parts consists of the fact that the whole provides the overarching principles of order which shape the identity, character, and behavior of the parts. On this view, while the One is always, and necessarily, a unity-in-diversity consisting of interacting proper parts it is nevertheless ontologically prior to the many, on account of the (presumed) fact that the latter are asymmetrically dependent on it. Although it is far from easy to articulate with precision the asymmetry which prioritizes the One over the many, the general thrust of this position is clear. In contrast, “generative monism” (GM) is my terminological choice for the view that the One engenders the many, that is, that it literally brings multiplicity into being. Such begetting is not, of course, the creation of a product external to the producer—as depicted in the Book of Genesis or in Plato’s Timaeus— but, rather, a process of internal differentiation through which a plurality of distinct entities arises out of an originary state of undifferentiated singleness.22 Finally, nor is such generation akin to spawning or splintering. For while the multitude of emergent beings enjoy various forms and degrees of individuality (and in the case of subjects like us, a significant measure of personal and collective autonomy) they remain inseparable from their ultimate singular origin—grounded in it and pervaded by its immanent presence. In this respect, a comparison to whirlpools and solitons in a large water body is suggestive, for such metastable emergent forms are locally bounded, functionally discernible, and capable of remarkable behavior, yet are ultimately inseparable from the underlying watery substance that gives them sustenance (see Shani 2015). Clearly, there is a real metaphysical difference between these two types of priority monism. A picture of reality in which the One and the many are necessarily co-specifying (as per MM) is markedly distinct from one in which the former precedes the latter (as per GM) and is therefore unconditioned by it (at least in its original, pre-cosmic phase). Moreover, whereas MM portrays

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the One as a unity-in-diversity, GM envisions it as pure and simple—an undifferentiated oneness. Finally, it follows from the above that while MM is committed to the view that concrete reality is fundamentally heterogeneous, GM endorses the opposite notion of primordial homogeneity. Doubtlessly, then, we are faced with two alternative conceptions of reality whose differences are consequential. Needless to say, such momentous metaphysical differences are of interest to cosmopsychism as well. Any attempt to think seriously about CC, and about its relations to ordinary subjects and the manner in which it grounds their individuation, would be heavily affected by one’s choice between these two rival frameworks. And, of course, such a choice would also determine the identity of one’s potential historical allies—be they oriental or occidental. In short, while Schaffer’s (2010a) celebrated distinction between priority monism and existence monism is laudable, it is time for priority monists to go beyond it and pay honest heed to the discrepancy between MM and GM. b. Rehabilitating Generative Monism Intriguingly, when it comes to the contrast between MM and GM Schaffer’s influential work on monism obscures more than it enlightens. For while Schaffer is well aware of the fact that more than a few important historical advocates of monism were championing monistic conceptions which correspond to GM (see Schaffer 2010a: 57) he nevertheless narrates his discussion in such a way that the reader is led to identify priority monism with its mereological variant. This creates a potential confusion since it misleadingly suggests that a worldaffirming monism must coincide with the assumption that fundamental reality is a heterogeneous unity-in-diversity. Yet, clearly, that is not the case. As the previous section gave us occasion to ascertain, KS and the integral advaita of Aurobindo are two evident examples of a world-affirming monism that takes undifferentiated CC as the ultimate ground of reality. Aurobindo endorses the Advaitic view according to which Brahman is an unchangeable Absolute transcending all multiplicity.23 At the same time, he maintains—in line with Śaiva and Śākta influences, and in contradistinction to Śaṅkara—that this Absolute is an infinite and inexhaustibly creative force. He insists that the air of paradox is resolved upon realizing that a force may inhere in its bearer latently, hence that Śākti is inseparable from Brahman even while the latter is at full repose (1919/2006: 90).24 As for KS, suffice it to mention here two pertinent points. First, that the cosmogonic primacy of an undifferentiated point of origin is evident in famous parables such as that of the seed of the Banyan tree (see Bäumer 2011: 238), and that of the plasma of the peacock’s egg (Singh 1985: 17), whose point, it appears, is to stress that, primordially, all things lie as pure potentials in the hidden recesses

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of the Supreme (Tantray et al. 2018). Second, that manifestation, or Ābhāsa, is clearly a gradual process that begins in an Ur-state of an “undifferentiated mass” (Singh 1985: 17) and progresses along subsequent steps of increased differentiation and objectification (Pandit 1997: 26–7; Sharma 1972: chap. 7, sections 1–2). Needless to say, this theme generalizes beyond the two Hindu monistic approaches just mentioned. Indeed, the first chapter of the Brihadâranyaka Upanishad, from which the quotation at the opening of this section is taken, illustrates well this perennial theme of the generation of the world’s multiplicity of concrete beings from a singular, uniform, conscious ground—the allpervading Brahman. Such an ultimate ground, let it be stressed again, does not give birth to a world separate from it but, rather, continues to permeate and sustain the entire emergent edifice. In western thought, the most glaring example of the endorsement of GM can be found in the work of Plotinus and, indeed, in Neo-Platonism as a whole, where the ultimate cosmological point of origin is traced to the undifferentiated and indescribable One. In Chinese philosophy, one might meaningfully connect the GM perspective to the pivotal concepts of Dao and Taiji, or supreme ultimate (see Liu 2018: chap. 2; Wang 2012: chap. 2). In fact, variations of this generative narrative are found, in various times and places, in many philosophies and cosmogonies influenced by meditative spiritual practices and by mystical experiences.25 Schaffer’s de facto identification of priority monism with MM is driven, in large part, by a reaction to an argument on behalf of pluralism which can be framed like this (cf. Schaffer 2010a: 58): 1. Fundamental objects must be homogenous. Hence, 2. If the cosmos [considered as a single individual entity] were fundamental than it would be homogenous. But evidently, The cosmos is not homogenous. ∴ Therefore, the cosmos is not fundamental (from 2 & 3). Schaffer’s solution consists in denying premise one, namely, the notion that fundamental entities must be homogenous. It thereby seals the fate of GM by fiat. But is it really necessary to deny this premise in order to rebut the pluralist? The argument suggests this move only because it identifies the One of traditional monism with “the cosmos,” which, by definition, is an ordered totality and therefore an abode of heterogeneity. Since it makes no sense to expect the cosmos to be homogenous it follows that if the monist’s basic entity of choice is “the cosmos” she must endorse fundamental heterogeneity. Yet, evidently, nothing about the concept of priority monism per se necessitates

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any of that. The idea that the One precedes the many does not, or at any rate need not, commit us to a specific opinion regarding the particular nature of this ontological ultimate—be it that it is fundamentally homogenous or that it is fundamentally heterogeneous. We should not beg the question on this substantive metaphysical issue when all that matters, from a strictly logical point of view, is the formal condition that the One enjoys ontological priority over the many. To satisfy this condition, there is no necessity to identify the One with “the cosmos”; for it could be identified, without contradiction, as an undifferentiated wholeness which, transmuting itself, gives rise to the manifest universe (hence, the cosmos) and to the plurality of phenomena contained in it. This, it seems to me, is precisely what GM is all about. As soon as we refrain from identifying the monist’s basic entity of choice with “the cosmos” the anti-monist argument presented above loses its bite since the assumption that the One is homogenous does not entail the preposterous notion that the cosmos is homogenous, let alone the still more absurd conclusion that the familiar world of our ordinary experience is bereft of variability. In short, when properly analyzed, the argument against fundamental homogeneity must be judged to be founded on confusion. That said, proponents of GM are left with a different, albeit related challenge, namely: Assuming that fundamental reality is homogenous how is heterogeneity to be explained? While this explanatory task is by no means trivial there is nothing absurd or seemingly unintelligible in the idea that a primordially homogenous substance, or entity, could give rise to a heterogeneous plurality. Supporters of MM may consider it an advantage of their position that it does not confront such a challenge. Still, the edge this gives them is far from decisive and, as I argue below, it may well be counterweighed by MM’s own liabilities. For the time being, and in the spirit of the present paper, suffice it to note that both KS with its detailed theory of ābhāsa or manifestation (Pandit 1997: 24–6; Singh 1985: 17–9), and Aurobindo with his concepts of divine self-limitation and self-absorption (Aurobindo 1919/2006: chap. 13; Medhananda 2020), offer us valuable pointers for thinking coherently and constructively about this generation problem in the context of an idealist generative cosmopsychism. c. In Support of Generative Monism It is one thing to plead on behalf of GM’s coherence and intelligibility, but it is quite a different task to argue specifically in its favor. On the present occasion I can only offer the germ of a more detailed account which I hope to develop in the future. Unavoidably, then, the ensuing discussion is succinct and tentative. In considering GM and MM as competing variants of priority monism a key question which must be borne in mind is which of the two reflects better the general contours of reality. In this regard, it is tempting to make the argument that MM is simply incomplete, that is, that it captures adequately a part of

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the monistic narrative but fails to realize that it is but a portion of a more comprehensive story. In what follows I try to substantiate this claim with three loosely connected arguments which take their cues, in consecutive order, from biology, cosmology, and mysticism. i. The Argument from the Deep Nature of Organic Unities In Schaffer’s own articulation of the position labeled in the present paper as MM it is emphasized that such monism centers around the idea of organic unity, namely, a unity-in-diversity in which the One subsumes the many in its midst while the many are integrally woven and interrelated—depending on each other as well as on the overarching context defined by the all-inclusive whole (see Schaffer 2010a: 67; 2010b: 342). What makes this position an instance of PM is the idea that organic unities sustain an asymmetrical dependency relation which prioritizes the whole over the parts. Just as the limbs, organs, tissues, and cells of a living body depend on the organism as a whole, so do the universe’s proper parts depend on the cosmos as a whole. However, a close look at the organic metaphor reveals that the picture described above is partial and selective. Its perspective on the matter is limited because it neglects to mention growth and differentiation. The organs, tissues, and limbs of an animal develop from a fertilized egg cell; and the roots, stem, leaves, and flowers of plants and trees grow from a seed. Barring such a developmental dimension, there is no organic unity! Thus, a more adequate picture would have to accommodate the fact that the articulate unity-in-diversity observed in mature organic specimens is an outcome of a process of growth and differentiation traceable to a relatively homogeneous and unstructured point of origin. It is true, of course, that eggs and seeds (none of which are fundamental concreta, let us not forget!) are not entirely homogeneous and unstructured. Put them under the microscope and you will observe a complex reality. Therefore, the present argument is, at best, a first approximation. But its point is nevertheless important since it illustrates the incompleteness of the organic unity narrative. Organic unities are historical entities. They are generated, and their generation involves a process of internal differentiation from a seemingly homogeneous point of origin. In a more comprehensive argument, the next step is to demonstrate that this observation fits into a grander cosmic pattern leading, ultimately, to the generation of order and variability from out of a homogenous background. ii. An Argument from Physics and Cosmology To my judgment, contemporary physics and cosmology lend substantive credentials to the generative narrative. One source of support is the big bang and early universe cosmology, combined as it is with the standard model of particle

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physics. To begin with, the picture which emerges from this cosmological narrative is that of a process in which the entire universe (space, time, and matter) bursts forth from a single dimensionless point of origin. Moreover, all the world’s basic structures, the particles and the forces of nature, emerge as a series of processes of spontaneous symmetry-breaking corresponding to the various epochs of the early universe (Chaisson 2001: 105–15; Coughlan et al. 2006: 218–21). Such symmetry breakups mark the generation of order and of multiple individual forms from out of a prior state of an indescribably dense unity. The crucial point, then, is that according to this scientific cosmogony the world’s heterogeneity arises out of a primal energy which, to all appearances, is entirely homogeneous. Furthermore, nor is this primal unity merely a matter of remote history: For the theory also implies that, underneath it all, the variety of emergent phenomena remain connected through hidden-symmetries (see Mee 2012: 218). A complementary source of support may be garnered from quantum field theory. According to QFT, particles are excitations, or energetic disturbances, of quantum fields. The fields are the fundamental reality (Coughlan et al. 2006; Manton and Mee 2017; Raymer 2017). Extrapolating from this basic fact, it follows that all configurations of matter in the universe emerge from, and are patterns of, quantum fields. Now, in its ground state of minimal energy— the so-called zero-point field—a field is a vacuum. There are no real particles involved and no complex physical structures. In short, no explicit heterogeneity. Combining these two threads—big bang cosmology and QFT—the emerging picture is one in which a heterogeneous unity-in-diversity is an emergent outcome, preceded and sustained by a primal state of homogeneous wholeness, which is nevertheless dynamic and creative. This provides a more solid and more comprehensive backing to the contention, made in the previous subsection, that a heterogeneous unity-in-diversity presupposes a more basic form of wholeness. iii. The Argument from Mysticism Mystical experiences are fundamentally transpersonal, involving a sense of unity with, or dissolution in, a cosmic totality. As such, they pertain naturally to monism. In William James’s words, In spite of their repudiation of articulate self-description, mystical states in general assert a pretty distinct theoretic drift. It is possible to give the outcome of the majority of them in terms that point in definite philosophical directions. One of these directions is optimism, and the other is monism. (1902/1985: 416) Thus, to the extent that such experiences are a valid source of information about the nature of reality they provide an alternative, inner, channel for

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exploring issues related to monism, a route which is complementary to an external investigation based on science and reason.26 It is interesting to notice, in this respect, the impressive degree to which reports of profound mystical experiences (obtained through meditation or other means) correlate with the notion that ultimate reality is an undifferentiated wholeness. As mentioned in Section 4.2, experiences of this sort are evident in a rich variety of mystical traditions, and over vast expanses of time and space: from Hinduism, to Daoism, to neo-Platonism, to Christian mysticism—to mention but some. Moreover, mystics as diverse as the seers of the Upanishads, Plotinus, and Meister Eckhart relate also that unity-in-diversity is experienced as a lower sort of wholeness dependent on, and issuing from, a more basic monistic reality (see Otto 1932/1970: chap. 1; Underhill 1920: 8–11). While scholars may debate the strength and validity of the evidential basis for a clear hierarchical ordering of mystical experiences, it would be myopic to dismiss such cross-culturallycorrelated evidence, or to ignore its potential significance. There is more to be said in favor of GM’s commitment to the notion that fundamental reality is homogeneous and against MM’s adherence to fundamental heterogeneity. In particular, I’m inclined to believe that there is truth in the age-old (albeit somewhat unfashionable) intuition that absolute being must be absolutely simple, and therefore free of internal diversity. However, since making the point is a taxing exercise unbefitting this late stage of the present work, I must leave it for another occasion. For the time being, I hope that what has been said is sufficient to establish the following two points concerning GM. First that it is a significant variant of monism, conceptually as well as historically, and that it ought to be recognized and discussed. Second, that it is coherent and plausible. In the concluding section, I argue that GM is not only compatible with cosmopsychism but also instrumental in assisting the latter to address the explanatory challenges it faces.

5 CONCLUSION: COSMOPSYCHISM, GENERATIVE MONISM, AND NON-ŚANKARAN TRADITIONS OF HINDU NON-DUALISM The difference between GM and MM assumes special import when applied to our understanding of cosmopsychism. A detailed discussion of this matter must be postponed for another time but here, in closing, it is possible nonetheless to point to the main issues at stake. In the first place, it goes without saying that a choice between GM and MM affects the manner in which one envisions the nature of CC. A cosmic consciousness whose primordial nature is that of an undifferentiated whole, and which generates plurality as an act of selfmanifestation and self-individuation, is clearly distinct from one that can only exist as a unity-in-diversity, subsuming the many in a heterogeneous

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whole. Although contemporary cosmopsychism has paid little attention to this partition, the divide is implicit in its various articulations. Thus, Goff’s subsumptive approach (2017: chap. 9) is a clear example of a tacit endorsement of MM, and a similar implicit advocacy can be found, though perhaps less decisively, in Nagasawa and Wager (2017). In contrast, GM is presupposed in the work of other proponents of cosmopsychism such as Mathews (2011) and myself (Shani 2015; Shani and Keppler 2018). A recognition of the existence of such differences and attention to their potential philosophical significance are likely to bring greater clarity to the discussion. One crucial respect in which a choice between MM and GM is consequential concerns the manner in which CC grounds lesser subjects—a question that bears directly on the individuation problem, or IND (see Section 2). In a recent paper (Shani 2022) I argue that the combination problem (see Section 2), infamous for burdening micropsychism, arises from the assumption that for microsubjects to constitute macro-subjects they must also survive as subjects within the compound whole they constitute. In other words, it is the commitment to constitution-cum-inclusion that breeds incoherence and renders the combination problem insolvable. In contrast, the allegedly analogous problem for cosmopsychism, IND, can be coherently avoided since cosmopsychism is compatible with the decoupling of constitution and inclusion. The details are complicated and need not concern us here but one point is especially pertinent to the present discussion and therefore merits reproducing. Cosmopsychism implies that CC includes all infra-cosmic subjects in its midst. If such lesser subjects are also constitutive of CC, then the situation would appear to be rather similar to the troublesome coupling we’ve identified in connection with constitutive micropsychism. Now, if one’s monistic framework of choice is MM it appears that a commitment to constitution is inevitable. After all, there could be no CC without lesser subjects any more than there could be an organism in the absence of sub-organismic parts.27 In contrast, a cosmopsychism based on GM emphatically avoids this assumption by maintaining that CC’s fundamental being is prior to, and independent of, the actual existence of lesser subjects. As I argue in that paper, this assumption plays a key role in avoiding IND and breaking the presumed symmetry between cosmopsychism and micropsychism. If I am right about that, then this issue provides a very clear sense in which a choice between MM and GM is consequential for cosmopsychism. Earlier, it was argued that, among variants of Hindu non-dualism, KS and Aurobindo’s integral advaita stand out as two potential allies of cosmopsychism. Apart from being emphatically world-affirming, both these views display a clear commitment to GM, offering rich accounts of how an undivided CC gives rise, in its midst, to a manifest world populated with ordinary subjects and objects. Relatedly, both views offer intriguing resources for addressing IND, in

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particular by recourse to the idea that a pluralized individuation is the outcome of a spontaneous process of self-limitation in which, by being absorbed in concentration on exclusive localized conditions, CC lends itself to willful selfforgetfulness and alienation from its own true nature.28 Finally, although both views are exemplars of GM they affirm the notion that as manifestation unfolds from out of the primal wholeness, a holistic order of unity-in-diversity emerges. This underscores an important realization, namely, that there isn’t necessarily a contradiction between MM and GM. Rather the two are compatible provided that a cosmic order based on organic unity is seen as an emergent phase in a broader narrative captured more adequately by GM. In sum, while one must bear in mind that other views within the Hindu corpus may be of similar relevance for cosmopsychism, and that other variants of cosmopsychism may stress different lines of pertinence and significance, there is little doubt that cosmopsychism stands much to gain from engaging constructively with the philosophical outlooks of Kashmir Śaivism and of Aurobindo’s integral advaita.

ABBREVIATIONS CC GM IND KS MM PGH QFT

cosmic consciousness generative monism individuation problem Kashmir Śaivism mereological monism phenomenal grounding hypothesis quantum field theory

NOTES 1

See also the contributions to a volume of the Monist on ‘‘Cosmopsychism and Indian Philosophy,” guest-edited by Jonardon Ganeri and myself.

2

Token-monism is distinct from type-monism, the generic position according to which there is only one type of concrete entities, whether physical, mental, or neutral.

3

For exceptions, see Jaskolla and Buck (2012) and Siddharth (2020).

4

For elegance’s sake, unless specifically required, I drop reference to token-monism and priority monism from now on. Instead, I shall speak simply of “monism” with the understanding that in the present context it is taken to presuppose the abovementioned qualifications.

5

Apart from the question of monism there is another important question concerning the metaphysical status of cosmopsychism, namely, where does it stand relative to metaphysics’ traditional “battle of the isms”: Is cosmopsychism

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best interpreted as a form of idealism, dualism, or perhaps something else, for example, neutral monism or the double-aspect theory? While my own inclination is toward idealism, and while this inclination is in line with the views advocated by Kashmir Śaivism and by Aurobindo (see Section 3), considerations of space preclude me from discussing this question any further. 6

William Seager’s introduction to The Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism (Seager 2020) is an excellent and accessible essay on panpsychism. David Skrbina’s monograph Panpsychism in The West (2005) is a comprehensive historical survey.

7

Notice that the operator ‘or’ is to be understood as an inclusive disjunction, for according to panpsychism all non-fundamental conscious beings (humans, for instance) are ultimately constituted of other conscious beings—viz., of the fundamental entities, whatever they are.

8

Notice that ‘phenomenal grounding’ is used here in a broad sense subsuming both phenomenal properties and subjectivity—it does not pertain merely to grounding relations between phenomenal properties. As for PGH itself, while not all panpsychists, or even cosmopsychists, abide by it (for reasons on which I shall not comment here) priority cosmopsychists surely do. For the purposes of the present paper, that’s all that really matters.

9

From this point onward, I use the term “combination problem” to refer specifically to the subject combination problem. For a seminal discussion of several distinct types of combination problems, see Chalmers (2017).

10 The advantage of this terminology consists in the fact that it avoids two contentious assumptions, namely: (a) that the problem is strictly analogous to the combination problem (see below); and (b) that CC is fundamentally a mereological whole composed of lesser minds (for a discussion of mereological wholes see Section 4). 11 Anand Vaidya (2022) offers a useful terminological distinction between these two aspects of the individuation problem by calling the first the mechanical aspect, and the second (the one I claim to be the more pressing) the modal aspect. 12 Of course, much depends on what type of cosmopsychism is at stake since, clearly, some forms of cosmopsychism are more vulnerable to IND than others. However, from the standpoint of my argument the crucial point is that it simply isn’t true that the problem bears devastating consequences for priority cosmopsychism as such. In this respect, my conclusions are diametrical to those suggested by critics (e.g., Albahari 2019) as well as by a paper in the present volume (see Basile 2022). 13 Cited in Sharma (1962: 5). 14 Needless to say, not all commentators agree on how to interpret Śankara’s view. See Fasching (2022) for a different take on orthodox advaita combined with a beautiful envisioning of its potential contributions to a world-affirming metaphysics of mind. For my part, I remain under the impression that the worlddenying elements in the thought of this influential school are too conspicuous to be downplayed. 15 For further references, see Medhananda (2021: 15).

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16 Should one argue for the illusionist stance on meditative-experiential grounds (for a forceful recent example, see Albahari 2019) it may be observed, in response, that neither is the realist opposition bereft of powerful appeals to such support (see, e.g., Medhananda 2022b). 17 See Bäumer (2011: 269). For a concise yet highly informative exposition of Kashmir Śaivism in comparison to Advaita Vedānta, see Singh (1985). For more extensive treatments see Dyczkowski (1987) and Pandit (1997). 18 More exactly, the movement is bidirectional since that which is unfolded can be refolded, and back again, in a repeated cosmic cycle of evolution and involution. 19 Lest it be objected that the ultimate ineffability of Brahman implies that its association with Saccidānanda is an empty ploy it ought to be stressed that on Aurobindo’s view “all is one Reality” (1919/2006: 54) and everything is continuous. At the ultimate frontiers of human experience one reaches the limits of comprehension and expression, where what we’ve experienced as Saccidānanda shades off into “something beyond the last term to which we can reduce our purest conception and our most abstract or subtle experience of actual being” (1919/2006: 32). In short, the limits of effability do not imply an ontological breach. 20 To prevent confusion, it ought to be borne in mind that such involuted consciousness does not, in any way, distract from Brahman’s inexhaustible reservoir of pure consciousness. As stated in the quotation from Plotinus at the opening of this chapter, a limitless spring “gives itself to all the rivers” without ever being exhausted by what they take. In this respect, Aurobindo’s cosmology is reminiscent of Plotinus’s doctrine of emanation. 21 While the involution-evolution picture has historical precedents among mystics, none, prior to Aurobindo, has absorbed evolutionary thinking to such a degree. 22 By “undifferentiated singleness” I mean a state of homogeneity, displaying no variations or differences and no specializations of form, structure, or function. It is, quite literally, the notion of simplicity so often associated in ancient and medieval metaphysics and theology with the ultimate source, or divine ground, of Being. 23 “The Pure Existent” (Aurobindo’s term for the transcendent Absolute), he says, “is the fundamental reality” (1919/2006: 85). 24 As for the paradox of an unchanging entity sustaining all change, one must refer again to the metaphorical image of an infinite spring, which, on account of its inexhaustibility, can remain unmoved even while it sustains myriads of aquatic activities in rivers and tributaries. 25 Of course, this is not to suggest that all mystically inspired metaphysical outlooks embrace GM, but merely to stress that many do. 26 Recent decades have witnessed a lively scholarly debate regarding the nature of mystical experience and the extent to which such experiences convey information about the ultimate nature of reality (for an informative review see Marshall 2005, chap. 6). Significantly, some of the debaters—for example, radical constructivists and reductive naturalists—deny the very assumption that mystical experiences could teach us something about the ultimate nature of reality. Therefore, it ought

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to be borne in mind that in debating the question what sort of metaphysical lessons could mystical experiences teach us one is emphatically not engaged in debating such skeptics (however vibrant their presence might be in the larger contemporary controversy on the question of mysticism…). 27 While one may insist that the whole is prior to the parts (in some specified sense), it is difficult to see how, on such a view, the parts could fail to be constitutive of the whole. Or rather, on such a view whole and parts are co-constitutive. 28 For an informative analysis of Aurobindo’s self-limitation view and its relevance for cosmopsychism and the individuation problem, see Medhananda (2022b).

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Gasparri, L. (2022), ‘Śaṅkaran Monism and the Limits of Thought’, The Monist, Special Issue on Cosmopsychism and Indian Philosophy, guest edited by J. Ganeri and I. Shani, 105 (1): 76–91. Goff, P. (2017), Consciousness and Fundamental Reality, New York: Oxford University Press. Hiriyanna, M. (2014), Outlines of Indian Philosophy, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Horgan, T. and M. Potrč (2000), ‘Blobjectivism and Indirect Correspondence’, Facta Philosophica, 2: 249–70. James, W. (1902/1985), The Varieties of Religious Experience, New York: Penguin. Jaskolla, L. and A. J. Buck (2012), ‘Does Panexperiential Holism Solve the Combination Problem?’ Journal of Consciousness Studies, 19: 190–9. Kastrup, B. (2019), The Idea of the World: A Multi-disciplinary Argument for the Mental Nature of Reality, Croydon, UK: IFF Books. Leidenhag, J. (2019), ‘Unity between God and Mind? A Study on the Relationship between Panpsychism and Pantheism’, Sophia, 58 (4): 543–61. Liu, J. (2018), Neo-Confucianism: Metaphysics, Mind, and Morality, Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell. Maharaj, A. [now Swami Medhananda] (2020), ‘Panentheistic Cosmopsychism: SwamiVivekananda’s Sāmkhya-Vedāntic Solution to the Hard Problem of Consciousness’, in G. Brüntrup, B. P. Goeke and L. Jaskolla (eds), Panentheism and Panpsychism: Philosophy of Religion Meets Philosophy of Mind. Innsbruck Studies in Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 2., 273–301, Paderborn, DE: Brill Mentis. Manton, N. and N. Mee (2017), The Physical World: An Inspirational Tour of Fundamental Physics, New York: Oxford University Press. Marshall, P. (2005), Mystical Encounters with the Natural World: Experiences and Explanations, New York: Oxford University Press. Mathews, F. (2011), ‘Panpsychism as Paradigm’, in M. Blaumauer (ed.), The Mental as Fundamental, Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag. Mee, N. (2012), Higgs Force: The Symmetry Breaking Force That Makes the World an Interesting Place, Cambridge: Lutterworth. Medhananda, Swami (2021), ‘Cutting the Knot of the World Problem: Sri Aurobindo’s Experiential and Philosophical Critique of Advaita Vedānta’, Religions, 12: 765. Available online: https//do.org/10.3390/rel12090765. Medhananda, Swami (2022a), Swami Vivekananda’s Vedāntic Cosmopolitanism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Medhananda, Swami (2022b), ‘The Playful Self-involution of Divine Consciousness: Sri Aurobindo’s Evolutionary Cosmopsychism and His Response to the Individuation Problem’, The Monist, Special Issue on Cosmopsychism and Indian Philosophy, guest edited by J. Ganeri and I. Shani, 105 (1): 92–109. Miller, G. (2018), ‘Can Subjects Be Proper Parts of Subjects? The De-combination Problem’, Ratio, 31 (2): 137–54. Nagasawa, Y. and K. Wager (2017), ‘Panpsychism and Priority Cosmopsychism’, in G. Brüntrup and L. Jaskolla (eds), Panpsychism: Contemporary Perspectives, 113–29, New York: Oxford University Press. Otto, R. (1932/1970), Mysticism East and West, New York: MacMillan. Pandit, B. N. (1997), Specific Principles of Kashmir Śaivism, New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal. Radhakrishnan, S. (1927/1948), Indian Philosophy. Volume 1, London: George Allen & Unwin.

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PART TWO

Emergence and Mental Causation

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CHAPTER THREE

Consciousness, Physicalism, and the Problem of Mental Causation CHRISTIAN COSERU

1 INTRODUCTION Is there such a thing as mental causation? Is it possible for the mental to have causal influence on the physical? Or has the old “mind over matter” question been rendered obsolete by the advent of brain science? Whatever our answers to these questions, it seems that we cannot systematically pursue them without considering what makes mental causation problematic in the first place: The causal closure of the physical world. The general idea is that since all things natural can be explained in terms of the most basic entities, events, and processes that physics postulates as fundamental, all explanation in terms of cause and effect is ultimately grounded in our most fundamental physics. So, if minds do appear to exercise any influence at all, not just on other minds but on bodies as well, that influence must admit of physical and/or biological explanation. The causal closure of the physical means that only physical and biochemical processes in the brain can have causal powers. Yet, the possibility of a physicalist explanation of the mental bolsters a view of the mind itself as physical. In short, the problem of mental causation does not go away by

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assuming, as most philosophers and scientists nowadays do, that mental states and processes either are (on a token-identity view), or are reducible to, or at the very least supervene on, physical states and processes (Swinburne 2018, 2019). Even the physicalist must offer satisfactory explanations for the full range of beliefs, desires, intentions, and voluntary actions that are constitutive of human agency. This chapter revisits the problem of mental causation by drawing on a classical debate between Buddhists and the Indian materialists, better known as the Cārvākas. The key issue concerns the relation between cognition and the body, specifically the role this relation plays in causal-explanatory accounts of consciousness and cognition. Here a number of questions arise: Does the central principle of Buddhist Abhidharma reductionism apply to consciousness? Is there a causal criterion for the presence of consciousness? If there is, can this causal criterion account for the specific features of consciousness, for example, its intentional, phenomenal, and subjective character? In short, can a causal account of phenomena be reconciled with the seeming irreducibility of consciousness? The Buddhist answer to the challenge of Cārvāka physicalism displays many of the common features of classical debates in metaphysics about grounding and the mind-body problem. This chapter proposes a philosophical reconstruction that builds on two important features of the Buddhist account: An expanded conception of causality and a robust account of phenomenal content that, taken together, cast new light on the problem of mental causation. It also argues that a satisfactory solution to the problem of mental causation must reject the completeness of the physical principle in favor of conceptions of causality that allow for phenomenal properties to play a causal-explanatory function.

2 PHYSICALISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS The physicalist claims that to the extent that minds are taken to be non-physical, they cannot cause events in the physical world (Armstrong 1968; Lewis 1972; Smart 1959). However, if minds do appear to exercise such causal influence in the physical world, then that influence must have a natural explanation. The physicalist position on mental causation confronts us with the possibility that the mind itself is physical. This possibility was explicitly rejected by Descartes, whose solution to the problem of mental causation resulted in a dualist, interactionist picture that subsequent philosophers—beginning with Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia’s calling into question of the very possibility that immaterial minds could causally interact with material bodies1—saw as untenable on both metaphysical and epistemological grounds. While early modern philosophers abandoned the problem in favor of the notion that

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the mind and body exist independently (e.g., Leibniz and Malebranche’s substantival dualism), a majority of philosophers, at least outside the German Idealism tradition,2 have favored naturalist explanations that seek to understand mental events and processes in terms of their physical and/or neurobiological correlates. What motivates this naturalist orientation is the recognition that consciousness must in some way or another be integrated into nature if mental causation is to be possible. And there are few satisfactory metaphysical accounts for how this integration may work. Among them, the most popular is a version of panpsychism or panprotopsychism better known as Russellian monism. Unlike dualism, which places the mental into a distinct domain, and physicalism, which is vulnerable to anti-materialist arguments (e.g., the knowledge and conceivability arguments), Russellian monism puts forth a view of consciousness as at least partly constituted by quiddities, intrinsic properties that categorically ground dispositional properties and that are not amenable to physical explanation. The Russellian monist holds that physical dispositions (associated with mass, charge, and spin) and macrophenomenal properties (e.g., sharp pain, the redness of a red tomato) are grounded in the same kinds of basic microproperties or quiddities, wherefrom they inherit their physical efficacy (Chalmers 2013; Goff 2015; Shani 2021; Strawson 2006). The key issue is whether Russellian monism can address the problem of naturalizing consciousness while retaining the transcendental stance that provides nonempirical access to consciousness as a domain of experience. Much of it, I argue, depends on whether a naturalism fine-tuned to accommodate mental phenomena is possible, and its implications for mental causation. There is an obvious reason for this turn toward naturalism in the study of mental phenomena: Biology in the wake of Darwin’s theory of evolution has been very successful in explaining a whole range of human functions (e.g., digestion, circulation, reflex responses) that do not depend on consciousness. If, ex hypothesi, mental processes (e.g., thoughts, emotions, sensations) are just as much a product of evolution as physical processes, there is good reason to assume that complex actions such as perception, the weighing of reasons, and intention, also could result from more refined neurobiological processes and functions. This is precisely the line of reasoning that Huxley (1874) adopts in challenging the Cartesian hypothesis that consciousness, specifically the capacity for self-consciousness, is what sets humans apart from animals, which are mere conscious automata. Had Descartes had the benefit of modern (by nineteenthcentury standards) physiology—argued Huxley—he would have extended the automata hypothesis to human consciousness as well, given its dependence on a brain, which shares the same basic structure as other mammalian brains. The alternative hypothesis, namely that—as Huxley (1874: 80) famously put it—humans “are conscious automata endowed with free will” rests on

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the notion that continuity of processes and events in the natural world is too well established to suppose that “any complex natural phenomenon” such as human consciousness could come into existence “suddenly, and without being preceded by simpler modifications.” The continuity thesis informs the view that the difference between organisms and inorganic matter is one of degree of complexity rather than kind. Does that mean conscious mental states are ultimately identical with brain states? Given that mental and physical phenomena fall under different categories, are identity theorists (Churchland 2013; Smart 1959) committing a category mistake in claiming that we—this subjective sense of self that is characteristic of the first-person stance we take on ourselves—and our brain are not separate? Armstrong famously argued that the identification of mental states with brain states is perfectly intelligible under a correct view of mental concepts grounded in a causal theory of the mental. Consider a causal concept such as poison, “the concept of something that when introduced into an organism causes that organism to sicken and/or die” (Armstrong 1981: 20). Since only certain substances act in such ways that can be labelled “poison,” the concept in question stands for that, whatever it is, that can produce certain effects (which, in turn, creates the possibility of a scientific account of poisons). On a causal theory of mental concepts, “mental state” likewise stands for “something that is, characteristically, the cause of certain effects and the effect of certain causes” (Armstrong 1981: 23). Certain patterns of behavior, for instance, would count as the effects caused by a certain mental state: Hunger, as a mental state, is the cause for an individual seeking food. Does a causal theory of mental concepts work for all categories of mental states or is it limited to the sort of mental states, such as desires and dispositions, that are relatively easy to accommodate? Would it work for perceptions and beliefs? Perhaps, but only if perceptions and beliefs are nothing more than mappings of the world. But perception discloses both the world and our presence to it, and belief covers intention, deliberation, and the weighing of reasons about matters (e.g., what to value, whom to love, how to achieve one’s goals) that do not map neatly onto one’s immediate surroundings, if at all. Furthermore, if purpose depends on perception and belief, and perception and belief depend, in turn, on purpose, the causal account of mental concepts faces the problem of circular reasoning. Armstrong thought this criticism can be avoided if the concepts in question are introduced together as correlative concepts (e.g., husband and wife, soldier and army). But it remains an open question whether a causal theory of mental concepts can work for intentional and introspective mental states since it is not clear whether these concepts are causally determined (hence effects) or causes in their own right. Nor is the thesis about the equivalence of statements about experience with statements about physics obvious: Whether “the sky is blue” is ultimately a statement about the

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psychophysics of light perception depends on whether the subjective aspect of experience, that bluish way it is like for me to see the sky can just as easily be naturalized as the blueness of the sky (Kriegel 2005 thinks the difference between the subjective aspect of an experience and its intentional content is sufficiently salient to call into question the equivalence of statements thesis). As Kim (1999) argued some time ago, the typical response to the problem of mental causation has been either to claim that there are no causal laws about psychological phenomena (e.g., Davidson’s anomalous monism) or to propose that the mind is nothing more than a system that computes representations such that only its syntactical properties (not the semantic ones) have causal powers. Both proposals ignore the fact that mental phenomena exhibit properties (e.g., subjectivity, intentionality, qualia) and relations (e.g., logical entailment) that transcend the properties of the elements upon which they supervene. Higherorder cognitive processes such as introspection, reflection, and counterfactual reasoning enact ways of being and knowing—those constitutive elements of personal identity—that cannot be predicted on the basis of the laws governing simpler systems.3 How are these apparently irreducible aspects of the mental to be reconciled with the causal closure of the physical principle? In short, given that every physical event that has a cause has a physical cause, how is a mental cause also possible? In seeking an answer to these questions, alternative proposals to reductionism,4 identity theory, and anomalous monism invoke the concepts of emergence and mind-body supervenience. A concept with roots in the nineteenth-century British emergentism movement, “emergence” stands for the notion that while mental states do emerge from physical states, they are not reducible to the latter. Based on the notion, first articulated in Mill’s A System of Logic (1843), that some physical systems, when combined, exhibit new dynamic forces (e.g., chemical reactions), emergentism initially positioned itself as a rejection of mechanist ontologies. Whether or not emergence is fundamentally inexplicable and should be taken as a “brute empirical fact” (Alexander 1920, Vol. 2: 46–7) or as a “continued presence” that sustains the course of events specific to each physical and psychological level (Lloyd Morgan 1923: 17), it is clear that “as systems acquire increasingly higher degrees of organizational complexity they begin to exhibit novel properties” (Kim 1999: 3). Not unlike emergence, mind-body supervenience captures the notion that if two systems are wholly alike physically, we should expect the same mental properties to occur, or fail to occur, in each. Since in order for mental causation to work, the mental cannot float freely above the physical, supervenience brings the mental sufficiently close to the physical to make it intelligible and causally effective. But the possibility that mind-body supervenience could fail, for instance, due to the lack of an explicit correspondence between mental events and their neuronal correlates, leaves us with no clear way of understanding the possibility of mental causation.

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The Buddhist-Cārvāka debate on the relation between cognition and the body confronts some of the same issues non-reductionist proposals set out to address: How can a model of mental causation predicated on the supervenience of mental phenomena on physical elements and processes account for the specific features of consciousness? But it departs from these other non-reductionist accounts in putting forward a distinctly proto-phenomenological conception of the mind, in which the irreducible elements of existence and/or experience (dharmas) are not essences or substances, but activities, properties, and patterns of connectedness. The identification and mapping of these irreducible elements are both descriptive and experimental and, as I have argued elsewhere (Coseru 2019, 2021), function as a kind of naturalized phenomenology (Roy et al. 1999), that is, as a method for bringing into focus, capturing, and categorizing variable mental operations and contents that are normally difficult to attend to, while also submitting to empirical scrutiny about their causal and conditioning factors. A naturalism open to phenomenological analysis seeks to enlarge the scope of naturalization beyond the confines of neurophysicalism.

3 NEUROPHYSICALISM AND THE PROJECT OF NATURALIZATION The conceptions of naturalism that inform the background philosophical assumptions of emergentism and mind-body supervenience are not without their challenge. Physics and the natural sciences invoked at the beginning of the last century to support a conception of the nature of nature as material, and thus extra mental, have undergone a radical transformation. Quantum mechanics, as a set of mathematical principles for predicting the behavior of subatomic particles, may prove very effective in explaining what happens when phenomena at infinitesimal scales are subjected to the instrumentation of science. Nonetheless, the idea that we can give an account of what the world is like at this scale in and of itself independently of any observation and measurement thereof remains controversial (Chalmers 1996; Stapp 1993, 2007; von Neumann 1955). As the most recent incarnation of these early conceptions of naturalism, neurophysicalism5—essentially the view that any and all mental events are some physical event of other, specifically some central nervous system event (Flanagan 1992, 2007; Koch 2004, 2009)—is predicated on the notion that the scientific method should be adopted in examining not only nature but human experience as well. A century later, we can state with confidence that the advice of these early champions of naturalism has been heeded. The claim that reality is exhausted by nature, however, remains problematic in light of ongoing debates about the meaning and extension of naturalism. This largely “semantic”

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problem is further complicated by the varying degrees of commitment to naturalism: That is, those who operate with a rather unrestricted conception of nature embrace a less parsimonious ontology than stronger adherents, for whom naturalism serves as a platform for excluding most, if not all, of what belongs in the experiential domain. Among the latter, one encounters both eliminative physicalists, who seek to reduce all mental content to biological and neurobiological processes (Quine 1960; Sellars 1956; Smart 1959), and tokenidentity theorists who regard each mental state as some physical, specifically brain state. Both groups are equally diverse, and count among their constituents both realist physicalists, who claim that consciousness is part of the physical world, and type-identity theorists, who think the subjective and physical domains in effect, coincide (Churchland 1986, 2013). While the mind sciences do not rule out the possibility that mental states have nonphysical properties (indeed, the scope of cognitive science is precisely that of understanding the nature of such properties however they may be realized, rather than their reduction to more basic elements), the overwhelming evidence according to champions of neurophysicalism suggests otherwise. Much of it has to do with mental causation since, as Flanagan has noted on more than one occasion, “If mental events—for example, intentions to act—are, as they seem, causally efficacious, then the best explanation is that they are neural events” (Flanagan 2011: 65–6). As I have argued at length elsewhere (Coseru 2019), grounding the efficacy of mental events on that of neural events is just what the token-identity view consists in: A particular feeling and a given brain state are really the same thing so long as they are constituted by the same token-event. But the token-identity account fails in one important respect: It does not and cannot explain how the phenomenal content of mental states is realized and its apparent capacity to impact physical events. Intentional behavior is an undertaking of the organism as a whole, not merely an outwardly directed mental state: We reach the glass on table by leaning forward, by stretching the arm, and by grasping. Furthermore, awareness of the position of the glass on the table is not an isolated event, but a function of the perceiver’s location and sensorimotor contingencies, which disclose the glass as within reach and as graspable. These events certainly admit of two different levels of description: One that considers goal-oriented behavior and the other that accounts for the brain processes underlying this instance of intentional behavior. On the token-identity view, the agent’s intention to do x is identical to a particular subset of neurons firing together. Since the dynamic brain event can be described intrinsically, without appeal to extraneous phenomena or events, it serves as the sole causal event. We are thus compelled to concede that descriptions in terms of dispositions and intentions are not any different than those of physiological states (e.g., hunger, satiety, arousal, alertness, body-temperature), and that they are merely shorthand descriptions

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for brain processes and their somatic and voluntary functions. Thus, we can understand this particular instance of intentional behavior as token-identical with the brain process, which alone is responsible for the causal interaction we witness at the macro-level: It’s not the individual person socialized into a world of table manners that picks the glass off the table, but her brain states. That leaves open the possibility of treating mental states as wholly epiphenomenal: They may well capture the seeming nature of experience, but they cannot exert any real influence on events occasioned by the only causes there are, brain processes. By conflating the descriptive and explanatory accounts, the tokenidentity theorist argues that the seeming nature of subjective phenomena (e.g., searing pain) has no explanatory purchase on the instantiation of purposeful and socially modulated behavior. As a result, types of inquiry that seek to figure out why, say, searing pain can be debilitating in one instance and, in another, a cause for resilient action are blocked. Does neurophysicalism possess the explanatory resources necessary for making sense of such basic subjective and intentional behavior? Not knowing how such mental states are realized and yet assuming that they are realized as brain states takes a leap of faith. While neurophysicalism does offer a compelling strategy of naturalization, I will argue that we are better served by operating with a more capacious conception of nature, one that allows for non-supervenient mental causation, and for a theory of action that regards organisms as complex adaptive systems (where the mental is a selforganized structure with its own emergent dynamics that is not reflected in a change in the physical) to play a role. The naturalism I propose here, as more suited to the task at hand, is distinctly phenomenological. It argues that our conception of the mental must account for its phenomenal features in ways that capture their event-causal efficacy. These, in turn, become causally relevant in explaining how action is successfully accomplished with respect to criteria (e.g., deadlines, assent, opportunity) that are unintelligible in the third-personal language of neuroscience. Faced with such accounts of mental causation, critics typically invoke the causal closure of physical domain as evidence for the epiphenomenal character of mental states. But, as I will argue, what makes epiphenomenalism unattractive is the premise that cognitive events, which arise as a result of the tight causal coupling between perception, memory, reflection, and action, should themselves be causally inert. Arguments that invoke the closure of the physical domain have the peculiar distinction of lacking empirical grounding: Such closure is often assumed by a priori postulation (Buhler 2020). As with modern attempts to explain mental states either in terms of their token identity or supervenient status, the classical Buddhist-Cārvāka debate on the relation between cognition and the body showcases some of the problematic aspects of reductionist accounts that preclude event-causal explanations of

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consciousness itself. Unlike the modern debate, however, supervenience arguments against the autonomy of cognition, specifically as advanced by the Indian Buddhist philosopher Dharmakīrti, are meant to refute the existence of a distinct metaphysical realm of mental phenomena, not the efficacy of mental processes. These arguments are mainly a priori, and they aim to counter the Cārvāka’s challenge that consciousness originates or has its causal basis in the body.6 As should be obvious from the analysis that follows, Dharmakīrti’s arguments against the Cārvāka offer interesting new ways to conceptualize the problem of mental causation.

4 PHENOMENAL PRIMITIVES AND THE QUESTION OF EMERGENCE Buddhist perspectives on the subjective aspects of consciousness emphasize what we may call—using the language of contemporary philosophy of mind— the dynamic, embodied, and embedded functioning of the five aggregates. In the schematic analysis of the five aggregates, however, only “body” (rūpa) is a physical aggregate stricto sensu. Sensations, apperception, and volitions can acquire an objectual aspect, but are not empirical phenomena proper. Nor are they abstract entities with well-defined properties and functional characteristics. For instance, a sensation of pain is not reducible to the physical substrate, say a finger, in which it is instantiated (nor presumably to a mere physiological response). Rather, as object-oriented cognitive aspects (viṣayākāra), sensations, apperception, and volitions are included in the broader Abhidharma category of mental factors (caitasika). Feelings may define the quality of the impressions that result from contact with an object, with the implication that they perhaps stand in a causal relation with these objects. But as internal mental states, they are also conditioned by habitual tendencies (vāsanā), which, in turn, they condition: Your physical condition after strenuous exertion may feel pleasant or unpleasant depending on your level of fitness and degree of exercise frequency. Likewise, apperception (saṃjñā), the capacity to make intelligible or cause to be understood, although dependent on a multiplicity of psychological factors, captures the datum of experience only as fused into a single percept. Volitions too fit the same profile, with one important difference: Rather than attending to the object at hand or providing a sort of transcendental unity of apperception, they bring forth future states of existence. As dispositions to act in certain ways, they cleave the mental domain into two classes of conditioned phenomena: Those that are internal to consciousness, such as, for instance, obsessive dispositions like greed and delusion, and those that are dissociated from it, usually taken to refer to latent dispositions typically comprising various biological and physical traits.7

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It has been argued, most forcefully by Siderits (2003, 2011), that the reductionist framework of analysis in the Abhidharma entails physicalism, the view that everything is or supervenes on the physical (where “physical” stands for the world as described by our best physics). Although Dharmakīrti shares the empiricist stance of Abhidharma, the naturalism that informs his epistemological project is patently anti-physicalist. According to the Sautrāntika Abhidharma account of materiality that Dharmakīrti favors, entities reduce to their phenomenal primitives8: The particular is a token of a type, not blue in general, but this unique intensity of cerulean. Furthermore, the formal properties of material objects are analyzed either in terms of how they are impacted by contact or as factors that oppose resistance. These properties, however, do not extend to the atoms themselves, which according to the Abhidharma form the building blocks of materiality. As monadic units the atoms are seen as devoid of any formal properties. It is only as atomic compounds that atoms are subject to the same properties of resistance and destruction as composite material entities. The reductionist model of Abhidharma, like all philosophical attempts to carve reality at its joints, works against the common conception that empirical awareness provides access to an external, stable, and self-sustaining world: A world as it is in and of itself or intrinsically (as captured by the notion of svabhāva) rather than as it appears to an observer. But the conception of the human mind that Abhidharma offers is grounded in a metaphysics of experience, rather than of momentary, point instant particulars. Indeed, the irreducible elements of existence and/or experience (dharma) are not fixed substances but activities, properties, or dynamic patterns of connectedness that are constitutive of the world as perceived. It is experience rather than the abstract schema of a causal web of impersonal elements that marks the boundary of what there is: The nexus of causes and conditions that set the boundaries of lived experience are determined by the operations of our cognitive architecture. Color, for instance, only exists for an organism that is sensitive to light. How does this dynamic picture of what there is take on the characteristics of subjectivity and intentionality? And how do these emergent phenomena in turn create the conditions for grasping and attachment? For the Buddhist, the answer does not lie primarily in the patterns of conditioning that explain the aggregation of phenomena, but in certain defining characteristics that belong to the structure of experience9 itself. Not only are the senses conceived as receptacles of experience, they also serve as ground or support, joining the external domain of sensory activity with the internal domain of subjective awareness. Of course, Abhidharma reductionism is predicated on the notion that things reduce to their component parts, which are ultimately real only if they are further irreducible. If something can be reduced either by breaking it down to more basic constituents or through conceptual analysis, then it is not

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ultimately real. Pots are not ultimately real, nor are persons—as persistent, unchanging subjects—real in this ultimate sense. Does this principle of reductionism apply to consciousness? Certainly, consciousness is but a stream of momentary conscious events of different types (visual, auditory, introspective, etc.). But reductionism about consciousness is problematic. Why? Because it cannot explain its most basic features: Its intentional, phenomenal, and selfreflexive character. Abhidharma metaphysics thus retains an irreducible notion of consciousness as a stream of mind-moments, even though the character and structure of these mind-moments are a subject of debate both within Buddhism and between Buddhists and their opponents. And it is the Cārvākas that pose the most serious challenge to the Buddhist attempt to accommodate phenomenal primitives within a generally atomist ontology. For the Cārvākas do not merely advance a new theory of causation. Rather, they put forward an austere ontological picture according to which every phenomenon reduces to the four basic material elements—earth, water, fire, and air—which alone are ultimately real. Emergent phenomena, like the fully formed body and discerning cognition, supervene on these basic elements as their functional properties. The Cārvāka physicalists thus take issue with the notion that consciousness originates outside the order of the material domain, perhaps in a previous instance of cognitive awareness associated with a different body (as demanded by the view of karmic rebirth). Of course, the causal closure of the physical domain at work in Cārvāka metaphysics does not preclude an event-causal explanation of consciousness itself. Indeed, the supervenience argument against the autonomy of cognition is meant to refute the existence of a distinct metaphysical realm of mental phenomena, not the efficacy of mental processes. On this emergentist picture, cognition is a scaled phenomenon that tracks closely the development of the body: The absence of sensory organs in the embryonic stage, according to Cārvāka, precludes the attribution of any sort of perceptual awareness at that level of development. For the Cārvāka, thus, consciousness is a manifestation of the body’s development, functional organization, and responsiveness to objects, situations, and things. Just like fermented grain yields a liquid with the capacity to intoxicate, so also consciousness must be regarded as nothing more than a product of the type of material organization that is constitutive of biological organisms. Indeed, the Cārvāka offers a rather stark picture of the human condition, as we see in one of their earliest accounts: We shall now examine the principles of reality. Earth, water, fire, and air are the principles (of reality), nothing else. Their combination is called the ‘body’, ‘senses’, and ‘objects’. Consciousness arises out of these elements, as the power to intoxicate arises out of fermenting ingredients. The human

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being is nothing but the body endowed with consciousness. Cognition arises from the body itself, because of the presence of consciousness when there is a body. (Bhattacharya 2002: 603ff) If consciousness is nothing but an emergent property of the body, then consciousness can be present neither without a faculty of apprehension, nor in the absence of suitable objects of apprehension. For the Cārvāka, then, seeking to circumvent these objections, as the Buddhist does, by pointing to the momentary nature of phenomena undermines the “continuity of consciousness” thesis. That is, the Buddhist wants to claim both that each moment of consciousness has as its cause a previous mind moment in the stream of consciousness (on the principle that consciousness cannot emerge from insentient matter) and that specific types of conscious mind moments (e.g., visual awareness of a blue patch) nonetheless arise as a result of the coming together of objects and their corresponding cognitive faculties (on the principle of dependent arising). The main reason for the objection concerns the idea of momentariness itself, which entails the serial dissolution of both the object and the cognitive process by which it is apprehended. If the body is taken to be the cause of consciousness, as the Cārvāka claims, the question naturally arises: is it “cause” in the form of an aggregated whole, as a composite of various elements, or as an aggregate of atoms? And, given the requirement that the sensory systems are fully developed, does the body (as a physical or biological substrate) serve as a cause along with, or independently of, the senses? Finally, should the body (with its physical and functional properties) be regarded as a material cause or simply as a condition for the possibility of consciousness?

5 AN ERROR ARGUMENT FOR MENTAL CAUSATION What makes Dharmakīrti’s response to the Cārvāka physicalist challenge relevant to contemporary debates are the metaphysical considerations that ground his causal account, and the specific conception of consciousness that thus emerges. As already noted, Buddhists who take Dharmakīrti’s lead hold that consciousness is but a stream of conscious episodes of different types (visual, auditory, etc.). If the subjective and intentional dimensions of consciousness are nothing but aggregates of discrete mind moments, a dilemma arises: What accounts for the sense of continuity of awareness and, more importantly, what could serve as the basis for the arising of each instance of cognitive awareness from one moment to the next? The bundle theory stipulates that every phenomenon is part of a complex causal web. Indeed, the Sanskrit notion of skandha (lit., “heap”) captures rather well the aggregated nature of phenomena—something

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fashioned by the collective combination of multiple causes and conditions (as Vasubandhu glosses it in AKBh ad I, 7). The constitutive factors themselves exist only as part of a causal continuum of interdependently arising phenomena. Of course, these constitutive factors do not all contribute in equal measure: Some are basic or necessary and some are merely contingent. The Cārvāka claims that the body alone is the source of cognition. But on the aggregate model of personal identity put forth by the Buddhist, the body is just one among the five constitutive factors of agency, even as statements of personal identity have no corresponding states of affairs.10 The principle that establishes effects as markedly different from their causes runs counter to empirical evidence. We observe that like causes like: Cows give birth to calves, and fermented milk yields yoghurt. On this principle of causal homogeneity, then, cognitive awareness cannot arise from something non-conscious, such as the physical body. As Dharmakīrti notes (PV II vv. 35–36a), there could be “unwarranted consequences” for presupposing otherwise. Indeed, Dharmakīrti is committed to a strict ontological difference between “cause” (kāraṇa) and “condition” or “conditioning factor” (pratyaya): The former can only give rise to a specific type of effect, while the latter can serve as a basis for the arising of multiple effects. The acorn can only grow into an oak tree, but the same soil and climactic conditions may provide support for various tree species. On the reductionist Abhidharma model, all aggregate entities reduce to two kinds of basic constituents: Elemental atoms comprising the four primary elements, and the atomic totality, which includes the secondary elements associated with each of the four sense spheres (with the exception of sound). Although there is some debate among Abhidharma philosophers about how best to draw the lines between primary and secondary existents, conscious mental states, as a domain of phenomenal primitives, do belong in the Buddhist’s ultimate ontology. Their reality is premised on their causal and pragmatic efficacy. For instance, in perceiving a pot, it is not the pot itself that serves as the basis for the arising of the cognitive event but rather the causal efficacy of phenomenal primitives that ground a conception of pots as material entities. Furthermore, middle-size dry goods such as pots are not perceived in a vacuum. Rather, conditioning factors play an important role. Just as the potter fashions his clay in whatever form the vessel will take by increasing the preponderance of the water element, so also, under certain conditions something solid may become liquid, like heat causing the melting of a block of ice. Given the speculative nature of the Abhidharma metaphysics, there should be no surprise in finding disagreements about the specific ways in which properties attach to each aggregated entity. For instance, while for the Vaibhāṣikas entities borrow their physical properties from the elements themselves, Sautrāntikas take them to be present only as mere potentialities.

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In a block of ice, the fire element is only potentially present, for without it, ice cannot melt into water. Dharmakīrti works out his account of causal efficacy in terms of the strict regularities that must obtain between elements in a causal series. These regularities act as a kind of “restriction in causal potential” (śaktiniyama)—a notion that Dharmakīrti uses to argue for the limited or restricted efficacy of causal elements. For instance, a lotus seed cannot produce a cow and oil cannot be extracted from sand. The so-called essential nature of the causally efficient element in a causal chain suggests that entities are not simply the product of a given causal chain or causal complex. Rather, they are the product of specifically active elements within that chain and of the conditions that make it possible for those active elements to manifest their potentiality. While Dharmakīrti does in principle concede that the material elements could serve as a basis for the arising of cognition, his conception of causation as limited to relations between homogeneous elements within the causal chain prevents the establishment of a direct link between consciousness and the body. Likewise, while the principle of preponderance may apply to all kinds, a cow is not just a collection of elements with a certain predominant property like solidity, heat, or capacity to produce milk. Nor is it a conceptually constructed entity like a forest, or a cart, that is analytically reducible to its constitutive parts. There must be more than just the configuration of matter that accounts for the arising of cognitive awareness and its specific intentional content (PV II vv. 37–8). Indeed, for Dharmakīrti the reflexive dimension of awareness cannot be a function of the body arising together with all the senses because its occurrence is observed even when one or more of the senses are impaired (PV II v. 47). The wealth of empirical evidence from clinical neuroscience about such phenomena as the “locked-in syndrome” or the persistence of “minimal consciousness” in patients diagnosed as being in a vegetative state gives credit to the hypothesis that consciousness enjoys a greater degree of autonomy than basic cognitive function (Koch 2012; Laureys et al. 2005; Laurey, Perrin, and Brédart 2007; Naci, Sinai, and Owen 2017; Noirhomme et al. 2007; ). This sort of evidence, it seems, lends support to Dharmakīrti’s thesis that basic sentience enjoys a certain degree of causal autonomy from more specific higher-order modes of cognitive awareness. It also suggests that, given the difficulty of diagnosing whether a patient is in a minimally conscious rather than a permanent vegetative state, the distinction between unconscious mental states and states of consciousness with minimal cognitive and behavioral function is less clear than it may seem. Rather than being unconscious, a cognitively and behaviorally non-responsive individual could simply be minimally conscious. Most importantly, in the absence of a better understanding of the tight correlation between mental and physical (e.g., brain) states, such evidence sets the stage for developing a wider conception of causality than physicalism allows.

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Consider the occurrence of a sensation, say of pain, resulting from a wound in the body. The pain has both qualitative features or qualia (sharp, stinging) and intentional content, insofar as it discloses the body as the locus of tissue damage. The co-occurrence of bodily processes and specific mental states, however, does not suggest that the body actually causes it, but only that it serves as a contributing factor in the arising of cognition. What we see here is a clear example of Occam’s Razor: Dharmakīrti argues against taking cognitive awareness to be a product of bodily functions because he thinks the mental domain is the natural place for cognitive awareness. The mental domain is sufficiently complex to support its own operations. So, while the body and its environment both support and constrain its operations (e.g., functional eyesight enables vision, while night restricts it), cognitive activity functions on the basis of a different set of principles (e.g., of illumination, representation, logical entailment) (PV II vv. 33–44). Nothing is closer to each instance of cognitive awareness than a cognition immediately preceding it. Why not postulate that each state of cognitive awareness serves as the antecedent cause for cognition? Hence Dharmakīrti’s dictum: “let only what is observed as the cause always be considered the cause” (PV II v. 44cd). And what is observed is the constant stream of conscious mental states. Dharmakīrti’s attempt to carve out a space for the autonomy of the reflexive dimension of cognitive awareness from material causation while retaining the efficient-causal model showcases not only his conceptual ingenuity but also his keen phenomenological sense. His case for the autonomy of consciousness draws on an error argument based on impaired cognitive function: “Nor are the senses, or the body together with the senses, the cause of cognition, [for] even when every single one of the senses is impaired, the [corresponding] cognitive awareness is not impaired. But when [the cognitive awareness] is impaired, their (i.e., the senses’) impairment is observed” (PV II. v. 39). Phenomena such as phantom limbs and the locked-in syndrome are perfect examples of the sort of impaired cognitive function that does not impact cognitive awareness in the respective domain. But central to the error argument is the premise that cognitive awareness is nonetheless in some kind of dependency relation to the body, as demanded by the causal principle of dependent arising. For instance, visual awareness can only emerge in organisms that are sensitive to light. Can Dharmakīrti answer the physicalist challenge while retaining a causalexplanatory framework that is necessary for explaining the relation between cognition and the body? As I have argued at length elsewhere (Coseru 2020), models of causation in the material domain face certain limitations when extended to consciousness and cognition. For instance, on a strict account of causal generation, cognitive error would track closely deficient causation. But that does not always happen. One might perceive a sparkling lake where there is only a naturally occurring

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optical illusion. This perceptual illusion is not simply a case of misapprehension, for the illusion persists even after it has been disambiguated (i.e., after one has come to apprehend the appearance of the lake as a mirage). What the error argument targets is strict causal generation: The notion that each mental state is instantiated by a suitably relevant combination of physical elements and processes. The persistence of perceptual illusion even after disambiguation, and the possibility of effective action such disambiguation affords (by not chasing after a mirage), works against the strict causal model of the Cārvāka physicalist, which reduces human agency to changes in the microphysical structure of each individual. When Dharmakīrti claims that a trustworthy cognition (avisaṃvāda) is not merely epistemically salient but also causally effective, he advances a naturalistic account of cognition, one that accounts for the intentional structure of awareness and its phenomenal character: Perception is not simply the apprehension of a unique particular as such; rather it is the apprehension of a particular as perceived, which also discloses the perceiver’s intentional stance. In the case of perceptual illusions such as mirages, it is not only the perceiver’s vantage point but also the phenomenal character of the experience itself that ensures successful action: Illusory water can neither quench thirst nor afford immersion. Has the Buddhist satisfactorily answered the challenge of physicalism? It is clear that by rejecting the notion that intentional objects are causally related to the experience of unique particulars (e.g., PV III v. 320), Dharmakīrti showcases the importance of phenomenological considerations (specifically about the structure of awareness) in settling the debate about mental causation. This point is necessary if his account of the efficacy of cognition, which takes causal explanation to contain an element of ontological subjectivity, is to succeed.

6 CONCLUSION The debate about mental causation has been primarily driven by efforts to explain how mental properties could be causally relevant to bodily behavior. Neither agency, nor free will and moral responsibility can be satisfactorily explained without appealing in one way or another to mental causation. Indeed, if behavior was not the result of mind’s activities—its reasoning, deliberation, and decision to act—there would be little scope for a notion of responsibility. Isolating the mental from the physical or rendering it epiphenomenal by attributing all causality to the physical, makes it difficult to explain how what goes on in our minds relates to what the body does. To these concerns, the Buddhist-Cārvāka debate on the relation between cognition and the body adds another, specifically about demonstrating the possibility of freedom, which

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is essential to overcoming the limitations of the human condition. For the Cārvākas the most probable explanation for the existence of the universe is a series of random events. In rejecting both the law of karma and the concept of destiny, their argument is that implicit in these notions is a view of existence as inherently purposeful. In response, the Buddhist emphasizes not only the reality of karmic action but also the efficacy of individual effort. Indeed, against the claim that nothing is done either by oneself or another, the Buddha pointed out that articulating any view whatsoever shows that there is an element of initiative, that one either strives to overcome some resistance or to reach the sort of reflective equilibrium that comes with understanding and insight (Bodhi 2012: 901). Insofar as they eschew such concerns, the Cārvākas also discount the importance of efficient causation, focusing instead on material causes and conditions, as their emergentist account of consciousness demonstrates. In that regard, they both align with, and face the same challenges as, presentday physicalists. Indeed, from a modern standpoint, it may be objected that consciousness is a subjective phenomenon and thus not amenable to scientific (hence, efficient causal) explanation. The Buddhists may well admit that aggregated entities reduce to their ontological primitives, which alone are real. But causally describable series of phenomena are not incompatible with treating some basic phenomena as irreducibly mental, so Buddhist reductionism does not necessarily entail physicalism. However, on a distinctly Kantian line of argumentation about the irreducibility of normative relations (relations that obtain in the logical space of reason), conscious mental events will not admit of efficient-causal description. Against such a normative framework, Dharmakīrti’s appeal to causal explanation as a criterion for the efficacy of epistemic practices would arguably render his account indistinguishable from that of his physicalist opponent. The efficacy of reasons lies primarily in the relevance of their content rather than the fact that they fall under some efficient-causal description. But the Buddhist does not think the relevance of such content can be ascertained on logical or conceptual grounds alone since what makes a cognition veridical is its causal efficacy, the fact that it can lead to successful action. Hence, the Buddhist response to the problem of how to think of consciousness using the language of efficient-causal explanation is framed by two sorts of considerations: First, about the basis or support of consciousness (that is, about what sorts of factors might be responsible for the arising of different aspects of consciousness given a metaphysical commitment to momentariness), and second, about the structure and character of consciousness (which reflects a commitment to the reflexivity thesis). On the account put forth here, consciousness is thus constitutive of a constant and continuous stream of discrete cognitive events, not independently of, but rather alongside, various conditioning and dispositional factors. The problem is not how consciousness could arise from purely causal interactions

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in the psycho-physical domain. Rather, the problem is how this domain, which also includes irreducible phenomenal properties, conditions the arising of specific cognitive events. The Buddhist account of mental causation sketched here insists that facts about one’s subjective experience are not empirically accessible in the way that facts about the external world are. The epistemic subjective-objective distinction thus rides on a more basic, ontological distinction in modes of existence. Pains and pleasures manifest only as phenomenal qualities of awareness. Their experiencedependent status, however, does not render them any less real. Likewise, just because we are physiologically limited to perceiving only a narrow range of light frequencies does not mean our color experiences lack objective properties. The capacity to unambiguously apprehend phenomena not only as they seem, but as they presumably are, suggests that we can have an epistemologically objective account of the subjective and intentional dimensions of consciousness. In short, ontological subjectivity is no bar to epistemic objectivity. Framing mental causation as an observer-relative phenomenon does not mean, however, that it is not a real feature of our ontology. Rather, its observer-relative status simply suggests that it contains an element of ontological subjectivity.

NOTES 1

As she famously puts in one of her letters to Descartes, after acknowledging that it is largely due to our ignorance of what causes bodies to move that we attribute such causal power to the soul, “I admit that it would be easier for me to concede matter and extension to the soul than to concede the capacity to move a body and to be moved by it to an immaterial thing” (Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia and Descartes 2007: 68).

2

One notable exception is Schelling, whose natural philosophy (Naturphilosophie) puts forward a dynamic conception of nature that seeks to bridge the chasm opened up, on the one hand, by the Newtonian mechanistic conception of nature as a domain of causality and, on the other, by the Kantian notion that the spontaneity of practical reason places the self-constituting subject beyond the conditioned realm of determination. Rejecting the Kantian conception of freedom as mere noumenal spontaneity, Schelling argues instead for the possibility that genuine causality expresses itself through reason: “the empirical I cannot possibly realize itself, because the empirical I as such does not exist through itself, through its own free causality” (Schelling 1976: I, 2, 166). Rather, as he claims, “‘reason’ is a mere play of higher and necessarily unknown natural forces” such that “there is nothing impossible in the thought that the same activity by which Nature reproduces itself anew in each successive phase, is reproductive in thought through the medium of the organism” (Peterson 2004: xviii–xix). See also Woodard (2019: 18), who argues that Schelling integrates human thought regarding it as a “species of motion.”

3

Predictive processing models of cognition, according to which the brain makes sense of the sensory data by making probabilistic inferences about the world and

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correcting them in order to minimize predictive errors, advance the claim that minds are “inferentially secluded from the world … and more neurocentrically skull-bound than embodied and extended” (Hohwy 2013: 259). Critics, however, argue that without embodiment and interaction it is hard to make sense of the dynamic variants of predictive coding (Clark 2016). 4

One way to understand the difference between the non-reductionist and the reductionist views of personal identity is along the simple/complex divide: The non-reductionist favors the simple, soul or Cartesian Ego, view, whereas the reductionist prefers the complex view that entails relations among physical and psychological states. Holding a soul view, of course, does not necessarily amount to holding a brute fact view, although in the absence of non-circular criteria for personal identity (of the sort required by the complex view) it is hard to tell them apart. What motivates recent defenders of the simple view (e.g., Baker 2013; Lowe 2010, 2013; Nida-Rümelin 2013; Swinburne 2013) is not commitment to a Cartesian Ego, but rather the notion that a specific, perhaps non-conceptual and pre-reflective, type of self-awareness seems indispensable to framing any account of personal identity.

5

I use “neurophysicalism” here mainly in its token sense as the view that for every mental state there is a suitable set of neural correlates. Correspondingly, type neurophysicalism stands for the view that different types or kinds of mental events (e.g., perception, belief, emotion) are similarly realized by each member of a species (cf. Flanagan 2007: 27).

6

Detailed analyses of these arguments can be found in Vetter (1964), Hayes (1993), Taber (2003), and Arnold (2008).

7

Detailed accounts of this twofold analysis of phenomena are found in Vasumitra’s Pañcavastukavibhāṣāśāstra [Wu shih p’i-p’o-sha Zun], T 28 (1555), p. 989b2, Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośabhāṣya, II, 23–34, and Yaśomitra’s Spuṭārthā Abhidharmakośavyākhyā. Cox (1995: ch. 4) offers the most detailed account to date of the citta-viprayuktasaṃskāra. For a broader discussion of the process by which mental factors that arise in conjunction with a given intentional object come to be associated with the qualities of the respective object, see Waldron 2003: 57ff.

8

One way to understand “phenomenal primitives” is by analogy to the sort of phenomenal properties that Russelian panpsychists associate with certain fundamental entities that exhibit conscious experience. Since these entities are assumed to be microphysical, they thus exhibit “microphenomenal” or “protophenomenal” properties (Alter and Coleman 2019; Chalmers 2013).

9

By “structure of experience” I mean things like interiority, directedness toward an object, background awareness, and experiential horizon, all of which can result from the aggregation of both non-phenomenal properties (shape, texture, boundary conditions, luminosity, etc.) and phenomenal properties that give experience its structure or aspectual shape (sharpness, brightness, edge, etc.). One way to avoid the physicalist view that the structure of experience could be entirely constituted of non-phenomenal properties is to distinguish between protophenomenal and structural properties, and to require that there be “an a priori entailment from truths about protophenomenal properties (perhaps along with structural properties) to truths about the phenomenal properties that they constitute” (Chalmers 2013: 260).

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10 Although “states of affairs” and “facts” are often used synonymously, the latter typically designates actual (hence, existing) states of affairs. Many philosophers (Armstrong 2009; Meixner 2009; Olson 1987) take states of affairs to be the constituent, building blocks of reality, and many, though not all (Voltolini 2006), distinguish them from propositions: The former are taken to be truthmakers (e.g., entities that make true propositions true), while the latter are truthbearers (the vehicles of truth or falsity). See Reicher (2009) for a detailed discussion of how to think of states of affairs relative to facts, propositions, events, and tropes, and of various arguments for and against their very existence.

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CHAPTER FOUR

Abhinavagupta’s Svātantryavāda: Mental Causality, Emergentism, and Intuitionist Mathematics LORILIAI BIERNACKI

1 INTRODUCTION How do we get a concept of mind, indeed a mind that is not simply mere epiphenomenon but that can effectively cause events within our current paradigm of materialism—that is, within a paradigm which reduces causal relations to the interplay of physical objects, that is, neurons and molecules? The notion of mental causality, the idea that the mind can influence the material substrate is fraught, problematic for a materialist paradigm. On the one hand, much of our science follows an understanding that only matter can affect matter; mental constructions, whatever they are, cannot affect matter. For this scientific perspective, to suggest otherwise is to slide into the hocuspocus of magic. On the other hand, the idea that mind does not affect the physical world—at a minimum inducing change in one’s own physical body, as when a loving thought slows the heart rate—but even more broadly, that the mind does not impact the material world—this seems to lead to a view that

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goes against common sense. If what we think has no effect on the world or our bodies, that our consciousness, our minds are simply irrelevant, as Daniel Dennett famously argued, mere epiphenomenon (Dennett 1991), then in a sense we wind up erasing the impact of centuries of human culture, including even the human thought that has generated the very science we use to address the question. In other words, much is at stake, since a notion of mental causality is tied to the idea of free will, as we see with John Searle famously lifting his arm as an instance of both (Searle 2006). Here, the crux of the question is how might what we think of as thought manage to interact with and affect materiality? To get around the problem of mechanism, a number of contemporary materialist philosophical renditions rely on a concept of emergentism as a way of supporting a link between the mental and matter so as to render mental causality efficacious. To put this, for the sake of brevity, much too simplistically, if mind emerges out of matter, then its seeming difference from matter is not an ontological barrier to downward causality, where mind can interact with materiality. Of course, mental causation as a concept relates to a variety of formulations addressing the nature of the mind-body relation, for instance, that certain mental patterns can generate physiological effects, such as heart rate or brain chemistry release of dopamine, or more radically, that the mental mantra practice of a yogi can prevent contact with fire from burning her skin, or that a yogi like Sai Baba can generate a mūrti, a statue of Kṛṣṇa through thought alone, and so on. For the purposes of this paper I will focus on only one particular philosophical consequence of mental causation, the aspect of free will. Even as the idea of mental causality encompasses a number of different components, addressing the component of free will as one particular aspect of mental causality highlights what I suggest we can see as an intrinsic link between a subjective perspective and mental causality. With this, I offer a different avenue than emergentism for linking mind to materiality and thus enabling a capacity for the mental to affect the physical. I draw on Abhinavagupta’s eleventh-century articulation of Svātantryavāda, the “Free-will Doctrine” to point to a model for mental causation that does not rely on emergentism; instead Abhinavagupta’s model proposes a modal argument based on a foundational subjectivity as a means of positing mental causation. I suggest that Abhinavagupta offers a model where mind itself, consciousness as a first-person subjectivity is a foundational category that generates the materiality of the world we encounter. This operates as a type of cosmopsychism, which unfolds out of itself the materiality that makes up the physical world. Certainly, proposing a foundational subjectivity is fraught; a perspective of subjectivity is frequently criticized as being insufficiently scientific, with the implicit equation of science with a third-person, objective perspective. This

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criticism, I suggest, is unfounded; to support this, I draw from the work of physicist Nicolas Gisin and before him, L. E. J. Brouwer’s articulations of Intuitionist Mathematics (Brouwer 1981). What is interesting about this alternative path to mental causation, based within a concept of free will, I suggest, is that Gisin and Brouwer argue for its basis within a rigorous mathematical model that does not depend on emergentism, or for that matter, on panpsychism. I suggest that we find a similar framework to Gisin’s use of Intutionist Mathematics, and more especially Brouwer’s entailment of subjectivity with his idea of the “Creating Subject,” in Abhinavagupta’s Svātantryavāda, and that Abhinavagupta’s model, intuitively derived, follows a similar logic. Abhinavagupta is not a mathematician (and nor am I), and his own articulation of his model of consciousness involves no mathematics; however, his model shares structural similarities to these mathematical articulations, specifically: 1) The inclusion of free will, 2) a non-deterministic system, 3) a necessary inclusion of the idea of time. What Abhinavagupta’s Svātantryavāda, Free-Will Doctrine adds to these mathematical derivations is to make explicit the emphasis on subjectivity and a first-person perspective, an element not found in Gisin’s articulation, which is, however, incipiently articulated in Brouwer. With this, I suggest that we ought not to discount subjectivity as a model simply because of a bias that sees objectivity, a third-person perspective as more scientific or logically precise. This also suggests that Abhinavagupta’s medieval adoption of a subjectively oriented philosophical model can add to the conversation on causality1 and that we might find productive results in unpacking this alternative path toward accounting for mental causation.2

2 PANPSYCHISM, COSMOPSYCHISM, EMERGENTISM While panpsychism was developed as a way around the hard problem, recently a variety of thinkers have adopted forms of panpsychism as a way to entail mental causation while still avoiding the philosophical problems accompanying emergentism.3 As Godehard Brüntrup and Ludwig Jaskolla point out, panpsychism offers “a world view which is capable of remaining within a broadly conceived naturalist framework whilst accounting for the emergence of a nonreductively conceived mental reality” (Brüntrup and Jaskolla 2016: 3). Panpsychism, since it entails an already embedded notion of mind within all matter, seems to stave off the problem of needing an emergentist doctrine, or at least a strong emergentism, to account for mentality and mental causation. Nevertheless, various models that embrace panpsychism still invoke a form of emergentism, particularly as a way around the combination problem.4 Giulio Tononi and Christof Koch’s Integrated Information Theory 3.0 (IIT  3.0) is an illustrative case, asserting panpsychism, while relying on a form of

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emergentism to distinguish between objects that display consciousness (Phi in their terminology) and those that do not. Tononi, for instance, proposes that we might find consciousness even in a simple mechanical device, a photodiode. Underwritten by a foundational panpsychism, actual, measurable consciousness (Phi) emerges  only in instances where information as self-reflexive activity is demonstrated. The operating principle in this model is that if enough information  as bits is accumulated and nested within integrated circuits of recursive feedback loops, meaning will emerge. A jump to consciousness will occur. Describing the process in an imaginary dialogue between Galileo and Leibniz, Tononi writes, “which mechanisms would one have to add in order to augment the lowly photodiode and make it like Galileo’s brain?” (Tononi 2012: 199). In order to get, as Tononi puts it, “meaning out of mechanism,” the Baron tells Galileo, By piling one mechanism on top of another, that’s how it’s done! … One mechanism alone—things are this way and not another way—generates hardly any information: one nondescript bit. But if you pile them up, so that one builds upon another, not only side-by-side, but each standing on the shoulders of the others, as it were, they generate far more information, bits multiply. (Tononi 2012: 203) With enough nested circuitry one can make the jump from the mere mechanism of a manufactured mechanical device, a photodiode, to the wonder of consciousness. That is, Tononi’s method entails a kind of emergentism: “if you pile them up” some new shift occurs; consciousness emerges. Tononi has made it clear that he subscribes to a model of panpsychism; yet he incorporates emergentism to explain why it is that even though consciousness is allpervasive, objects like a cellphone do not exhibit the self-recursivity required for what we think of as consciousness (Oizumi, Albantakis, and Tononi 2014) and (Tononi n.d.). Abhinavagupta, on the other hand, does not subscribe to an emergentist model.5 This is where his panentheism—which again might be considered akin to what thinkers like Itay Shani, Joachim Keppler, and Philip Goff designate as cosmopsychism, a kind of overarching single principle that spreads itself out into what makes up the world—diverges from the type of micro-panpsychism Koch and Tononi embrace.6 In this respect we might understand his panentheism as a form of cosmic consciousness. Shani argues that it is possible to formulate a cosmopsychism that avoids the combination problem entailed in micropanpsychism and can also preempt its mirroring obverse, the decombination problem (Shani and Keppler 2018). While it may be possible to argue that

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Abhinavagupta’s model evades the combination and decombination problems by virtue of its adoption of a singular cosmic consciousness, I focus here explicitly on the links his model proposes between free will and subjectivity as the mechanism for mental causality. In other words, embedded within Abhinavagupta’s conception of cosmic consciousness is a separate avenue for arguing for mental causation: his prioritization of subjectivity, with a concommitant freedom, over a third-person perspective.7 Thus, he tells us elsewhere, “this in fact is freedom, which is the capacity to do that which is exceedingly difficult. And that difficulty is to be actually placed on the level of Māyā.”8 The idea of freedom, which is intrinsic to subjectivity as modality, is what allows a singular consciousness to individuate into a multiplicity of different conscious entities each with their unique capacities to exercise divergent expressions of free will.9 Thus, he tells us: “When those [beings] belonging to Māyā—even down to a worm, an insect—when they do their own deeds, that which is to be done first stirs in the heart.”10 That is, even the tiniest insect has an agency and a consciousness capable of choosing, a subjectivity rising in the heart. Specifically, by subjectivity as modality I mean that Abhinavagupta suggests a phenomenology of the first-person perspective at its base entails an essential freedom that serves as foundational for subsequent truth claims.11 In what follows, we look comparatively at the conditions for this freedom in Abhinavagupta’s model in relation to Gisin’s adoption and Brouwer’s articulations of Intuitionist Mathematics. Beginning with Gisin’s articulation of the problem of real numbers, as the mathematical argument for this alternative model, we then address specifically three areas of convergence Abhinavagupta shares with Intuitionist Mathematics: Indeterminism, its links to freedom, and the inclusion of time. After this we examine Abhinavagupta’s postulation of subjectivity.

3 REAL NUMBERS Gisin points to the origin of Intuitionist Mathematics in an early twentiethcentury debate between mathematicians L. E. J. Brouwer and David Hilbert on how we might count numbers. Hilbert insisted that we understand every real number with its infinite series of digits as a completed individual object (Gisin 2020: 114). Brouwer, arguing for an Intuitionist Mathematics, took the view that each point on a number line should be represented as a neverending process that develops in time (Gisin 2020: 114). As Gisin relates, the question has to do with whether mathematics exists within time or whether it operates within an idealized Platonic realm, and this mathematical debate mirrored another debate also focusing on time, and happening around the same time in Paris (Gisin 2020: 114). In this related debate, Albert Einstein debated

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the French philosopher Henri Bergson (Gisin 2020: 114). Bergson critiqued Einstein’s conception of time prompting Einstein’s famous assertion “Il n’y a donc pas un temps des philosophes” (The philosopher’s idea of time does not exist) (Canales 2015: 5). Even as Einstein’s argument against Bergson eventually eclipsed Bergson’s position, at the time Bergson’s critique that Einstein’s idea of relativity and its assertion of time pertained not to physics, but to epistemology, hit a nerve.12 So much so that it swayed the Nobel Prize committee to give Einstein the Nobel prize for his work on the photo-electric effect, not for what made him famous at the time, his celebrated formulation of relativity (Canales 2015: 3–4). Perhaps aware of this other debate, Brouwer’s intuitionist mathematics focused on understanding mathematics as embedded within a schema of unfolding time. Precipitated by a logic problematizing an infinite series of digits as ultimately a product of random selection, Brouwer formulated a mathematics tied to a materially embedded reality, operative expressly within the parameters of time and the free choices made by the mathematician engaging a mathematical problem (van Atten 2018). Gisin, whose own work spans classical and quantum physics, draws on Brouwer particularly in relation to the problem of time, infinity, and information for a contemporary model. Gisin points to the problem of a mathematically projected infinity in relation to a finite volume. He says, “no finite volume of space can contain an infinite amount of information. This is a well accepted result that follows from the holographic principle, known as the Bekenstein bound” (Gisin 2019: 6). For Gisin, a mathematical stipulation of real numbers as infinite carries its own burdens, in particular, an unwieldy infinitude at the heart of physics. He proposes as remedy an alternative mathematical physics based on Brouwer’s Intuitionist Mathematics. This alternate mathematical system recognizes the disjunct, the actual practical impossibility of a mathematics that operates on an infinite amount of information contained between two numbers on a number line. In a nutshell: The impossibility of containing an infinite amount of information within a finite space. Gisin derives his formulation from Brouwer’s Intuitionist Mathematics. As Brouwer outlines the basic principles, the problem is that the history of mathematics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries introduced a formalism divorced from an actual experiential engagement with mathematics. Intuitionist mathematics proposes recognizing an intuitive understanding of mathematics grounded in experience and developed intuitively, separate from the formulation of a language to describe mathematics, instead understanding mathematics as “an essentially languageless activity of the mind having its origin in the perception of a move of time” (Brouwer 1981: 1–4). As such, Brouwer’s formulation entails that certain logical conditions that we take for granted, such as the law of the excluded middle, are simply artefacts of a historical

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construction and only applicable in certain situations. (Brouwer 1981: 5–8). To return to Gisin’s formulation of the problem of an assumed mathematical infinity, Gisin tells us: Today, everyone knows that they hold gigabytes of information in their pockets … Furthermore, everyone knows also that each stored bit requires some space. Not much, possibly soon only a few cubic nanometre (10−18 mm3) … Consequently, assuming that information has always to be encoded in some physical stuff, a finite volume of space cannot contain more than a finite amount of information. (Gisin 2019: 7) This is his basic premise, that information occupies space. Information encoded within a material substrate is limited, even as our current predominant mathematics offers a system predicated on infinite information. Further: Consider a small volume, a cubic centimetre let’s say, containing a marble ball. This small volume can contain but a finite amount of information. Hence, the centre of mass of this marble ball can’t be a real number … since real numbers contain—with probability one—an infinite amount of information … the assumption that a finite volume of space can’t contain more but a finite amount of information implies that the centre of mass of any object cannot be identified with mathematical real numbers. Real numbers are useful tools, but are only tools. They do not represent physical reality. (Gisin 2019: 7) As he outlines it, his formulation of Intuitionist Mathematics works much the same as classical mathematics; its advantage lies in its acknowledgment of this basic incompatibility—between a Platonic mathematics of infinity and our current real-world awareness that a finite space can only contain a finite amount of information. With this he proposes a mathematics and physics that operates similarly to classical mathematics and physics, but which addresses the problem of infinite information in a finite space: In a nutshell, this alternative theory keeps the same dynamical equations as classical mechanics, but all parameters, including the initial conditions are given by numbers containing only a finite amount of information … I argue that this alternative classical mechanics is more natural because it doesn’t assume the existence of inaccessible information. (Gisin 2019: 2)

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Even as Gisin’s alternative mathematical theory functions similarly to classical mathematics in solving physics and mathematical problems, it nevertheless carries with it a number of philosophical implications. I will address the implications below: These include 1) a model that suggests indeterminism even within classical physics, not just within quantum physics where it is familiar; 2) this model is tightly linked to an assertion of free will, again, resonant with Abhinavagupta’s philosophical model of Recognition (Pratyabhijñā), which has alternatively been called the Free-Will Doctrine, Svātantryavāda; 3) directly following from indeterminism, the reincorporation of time within physics.

4 INDETERMINISM LINKED TO FREEDOM Many of the philosophical ramifications of Gisin’s alternative mathematical theory follow directly from postulating a primary indeterminism. Gisin derives this from his initial premise that a finite amount of space cannot contain an infinite amount of information. The finitude of physical space links back to Brouwer’s intuitionist mathematics and Brouwer’s assertion that the sequences of numbers generated on a continuum are not infinite, but instead generated as random numbers (Gisin 2020: 115). As Gisin relates, understanding the fundamentally uncomputable nature of real numbers means that we should understand them instead as random numbers; the term “real numbers,” he tells us, is a misnomer: In other words, almost all real numbers are random in the sense that their sequences of digits (or bits) are random … And these random numbers (a  better name for real numbers) should be at the basis of scientific determinism? Come on, that’s just not serious! … it is also a great source of confusion in the philosophy of science. (Gisin 2016: 5) That is, the very basis of our mathematical system leads us astray, inclining us to miss the fundamentally random nature of real numbers. That they are random means that they cannot be used to predict determinate outcomes; the random quality of these numbers will yield only imprecise, indeterminate mathematical results.The consequence is that scientific determinism has no solid foundation, no real leg to stand on. This is where his alternative mathematics adheres more closely to the actual situation of things. What it means is that at base, even for classical physics—not just for quantum physics—the notion of a scientific determinism does not follow our material situation. Gisin is quick to point out

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that these parameters, determinism vs indeterminism, are elements built into the particular model of mathematics we use: One may object that intuitionism doesn’t derive indeterminism, but assumes it from the start. That is correct. Likewise, classical mathematics assumes actual infinite information from the start. These two views cannot be distinguished empirically. One can always claim that instead of God playing dice every time a random outcome happens, God played all the dice at once before the Big Bang and encoded all results in the Universe’s initial condition. (Gisin 2020: 115) Pointing out that Einstein’s oft-quoted rejection of quantum physics’ structural indeterminacy is simply kicking the can down the road, back chronologically to the Big Bang, Gisin identifies the postulation of infinite information as an assumption within classical mathematics. Thus, this alternative, Intuitionist Mathematics instead takes as its premise indeterminism; God left some of the dice-play for after the Big Bang. Gisin justifies choosing indeterminism as a premise by pointing to the equally unsubstantiated and problematic presumption of our usual mathematics, that it assumes infinite information from the start. And as we saw, the problem with an infinity of information is that it is not supported by what we actually know about information, that a finite space can only contain a finite amount of information.13 This also entails as a foundation for Gisin’s argument that there is a real world and that physicists model their calculations on this real world, not on a mathematics that proposes infinite information in real numbers.14 His alternative Intuitionist Mathematics is more closely aligned to the idea of the world as real and physically tangible, because, “it doesn’t assume the existence of inaccessible information”(Gisin 2019: 2). Abhinavagupta’s model similarly, unlike an Advaita Vedānta ascription of the world as illusion, emphasizes that the objects we encounter here are real.15 As K.  C. Pandey pointed out in early scholarship on Abhinavagupta, Abhinavagupta’s philosophy tends to work against our expectations of ontology; we tend to limit our choices to nondualism as idealism on the one hand, or else an actually existing world with a plurality of really existing different entities. Abhinavagupta subverted this false choice in a kind of have-your-cake and eat-it-too, what Pandey in a seemingly oxymoronic gesture labels a “Realist Idealism.”16 Elsewhere I argue that we might understand Abhinavagupta’s nondual Śaivism precisely as a reclamation of a very real materiality (Biernacki 2022). In his eleventh-century Īśvarapratyabhijñāvivṛtivimarśinī, he reminds us, “the object as something real is not to be denied.”17 The materiality of the world is elemental to his philosophy of agency; as he tells us, “when you separate off the effects [of creation, the body, etc.] then the state of Doership does not occur.”18

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The idea of “Doership” (kartṛtva) as activity in the world references the power of the absolute as consciousness to connect to the materiality of the world; it is this element that differentiates Abhinavagupta’s system from an idealist system like Advaita Vedānta which sees the world as insubstantial (Māyā). In practical terms, with the idea of “Doership” Abhinavagupta argues for an intrinsic link between consciousness and matter and precisely, the capacity of consciousness to generate material effects, that is, the capacity for mental causality.19 To return to Intuitionist Mathematics, even as it works empirically and is indistinguishable from classical mathematics on an empirical level, it carries profound philosophical ramifications. It radically alters how we think of the world. It means that our world is not predetermined, not just for quantum events, but even for a classical physics. Intuitionist mathematics tells us that real numbers are actually random and thus not capable of offering determinate outcomes. As Gisin puts it, “Here indeterministic is merely the negation of deterministic … given the present and the laws of nature, there is more than one possible future” (Gisin 2019: 3, n.2). This means as well that our models of physics and the other sciences, including for instance a neuroscience that proposes a capacity to determine outcomes mathematically, algorithmically, these algorithms will at base—that is, in principle—be incapable of fully determining an outcome. And not simply on an epistemological level. In fact, ontologically, our world is not predetermined.20 Gisin also explicitly links this indetermination to freedom. He tells us, “our acts of free-will are beginnings of chains of consequences. Hence, the future is open, determinism is wrong” (Gisin 2016: 2). Similarly, pointing to the link between indeterminacy and free will, Gisin argues, “The existence of genuine free-will, i.e. the possibility to choose among several possible futures, naturally implies that the world is not entirely deterministic” (Gisin 2016: 3). Ultimately, Gisin supports his argument for free will with his mathematical demonstration that real numbers should be understood as not real, but random numbers. As he puts it: the tension between free-will and creative time on one side and scientific determinism on the other side dissolves once one realizes that the so-called real numbers are not really real … the real numbers that theories use as inital conditions and parameters are not physically real. Hence, neither Newtonian, nor relativity, nor quantum physics are ultimately deterministic. (Gisin 2016: 2) Further, like Abhinavagupta, he makes the idea of free will foundational, saying, “Free-Will comes first in logical order” (Gisin 2016: 2). Abhinavagupta’s cosmology encodes indeterminacy as well, though not through a temporal predictive model. As with Gisin, indeterminacy

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is foundationally linked to free will, however, Abhinavagupta frames indeterminacy as a corollary to subjectivity, “I-ness” (ahantā). Subjectivity is the basic reality; it entails an originary state of plenitude, a dense mass of consciousness (cidghana, cidānandaghana) as undefined and indeterminate, in contrast to “This-ness,” the state of being an object.21 However, Abhinavagupta understands indeterminacy entirely in psychological terms. Driven by an overarching process that leads us astray—Māyā—this operation of Māyā acts as a determinate form of thinking which limits our capacity to both know and to do things in the world. Māyā is the process of individuation, a determination, delimitation, and limitation of activity. Abhinavagupta quotes the Rudrayāmala text, saying, “Māyā is the name of the one who deludes, who is seated in the process of individuation, the limitation of activity,” (“māyāvimohinīnāma kalāyāḥ kalanaṃ sthitam |” iti hi śrīrudrayāmalasāravākyam.) (Abhinavagupta 1985a: 3:285). An original indeterminate reality linked to subjectivity is lost when Māyā begins to operate. The mind distinguishes one thing as different from another (vikalpa), making determinate what was indeterminate, as a phenomenology of mental processes. Even as Abhinavagupta’s model is primarily based on a mental phenomenology, still, for Abhinavagupta as well, this also means that events are not predetermined. And even though our karma plays a role, still there is no fate already set in motion, impervious to our freewill choices, where we just go through the motions.22 The freedom (svātantrya) tied to subjectivity has genuine creative effects. Real creativity is indeed possible, even for limited beings, such as us humans, as Abhinavagupta makes clear: “‘or by his own independence’—accepting the idea that there is creation which is not dependent upon the creation of the Lord.”23 Indeed, this is the case even for a lowly insect. As Abhinavagupta tells us, “When those beings belonging to Māyā—even down to an insect—when they do their own deeds, that which is to be done first stirs in the heart.”24 The structural similarity Abhinavagupta shares with Gisin’s model is thus: Where we find indeterminism, we find freedom, and the converse as well. Abhinavagupta, on the other hand, charts the link in terms of mental processes. In a colorful metaphor that emphasizes the mental projection involved, that is, the degree to which a sense of subjectivity is a habit of mind, Abhinavagupta likens indeterminate subjectivity as freedom to the black soot that covers a lamp. If it gets differentiated, parceled out into separate bits, or moved from the lamp to some other spot, the blackness of the soot makes a mess; it is no longer pure, no longer free, yet in its own place on the lamp, as an undifferentiated mass of blackness, it is pristine.25 To reiterate, Abhinavagupta’s model is not a mathematical formulation, and not based on Gisin’s understanding of the finitude of information. Rather, it is tied to the idea of subjectivity; again, in this case what he shares with Gisin’s model of indeterminacy is the link between indeterminacy and freedom. Unlike

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Gisin’s use, Abhinavagupta’s model is prescriptive, not a map that tells us how the world is; indeterminacy is a state of mind that enables a greater capacity for freedom. I suggest he probably derives his model from the meditation practices of Tantra, charting the mind phenomenologically as it moves from an initial indeterminate awareness to concrete conjectures as a mental process. Abhinavagupta (Abhinavagupta 1985a: 3:330) tells us: Free awareness, that is free, and awake. That is the name given to the form of the one who is aware. That which is called “I”, in thinking “Who is that?” when with the body etc.—the form of that I becomes filled up with ideas like, “I am the one who is white;” “I am the one who is hungry;” and so on, then, the body and so on, alone become predominant, displacing the knower’s true form and status as pure consciousness. So the object alone becomes predominant, not the form of the knower. But when he sets out to direct thought to the form of pure consciousness which is one unified mass of light, asking himself, “what Archetypes make up the body etc.?,” then the Emptiness and the body etc., are no more as they are made into the true real form which is awareness, pierced through with the juice of consciousness. By practicing this, by properly entering into this awareness, he gains the special Energies which are the attributes of pure consciousness, and the miraculous yogic powers arise. However, even without practicing it, just by entering into it only for a moment, bliss rises up, along with the visible manifestation of other yogic experiences such as bliss, trembling, deep slumber, a feeling of pervasiveness, and whirling.26 These occur one after the other and he attains liberation for his soul even while still alive in the physical body.27 Thus, we see here that Abhinavagupta links freedom to subjectivity specifically in terms of a phenomenology of the mind. This freedom also manifests as the siddhis of the yogi, the powers to manipulate material objects, which we find in the hagiographical tales of yogis inhabiting dead bodies, and changing matter.28 When the sense of “I” becomes limited as “I am hungry” and so on, one takes on the status of being object, losing one’s true form as undifferentiated subject. However, indeterminacy and determinate status are driven by subjective awareness and as such, can be influenced by mental processes and mental choices. Developing a particular habit of mind, entering into an awareness of consciousness as an undifferentiated mass of light, one is then able to acquire yogic abilities. Moreover, even without exerted practice, simply experiencing this awareness, Abhinavagupta tells us, leads to states linked to yoga, such as bliss and certain movements of the body such as trembling and so on. In this way, indeterminacy as a marker of a particular awareness of subjectivity is primarily a phenomenological process tied to freedom, and linked with yoga and tied to yogic abilities as its expressions.

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5 TIME To bring this back to cosmology, we also find time reincorporated back in, as a central feature, in both Gisin’s and Abhinavagupta’s models. For Abhinavagupta this is important since his cosmopsychism stands in contrast to earlier, alternative forms of nondualisms, such as Advaita Vedānta, which situate subjectivity within an idealized time-free or time-transcendent reality—much as we see with Gisin’s characterization of classical mathematics as Platonized and outside of time. In his article “Time Really Passes, Science Can’t Deny That,” Gisin tells us “[n]ondeterminism implies that time really exists and really passes: today there are facts that were not necessary yesterday, i.e. the future is open” (Gisin 2016: 2). He bases his argument on the argument outlined earlier: A finite amount of space cannot contain an infinite amount of information and that real numbers are essentially random numbers. As a consequence, he tells us the future is not predetermined. His insistence on this indeterminism, an open future itself entails free will. A consequent corollary following from these two is the reality of time. Gisin nuances his argument on time in this regard, allowing for two types of time, what he calls Einsteinian- or Parmenides-time, the type of time amenable to classical mathematics as “geometric-boring time” where no change occurs, and where using real numbers works fine, and Heraclitus-time where actual change occurs, and chance with its indeterminability is a factor (Gisin 2016: 6). With this, he gives a system accommodating both the idea of time as symmetrical and a pre-determined universe as Einsteinian-time and also the reality of time as a genuine unfolding of events allowing for chance and free will. For Gisin, chance and the possibility of actual newness, the open indeterminate future, Heraclitustime, can and does occur, while at other times Einsteinian- or Parmenidestime gives us the predictable world, which is mostly, but not always what we experience. Abhinavagupta as well reincorporates an idea of time, in his case as a corollary of a first-person embodiment. Like Gisin, Abhinavagupta pushes back against the idea of timelessness by connecting time to free will, in his articulation expressed as intentionality. Intentionality, as an orientation toward one thing or another is the heart of a capacity to will. And this, he tells us, already embeds the fact of time. I give here a long passage which outlines his position: ‘The intent of the will is the first instant of time’ (Śivadṛṣṭi 1/7–1/8). Even the highest Reality, Śiva, the energy of bliss—which is that form where unfolding is just about to happen—that energy of bliss has priority, i.e., primacy, and prior existence with regard to the energy of will, [i.e., there is sequence here as well]. The word ‘tuṭi’ is explained as a unit of time. Otherwise in the absence of sequence how could there be states of priority and posterity? However, with reference to those who are to be instructed and to those limited souls who are completely within [the grip of Māyā], there [teaching a lack of sequence] is appropriate.29

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Here, Abhinavagupta argues against the idea that some absolute reality, or deity, might exist outside of time, beyond the reach of time. What Abhinavagupta suggests here does go against a dominant reading of Abhinavagupta’s nondual Śaivism, where it is aligned to an idea more akin to Advaita Vedānta, with a space transcendent of time. What I suggest here is that if we read Abhinavagupta closely, we see that he realizes the philosophical problem embedded within a view that offers a transcendent space outside of time. As I suggest elsewhere (Biernacki 2022), for his nondualism to really incorporate the world, it must also incorporate time. And this is precisely why he brings the notion of time back in, explaining that the idea of a transcendent space outside of time is really just a skillful teaching tool for those who are caught in Māyā. At base, however, time occurs at the very heart of the highest deity because that deity, Śiva, has the power to will. The capacity to will, as intention, that is, as free will, is itself indicative of time. Those schools of thought that locate a transcendent reality outside of time, he tells us, are simply catering to students whose understanding is limited. This works fine as expedient teaching, acceptable for folks who are caught in the illusions of Māyā, but it is not the truth. He continues: You may protest that it says here in this verse that limited souls which are created have sequence; [since they exist within time], but the Śiva Archetype does not. In reply [Utpaladeva] says “because of the universality of the Subject.” There also, in fact, the presence of sequence is proved. So [the text] says “that, in this way”.30 That is, the Subject, who resides in the limited Māyā-bound individual is the same as the Subject which is Śiva. If the limited Subject can manifest sequence, surely the highest reality Śiva has the capacity also to contain sequence.31 The essence of his argument depends on the idea that subjectivity is foundational and all-pervasive, in both the limited person and the highest absolute. Even if we can postulate some absolute reality or transcendent deity, outside of time, the very notion of a foundational subjectivity entails that it instantiates everywhere, allpervasively.32 This means that this subjectivity at base entails free will and that just as we in our limited bodies experience the unfolding of events in time as a result of free-will choices, this unfolding of time necessarily occurs also for the cosmic consciousness that is the absolute reality and/or the highest deity and this arises through the free will of both cosmic consciousness and our limited selves.33

6 SUBJECTIVITY What Abhinavagupta’s Svātantryavāda, Free-Will model adds to these mathematical derivations of free will is his emphasis on subjectivity. This emphasis on subjectivity as necessarily tied to the idea of free will and

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non-determinism is not found in Gisin’s work. Abhinavagupta, on the other hand, includes it it as a central component of his thinking. I suggest that the idea of subjectivity as an element in Abhinavagupta’s model intuitively follows from the notion of free will. And even as Gisin is silent on the notion of subjectivity, Brouwer’s work on Intuitionist Mathematics, in contrast, turned as well toward the idea of subject, referenced as the “Creating Subject,” and pointing to the role of the free choices made by the mathematician as part of the configuration of an Intuitionist Mathematics. Moreover, I suggest that the idea of a foundational subjectivity restructures the way causality operates, and as such, mental causality is written in at the base; it does not need to be derived. Intuitionist Mathematics gestures toward this, offering a mathematical logic premised on free will, the reality of time, and a non-predetermined reality and with this, the element of subjectivity as intrinsic. First, we can briefly look at Abhinavagupta’s model to get a sense of his conception of subjectivity and then look at Brouwer’s formulation. Subjectivity is foundational to Abhinavagupta’s model of consciousness; it is the marker for consciousness. Subjectivity, the “I,” is the basis, which then expands outwardly, taking on a third-person perspective to become the objects we encounter. Abhinavagupta says: The Subject’s form, which is a unity of awareness contains also an excess, an abundance of awareness. This is deposited into the side of the object that is going to be created. So inwardly the [object] has the attribute of śakti, Energy which is none other than the form of consciousness.34 To be an object, that is, insentient, is to be in the grip of what we might call an excess of third-person perspective, “this-ness” (idantā), in contrast to an innate subjectivity, “I-ness” (ahantā), the first-person perspective. Subjectivity as the “I” (ahantā) is in essence a form of awareness (vimarśa), yet an awareness that intrinsically links to activity (kriyā) and with this, is tied to the material world.35 In Abhinavagupta’s system, however, “this-ness” and “I-ness” are modes and as such, not two irreparably separate categories. Rather, subjectivity is embedded at the core of the “this-ness” (idantā) that makes up the objects in the world. In other words, subjectivity is the foundation; the third-person perspective is secondary and derived from this. Even mere objects, a clay jar, at base are simply consciousness as subjectivity. He tells us, “that clay jar—its true nature is the essence of consciousness when it is in a state without mental differentiation; it is complete, like consciousness itself, the body of the whole world.”36 That is, even a mere object has, a deeply retained sense of subjectivity. We see, [a]nd in precisely this way, even while accepting the state of being mere object, by properly, in a true way touching and perceiving the object’s

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“This-ness” in the highest sense, then out of the objects, those “things” perceived, consciousness alone flows forth. The “thing” in its essential nature is the expanse of Light (prakāśa). And this expanse of Light consists of an active awareness (vimarśa), the “I” which is not looking towards something other.37 Thus at the heart of everything is a foundational subjectivity, premised on a monism. Abhinavagupta draws his monism from his predecessor Somānanda, whose model approximates a pantheism (Nemec 2014). Abhinavagupta adds nuance and the precision of a dual-aspect model to Somānanda’s animist nondualist pantheism which sees all things as the expanse of light (prakāśa)38 to formulate his own panentheism as dual-aspect, with both the expanse of light (prakāśa) and its inner awareness as subjectivity (vimarśa). The light of consciousness (prakāśa) congeals to make objects in the world. This is one aspect of his dual-aspect monism. At the heart of this expanse of light—out of which things come to be—at the heart is a subjectivity; this is the second aspect of his dual-aspect monism. This is the “I,” an active awareness (vimarśa), which is what gives even a clay jar its life, its sentience. Abhinavagupta explains this dual-aspect monism in cosmological terms, as a cosmic subjectivity, which is the absolute, (Śiva), which then unfolds to make our world, yet which nevertheless does not lose its inner consciousness: “pure consciousness lying in the core exists as a state containing both inner and outer. As Māyā’s creation spreads out, expands into many branches, the Lord remains still within the core.”39 As Māyā’s creation spreads out; we get the complex variety of our world, while still all the while, even in seeming dead matter, clay jars, a pure awareness, consciousness remains at the core. His cosmopsychist model entails a panpsychism—all things are innately conscious—yet they derive from a single unfolding cosmopsychist reality. As I mentioned, while we do not see the notion of subjectivity in Gisin’s work, Brouwer’s work, on the other hand, points to a notion of a subject that underlies his model of intuitionist mathematics. He called this the “Creating Subject.”40 As Mark van Atten thoughtfully lays out, Brouwer formulates intuitionist mathematics from a postulation of a subjectivity of the mathematician generating free choices.41 His idea of the “Creating Subject” focuses on whether the temporal order in which a mathematician establishes mathematical theorems can change the mathematical argument.42 His arguments suggest that the person, the subject engaging in a mathematical problem within the system of intuitionist mathematics does not exist outside the system, but is, in fact, integral to it. The idea is radical; it eats away at the core of a postulation of objectivity. This turn to an idea of the subject as foundational offers a radically, profoundly different model for understanding the world. As such, it left some

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of his students perplexed and uncomfortable. His student, Arend Heyting, who later compiled his writings and succeeded him as Mathematics professor at the University of Amsterdam, wrote this regarding Brouwer’s idea of the “Creating Subject”: “It is true that Brouwer in his lecture introduced an entirely new idea for which the subject is of essential importance. As I said, I feel that it is still questionable whether it is possible and whether it is good to introduce this idea in mathematics” (Niekus 2010: 31). The problem, of course, with bringing in subjectivity is precisely that it upends the notion that science generally, and the mathematical logic that underpins it, offers truth precisely because it proposes a universal, third-person, objective reality divorced from subjective perspectives. When Brouwer brings back in the “Creating Subject” he throws a wrench in the gears of this logic, concluding instead that our external world cannot be calculated and predetermined outside of a subject engaging in mathematical operations. This entails as well an idea of freedom; as van Atten points out, the “Creating Subject” is essentially free in the choices she makes.43 This freedom carries with it also again the idea of indeterminism. The Creating Subject cannot know in advance what will come in (van Atten 2018: 1573); in other words, the future is not predetermined, and thus not calculable by an algorithm.44 It may also be possible to liken Brouwer’s understanding of the Creating Subject to a cosmic subjectivity. Iemhoff reads it this way (Iemhoff and Zalta 2020: 2.2), and in this sense, it is akin to Abhinavagupta’s formulation of a cosmological cosmopsychism, however, this goes beyond the scope of this paper.45 In any case, Brouwer offers a way of doing the precise work of mathematics, while retaining the idea of a subjective perspective.

7 CONCLUDING REMARK I suggest here that it is the shift to a foundational subjectivity that Abhinavagupta makes that underwrites the possibility for a mental causation not reliant on emergentism. The reliance on a subjective perspective goes against our habitual invocation of a third-person perspective as more “logical.” However, the mathematical demonstrations of Gisin’s and Brouwer’s adoption of Intuitionist Mathematics afford a method for inscribing free will, non-determinism and time, and in Brouwer’s work particularly, an intrinsic subjective perspective for a philosophy of science. Abhinavagupta’s cosmology shares these features with Intuitionist Mathematics, while emphasizing the element of subjectivity as foundational to mental causality. Abhinavagupta’s articulation of a subjectively oriented philosophical model can add to our thinking on models of mental causality.

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NOTES 1

Abhinavagupta, for instance, asserts causality lies not with material objects, but within a subjective perspective, telling us: “it cannot be proved that the relation of cause and effect is grounded within what lacks sentience. Rather, however, the relation of cause and effect lies only with that which is conscious” (Abhinavagupta 1985a: 3:257) jaḍe pratiṣṭhitaḥ kāryakāraṇabhāvo na upapadyate, api tucidrūpa eva.

2

I discuss this in great detail, with specific attention to understanding Abhinavagupta’s relevance for a contemporary philosophy of mind, in Biernacki (forthcoming, 2022), The Matter of Wonder: Abhinavagupta’s Panentheism and New Materialism, particularly in the fourth chapter. I also discuss the relevance of Abhinavagupta has for contemporary philosophy of mind in Biernacki (2015, 2016).

3

See, for instance, Chalmers (1996). For an examination of different models, see (Goff 2017), and for an extensive overview (Bruntrup and Jaskolla 2016). See as well Strawson (2006) particularly Galen Strawson’s work on subjectivity (Strawson 2017).

4

See Sam Coleman’s articulate critique of the combination problem and why panpsychism still has a problem with its reliance on emergentism, even as his primary argument focuses on panpsychism more generally (Coleman 2014).

5

See, for instance, Ratie (2014: 171).

6

See, for instance, Shani (2015) and Goff (2019).

7

I outline the details of Abhinavagupta’s model of subjectivity at great length in a forthcoming publication.

8

The quote continues, “This happens because of the power (niyatiśakti) to determine things as one way or another.” In the interest of space I will not go into greater depth here, but propose elsewhere that we may read this as an appeal to theology, and his recognition of the intractability of the decombination problem (forthcoming), even if, as we see below it also entails that even a mere insect can lay claim to this freedom. (Abhinavagupta 1985b: 1:180:) “etadevasvātantryaṃ yadatidurghaṭakāritvam | durghaṭaṃ ca tat niyatiśaktikṛtādeva māyādaśāyāṃ.”

9

I discuss at great length Abhinavagupta’s model linking subjectivity to freedom (Biernacki, Matter of Wonder: Abhinavagupta’s Panentheism and New Materialism, Oxford University Press, 2022, forthcoming). Abhinavagupta’s cosmopsychism as all-pervasive entails it even in an insect or a clay jar. Abhinavagupta tells us that even for a “clay jar– its true nature is the essence of consciousness” in (Abhinavagupta and Utpaladeva 1986: ad 1.6.3, line 1237) “citsvabhāvo ‘sau ghaṭaḥ.”

10 Abhinavagupta, Īśvara Pratyabhijñā Vivṛti Vimarśinī, ed. Paṇḍit Madhusudan Kaul Śāstrī, vol. 3 (Delhi: Akay Reprints, 1985), 260: “Māyīyānāṃ kīṭāntānāṃ svakāryakaraṇāvasare yat kāryaṃ purā hṛdaye sphurati.” See also footnote 55 below, which discusses the distinction Nemec sees between Somānanda and Utpaladeva. 11 This might be understood as akin to Descartes declaration that his thoughts might be true or false, but that his awareness of thinking was indisputable.

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12 Bergson wrote of Einstein’s theory of time that it is “a metaphysics grafted upon science, it is not science,” in Canales, Jimena (2015: 6). 13 Gisin (2019: 7, n.10) tells us, “Here I am clearly building on the huge success of quantum information science and on Landauer’s famous claim—‘Information is Physical’, by which he meant that information has always to be encoded in some physical stuff in Gisin (2019: 7, n.10). 14 Gisin points to the disjunct for physicists around the problem of real numbers and infinite information as one that physics mostly rejects in favor of working with the finitude of our real and limited world. Quoting Max Born he says, “My experience is that most physicists reject the faithfulness of such a representation, but admit— often with regret—that they don’t see how one could do otherwise. For example, Max Born, one of the fathers of quantum theory, stressed that “Statements like ‘a quantity x has a completely definite value’ (expressed by a real number and represented by a point in the mathematical continuum) seem to me to have no physical meaning,” in Gisin (2020: 115). And again he tells us, “in practice one never uses real numbers with all their infinitely many digits. Think, for example, of computer simulations that necessarily at each time only consider finite information numbers,” in (Gisin (2020: 116). 15 One of Abhinavagupta’s first twentieth-century interpreters, K. C. Pandey, stressing that Abhinavagupta understood the world as real, labeled Abhinavagupta’s philosophical system as a “Realist Idealism,” in Pandey (1963: 320). Isabelle Ratie argues that the dichotomy of realism/idealism does not work for Abhinavagupta’s Pratyabhijñā and that it does “consider the phenomenal world as perfectly real,” in Ratie (2011: 481, n.4). 16 (Pandey 1963: 320). 17 “Anapahnavanīyatayāvastueva” (Abhinavagupta 1985a: 3:288). 18 Tataḥ kartṛtvaṃ vyatirikte kārye na upapadyate (Abhinavagupta 1985a: 3:316). 19 I unpack the argument he uses in great detail elsewhere (forthcoming). 20 This is in a sense also the point that Karen Barad makes about Niels Bohr’s interpretation of quantum indeterminacy as ontological in contrast to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle as epistemological, in Barad (2007: 115–16). 21 It is important to note that Abhinavagupta’s formulation here does not entail indeterminacy but at best offers secondary support. I thank Itay Shani for pointing this out. 22 As I note elsewhere (forthcoming), fate, in this way, is never entirely determined, but only partially, by the web of five sheaths (kañcuka) that usually overlay our awareness. These include time, a limited sense of knowledge, a limited capacity to do, desire, and fate (niyati). By accessing an innate subjectivity, we can be not constrained by sheaths. This means the freedom to change destiny is somewhat accessible, to the extent we can embrace a stance of subjectivity. 23 “Svātantryeṇavā” iti īśvarasṛṣṭyanapekṣayā. Nirmāṇam itisamarthitamitisambandhaḥ (Abhinavagupta 1985a: 3:260). 24 Ipvv vol.3 p. 260: “Nirmātṛpade” iti. Māyīyānāṃ kīṭāntānāṃ svakāryakaraṇāvasare yat kāryaṃ purā hṛdaye sphurati. 25 Abhinavagupta tells us, “Freedom is awareness. This is the reality. There, the impurity occurs by destroying [freedom] through making separate portions,

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because this is in fact removing its essential nature. This impurity is a contraction, limiting one’s own inherent wealth… For example, if you take a portion of kajjal, the black coal from an oil lamp out of its own proper element and place it on some other substance, then there it’s just dirt, impurity [making a mess]. But in its own natural habitual state [on the lamp] it is a single unified creation, a form which is one dense mass [of black. Without a counterpoint of comparison] it is completely free from impurity, supremely pure, though that very thing was earlier considered a fault.” In Abhinavagupta 1985a: 3:313 “‘Svatantro bodha’ityetattattvam. Tatrabhāgāntarahānyā svarūpāpahārāt malamaṇutāṃ saṃkocamādadhānamāṇavaṃ dvidhā. Malaṃhi anyena vijātīyenayogaḥ kajjalaṃśaḥ svadhāyāḥ, tadaṃśo’pi kajjalasyeti ekajātīyamekaghanaṃ rūpaṃ yatnirmalaṃviśuddhaṃ.” For the terminology of consciousness as an undifferentiated mass, cidghana, see also Bansat-Boudon (2014: 43–4). 26 Emendation to the version from Muktabodha which reads dhurni instead of ghurni. 27 (Abhinavagupta 1985a: 3:330: ) “Svatantra” iti. Svatantrabodho nāma boddharūpo’hamitiyo gīyate, sakaḥ iticintāyāṃ yadādehādinātadrūpaṃ pūryateyogauraḥ, so’haṃ; yadṣuddhitaḥ, so’hamityādi; tadādehādirevapradhānībhavati saṃvitsvarūpaṃ nyakkṛtaṃ jātamitibhedyameva pradhānībhavati, na vedakarūpam, yadātudehādeḥ kiṃtattvamiti cintopakramaṃ prakāśaghanamevasaṃvidrūpamiti, tadābodhassvarūpīkṛtaṃ tadrasānuviddham eva śūnyādidehāntamavabhātīti abhyāsāt tasyasaṃviddharmāḥ śaktiviśeṣāḥ samyagāviśanto vibhūtīrutthāpayanti, anabhyāse’pitutatkṣaṇāveśa eva ānando dbhavakampanidrāvyāptirūpaghūrṇyāvirbhāvanakrameṇa jīvanmuktatālābhaḥ (Abhinavagupta 1985a: 3:330). 28 Somadeva’s Kathāsaritsāgara offers a nice illustration of these powers of a yogi, in (Somadeva 1915, passim). 29 “Yadātutasyaciddharmavibhavāmodajṛmbhayā |vicitraracanānānākāryasṛṣṭipravart ane|| bhavatyunmukhatācittāsecchāyāḥ prathamātuṭiḥ | (2/8) iti. (Abhinavagupta 1985a: 3:263) Paramaśive’pi bhagavati aunmukhyarūpāyānandaśakterīcchāśakty apekṣayā prathamatvaṃ pūrvabhāvitvaṃ, tuṭiritikālāṃśarūpatvaṃ tadupapadyate; anyathākramābhāve kathaṃ pūrvāparībhāvavyavahāraḥ kintu, upadeśyāpekṣayā antargatamāyīyapramātrapekṣayā cayukto’sāviti. 30 Nanu atrasūtrekramavanto māyāpramātāraḥ sṛṣṭāḥ, natu śivatattvam (Abhinavagupta 1985a: 3:263). Āha “pramātṛsāmānyāt” iti. Tatrāpihi upapāditākramasthitiḥ. Ata eva uktaṃ “tad evam” iti. 31 In a gesture that seems to accommodate both views, as Gisin does with his nuanced notion of two types of time, Abhinavagupta tells us it depends on our perspective. He gives us alternative readings of Utpaladeva’s text on which he is commenting here: “Alternatively, he says, ‘Or perhaps’ these souls, these Māyā-bound souls do not at all [have sequence either] here viewing them from the perspective of the ultimate reality” (Abhinavagupta 1985a: 3:263) “Tevānakeciditivāstavaṃ pakṣamāha ‘athavā’ iti.” If the divine itself is free of time, then we might suggest that viewed from this perspective ordinary beings are as well. This last point does indeed offer a counter-argument. I suggest that this is characteristic of Abhinavagupta’s style, to give us a rich presentation of possibilities that do not all agree. I thank Susanne Beiweis for pointing this out.

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32 As Gisin points out, tied to these ideas of free will and time unfolding is also a logical refutation of the Law of the Excluded Middle. He draws from Brouwer here as well (Brouwer 1981: 5–8). Gisin tells us that this Law depends upon the assumptions of infinite information tied to real numbers and that if we adopt a different mathematical model, that of intuitionist mathematics, the Law of the Excluded Middle no longer holds, in Gisin (2020: 116). The example he uses has to do with the incorporation of time, for instance, the question of whether it will be raining in a year or not is not amenable to the Law of the Excluded Middle. Given the use of this concept as a way of criticizing Indian philosophy, Gisin’s observation of the assumptions entailed in the Law of the Excluded Middle is interesting. However, Abhinavagupta’s adoption of structural similarities to Gisin’s intuitionist mathematics is not found in other Indian philosophies, such as Advaita Vedānta. 33 George Dreyfus articulates this idea I think as well from a Buddhist perspective, when he suggests that we leave phenomenology when we posit a transcendent self, in Dreyfus (2013: 135). 34 Abhinavagupta, Ipvv, 3:258: Bodhaikarūpasya pramātur yad adhikamabodharūpaṃ, tat nirmātavyapakṣe nikṣipyate iti tasya yat nijam śaktirūpaṃ dharmaḥ. 35 Elsewhere, I translate vimarśa as “active awareness” and discuss the relationship between vimarśa as an active awareness and prakāśa as the elment of light which gives rise to the appearance of our material world in great detail (Biernacki 2022). Given the complexity of the argument and the constraints of space I will not go into this argument here. I also there discuss the relation these terms bear to the terms jñāna, knowledge, and kriyā, action. 36 “Tadavikalpadaśāyāṃ citsvabhāvo ‘sau ghaṭaḥ cidvadeva viśvaśarīraḥ pūrṇaḥ” (Abhinavagupta and Utpaladeva 1986: ad 1.6.3, line 1237). See here also Catherine Prueitt’s extended discussion of this passage relating this to the concept of apoha, differentiation as delimitation in Prueitt (2017). 37 Tathā hi vedyadaśām aṅgīkṛtavatām api ata eva ucitena idantāparāmarśena parāmṛśyānāṃ bodha eva prakāśātmā sāraṃ vastu, prakāśaś ca ananyonmukhāhaṃ vimarśamayaḥ (Abhinavagupta 1985a: 3:274). Here again Abhinava indulges in a play on words where parāmarśa means both touching the “other” and touching the highest. And again he playfully contrasts this with the word “vimarśa” the supreme power of active awareness, the “touching” of the Lord. 38 Abhinavagupta derives this dual-aspect monism from Utpaladeva’s writings; clearly present in Utpaladeva’s work, it is less clear in Somānanda’s writings. 39 Abhyantaracinmātrāpekṣayā antarbahirbhāvasya sadbhāvaḥ, māyīye tu sarge >bhy antareśvaravṛddhyādyapekṣayā bahuśākho >sau (Abhinavagupta 1985a: 3:262). 40 See particularly Mark Van Atten’s helpful analysis of Brouwer’s “creating subject” in van Atten (2018). See also Niekus (2010). The mathematics involved in both of these articles is beyond my skill set, however, both of these authors, van Atten in particular, do a good job of situating these mathematical proofs within a contextual argument to make them accessible for broader philosophical interest. 41 As van Atten (2018: 1594) points out here, quoting Troelstra, intutionist mathematics entails the “subjectivistic viewpoint of intuitionism.”

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42 As van Atten points out, Brouwer’s intuitionist mathematics recognizes the foundational priority of the subject. Van Atten tells us, “the Creating Subject cannot simply accept a proof from outside, and must go through the steps to reconstruct the evidence. In the end, then, its own ability to make A evident is what really matters,” in (van Atten 2018: 1595). 43 Van Atten makes this point within a mathematical formulation, and it may be of interest for mathematically inclined readers to examine the mathematical proof he lays out in detail; for our purposes here, I focus on the philosophical idea of subjecitivy underlying the model. I reproduce here van Atten’s mathematical formulation, symbols intact, for interested readers, but the mathematical proof is beyond my ken: “Then it can be argued from the essential freedom of the Creating Subject, that ∀n°˛°˛∃k(a*n (k) = 1) (112) because the Creating Subject is free to work towards constructing its nth lawlike sequence, but that ∀n ∃k(a*n (k) = 1) (113) is not true, because the same freedom allows the Creating Subject, for given n, not to begin constructing its nth lawlike sequence by whatever stage k the lawlike sequence a*n indicates,” in (van Atten 2018: 1609). Also van Atten reiterates the importance of freedom, the free choices of the “Creating Subject” saying, “Troelstra is clear that Creating Subject sequences (‘empirical sequences’) do depend on free choices of the Creating Subject, and that they are not lawlike in a sense that would include their being independent of the Creating Subject’s free choices,” again in (van Atten 2018: 1609). 44 This brings in again the idea of time, as a separate argument from what we saw in Gisin’s argument for including time in a mathematical schema. As van Atten points out, we find this in Brouwer: “To see why the time parameter in this sense is mathematically relevant for the Creating Subject, recall Brouwer’s statement in his dissertation that mathematics is first of all an act.” I am reminded here of Abhinavagupta’s statement that we saw earlier, linking “Doership” to the reality of the world. That is, the world is real because it is linked to the willful actions of a subject. In this case Abhinavagupta shares with Brouwer a recognition of the fundamental importance of instantiated, material activity as an element of a firstperson perspective. 45 Van Atten addresses this element of reading Brouwer’s Creating Subject as a singular subject, as well, and quotes Brouwer to argue, in effect, against this reading, suggesting rather that the Creating Subject be understood schematically, with a possible instantiation in a variety of subjects, in (van Atten 2018: 1595). In both cases, I think what is key is the shift in the model from a third-person perspective to subjectivity as the grounding perspective.

REFERENCES Abhinavagupta (1985a), Īśvara Pratyabhijñā Vivṛti Vimarśinī, ed. Paṇḍit Madhusudan Kaul Śāstrī, vol. 3, 3 vols., Delhi: Akay Reprints. Abhinavagupta (1985b), Īśvara Pratyabhijñā Vivṛti Vimarśinī, ed. Paṇḍit Madhusudan Kaul Śāstrī, reprint. Vol. 1., 3 vols., Delhi: Akay Reprints. Available online: https://archive.org/details/ IshvaraPratyabhijnaVivritiVimarshiniAbhinavaguptaPart1KashmirSanskrit/ mode/2up.

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Abhinavagupta and Utpaladeva (1986), Isvarapratyabhijnavimarsini, Adhikaras 1–4. Based on the following edition: Īśvara-pratyabhijñā-Vimarśinī of Abhinavagupta: doctrine of divine recognition, Sanskrit Text with the commentary Bhāskarī, ed. K. C. Pandey and K. A. Subramania-Iyer, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, digital on Goettingen Register of Electronic Texts in Indian Languages. Available online: http://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil/1_sanskr/6_sastra/3_phil/saiva/abhiprvu. htm. Atten, Mark van (2018), “Creating Subject, the Brouwer-Kripke Schema, and Infinite Proofs,” Indagationes Mathematicae, 29 (Virtual Special Issue-L.E.J. Brouwer after 50 years): 1565–636. Available online: https://doi.org/10.1016/j. indag.2018.06.005. Bansat-Boudon, L. (2014), “On Śaiva Terminology: Some Key Issues of Understanding,” Journal of Indian Philosophy, 42 (1): 39–97. Barad, K. (2007), Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Biernacki, L. (2015), “The Conscious Body: Thinking about the Relation between Mind and Body with Abhinavagupta’s Tantra,” in E. Kelly, A. Crabtree and P. Marshall (eds), Beyond Physicalism: Toward Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality, 349–86, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Biernacki, L. (2016), “Connecting Consciousness to Physical Causality: Abhinavagupta’s Phenomenology of Subjectivity and Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory,” Religions, 7: 1–11. Biernacki, L. (2022, forthcoming), Matter of Wonder: Abhinavagupta’s Panentheism and New Materialism, New York: Oxford University Press. Brouwer, L. E. J. (1981), Brouwer’s Cambridge Lectures on Intuitionism, ed. D. van Dalen, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bruntrup, G. and L. Jaskolla, eds (2016), Panpsychism: Contemporary Perspectives, New York: Oxford University Press. Canales, J. (2015), Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate That Changed Our Understanding of Time, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Chalmers, D. (1996), The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, New York: Oxford University Press. Coleman, S. (2014), “The Real Combination Problem: Panpsychism, Micro-Subjects, and Emergence,” Erkenntnis, 79: 19–44. Available online: https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10670-013-9431-x. Dennett, D. (1991), Consciousness Explained, New York: Little, Brown and Co. Dreyfus, G. (2013), “Self and Subjectivity: A Middle Way Approach,” in M. Siderits, E. Thompson and D. Zahavi (eds), Self, No Self? Perspectives from Analytic, Phenomenological and Indian Traditions, 114–56, New York: Oxford University Press. Gisin, N. (2016), “Time Really Passes, Science Can’t Deny That,” in R. Rennar and S. Stupar (eds), In Time in Physics, 1–15, Cham, Switzerland: Birkhauser – Springer, arXiv:1602.01497v1. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1602.01497.pdf. Gisin, N. (2019), “Indeterminism in Physics, Classical Chaos and Bohmian Mechanics: Are Real Numbers Really Real?,” Erkenntnis, October 1–13. Available online: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-019-001658. Gisin, N. (2020), “Mathematical Languages Shape Our Understanding of Time in Physics,” Nature Physics, 16 (2): 114–16. Available online: https://doi.org/10.1038/ s41567-019-0748-5.

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Goff, P. (2017), Consciousness and Fundamental Reality, New York: Oxford University Press. Goff, P. (2019), “Cosmopsychism, Micropsychism, and the Grounding Relation,” in William Seager (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism, 144–56, Leiden: Routledge. Iemhoff, R. (2020), “Intuitionism in the Philosophy of Mathematics,” in E. N. Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available online: https://plato.stanford. edu/archives/fall2020/entries/intuitionism/. Nemec, J. (2014), “Evidence for Somānanda’s Pantheism,” Journal of Indian Philosophy, 42: 99–114. Niekus, J. (2010), “Brouwer’s Incomplete Objects,” History and Philosophy of Logic, 31 (February): 31–46. Available online: https://doi. org/10.1080/01445340903445071. Oizumi, M., L. Albantakis and G. Tononi (2014), “From the Phenomenology to the Mechanisms of Consciousness: Integrated InformationTheory 3.0,” PLOS: Computational Biology, May. Available online: http://journals.plos.org/ ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003588. Pandey, K. C. (1963), Abhinavagupta: An Historical and Philosophical Study, 2nd enlarged edn., Varanasi: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series. Prueitt, C. (2017), “Shifting Concepts: The Realignment of Dharmakīrti on Concepts and the Error of Subject/Object Duality in Pratyabhijñā Śaiva Thought,” Journal of Indian Philosophy, 45: 21–47. Available online: https://doi.org/DOI10.1007/ s10781-016-9297-8. Ratie, I. (2011), “Can One Prove That Something Exists beyond Consciousness? A Śaiva Criticism of the Sautrāntika Inference of External Objects,” Journal of Indian Philosophy, 39: 479–501. Ratie, I. (2014), “Śaiva Interpretation of the Satkāryavāda: The Sāṃkhya Notion of Abhivyakti and Its Transformation in the Pratyabhijñā Treatise,” Journal of Indian Philosophy, 42 (March): 127–72. Searle, J. R. (2006), “Minding the Brain,” Gale Literature: Book Review, New York Review of Books, 53 (17), November 2, 2006. Available online: https://www. nybooks.com/articles/2006/11/02/minding-the-brain/. Shani, I. (2015), “Cosmopsychism: A Holistic Approach to the Metaphysics of Experience,” Philosophical Papers, 44 (3): 389–437. Shani, I. and J. Keppler (2018), “Beyond Combination: How Cosmic Consciousness Grounds Ordinary Experience,” Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 4 (3): 390–410. Somadeva (1915), Kathāsaritsāgara, Gottigen, Germany: Nirnaya-Sagar Press in GRETIL. Available online: http://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil/1_sanskr/5_ poetry/4_narr/sokss_pu.htm. Strawson, G. (2006), “Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism,” in A. Freedman (ed.), Consciousness and Its Place in Nature: Does Physicalism Entail Panpsychism? 3–31, Exeter: Imprint Academic. Strawson, G. (2017), Subject of Experience, New York: Oxford University Press. Tononi, G. (2012), Phi: A Voyage from the Brain to the Soul, New York: Pantheon. Tononi, G. (n.d.), “Why Scott Should Stare at a Blank Wall and Reconsider (or, the Conscious Grid),” Shtetl-Optimized: The Blog of Scott Aaronson (blog). Available online: http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1823 (accessed April 13, 2016).

CHAPTER FIVE

Karma and Mental Causation: A Nikāya Buddhist Perspective GEORGE WONG SOO LAM

1 INTRODUCTION The aim of this paper is to situate the early Indian (Nikāya) Buddhist1 notion of karmic causation within the mental causation discourse in the Western analytic tradition, which concerns causal transactions involving mental events, such as desires, beliefs, and intentions, whether the transactions are between mental events, or between mental events and physical events. Karmic causation involves actional causes, in concert with non-actional causes, and their experiential effects on the actor, in concert with non-experiential effects. The problems generated by karmic causation in Buddhism overlap with those generated by mental causation in the Western analytic tradition. They include how the mental aspects relate to the physical aspects of the self, sense perception, and action, as well as how the mental and physical aspects of an actional cause relate to the experiential and non-experiential aspects of an effect on the actor. To make sense of mental causation, it is crucial to understand a cluster of associated concepts such as causation, the self, sense perception, and action. Similarly, to make sense of karmic causation, it is crucial to understand a cluster of associated concepts such as dependent arising (paṭiccasamuppāda), the

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fivefold laws of nature (pañca-niyāma), the five aggregates (pañca-khandha), the six sense bases (Saḷayatana), action (karma), and results (vipāka). I shall discuss these concepts under the headings of causation, the self, sense perception, and action before I move on to address karmic causation in the context of the mental causation debate.2 The main contention of this paper is that, after examining the cluster of associated concepts, karmic causation does not fit neatly into the various standard positions of the mental causation debate given the differences in the approach to causation and the conception of the mental and the physical between the Western analytic tradition and the early Indian Buddhist tradition3 (see Section 6). On the approach to causation, the Western analytic tradition usually treats cause and effect as an atomistic one-to-one relation, whereas the Buddhist tradition treats cause and effect as a holistic many-to-many relation (see Section 7). On the conception of the mental and the physical, the Western analytic tradition usually conceives of the mental and the physical as either strictly distinct or strictly identical, whereas the Buddhist tradition conceives of the mental and the physical as neither strictly distinct nor strictly identical. On the Buddhist conception, the line between the mental and the physical is blurred and yet the bond between them is tight.

2 THE BUDDHIST ACCOUNT OF CAUSATION The Buddha mentioned the four characteristics of causal relations governing all things in The Discourse on the Requisite Conditions (Paccaya Sutta), namely (1) objectivity (tathatā—it is exactly so), (2) necessity (avitathatā), (3) invariability (anaññathatã—not otherwise), and (4) conditionality (idappaccayatā). The first characteristic, objectivity, emphasizes the reality of causal relations, as opposed to the Upanisadic view, which maintains that causal relations are mere epistemological categories or subjective phenomena without ontological status or objective reality. According to early Buddhism, causation is not a category of relations between ideas but a category of conditions in the actual world, both subjective and objective. The second and third characteristics, necessity and invariability, emphasize the exceptionless-ness and regularity of causal relations. Necessity means that a certain set of conditions will give rise to a certain effect, as opposed to accidentalism, where a certain set of conditions can give rise to something entirely different. Invariability does not refer to the nature of causes and effects but to the nature of the relation between causes and effects. It emphasizes the constancy of the relations between causes of certain kinds and effects of certain kinds rather than the sameness of causes and effects. The fourth characteristic, conditionality,

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is the notion that things come into existence only if a set of conditions is present. It avoids the two extremes of unconditional necessity (fatalism) and unconditional arbitrariness (accidentalism), and hence is known as the middle path (Kalupahana 1976: 27–8). Based on the four characteristics of causal relations, the Buddha formulated the following general causal principle, known as “dependent arising” (paṭiccasamuppāda), in The Discourse of the Uninstructed (Assutavā Sutta) and other early texts: When that is present, this comes to be; on the arising of that, this arises. When that is absent, this does not come to be; on the cessation of that, this ceases. (Kalupahana 1992: 56) The principle of “dependent arising” stated above has three empirical features. First, it expresses a temporal relation, which is unexpressed on the hypothetical or the conditional syllogism using the “if-then” formula used in the more rationalist systems of logic. Second, the relation between “that” and “this” highlights the experiential component of the relation rather than the rational component. “This” refers to the effect that is experienced, and “that” refers to the cause that has already been experienced. Third, the relationship between “this” and “that” refers to the relationship between two events rather than between two ideas (Kalupahana 1992: 57). In his Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga), fifth-century Buddhist scholar Buddhaghosa defined “dependent arising” as a set of causes or conditions acting together, rather than a single cause or a single condition acting individually, in producing a set of effects: This total conditionally, acting interdependently, Arouses states together equally; (Buddhaghosa 2010: 537) Notably, the set of effects will not be produced if some of the causes or conditions from the set are absent, or if they are present but not acting together. In other words, “when that” in the positive statement refers to the presence of a set of causes or conditions, and “when not that” in the negative statement refers to the absence of a set of causes or conditions. Moreover, the dependent arising formula is intended to account for two different types of relations—the statement “when that is present, this comes to be” accounts for relativity, and the statement “on the arising of that, this arises” accounts for genetic relations (Kalupahana 1975: 56).

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Early Buddhists recognized the universal applicability of causation including the four characteristics of causal relations and “dependent arising.” Buddhaghosa was the first to employ the scheme of the fivefold laws of nature (pañca-niyāma) to explain every phenomenon. Modern Buddhist scholars (e.g., Rhys Davids, Bhikkhu Nārada Thera, David Kalupahana) built on the scheme consisting of (Jones 2012): 1. Inorganic physical laws (utu-niyāma)—the laws of seasons, which correspond to physics, chemistry, and the earth sciences. 2. Organic physical laws (bija-niyāma)—the laws of seeds, which correspond to biology and other life sciences. 3. Psychological laws (citta-niyāma)—the laws of thought, which correspond to psychology and other social sciences. 4. Moral laws (kamma-niyāma)—the laws of action, where moral acts tend to generate beneficial results, and immoral tend to generate detrimental results. 5. Spiritual laws (dhamma-niyāma)—the laws of truths, which correspond to the truths of the spiritual teachings. Consistent with the Buddha’s empirical approach, these fivefold laws seem so all-inclusive that nothing in experience is excluded. In short, everything in the universe comes within the framework of causation. However, while the four characteristics and “dependent arising” present few problems as a general causal account, the scheme of fivefold laws seems to reveal the problems of mental causation for the Buddhist account of causation. Firstly, while the first three of the fivefold laws seem to fit the empirical and naturalistic view, the last two seem not to. For how can the moral and the spiritual be part of the empirical and natural? A first response is that the Buddha treated what could be observed through both sensory and extrasensory means as empirical, phenomenological, and natural, not rationalistic, metaphysical, and supernatural. A second response, focusing solely on the relationship between the moral laws and the non-moral laws, is that not all events are explained by the moral laws and many other events are explained by the non-moral laws. Yet, even if the first two responses are acceptable and the moral and spiritual laws fit the empirical view, a deeper second problem of mental causation remains. Leaving the spiritual laws aside, the deeper second problem is this: If events belonging to the fivefold laws figure in the set of causes and conditions of a set of effects under the “dependent arising” formula, how do the moral laws interact with the nonmoral laws? I shall propose a solution later after discussing the other aspects of the karmic approach to mental causation.

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3 THE BUDDHIST ACCOUNT OF THE SELF The Buddhist notion of the empirical self or person consists of a “bundle” (khandha) of continuous and connected psychological and physiological aggregates by way of “dependent arising,” without positing a metaphysical self (attā) behind these processes. In The Debate of Milinda, it is explained via the following analogy: Just as a “chariot” arises when the parts are rightly set, a “person” arises when the aggregates are rightly set. And just as the “chariot” is not an unchanging and independent entity over and above the rightly set parts, the “person” is not an independent and unchanging entity over and above the rightly set aggregates (Pesala 2001: 34). As the Buddha examined his own person, he did not encounter an unchanging and independent self (attā), but the different facets of experiences instead, such as feeling (vedanā), perception (sañña), disposition (saṅkhāra), or consciousness (viññāṇa). Moreover, if there was anything other than these psychological facets that constituted the person, it was the body (rūpa). Moreover, the Buddha observed that all the five aggregates (pañca-khandha) comprising the empirical self or person are dependently arisen, and hence subject to impermanence (anicca) and insubstantiality (anatta) (Thanissaro 2005b). Although the notion of the five aggregates, as expounded in The Great Fullmoon Night Discourse (Maha-punnama Sutta), is usually negatively employed to reject the metaphysical self, it can also be positively employed to clarify the empirical self: 1. Body or form (rūpa) is the first part of the empirical self. It refers to both material form (including the human body) and the experience of material form (including the human body). Material form includes the four primary elements (mahābhūta)—earth, water, fire, and air— which correspond to the following experiences of material form— solidity, fluidity, heat, and motion. Body or form, then, can be seen as experienced materiality, without denying either the experiential or material aspects. For the Buddha, body or form accounts for the identity of the person as it is the most sensible part of the empirical self. 2. Feeling or sensation (vedanā) is the second part of the empirical self. It refers to the affective or valence aspect of human experience. There are three types of feelings: The pleasant or the pleasurable (sukha), the unpleasant or the painful (dukkha), and the neutral (adukkhamasukha). And feelings have different levels of intensity—less intense feelings account for attachment and aversion while more intense feelings account for craving and hatred. 3. Perception (sañña) is the third part of the empirical self. It refers to the cognitive or discriminative aspect of human experience. Like feelings,

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perceptions are connected to all other parts of the empirical self. Each perception is experienced as a blend of memories, imagination, concepts, feelings, dispositions, and material form. The Buddha rejected the notion of a pure percept free from other psychological and physiological elements, which he saw as a metaphysical or rationalist rather than a phenomenological or empirical notion. 4. Disposition (saṅkhāra) is the fourth part of the empirical self. It refers to the conative or volitional aspect of human experience, as well as the habits and tendencies conditioned by reactions to and feedbacks from past experiences; it explains why pure percepts are impossible. According to the Buddha, disposition contributes to the individuation of a person, and therefore his perceptions, feelings, and even material forms. Our disposition shapes not only the person we identify ourselves with and our experience of the physical and social environment at present, but also the person we will identify ourselves with and our experience of the physical and social environment in the future. Functioning as inclination, it plays a crucial role in helping us to make sense of the world, by selecting from the excessive information about the world we are exposed to. 5. Consciousness (viññāṇa) is the last part of the empirical self. It refers to a stream of awareness, whether of sensations or thoughts, and explains the continuity of a person individuated by disposition. Like the other parts, consciousness depends on the other four aggregates for its persistence. Consciousness does not refer to a permanent and eternal substance nor a series of discrete and momentary acts of awareness owned by an independent self. The Buddha held that consciousness is nothing more than the act of being conscious and that it cannot function independently of the other aggregates, especially material form. Just as pure percepts are impossible, pure experience, in terms of both sensations and thoughts, is impossible because like perception, experience is always conditioned by the other aggregates including dispositions, feelings, perceptions, and material form (Kalupahana 1992: 71–2). The Buddhist account of the self raises some questions pertaining to the relationship between the mental and the physical in the context of the mental causation debate. How is disposition, a psychological aggregate, related to the physiological aggregate? And how does disposition, as a psychological aggregate, cause a change in the physical environment? I shall propose a solution later after discussing the other aspects of the karmic approach to mental causation.

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4 THE BUDDHIST ACCOUNT OF SENSE PERCEPTION As discussed above, the five aggregates are interdependent of one another. Understanding the process of perception, especially sense perception, and how it is connected to the other aggregates, is crucial to understanding the Buddhist account of action and mental causation. The Buddha did not deny the validity of sense perception and acknowledged that sense perception (phassa or sañña) is the primary source of our knowledge of the world. However, he emphasized that sense perception tends to mislead us. This is not due to any defect in the sense perception itself, but mostly the manner in which we have been conditioned to interpret what we see, hear, feel, and so forth. In the Discourse on the Ball of Honey (Madhupiṇḍika Sutta), the Buddha described the process of sense perception and how sense perception may be misleading: Depending on the visual organ and the visible objects, O brethren, arises visual consciousness; the meeting together of these three is contact; because of contact arises feeling. What one feels, one perceives; what one perceives, one reasons about; what one reasons about, one is obsessed with. What one is obsessed with, due to that, concepts characterized by such obsessed perceptions assail him in regard to visible objects cognisable by the visual organ, belonging to the past, the future and the present. (Thanissaro 1999) In the earlier stages of the process of sense perception, attention is paid to the relationship between the sense organ, the sense object, and the act of consciousness. The above description possesses the following metaphysical and epistemological features (Kalupahana 1992: 32): 1. By basing sense perception on “dependent arising,” the notion of the metaphysical self or mental substance that plays the role of the agent is rejected. 2. The visual organ, which is part of the human body, is the first item mentioned in the formula. As the human body is part of the changing and interdependent five aggregates comprising an empirical self, the notion of a tabula rasa on which sense percepts are imprinted is also rejected. 3. Even though the sense object is mentioned after the sense organ, the formula accords equal importance to both, for the act of perception is dependent on both the sense organ and the sense object. The above description is silent on the nature of the sense object—whether the sense object is a physical object or a mere sense datum. But it requires that the

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sense object is compatible with the sense organ, for a sense object that is incompatible with the sense organ cannot be perceived. The Buddha focused on what a person does with the sense object or what happens to the sense object when the process of perception takes place, rather than on what the sense object is or how the sense object can be described. 4. A pure percept or an objective perception of the sense object cannot be achieved because the human perspective cannot be avoided, as expressed by the initial stage of sense experience, which underscores the dependence of consciousness on the sense organ and the sense object. Nevertheless, pure phenomenalism or idealism is not affirmed, as consciousness is generated by the contact between the sense organ and the sense object, both of which have a material basis (rūpa). In the later stages of the process of sense perception, the relationship between contact (phassa), feeling (vedanā), and perception (sañña) is examined. The meeting of the sense organ, the sense object, and the consciousness conditioned by them is called contact. The term “contact” is to be understood in its broader sense, as “encounter” or “familiarity,” and not in the narrower sense, as “touch” (Kalupahana 1992: 33–4). Because the term is applied in a more extended sense, the Buddha was able to claim that all views are dependent on contact. Feeling is the inevitable result of contact, which can be pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Familiarity can breed approval, disapproval, or indifference. The emotive aspect of sense perception is crucial in enabling the Buddha to ground moral evaluations in the world of experience instead of leaving them as arbitrary or supernatural evaluations disconnected from experienced reality. However, the Buddha was also aware that feelings can become excessive, overwhelming human beings to such an extent that they become irrational. The statement “what one feels, one perceives” indicates that our perceptions are influenced by our feelings. It clearly acknowledges that our interests and disinterests, or the more intense likes and dislikes, or the most intense craving and hatred, play an important role in our perceptions. No perception can be totally free from perspectives determined minimally by biases and prejudices (Kalupahana 1992: 33–4). The visual organ and the visual object mentioned in the formula comprise only one out of six pairs of sense bases (salayatana) mentioned in the Discourse on the Six Sextets (Chachakka Sutta), including (1) eye and sight, (2) ear and sound, (3) nose and smell, (4) tongue and taste, (5) skin and touch, (6) mind and concept/idea. Moreover, these six pairs or sense organs and sense objects condition the six corresponding acts of awareness, including (1) visual consciousness, (2) auditory consciousness, (3) olfactory consciousness, (4) gustatory consciousness, (5) tactile consciousness, and (6) ideational/conceptual consciousness.

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As a sense organ, the mind (mano) plays a cognitive role not shared by the other sense organs—it surveys the sense objects (percepts) of the other sense organs, a process known as “reflection.” Through “reflection,” the sense  objects (percepts) of the other sense organs become ideas or concepts or sense objects of the mind. The mind also plays a crucial role in generating the ego consciousness, or awareness of the self, and in shaping the entire process of perception. That said, it is worth noting that the mind is not synonymous with consciousness understood as the metaphysical self or a mental substance that underlies changes, but one of the six sense organs that condition consciousness with an added reflective aspect. And the “feeling of self” generated by the mind is understood in the same way as the feelings generated by the other sense organs (Kalupahana 1987: 29–30). The significance of the Buddhist account of sense perception in the mental causation debate lies in its description of the relationship between the sense receptors (six sense organs), sense content (six sense objects), and conscious states (six consciousnesses or acts of awareness), especially in terms of contact and obsession (papañca), which has crucial implications for action. Obsession refers to the preoccupation with sense objects (precepts) including those of the mind (concepts) as a result of perception distorted by feelings of different levels of intensity—interests and disinterests, likes and dislikes, or craving and hatred. I shall explore these implications further after discussing the karmic approach to mental causation.

5 THE BUDDHIST ACCOUNT OF ACTION The Buddhist account of action begins with the well-known term “karma,” which means “action” or “deed” (Thanissaro 1997a). More specifically, it refers to intentional or volitional acts, whether bodily, verbal or mental. In  A  Penetrating Analysis (Nibbedhika Sutta), the Buddha defined karma as follows: Intention, I tell you, is kamma. Intending, one does kamma by way of body, speech, & intellect. (Thanissaro 1997b) When there is an instance of intention (cetanā), there is an instance of karma, and when there is an instance of karma, there is an instance of result (vipāka). Karma, like all other phenomena, is dependently arisen. It is conditioned by contact (phassa), which is in turn conditioned by the coming together of sense organs, sense objects, and consciousness (viññāṇa) or acts of awareness, as well as the obsession (papañca) generated by contact.

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The relationship between our karma and our identity is expressed in The Shorter Analysis of Action (Cula-kammavibhanga Sutta): … beings are owners of kamma, heir to kamma, born of kamma, related through kamma, and have kamma as their arbitrator. Kamma is what creates  distinctions among beings in terms of coarseness & refinement. (Thanissaro 1995) Every intentional act we perform generates latent tendencies (saṅkhāra), such that every immoral act we perform reinforces the tendency that we will act immorally again, and every moral act we perform reinforces the tendency that we will act morally again. Our identity, in terms of our latent tendencies (saṅkhāra), is shaped by the sum of our intentional actions. In this way, what we are is shaped by what we do, or our empirical self is the “owner” or “heir” of our karma. The notion of karma generating latent tendencies raises a question: Where are these latent tendencies stored? This issue is explored in The Debate of King Milinda, where King Milinda asked: When deeds are committed by one mind and body process, where do they remain? And the Buddhist sage Nagasena replied: The deeds follow them, O king, like a shadow that never leaves. However, one cannot point them out saying, “Those deeds are here or there”, just as the fruits of a tree cannot be pointed out before they are produced. (Pesala 2001: 60) The “shadow that never leaves” refers to the latent tendencies that remain after the “deeds” are committed but lack spatial location, and the “fruits of a tree” refers to the results that are only “produced” by the latent tendencies when suitable non-karmic conditions are present. A causal account of karma was given by the Buddha. On this account, intentional or volitional action (karma) is determined by one of three factors or a combination of them: (1) external stimuli, (2) conscious motives, or (3) unconscious motives. In A Penetrating Analysis (Nibbedhika Sutta), the Buddha remarked: And what is the cause by which kamma comes into play? Contact is the cause by which kamma comes into play. (Thanissaro 1997b)

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In the physiological sense, contact may be understood as an explanation of behavior in terms of a stimulus-response model, where reflex movement follows from sensory excitation in the presence of an external stimuli. In the psychological sense, conscious motives are conditioned by contact and its resultant obsessions such as attachment or greed (lobha), aversion or hatred (dosa), and ignorance or foolishness (moha) generate action (karma) too. Generally, immoral behavior is generated by the presence of these three motives, while moral behavior is generated by the absence of these three motives (Thanissaro 2005c). It is for this reason that the Buddha emphasized the psychological aspect of behavior and equated karma with volition (cetanā). Unconscious motives influence behavior too. Among these motives are the desire to perpetuate life (jivitukama) and the desire to avoid death (amaritukama), both of which correspond roughly to the Freudian “life instinct” (Freud 1961); as well as the desire for pleasure (sukhakama) and aversion to pain (dukkhapatikkula), both of which correspond roughly to the Freudian “pleasure principle” (Freud 1961). These unconscious motives are conditioned by a more deep-seated form of contact that involves the mind (as a sense organ) and its sense objects (ideas/concepts), which give rise to the “feeling of self,” an obsession that generates a distorted view of reality— seeing the impermanent as permanent, and the insubstantial as substantial (Kalupahana 1976: 47). A popular misunderstanding of the doctrine is that karma is solely responsible for the generation of results, a view the Buddha clearly rejected. According to the Discourse to Sivaka (Sīvaka Sutta), Moliyasivaka the wanderer asked the Buddha: Master Gotama, there are some brahmans & contemplatives who are of this doctrine, this view: Whatever an individual feels—pleasure, pain, neitherpleasure-nor-pain—is entirely caused by what was done before. Now what does Master Gotama say to that? And the Buddha replied: There are cases where some feelings arise based on phlegm … based on internal winds … based on a combination of bodily humors … from the change of the seasons … from uneven care of the body … from harsh treatment … from the result of kamma. You yourself should know how some feelings arise from the result of kamma. Even the world is agreed on how some feelings arise from the result of kamma. So any brahmans & contemplatives who are of the doctrine & view that whatever an individual feels—pleasure, pain, neither pleasure-nor-pain—is entirely caused by what was done before—slip

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past what they themselves know, slip past what is agreed on by the world. Therefore I say that those brahmans & contemplatives are wrong. (Thanissaro 2005d) The Buddha stressed that feelings can arise from either or both karmic and nonkarmic causes. While the karmic cause comes under the moral law (kammaniyāma), the non-karmic causes mentioned—“phlegm,” “internal winds,” “bodily humors,” “uneven care of the body,” “harsh treatment”—come under the organic physical law (utu-niyāma), consistent with dependent arising. A well-known criticism of the doctrine involves questions such as “Who is the doer of karma? Who reaps the fruits of karma?” Recall that the Buddha rejected the metaphysical self or substance—whether mental or physical—as the agent. In response to these questions, Buddhaghosa declared in his Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga): There is no doer of a deed or one who reaps the deed’s result; Phenomena alone flow on—No other view than this is right. (Buddhaghosa 2010: 627) The “doer of a deed” and “one who reaps the deed’s result” that Buddhaghosa rejected refer to the metaphysical self or substance—whether mental or physical—as the agent. Yet, Buddhaghosa’s statement need not be read as rejecting the empirical self, which comprises the five aggregates (pañca-khandha), expressed as “phenomena alone,” as the agent. The twentieth-century Buddhist scholar Nārada Mahāthera (1988: 198) expanded on Buddhaghosa’s point and claimed that of these five aggregates, the disposition aggregate (saṅkhāra) is the “doer of a deed” and the feeling aggregate (vedanā) is the “one who reaps the deed’s result.” Apart from these parts of the empirical self, there is no metaphysical self to sow the seeds or reap the fruits. “Agent,” “ego,” or “person” are only conventional terms for the impermanent and interdependent psycho-physiological compound (nāma-rūpa) which constitutes the empirical self. In this sense, there is no actor apart from the action, no perceiver apart from perception, no conscious subject apart from mere consciousness. There remains a problem with karmic causation in the context of the mental causation debate. If karmic causes are purely volitional and karmic results are purely experienced or felt, then karmic causation is purely a case of mental cause to mental effect, a subjective or phenomenological matter rather than an objective or ontological matter. However, this is not the case as karmic causes arise out of the contact between the sense organs and the sense objects in the external environment, and karmic results occur only when certain external environmental conditions are present along with the karmic cause. So, how

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are the mental/subjective/phenomenological aspect and the physical/objective/ ontological aspect related? I shall discuss karmic causation in the context of mental causation in more detail and propose a solution to the problems it generates thereafter.

6 COMPARING THE BUDDHIST VIEW AND WESTERN ANALYTIC VIEWS OF MENTAL CAUSATION Given the early Indian Buddhist notions of causation, self, perception, and action (karma) discussed in the earlier sections, most if not all of the positions in the mind-body problem generally, or the mental causation debate specifically, can be ruled out. First, since early Buddhism rejects the metaphysical self or unchanging and independent substances, whether mental or physical, substance dualism (e.g., Descartes)—a position which affirms both the existence and interaction of mental and physical substances—is ruled out. Dual-aspect monism (e.g., Spinoza)—a position which affirms one substance with two (or more) aspects— is ruled out for the same reason. Second, since it affirms both experientiality and materiality as part of the empirical self or the changing and interdependent mental and physical aggregates, idealism (e.g., Berkeley)—which holds that nothing outside actual experiences exists; phenomenalism—which holds that nothing outside possible experiences exists; and reductive physicalism—which holds that nothing other than the physical exists, are ruled out. So, the debate in terms of substances does not apply to the early Buddhist view. This leaves the debate in terms of events, states, and properties, where positions include the various versions of property dualism or non-reductive physicalism. To see how the early Buddhist view relates to the various versions of property dualism or non-reductive physicalism, it is instructive to discuss the following passage in the Discourse on the Sheaves of Reeds (Nalakalapiyo Sutta): It is as if two sheaves of reeds were to stand leaning against one another. In the same way, from name-&-form (nāma-rūpa) as a requisite condition comes consciousness (viññāṇa), from consciousness as a requisite condition comes name-&-form. If one were to pull away one of those sheaves of reeds, the other would fall; if one were to pull away the other, the first one would fall. In the same way, from the cessation of name-&-form comes the cessation of consciousness, from the cessation of consciousness comes the cessation of name-&-form. (Thanissaro 2000)

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Here, Sariputta, one of the two chief disciples of the Buddha, described the reciprocal relationship between consciousness (viññāṇa) and the physiopsychological compound (nāma-rūpa): The physio-psychological compound arising with consciousness as the requisite condition, and consciousness arising with the physio-psychological compound as the requisite condition. Sariputta likened consciousness and the physio-psychological compound to two sheaves of reeds leaning against and supporting each other. If one of the two sheaves of reeds is pulled away, the other will fall. In a similar way, if consciousness ceases, the physio-psychological compound will cease; if the physio-psychological compound ceases, consciousness will cease. This passage is based on the twelve links (nidāna) formula of dependent arising (paṭiccasamuppāda), described in the Discourse on Requisite Conditions (Paccaya Sutta), where ignorance (avijja) conditions disposition (saṅkhāra), disposition conditions consciousness (viññāṇa), and consciousness conditions the physio-psychological compound (nāma-rūpa). To render the passage even more relevant to the purpose of this discussion, I shall recast the twelve links formula in terms of the five aggregates (pañca-khandha) formula without changing the early Buddhist position significantly, where disposition and consciousness are seen as parts of the physio-psychological compound, which is another term for the five aggregates. Based on the five aggregates formula, the two sheaves of mutually supportive and inter-conditional reeds refer to the psychological aggregates (including consciousness) and the physiological aggregate (body). Similarly, in his Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga), Buddhaghosa likened the mutually supportive and inter-conditional relationship between the psychological aggregates and the physiological aggregate to the relationship between a blind man and a cripple: They are individually dysfunctional, but when the cripple sits on the blind man’s shoulders, they can become a functional unit. He explained the relationship as follows: … mentality [alone] has no efficient power, it cannot occur by its own efficient power. It does not eat, it does not drink, it does not speak, it does not adopt postures. And materiality [alone] is without efficient power; it cannot occur by its own efficient power. For it has no desire to eat, it has no desire to drink, it has no desire to speak, it has no desire to adopt postures. But rather it is when supported by materiality that mentality occurs; and it is when supported by mentality that materiality occurs. When mentality has the desire to eat, the desire to drink, the desire to speak, the desire to adopt a posture, it is materiality that eats, drinks, speaks, and adopts a posture. (Buddhaghosa 2010: 619) In early Buddhism, this affirmation of the mutual supportiveness, interdependence, and co-efficiency of the mental and the physical is combined

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with the rejection of the mental and the physical as substances, the affirmation of the mental and the physical as processes, and the affirmation of the physical as experienced materiality. The combination of these theses blurs the line between the mental and the physical, or between the phenomenological and the physiological, without identifying them or reducing one to the other. Given the position of early Buddhism as expressed by Sariputta and Buddhaghosa, many versions of non-reductive physicalism or property dualism below can be ruled out. First, since early Buddhism affirms that the mental and the physical are mutually supportive, inter-conditional, and co-efficient, the supervenience of the mental on the physical—the position where there can be no difference in the mental without some difference in the physical but not the converse, or in short, where the physical fixes the mental—is ruled out. This rules out epiphenomenalism too—the position where the mental is an effect but never a cause of the physical—for the same reason. Second, since early Buddhism treats the mental and the physical as a two-way relationship, the realization of the mental by the physical—the position where the realized mental properties have causal power if their realizing physical properties have causal power—is ruled out. Realization, like supervenience and epiphenomenalism, is generally understood as a one-way relationship in Western analytic philosophy. This also rules out overdetermination—the position where a mental or physical event can be caused by both a physical event and a mental event but one of the causes alone is sufficient for the effect—for the same reason. It is less clear whether the remaining versions of non-reductive physicalism or property dualism—interactionist property dualism, panpsychist property dualism, predicate property dualism, and psychophysical parallelism—are ruled in or out by the early Buddhist view. First, if the mutually supportive, inter-conditional, and co-efficient relationship between the mental and the physical is taken seriously, then interactionist property dualism—the position where mental events, states, and properties alone have causal powers over physical events, states, and properties—is ruled out. Second, the early Buddhist view is committed to experienced materiality— the idea that material objects are always experienced by us in certain ways, but not panpsychist property dualism—the position where all material objects have an experiential aspect, even though the two positions are mutually consistent. Third, since the early Buddhist view is committed to the empirical reality of mental and physical processes, predicate dualism—the position where the mental and the physical are just two descriptions of the same substance or property (usually the physical)—is ruled out. Fourth, psychophysical parallelism— the position where mental and physical events are perfectly correlated or coordinated, without any causal interaction between them—seems compatible

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with the early Buddhist view. But unlike psychophysical parallelism, the early Buddhist view emphasizes not only the correlation between the mental and the physical, but also the mutually supportive and inter-conditional relationship between them, regardless of whether there is any kind of causal interaction between them.

7 KARMIC CAUSATION AS MENTAL CAUSATION In discussing karmic causation as mental causation, it is important to bear in mind that karma refers to intentional or volitional acts, whether bodily, verbal, or mental. Karmic cause, in terms of mental cause, refers to the intentional or volitional aspect of the act. It is also useful to distinguish between the formation of karmic cause, the karmic cause itself, and the karmic result. First, the formation of karmic cause is based on the Buddhist account of perception. It starts with how the meeting together of the sense organ, sense object, and act of consciousness gives rise to contact; it continues with how contact gives rise to feelings (likes and dislikes) about the sense object which leads to the perception of the sense object in distorted ways; it ends with how distorted perception gives rise to obsession in terms of the attachment or aversion to, and ignorance (misconceptions) about, the sense object. Second, the karmic cause itself is a volitional act in response to contact conditioned by likes and dislikes, distorted perception, and obsession. All past volitional acts condition behavioral tendencies that constitute the present disposition aggregate, and all past and present volitional acts will condition the future disposition aggregate. The disposition aggregate is the part of the empirical self that functions as the agent and contributes to its individuation. Third, each karmic cause, or volitional act in response to contact, produces a karmic result to be experienced by the empirical self when other non-karmic conditions are present. A karmic result has three aspects: 1. The phenomenological aspect, whether pleasant or unpleasant, is to be experienced by the feeling aggregate—the part of the empirical self that processes valence. 2. The physiological aspect, whether wholesome or unwholesome, is to be experienced by the form aggregate—the physical part of the empirical self that contributes to its identity. 3. The external aspect, whether beneficial or detrimental, manifests in the physical environment of the empirical self for the phenomenological aspect of the karmic result to be experienced, due to the presence of both the latent tendencies generated by the karmic cause in conjunction with the presence of non-karmic conditions.

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These three aspects of a karmic result, in turn, condition the future formations of karmic cause. It is worth noting that the external aspect does not refer to the impact of an action on society and the environment, but to the way society and the environment enable the karmic result to be experienced by the empirical self. It is clear by examining the entire process of karmic causation that the line between the mental and physical is blurred. The sensory and neural activities of the body involved in an action in response to material objects or physical events, and the results of these activities, are intimately interconnected to the phenomenological features of the conscious, perceptive, sensational, and dispositional processes involved in the same action. In short, a karmic cause or intentional act, whether bodily, verbal, or mental, has both mental and physical features which are mutually supportive, inter-conditional, and co-efficient, and the karmic result experienced by the empirical self has phenomenological, physiological, and external aspects. At the stages of the formation of karmic cause and the karmic cause itself, the problem of mental causation is less acute as they involve action directly, where the intimate interconnection between the phenomenological and physiological processes is obvious. At the stage of karmic result, the problem is less acute in the phenomenological aspect of the karmic result, which involves the phenomenological processes from the disposition aggregate (one part of the empirical self) as the doer of the deed to the feeling aggregate (another part of the empirical self) as the reaper of the deed’s result. The problem is also less acute in the physiological aspect of the karmic result, such as the impact that emotional states, whether pleasant or unpleasant, has on physiological states. It is evident that the phenomenological processes and physiological processes are intimately interconnected in these cases. However, the relationship between the karmic cause and the external aspect of the karmic result that enables the phenomenological aspect is problematic. How do the karmically caused latent tendencies contribute to the manifestation of the physical environment that enables the phenomenological aspect of the karmic result to be experienced by the empirical self? How do the latent tendencies generated by a moral or an immoral act contribute to the manifestation of a beneficial or detrimental physical environment that enables the pleasantness or unpleasantness of the karmic result to be experienced by the empirical self? What is the correlation between the moral laws that apply to the karmic causes and the phenomenological aspect of karmic results and the nonmoral laws that apply to the external aspect of karmic results? In his article The Law of Karma and the Principle of Causation, Bruce R. Reichenbach expressed this problem succinctly: … it seems reasonable to contend that the law of karma is a special application of the principle of universal causation. In particular, it refers to

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some special modification of the agent which includes, among other things, dispositions and tendencies which have an important connection with moral actions. But what remains to be explained is the relation between these special modifications and the environmental effects which cause in us good or bad experiences. (Reichenbach 1988: 408) To resolve this problem, it is best to start with the Buddhist account of causation. Recall that under the formula of dependent arising “when that, then this,” “that”—referring to a set of causes and conditions acting together at some earlier time—generate “this”—referring to a set of effects occurring at some later time. Moreover, the set of causes and conditions can fall under any of the fivefold laws of nature—inorganic physical laws, organic physical laws, psychological laws, moral laws, and spiritual laws, which can act together to bring about a set of effects. The karmic cause that comes under the moral laws, brings about the experiential or phenomenological aspect of the karmic result, when it acts together with one or more of the non-karmic causes that come under one or more of the non-moral laws. Early Buddhism does not affirm that (1) karmic results are due solely to karmic causes and (2) karmic causes interact causally with or even causally override the non-karmic conditions. Yet, it does not deny some kind of intimate correlation between the karmic cause that comes under the moral laws and the external aspect of the karmic result that comes under the non-moral laws. In the following passage of the Path to Purification (Visuddhimagga), Buddhaghosa suggested a way to characterize this correlation: This term “dependent origination,” when applied to the total of states produced from the [total] conditionality, must be taken in two ways … when it arises, it does so “together with” and “rightly”, not singly or causelessly, thus it is a co-arising … it arises as a togetherness, thus it is a co-arising; but it does so having depended in combination with conditions, not regardless of them. This total of causes … is called “dependent” … owing to the mutual interdependence of the factors in the combination, in the sense both that they produce common fruit and that none can be dispensed with. And it is called a “co-arising” since it causes the states that occur in unresolved mutual interdependence to arise associatedly. (Buddhaghosa 2010: 537) The “total of states produced” or “common fruit” refers to the phenomenological, physiological, and external aspects of a set of karmic results. When the “total states produced” arise, they do not arise “singly” but “associatedly,” in “unresolved mutual interdependence,” from the “total of causes” or

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“combination of conditions,” which refers to the set of karmic causes and nonkarmic conditions, “owing to [their] mutual interdependence.” The qualifier “unresolved” emphasizes the complexity of the mutual interdependencies. This describes the intimate interconnection between the mutually interdependent totality of karmic causes and non-karmic conditions, and the mutually interdependent totality of karmic results—phenomenological, physiological, and external. More specifically, the karmic cause belonging to the moral laws and non-karmic conditions belonging to the non-moral laws, as well as the phenomenological aspect of karmic results belonging to the moral laws and the physiological and external aspects of karmic results belonging to the non-moral laws, are intimately interconnected. In this sense, there is an intimate interconnection between the karmic cause, as part of the “total of causes,” and the external aspect of the karmic result, as part of the “total states produced,” without there being a causal relation between them. This is so even when there are causal relations between the other parts of the “total of causes” and the other parts of the “total states produced” that come under the same laws. Moreover, to produce the “common fruit,” none of the “factors in the combination” can be dispensed with, suggesting that the karmic cause, as one of the “factors in the combination,” is indispensable to producing the “common fruit,” the karmic results of which the external aspect is a part. Here again, the line between the mental (karmic) and the physical (non-karmic) is blurred.

8 CONCLUSION To reiterate, the aim of the paper is to situate the Buddhist notion of karma within the context of the mental causation debate in the Western analytic tradition. The early Buddhist view of karmic causation does not fit neatly into the various standard positions of the mental causation debate, and it does not lean toward either the phenomenalism and idealism of later Buddhism (Cittamātra or Yogācāra in particular) or the physicalism, whether reductive or nonreductive, of contemporary secular Buddhism.4 In sum, the early Buddhist view of karmic causation, or answer to the problem of mental causation, is based on a few theses: First, the rejection of the mental and physical as substances; second, the affirmation of the mental and physical as processes; third, the affirmation of the physical as experienced materiality without rejecting either experientiality or materiality; fourth, the affirmation of the mutual interdependence of the mental (karmic) and physical (non-karmic) as parts of a set of causes and conditions of action; fifth, the affirmation of the mutual interdependence of the three aspects— phenomenological, physiological, and external—of karmic results; sixth, the

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intimate interconnection between the totality of causes, in which the karmic cause is a part, and the totality of effects, in which the external aspect of karmic results is a part. Taken together, these theses blur the line and tighten the bond between the mental (karmic) and the physical (non-karmic) concurrently, without identifying them, reducing one to the other, or granting one causal power over the other. This peculiar blurring of line and tightening of bond between the mental (karmic) and the physical (non-karmic) is a consequence of the early Buddhist approach to mental causation, and causation in general, where cause and effect are treated as a holistic, many-to-many relation, and where the mental (karmic) and physical (non-karmic) are conceived as neither strictly distinct nor strictly identical. This approach contrasts starkly with the Western analytic approach, where cause and effect are usually treated as an atomistic one-to-one relation, and where the mental and physical are conceived as either strictly distinct or strictly identical.

NOTES 1

In this paper, I shall confine myself to the views of early Indian (Nikāya) Buddhism as expounded in the translated scriptures and commentaries of the Pali Canon associated with the Theravāda sect. And I shall not address the sectarian views from the time of Abhidhamma scholasticism (including sects such as Sarvastivada and Sautrantika) onwards. A classic source of early Indian Buddhism is Walpola Rahula’s What the Buddha Taught (1974). A more recent source is Richard Gombrich’s What the Buddha Thought (2009). Free online translations and commentaries of the Pali Canon are available at Index of Suttas (accesstoinsight.org) and Sutta Discovery (SD) | The Minding Centre: The Dharmafarers.

2

For an overview of the mental causation debate in Western analytic philosophy, see Robb and Heil (2021).

3

For an overview of the Indian Buddhist Philosophy of Mind, see Coseru (2017).

4

Secular Buddhism is a contemporary movement in the West that values a naturalist, sceptical, and humanist approach to the study of Buddhism. It aims to strip the Buddhist doctrine of various traditional beliefs that can be considered superstitious, or cannot be tested through empirical research. Works representative of this movement include Batchelor (1998); Flanagan (2011); and Wright (2017).

REFERENCES Buddhaghosa (2010), Visuddhimagga: The Path of Purification, trans. Nanamoli Bhikkhu, Buddhist Publication Society. Available online: https://www.bps.lk/olib/ bp/bp207h_The-Path-of-Purification-(Visuddhimagga).pdf Batchelor, S. (1998), Buddhism without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening, New York: Riverhead Books.

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Coseru, C. (2017), “Mind in Indian Buddhist Philosophy,” in E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available online: https://plato.stanford.edu/ archives/spr2017/entries/mind-indian-buddhism/. Flanagan, O. (2011), The Bodhisattva’s Brain: Buddhism Naturalized, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Freud, S. (1961), Beyond the Pleasure Principle, trans. and ed. J. Strachey, New York: W.W. Norton. Gombrich, R. (2009), What the Buddha Thought, London: Equinox Publishing. Jones, D. T. (2012), “The Five Niyāmas as Laws of Nature: An Assessment of Modern Western Interpretations of Theravāda Buddhist Doctrine,” Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 19: 545–82. Kalupahana, D. J. (1975), Causality: The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Kalupahana, D. J. (1976), Buddhist Philosophy: A Historical Analysis, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Kalupahana, D. J. (1987), The Principles of Buddhist Psychology, Albany: State University of New York Press. Kalupahana, D. J. (1992), A History of Buddhist Philosophy: Continuities and Discontinuities, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Mahāthera, N. (1988), The Buddha and His Teachings, Kandy, Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society. Available online: https://www.bps.lk/olib/bp/bp102s_NaradaBuddha_and_His_Teachings.pdf Pesala, B. (2001), The Debate of Milinda, Penang: Inward Path. Rahula, W. (1974), What the Buddha Taught, New York: Grove Press. Reichenbach, B. R. (1998), “The Law of Karma and the Principle of Causation,” Philosophy East and West, 38.4: 399–410. Robb, D. and Heil, J. (2021), “Mental Causation,” in E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available online: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ spr2021/entries/mental-causation/. Thanissaro, Bhikkhu (2005a), Assutava Sutta: Uninstructed (1), Available online: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn12/sn12.061.than.html Thanissaro, Bhikkhu (2005b), Maha-punnama Sutta: The Great Full-moon Night Discourse. Available online: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.109. than.html Thanissaro, Bhikkhu (2005c), Mula Sutta: Roots. Available online: https://www. accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an03/an03.069.than.html Thanissaro, Bhikkhu (2005d), Sīvaka Sutta: To Sivaka. Available online: https://www. accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn36/sn36.021.than.html Thanissaro, Bhikkhu (2000), Nalakalapiyo Sutta: Sheaves of Reeds. Available online: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn12/sn12.067.than.html Thanissaro, Bhikkhu (1999), Madhupiṇḍika Sutta: The Ball of Honey. Available online: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.018.than.html Thanissaro, Bhikkhu (1998), Chachakka Sutta: The Six Sextets. Available online: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.148.than.html Thanissaro, Bhikkhu (1997a), Kamma Sutta: Action. Available online: https://www. accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn35/sn35.145.than.html Thanissaro, Bhikkhu (1997b), Nibbedhika Sutta: Penetrative. Available online: https:// www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an06/an06.063.than.html Thanissaro, Bhikkhu (1997c), Paccaya Sutta: Requisite Conditions. Available online: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn12/sn12.020.than.html

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Thanissaro, Bhikkhu (1995), Cula-kammavibhanga Sutta: The Shorter Analysis of Action. Available online: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/ati/tipitaka/mn/mn.135. than.html Wright, R. (2017), Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment, New York: Simon & Schuster. Yoo, J. (n.d.), “Mental Causation,” in J. Fieser and B. Dowden (eds), The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available online: https://www.iep.utm.edu/.

PART THREE

Realism, Idealism, and Panpsychism

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CHAPTER SIX

Consciousness as the Fundamental Reality of the Universe: A Master Argument for Buddhist Idealism ALEX WATSON

INTRODUCTION The conference on which this volume is based was titled “Consciousness and Fundamental Reality.” This contribution concerns the view that consciousness is fundamental reality, a view that I will be calling “idealism” and that was advanced in India by the branch of Buddhism known as Yogācāra or Vijñānavāda. A dominant theme of both the conference and this volume is panpsychism, so I will start by pointing to three points of contrast between idealism and panpsychism. (1) Although both claim that “consciousness is everywhere,”

I have the pleasurable task of naming and thanking an unusually large number of colleagues who kindly gave me feedback on this article. It substantially improved as a result: Dan Arnold, Christian Coseru, Georges Dreyfus, Sonam Kachru, Birgit Kellner, Martin Lin, John Nemec, Roy Perrett, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, James Reich, Raja Rosenhagen, Serena Saccone, Kranti Saran, Robert Scharf, Mark Siderits, and Davey Tomlinson.

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panpsychism is compatible with pan-physicalism and dualism, for it can assert that everything that exists is both mental and physical. Idealism I am defining for the purposes of this article as the denial of the existence of anything external to consciousness. This is clearly not compatible with physicalism or dualism (whether of the mind-body or consciousness-world type). (2) Panpsychism is primarily an answer to the question of the place of consciousness in the world— where it stands in relation to the body and the rest of the physical world. Idealism is primarily an answer to the question of the status of the objects we take to be external to us. (3) Panpsychism asserts the existence of consciousness as one of the fundamental constituents of the universe. Idealism asserts the existence of consciousness as the only fundamental constituent of the universe.1 We will now focus our attention on the philosophical world of mid-to-late first-millennium India, where three clearly differentiated views regarding the nature of the objects of our experience had emerged. 1. Direct Realism According to the direct realists, the content2 of outward-directed perception is an externally existing object. The external object is perceived directly, without the aid of an intermediary—an image or a representation—intervening between the subject and the external object. 2. Representationalism/Indirect Realism According to the representationalists, what we directly perceive are images, internal representations that are caused by external objects. We can know external objects to exist through inference, but can never perceive them directly. 3. Idealism The idealists agree with the representationalists that what we directly perceive are images internal to consciousness, but they deny that the images are caused by external objects. There are no external objects; the images are caused by vāsanās, latent impressions in the mind-stream.3 The differences between the three can thus be depicted by Figure 6.1.4 These three views were held, respectively, by three different branches of Buddhism: Vaibhāṣika,5 Sautrāntika, Yogācāra. They were also held, respectively, by the following groups of non-Buddhists: (1) Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika and Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā; (2) Sāṅkhya; (3) Non-dualistic Śaivism.6 Perhaps it would not be misleading to assert that they resemble the views in Early Modern European Philosophy put forward by, respectively, Reid, Locke, and Berkeley. The main proponents of the three views in our period of Indian Philosophy were those shown in italics in Figure 6.2. By our period—second half of the first millennium—the Vaibhāṣikas, Vaiśeṣikas, and Sāṅkhyas had ceased to

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Figure 6.1  The Three Views.

Buddhists

NonBuddhists

Early Modern Europeans

Direct realists

Vaibhāṣikas

Naiyāyikas, Vaiśeṣikas, Mīmāṃsakas

Reid

Representationalists

Sautrāntikas

Sāṅkhyas

Locke

Idealists

Yogācāras

Non-dualistic Śaivas

Berkeley

Figure 6.2  Representatives of the Three Views.

have the importance they earlier had, and the non-dualistic Śaivas had not yet come to prominence. In this article we will thus be concerned with Yogācāra Buddhist idealists, Sautrāntika Buddhist representationalists, and Naiyāyika and Mīmāṃsaka direct realists.7

THE OVERALL STRUCTURE OF THE IDEALIST’S ARGUMENT The article aims to give a sense of how Buddhist idealism was argued for in our period—against the rival theories of direct realism and representationalism. It does so by drawing on the argument of the Yogācāra Buddhist speaker in

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Jayanta’s Blossoms of Reasoning (Nyāyamañjarī, 890 CE).8 What we find there is a two-stage master argument, which brings together earlier arguments found in Kumārila (c. 550–650 CE) and Dharmakīrti (c. 550–660 CE). Some aspects of these arguments are developments of what we find in Dignāga (c. 480–540 CE or slightly earlier). The period of Indian Philosophy that ran from Kumārila and Dharmakīrti’s time to that of Jayanta was extremely fertile. By choosing an author from the end of this period, we are afforded a view of how the Buddhist idealist ideas of Dignāga and Dharmakīrti came to be received by, and articulated within, the surrounding environment of the rival theories on offer. Buddhist idealism taken not in isolation, but as part of the mosaic formed by the interplay of it and the two rival explanatory strategies, is what I hope will come across below. Jayanta, who has been referred to as one of India’s three greatest philosophers, along with Kumārila and Dharmakīrti (Shah 1972: 3), is famous for the strength of the arguments he puts into the mouths of his opponents (pūrvapakṣas) (see Watson forthcoming a). But bearing in mind that both he and Kumārila, who is the immediate source of some of the arguments that he attributes to Buddhism, were neither Buddhists nor idealists, but rather Brahmanical direct realists, it should be remembered that what is presented as Buddhist idealism in this article is not necessarily Buddhist idealism, but rather Jayanta’s Buddhist idealism. I have traced most of the elements of Jayanta’s Buddhist idealist arguments to Buddhist sources, but not all of them.9 The first stage of Jayanta’s Buddhist idealist argument consists of a refutation of direct realism; the second stage consists of a refutation of representationalism. In stage 1, the issue is: Do the forms I perceive (e.g., colors, tastes, smells) belong to cognition/consciousness or to an external object? The idealist holds the former, the direct realist the latter. In stage 2, the issue is: Can we infer the existence of external objects that cause the forms within our consciousness? For the representationalist we can, for the idealist we cannot. What I will be referring to as the idealist “master argument,” then, consists of: (1) arguments against the direct realist to the conclusion that forms we perceive belong to cognition; (2) arguments against the representationalist to the conclusion that those forms are not caused by external objects.10 I will not here enter the debate about whether the combination of these two conclusions is still not fully fledged idealism, and is better termed phenomenalism for it leaves open the possibility that there are external objects that neither feature in, nor cause, our perceptions.11

STAGE 1: IDEALISM VERSUS DIRECT REALISM In stage 1 the idealist seeks to establish, as said above, that the forms we perceive belong to cognition, not an external object.

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First a word is in order about the use in this article of the word “cognition.” It does not refer to one subdivision of the totality of mental states/events, a subdivision that distinguishes itself from perceptions, or emotions, or sensations, on the grounds that cognitions involve an element of “thinking,” or “knowing” that is not present in these latter. No, “cognition” here covers all mental states, including perceptions, emotions, sensations. The reason for my adopting this usage, which is common in English-language discussions of Indian philosophy but may sound strange from the point of view of other branches of philosophy, is that we need an English word to stand for such Sanskrit terms as jñāna, vijñāna, vijñapti, citta, caitanya, pratyaya, pratīti, buddhi, which in this Buddhist context include all awareness events, whether we are dealing with awareness of a thought, an object of perception, a sensation, or an emotion.12 “Cognitions” in the plural should be understood to mean “awareness events” and “cognition” in the singular should be understood to mean simply “awareness” or “consciousness.” The idealist’s thesis that the forms we perceive belong to cognition may sound very strange. The blue color that I perceive surely belongs to an object that exists at some distance of separation from my body. It belongs to an object that I can walk over to and touch. How can something “out there” belong to cognition? How can I touch something that is within cognition? This apparent strangeness of the idealist’s thesis disappears if we consider what happens when we dream. The tiger I dream of is experienced at some degree of separation from my body. The blue object I dream of is something I can walk over to and touch (in my dream). Yet dream objects are agreed by all sides to be within cognition, this being entailed by the fact that, when the dreamer sees the tiger, an observer awake next to the dreamer sees no tiger in the vicinity. So there is no incompatibility between being within cognition and being experienced as at some distance from the subject.13 The difference between the direct realist’s and the idealist’s theses implies no difference in the way we experience objects of perception. Both agree that we experience objects as external to us, but we are dealing with two competing accounts of this seeming externality. For the idealist it is the result of cognition’s ability to project outwards, an ability attested to in dreams. For the direct realist it is a result of mind-independent objects impinging on us from beyond cognition.14 The task of the idealist in stage 1, then, is to establish that any form we experience belongs to cognition, not to an external object. To speak of “form belonging to cognition” is equivalent to speaking of “cognition having form” or “taking on form,” and this highlights an important difference between the idealist and the direct realist. For the idealist cognition has form (sākāra);15 for the direct realist cognition is formless (nirākāra) and transparent, all form belonging to external objects.

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In considering whether perceptible form belongs to an external object or to a cognition, we should first ask: Could it not be that we perceive two forms, one belonging to the external object and one—an image of the external object— within cognition? If that were the case, we would be experiencing an object separate from cognition, the existence of which is precisely what the idealist denies: The direct realist’s contention that there are objects outside of cognition would be established. But as it happens, the idealist, the direct realist, and the representationalist all agree that, on perceiving blue, only one form appears to us, not both a representation and an external object.16 This admission on the part of the direct realist and the representationalist that we only perceive one form is crucial. Without it, there would be nothing to discuss: Idealism would be a nonstarter. It gives the idealist the handle they need.17 It means it is an open question whether this one form, that we all agree to be what we perceive, belongs to cognition or an external object. So now let’s turn to the arguments that the idealist gives for the position that form belongs to cognition, not an external object. 1.1 Argument from Parsimony Attributing form to cognition involves less postulation. Both sides agree that cognition exists; both hold that its existence is indisputable. If form belongs to an external object, we have to postulate not only cognitions, but also external physical things. Since postulating one kind of thing is preferable to postulating two, it is better to assume that form belongs to cognition.18 Or to put the same argument, but from a different starting point: The realists postulate insentient physical objects, but if only insentient physical objects existed, they would remain uncognized, and since it’s indisputable that (some) objects are cognized, realists have to postulate a second kind of thing: cognition. The idealist postulates half as much: one kind of thing rather than two.19 So much for the argument;20 what are we to make of it? (1) It has already been subject to philosophical evaluation by John Taber. He claims that the idealist is not postulating less because they’re postulating a complex power of cognition that the realist is not postulating: the power of latent impressions (vāsanās) to “produce the vast experienced world” (2010: 289). But this can be questioned. The realist also postulates latent impressions as creators of images within cognition in the context of memory and dreaming.21 In the case of dreaming, these latent impressions endow consciousness with the power to project a world of objects outward, fooling us into thinking we are observing a world beyond ourselves. So the idealist is not postulating anything more than features in the realist’s explanation of dreaming. The idealist just extends this

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already accepted power from dreaming (and memory to the extent that it is present there) to perception. (2) Jayanta responds to this argument with the claim that external objects are not postulated, they are directly perceived.22 So accepting them in addition to cognition involves no more postulation than just accepting cognition. This is a statement of the direct realist position. It is helpful for reminding us of the different presuppositions of that position from those of idealism. But it does not carry any argumentative force against the idealist, for they will say that external objects are not perceived. Whether what is perceived is external or not is exactly what is in question, so the idealist will think that the direct realist is prematurely helping themself to the conclusion. (3) This argument would not work against a physicalist. A physicalist does not share the view (of the Yogācāra idealist, the Sautrāntika representationalist and the Naiyāyika or Mīmāṃsaka direct realist) that if there was only a physical world there would be no perceivers and hence none of the experiences that are undeniably part of the world. So a physicalist can stick to just postulating one kind of thing—a physical world—and assert that form belongs to that. We have three kinds of views: idealism, with its one kind of—non-physical—thing; physicalism, with its one kind of—physical—thing; and dualism, with its two kinds of things. The idealist and the physicalist can both mount arguments from parsimony against the dualist, but they cannot do so against each other. It is only because the idealist’s opponents here—Naiyāyika and Mīmāṃsaka direct realists—are dualists that this argument is employable. (4) Out of two competing theories, the one that involves less postulation is to be preferred only if the two have equal plausibility and equal explanatory power. Solipsism requires less postulation, but it does not provide such a satisfying explanation of the fact that we seem to share the world with other subjects. It is thus open to the realist to challenge this idealist argument on the grounds that postulating cognition alone does not provide such a satisfying explanation of the fact that I seem to share the world with external objects— things that seem to be the objects of cognitions of other cognizers too.23 The realist could accept that they are postulating more, but maintain that this is justified in order to provide a convincing explanation. The idealist will respond that cognition alone, since it is all that is involved in dream experiences of a seemingly external and publicly shareable world, does provide a convincing explanation of waking experience. So this realist move of appeal to plausibility and explanatory power as justification for extra postulation will have to be accompanied by arguments establishing relevant differences between dreaming and waking—differences that indicate the need to postulate a different substrate of form perceived while awake from that of form perceived while dreaming.

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(5) It is worth noting that in Bertrand Russell’s account of the debate between idealism and realism in Problems of Philosophy, he sees considerations of parsimony and simplicity as weighing against idealism and in favor of realism: The way in which simplicity comes in from supposing that there really are physical objects is easily seen. If the cat appears at one moment in one part of the room, and at another in another part, it is natural to suppose that it has moved from the one to the other, passing over a series of intermediate positions. But if it is merely a set of sense-data, it cannot have ever been in any place where I did not see it; thus we shall have to suppose that it did not exist at all while I was not looking, but suddenly sprang into being in a new place. If the cat exists whether I see it or not, we can understand from our own experience how it gets hungry between one meal and the next; but if it does not exist when I am not seeing it, it seems odd that appetite should grow during non-existence as fast as during existence. And if the cat consists only of sense-data, it cannot be hungry, since no hunger but my own can be a sense-datum to me. Thus the behavior of the sense-data which represent the cat to me, though it seems quite natural when regarded as an expression of hunger, becomes utterly inexplicable when regarded as mere movements and changes of patches of color, which are as incapable of hunger as a triangle is of playing football. But the difficulty in the case of the cat is nothing compared to the difficulty in the case of human beings. When human beings speak—that is, when we hear certain noises which we associate with ideas, and simultaneously see certain motions of lips and expressions of face—it is very difficult to suppose that what we hear is not the expression of a thought, as we know it would be if we emitted the same sounds. … Thus every principle of simplicity urges us to adopt the natural view, that there really are objects other than ourselves and our sense-data which have an existence not dependent upon our perceiving them. (1912: 14–5) I return to Bertrand Russell’s arguments at the end of the chapter. 1.2 Argument from the Object-Specificity of Cognition If cognition lacked form, it could not be object-specific. Lacking form, it itself would be no different when confronted by a red object from when confronted by a blue object. Unless it takes on form from these objects, it is not affected by them. If it is not affected by them, how could a cognition of red be felt as different from a cognition of blue? So if cognition lacks form, we can provide no satisfactory explanation of how a cognition of red differs from, or is felt as different from, a cognition of blue.24

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We can detect the following principles in the argument: If a subject S experiences an object O, then S must be affected by O. For S to be affected by O, some change must occur in S’s form. If no change occurs in S’s form, O’s presence can make no difference to S. The argument appeals to what is uncontroversially accepted by both sides: that there is a difference for a subject between a cognition of blue, say, and a cognition of red. It claims that a direct realist account (as depicted in Figure 6.3) is unable to account for this difference. To avoid the problem, the direct realist assumption that the two cognitions themselves are qualitatively identical, all difference falling outside of cognition on the side of the external object, must be dropped. The situation must rather be characterized as in Figure 6.4: Cognitions take on form from their objects. Note that it is the representationalist’s position that is depicted in Figure 6.4, not the idealist’s. That is because we are now in stage 1. All the idealist needs to establish in stage 1 is that cognition contains form. It is the task of stage 2 to then establish that external objects need not be postulated, so that we arrive at the situation depicted in Figure 6.5. In arguing against the direct realist in stage 1, the idealist need not establish anything more than representationalism.25 This idealist argument effectively says to the direct realist: Even if you are somehow able to establish that an external object must be postulated, you will

Figure 6.3  The Direct Realist View.

Figure 6.4  The Representationalist View.

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Figure 6.5  The Idealist View.

also have to postulate form within cognition, for otherwise you will not be able to establish specific relationships between cognition and the various external objects—not be able to establish how a cognition is focused on one particular object and distinguishable from cognitions of other objects.26 The direct realist could say that cognition is like a mirror: Although it itself never changes as different objects pass in front of it, these different objects are reflected in it. The factor that explains how cognition can in one moment be of blue, and in another of red, is just the proximity of blue in the first moment and the proximity of red in the second.27 But the idealist will point out that there can be many things at once in the presence of cognition (different objects in the visual field, sounds, tastes, smells, and so on); how can we explain that cognition can be of one of these to the exclusion of others if proximity is all that determines what it is of? For cognition stands in the same relation of proximity to all the things within its range; proximity alone cannot explain a specific connection with one proximate object at the same time as non-connection with other proximate objects. To avoid this problem we have to assume, argues the idealist, that cognition takes on the form of the one thing it is of, and does not take on the form of the other things in its proximity. Note that the object-specificity problem—the proposed solution to which is form-containing cognition—has two aspects: diachronic and synchronic. (1) How does a cognition of one object in one moment differ from a cognition of another object in the next moment? (2) How can we explain that when we are in the proximity of many potential objects of perception, we focus only on one? The direct realist denies that form-containing cognition is the necessary solution to this twofold problem by appealing instead to causation. A particular cognition can be of a red object and not of a blue object because it is caused by the red object and not by the blue object. That cognition has a specific object does not have to be explained by cognition having the form of that object, for it can rather simply be caused by that object (tajjanya).

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We are thus dealing with two competing explanations of cognition’s objectspecificity. That it is of a blue object is explained by the idealist as resulting from its having a blue form (the “form view”), and by the direct realist as resulting from the fact that it is caused by a blue object (the “causation view”).28 Here are three ways in which the idealists can defend their form view against the direct realists’ causation view. (1) The way the idealist speaker responds in Blossoms of Reasoning is by pointing out that cognition is caused by other things in addition to its object. A visual cognition of blue has among its causes the faculty of sight and the presence of light, yet neither of these two features as its object. Thus being a cause of a cognition is not a precise determinant of what turns out to be the object of that cognition. If cognition were of whatever causes it, it would also have to be of the sense-faculty, but it is not. Causation is not specific enough to restrict it to the blue object.29 If the direct realists are going to avoid appealing to form within cognition as the  explanation of its object-specificity, by appealing instead to causation, then the burden is on them to explain why one cause of a cognition, and not others, features as the cognition’s object.30 The direct realist responds by distinguishing different kinds of causes.31 Blue, say, is the “object cause” (karmakāraka); the faculty of sight and light are instrumental causes; the self is the agentive cause, etc. It is just the case, says the direct realist throwing up their hands, that whatever is the object cause— and none of the other causes—becomes the object of the cognition. The direct realist admits that they cannot give any further explanation of this fact; but they point out that the idealist will also have to throw up their hands when asked why it is the object cause—and none of the other causes—that becomes the form of the cognition (and hence its object). It cannot be held against the direct realist that they have no explanation for why the object cause, and none of the other causes, becomes the object of the cognition, because the idealist also has no explanation for something similar: why the object cause—and none of the other causes—becomes the form within cognition (and thereby the object of the cognition).32 In both cases we have reached a base-level primitive that cannot be grounded in anything more fundamental. There are some things that can be explained by other features of a system, and there are other things of which it is only possible to say: That is just the way it is. Where does this leave us? Has the direct realist succeeded in showing that both positions are on an equal (lack of!) footing? I do not think so. For in answer to the question of why blue only, and not also the faculty of sight, features as the object of a cognition, the idealist has a more satisfactory answer than the direct realist. The idealist has a firmer criterion for singling out the blue: It is the form within cognition, the sense-faculty is not. The direct realist, for whom both are causes, neither being a form within cognition, admits they

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cannot say why it is that one and not the other features as the object. They can, it is true, point to something the idealist cannot say: why the object cause, blue, becomes the form within cognition. But the idealist’s appeal to simply “the way things are” comes further along the chain than the direct realist’s, which occurs at the very beginning of the chain. The direct realist’s occurs immediately on being asked why blue, and not the sense-faculty, is the object. The idealist has an answer for that, and, only on being further asked why blue becomes the form of the cognition, has to appeal to the way things are. When a child responds to every answer we give with “why,” then we will eventually have to say “that is just the way things are.” But hopefully we do not have to resort to that in answer to the very first question.33 (2) Even if the causation view could be saved from the problem that a cognition is caused by other things as well as its object, the idealist will still see the causation view as subject to a dilemma. Does the causal impact of the object produce some qualitative change in cognition itself or not? If so, then this qualitative change amounts to a change in form, which goes against the direct realist’s claim that cognition is formless. If not, cognition’s nature remains the same whether it is perceiving blue or perceiving red, so the difference between the two has not been satisfactorily explained, and it remains mysterious how the subject could experience the two objects as different. The original diachronic and synchronic problems still apply: (i) If blue is perceived in the first moment, it would be impossible to perceive red in the next: Blue would continue to be perceived until there is some qualitative change in cognition. (ii) If two objects are simultaneously within range of a subject, nothing explains the ability to focus on one to the exclusion of the other. (3) The direct realist wants all qualitative change to occur outside of cognition on the side of the world of external physical objects. But then how could the direct realist explain a gestalt switch, where we look at a duck-rabbit drawing and change from seeing it as rabbit to seeing it as a duck, despite no change in the external world? Does this not show that the duck-form and the rabbit-form must belong to cognition? How could they belong to the external world when that stays exactly the same as we pass from perceiving the rabbit to perceiving the duck?34 Space permits only a brief mention of the two main remaining stage 1 arguments given by Jayanta, but I will provide references to other treatments of them.35 1.3 Argument from Necessary Co-Perception (sahopalambhaniyama) If we compare the idealist view, depicted in Figure 6.5, with the direct realist and representationalist views, depicted in Figures 6.3 and 6.4, we can see that idealism challenges the way that we are used to thinking of experience as

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consisting of two distinct entities: a cognition and its object/content. Idealism collapses these into one: The object or content of the cognition becomes the form of the cognition, something that constitutes the cognition itself. In the present idealist argument we see the same thing—that idealism takes what are often thought to be separate, cognition and its object, and argues that they are in fact one. The argument was put forward by Dharmakīrti, and is known as that from “necessary co-perception” (sahopalambhaniyama):36 Premise 1: If two things are necessarily co-perceived, they are not different (i.e. not numerically distinct) Premise 2: Blue and cognition of blue are necessarily co-perceived Conclusion: Therefore, blue and cognition of blue are not different What does Dharmakīrti’s talk of two things being “co-perceived” mean? I argue (Watson forthcoming b) that it is perhaps best understood—best both in the sense that it is what Dharmakīrti intended in the Pramāṇaviniścaya,37 and in the sense that it makes premise 1 maximally defensible (though at the cost of making premise 2 more vulnerable)—as follows. X and Y are necessarily co-perceived if and only if perceiving X necessarily involves perceiving Y, and perceiving Y necessarily involves perceiving X. The most thorough philological study of the argument and its history is Iwata (1991).38 Philosophical evaluations have been given by Chakrabarti (1990), Taber (2010: 292–4), Arnold (2015: 175–83), Westerhoff (2018: 170–1), Taber (2020), and Watson (forthcoming b).39 1.4 Argument from the Reflexivity of Cognition and the Perception of Only One Form The following complex argument does not occur exactly in a Buddhist source known to me, but it is attributed to Buddhism by Kumārila and Jayanta, and contains elements that clearly derive from Dignāga and Dharmakīrti. Its overall structure is as follows. Premise 1: Cognition is perceived by itself/is self-aware Premise 2: Since cognition is perceived, it must have form Premise 3: Only one form is perceived Conclusion: Therefore the one form that is perceived must belong to cognition and cannot belong to an external object40 Premise 1 is justified by a considerable body of supporting arguments,41 including one that derives from Dignāga’s argument from memory for the self-awareness of cognition,42 and one that involves the following oft-cited contention of Dharmakīrti: If cognition were not perceived, its object would

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not be perceived either.43 For only if cognition is perceived can the object within it appear. The contention is further justified by the slightly more general claim that an enabler of knowledge can only enable knowledge if it is perceived: Light, if invisible, would not be able to illuminate. The reason property (hetu) in an inference, if unapprehended, would not enable knowledge of the target property. Two immediate direct realist rejoinders suggest themselves. (1) to say “only if cognition is perceived can the object within it appear” is to assume that the object is within cognition—to prematurely assume the idealist conclusion that the object is within, rather than external to, cognition. (2) There are counterexamples to the general claim that enablers of knowledge must be perceived. A sense-faculty enables perceptual knowledge, but is held by both sides to be imperceptible. There is now an extensive literature on what could be called the “CC” claim—that cognition of an object necessarily entails cognition of its cognition. An important early landmark was Matilal (1986: 148–60). For Jayanta’s insightful discussion of CC in Blossoms of Reasoning, see Watson and Kataoka (2010: 304–10, 325–39) and Watson (2014). Premise 2 asserts that if—as claimed by premise 1—cognition is perceived, then cognition must have some form. If cognition were formless we would see straight through it; it would lack any features that could be picked up by any sense-faculty, whether one of the five external sense-faculties or the inner sense. Premise 3 reminds us of what was agreed at the outset by both the idealist and the direct realist, that we perceive only one form. It is thus ruled out that we perceive one form of cognition and one of an object. So the only possibility remaining is that the one form we perceive belongs to cognition, not to an external object outside of cognition. The argument has been discussed in the following places: Taber (2010), Watson and Kataoka (2010), and Watson (2014).44

STAGE 2: IDEALISM VERSUS REPRESENTATIONALISM Having looked at idealist arguments against the direct realist in stage 1, we now turn to the idealist attempts to overcome the representationalist in stage 2. The representationalists agree that the forms we perceive belong to cognition. They thus do not disagree with anything that the idealist asserts in stage 1. Disagreement begins when we reach the question of the genesis of the forms that belong to cognition: How did they get there? For the representationalist they are taken on by cognition from an external object—in the sense that the presence of an external object causes an image or form to arise within cognition, this form resembling the form of the external object. The representationalist postulates external objects as the best explanation of the forms in consciousness that we directly experience; without them the latter

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become mysterious. The issue that thus separates the representationalist and the idealist is whether there is a sound inference from forms within cognition to external objects. The task of the idealist in stage 2 is to show that no such sound inference exists. The idealist argumentation relies on an admission on the part of the representationalist that external objects are not directly perceived, but only inferred. (It may be that not all forms of representationalism on offer in our period conceded this. Even restricting ourselves to Sautrāntika positions, and not including Sāṅkhya ones, it may be that some articulations of representationalism regarded the external object as directly perceived by means of the representation within consciousness.45 But when Dharmakīrti and his followers argue from an idealist perspective against Sautrāntika representationalism, they are arguing against a position that regards external objects as only inferred (anumeya), never perceived (grāhya).) I give two arguments that the idealist uses against the representationalist. 2.1 Argument from the Impossibility of Establishing Causation The inference of an external object as the cause of a form in cognition will be an inference of a cause from its effect (as is the inference of fire from smoke). The inference of a cause from an effect can obviously only get going after a causal relationship has been established. But it is not possible to establish causation between an external object and a form within cognition. When we are able to establish a causal relation between two things, say fire and smoke (such that we can subsequently infer instances of fire from instances of smoke), the following at the very least are necessary: (1) a plurality of perceptions of the co-presence of fire and smoke; (2) a plurality of perceptions of the co-absence of fire and smoke. Without these two we would not even be able to establish correlation, let alone causation. We would have no reason for thinking that whenever smoke occurs, fire occurs, and whenever fire does not occur, smoke does not occur. Now we cannot have a plurality of perceptions of the co-presence of an external object and a form within cognition, in fact we cannot even have one such perception, because we cannot, ex hypothesi, perceive external objects. The power of this argument derives from the fact that it is not just an expression of the idealist’s own position: It appeals to what the representationalists themselves maintain— that external objects cannot be perceived but only inferred. The idealist points to two representationalist claims that are hard to reconcile: External objects are never perceived, and an external object can be inferred as a cause. The best the representationalist can do is propose an inference of external objects as causes that does not appeal to perception of co-presence, and is based only on perception of co-absence: When no external object is there, we don’t perceive a form within consciousness.46 For an inference to be based only on

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co-absence does not disqualify it; both sides accept certain such inferences, so the idealist must take this possibility seriously and provide good reasons for rejecting it. The impossibility of perception of co-presence is not fatal. I give two examples of such inferences that both sides accept. (1) When no colored object is placed next to a crystal, the crystal looks colorless. Therefore when a crystal looks colored, we can infer that a colored object has been placed next to it.47 (2) In the absence of a functioning sense-faculty, perception does not take place. Therefore, when perception does take place, we can infer the existence of a functioning sense-faculty. Here is a little more elaboration. When a blind man stands with eyes open in front of a painting, he sees nothing. This means that despite several causes of perception being present—proximity of an object, open eyes, undistracted attention—there must be some further cause that is lacking in this case but present in successful cases of perception. This further cause is a functioning sense-faculty.48 The representationalist’s inference and these two all have the following structure. They begin with the assertion that when one crucial cause is lacking (external object, colored object next to the crystal, functioning sense-faculty) the effect is absent (perception of, respectively, a form, a colored crystal, the painting); and they then infer from the presence of the effect to the presence of that crucial cause. They are all valid, being cases of modus tollens. And the first two are also sound. The question mark hanging over the representationalist’s inference is whether its major premise is true. Its major premise—the claim of co-absence—is that when an external object is not there, then despite all other causes of perception being present (light, functioning sense-faculty, etc.), no form appears in consciousness. There are at least six slightly different ways in which we can gloss this claim. (i) When no external object is there, we experience a cognition without form. (ii) When no external object is there, we do not experience a cognition with form. Then the hypothetical (H) equivalents of those two: (i-H) If no external object were there, we would experience a cognition without form. (ii-H) If no external object were there, we would not experience a cognition with form. Then a third alternative and its hypothetical equivalent: (iii) When no external blue object, say, is there (but rather an external yellow object), we do not experience a blue form in cognition (but rather a yellow form). (iii-H) If no external blue object were there (but rather an external yellow object), we would not experience a blue form in cognition (but rather a yellow form). (i) and (i-H) appeal to the experience of a cognition with no form and content. Such an experience was not held by either the representationalist or the idealist to have been within the reach of non-Yogins or the non-awakened. So insofar as commonly accepted phenomena will be preferred as examples in this debate, it will not serve the representationalist well. Both sides hold that

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all worldly cognition, at least, has form (sākāravāda); a formless cognition is a potential threat to that shared theory. So this might lead the representationalist to phrase the major premise as (ii). Rather than appealing to the presence of a certain experience (one without form and content), they appeal to the absence of an experience (one with form and content). But when do these absences of experience take place? Are we not always having an experience? In which case how can we verify the purported absences of cognition when no external object is present? So that might motivate the move to (ii-H), where the absence of experience becomes merely hypothetical, or to (iii) or (iii-H), where there is no appeal to absence of form-containing experience per se, only to the absence of an experience with a particular form. The problem with (ii-H) will be explored below, in the context of a discussion of the crystal inference. What evidence can the representationalists provide in favor of (iii)? By their own admission, all we have perceptual access to in the case described is a yellow form within cognition—not also a yellow external object. So they cannot assert what the characteristics of the external object are that is supposedly causing the form. To know that it is not a blue object but a yellow one would require a means of checking the features of the external object, something they themselves deny. How about (iii-H)? How can we assume that there is a relation of “same color” between external object and form if we cannot observe the color of the external object in even a single case? What firm reasons for correspondence are there? How do we even know that the external objects are things that have color? (i), (ii), and (iii) begin with “When no external (blue) object is there.” But given the representationalist’s admission that external objects are perceptually inaccessible, how could we know when or if no external (blue) object is there? If everything apart from cognition and the forms within cognition lies beyond a veil of perceptual ignorance, then we are unable to perceptually verify not only co-presence but also co-absence. Yet the inference can only go through if one of these is known. Prior to the inference, if all we have to go on is perception, and if perception can tell us nothing about external objects, then not only can we not know that an external object is present: we cannot know that an external object is absent either. Perception is no more able to help us establish co-absence than co-presence.49 But perhaps perception is not all we have to go on. The representationalist can admit that perception cannot help to establish the co-absence, and so give up on the non-hypothetical formulations, (i), (ii), and (iii), and opt for a hypothetical formulation that could be supported by reasoning rather than perception. Some difficulties with (i-H) and (iii-H) have been given above. (ii-H) will be addressed below.

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2.2 The Superior Candidacy of Latent Impressions over External Objects The representationalist argues that the best candidate for the cause of forms within cognition is an external object. But the idealist argues that there is a better candidate: “latent impressions”/“traces of earlier experiences” (vāsanās). These latent impressions are not ad hoc entities imported here by the Yogācāra to enable argumentation in favor of idealism. They are appealed to by the representationalists too (and the direct realists) in at least three domains: memory, karma, and dreaming. What is it that enables us to recall an experience at some separation of time from the experience itself? The experience, if significant enough for the subject, lays down an impression of itself in the subject, which remains latent unless and until it is triggered by something, for example, a present experience similar to the earlier one. This results in the activation of the trace, which causes a memory. What is it that explains how an action that has long since ceased causes a karmic result? The action laid down a trace, which becomes activated later. What explains the appearance to consciousness of a dream image, when nothing in the external world around the dreamer corresponds to the image? The activation of a latent impression. These latent impressions are stored in an unconscious part of the self for the non-Buddhists, and in an unconscious part of the mind-stream for the Buddhists. On the one hand the representationalist attributes to latent impressions the power to produce images within consciousness both in the context of dreaming and of memory. On the other hand, the representationalist’s claim that external objects are forever imperceptible prevents him from claiming knowledge that external objects can produce images within consciousness. Given these two, it appears that for the representationalist the best candidate for the producer of images within consciousness, when we are awake and perceiving, should be latent impressions. The representationalist asserts that, when remembering and dreaming, X produces images within consciousness; so surely it is more reasonable to assert that, when perceiving too, X produces images, than that some imperceptible Y produces those images.50 2.3 The Difference of the Representationalist’s Inference from the SenseFaculty Inference and the Crystal Inference Those are the two interlocking idealist arguments—that from the impossibility of establishing causation and that from the superior candidacy of latent impressions over external objects—against the representationalist’s inference of external objects. Let us finish by considering the salient differences between the representationalist’s inference and the two abovementioned, similar but sound inferences.

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The inference of the existence of the sense-faculties notes that despite all other causes of perception being present, perception does not arise in the absence of a functioning sense-faculty, so that the rise of a perception entails the existence of a functioning sense-faculty. Similarly the representationalist’s inference of external objects notes that despite all other causes of perception being present (light, functioning sense-faculty, etc.), no form appears in consciousness in the absence of an external object, so that the rise of a form in consciousness entails the existence of an external object. Sense-faculties were regarded as imperceptible, so the fact that external objects are imperceptible for the representationalist does not mark the representationalist’s inference as different or objectionable. Why, then, is the representationalist’s inference different? Because, in these inferences of something imperceptible, it is crucial that the inferred is the best explanation of the phenomenon in question. In the case of the sense-faculty inference, no one doubts that the presence and absence of a functioning sensefaculty is the best explanation of occurrence of perception in the non-blind and its nonoccurrence in the blind. But there is doubt over whether the presence and absence of an external object is the best explanation of the occurrence and nonoccurrence of a form within consciousness. A rival explanation is the presence and absence of an activated latent impression—I perceive a table when a table-latent-impression is activated, and not when one is not. And as we have just seen, there are reasons for supposing an activated latent impression to actually be a better explanation than an externally existing table. Now let us consider the crystal inference: When no colored object is placed next to a crystal, the crystal looks colorless. Therefore, when a crystal looks colored, we can infer that a colored object has been placed next to it. The representationalist’s inference looks exactly parallel: When no external object is placed next to a sense-faculty, no form will appear in cognition. Therefore, when a form appears in cognition, we can infer the presence of an external object. But in the case of a crystal, we can perceive both the presence and absence of a colored object placed next to it. We might not always be able to do so. But an occasion on which we see only the colored crystal—the colored object being hidden from us—will enable us to infer the presence of the colored object only because of numerous past perceptions of a colored crystal in the presence of a colored object, and of a colorless crystal in the absence of any object in the vicinity. The parallel perceptions of co-presence and co-absence (of external object, and form within cognition) are not available to the representationalist. Now the representationalist may reply along the following lines. (1) It is not fair to criticize me for not being able to perceive the co-presence (of external object and form), because my inference is based only on co-absence. (2) I admit that the co-absence cannot be perceived, but it can be arrived at through the

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hypothetical consideration expressed by (ii-H), namely: If no external object were there, we would not experience a cognition with form. The representationalist will need to provide justification for this hypothetical claim, which he can do by claiming that cognition in its true nature is clear and transparent (svaccha), like a colorless piece of glass or crystal. If that were the case, then it would be true that in the absence of external influence, no form would appear in cognition, just as when no colored object is placed in the vicinity of the crystal, there is no appearance of color in the crystal. Form in cognition, like color in crystal, could only be inherited from outside. Where have we got to? The representationalist has admitted that they can perceive neither the co-presence nor the co-absence, but claimed they can establish the co-absence by stating it hypothetically and supporting that hypothetical claim by appealing to cognition’s intrinsic formlessness and transparency. So far so good. But now the difficulty comes: How will they support the claim that cognition is intrinsically clear and transparent, like a crystal? The disanalogy between cognition and a crystal mentioned above presents itself here again as an obstacle. We can inspect the area around the crystal, but we cannot perceptually inspect the area “around cognition,” by the representationalist’s own admission. We are able to perceive not only the crystal and its color, but also external objects close to it. And because we can perceive external objects close to it, we can determine that when we do not perceive them, they are not there. We can then correlate both situations—presence and absence of external objects—with, respectively, color in the crystal and non-color in the crystal. Thus we can arrive at the view that when unaffected by external objects, the crystal is colorless. But how can the representationalist arrive at the view that when unaffected by external objects, cognition lacks form? All the representationalist can perceive are cognition and its forms. Parallelism would thus dictate that all we can perceive are the crystal and its colors. It has different colors at different times, but we have no way of knowing when an object is placed next to it, or what color such an object may be. If that were the situation, we would not know if the changes in the crystal’s color were produced by its own nature or something extrinsic to it. We would not know that it is intrinsically colorless. The crystal inference is sound because we can perceive the relevant copresence, the relevant co-absence, and we can easily establish that the crystal is transparent in its intrinsic nature. The representationalist can perceive neither the relevant co-presence, nor the co-absence, nor establish the transparent nature of cognition which could enable him to infer the co-absence. But it needs to be pointed out that the idealist agrees with the representationalist that cognition is transparent in its true nature. In claiming that cognition is like a crystal in that respect, the representationalist is not

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asserting anything that the idealist will object to. So if the idealist grants to the representationalist that cognition is clear and formless in its true nature, is the representationalist not home and dry? They can then use that to support the hypothetical statement of the co-absence, which can serve as the major premise in their inference of external objects. The problem is that what the idealist and the representationalist mean by “clear and formless in its true nature” differs.51 For the representationalist cognition is clear and formless in the absence of external objects; only if that is true will the presence of form in cognition entail the presence of an external object. For the idealist it is not clear and formless in the absence of external objects, as it can be muddied by latent impressions. So what the idealists mean when they assert that cognition is clear in its true nature is: clear in the absence of latent impressions.52 If that is what is meant by the purity and clarity of cognition in its own nature, then we cannot say that in the absence of an external object there is no cognition with form (for the form can be derived from a latent impression even in the absence of an external object). And if we cannot say that, then the representationalist’s inference fails: We can conclude nothing from the presence of form in cognition. There is one additional consideration—embarrassing for the representationalist in its simplicity—that discredits the major premise of the representationalist’s inference, thus distinguishing it from the two sound ones. It is not true that in the absence of external objects cognition lacks form, for cognition has form in such cases as remembering, dreaming, and imagining, when no external object is exerting causal influence.53

CONCLUDING REMARKS This article has considered arguments in favor of the two halves of Buddhist idealism: (1) What we directly perceive are forms within consciousness. (2) There is no good inference from those forms to external objects, as they are better explained by latent impressions. What it has not done is consider how Buddhist idealists would then respond to objections such as the following, that are provoked by their idealist conclusions. (1) They explain waking perception as caused by the same mechanism as dreaming and remembering: latent impressions. But there is no mystery as to the provenance of the latent impressions that are active in dreaming and remembering: They can be explained as laid down by earlier perceptions. What, however, is the provenance of the latent impressions that, according to the Buddhist idealist, cause our perceptions? The problem seems particularly acute in the case of something perceived for the first time—something, say, that has only just been invented (so impressions laid down by perceptions in a past life cannot be appealed to).54

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(2) The Buddhist is not a solipsist, believing rather in the real plurality of individual streams of consciousness. So this brand of idealism might escape Bertrand Russell’s arguments about the difficulties posed to idealism by cats and other people. If a cat is not just my own sense-data, but a separately existing being, albeit one consisting ultimately only of a mind-stream, then perhaps its hunger and its movement across the room pose less of a problem for the idealist? And if the noises we hear when we take it that a human being is speaking do indeed emanate from another sentient being, then Russell’s point about the implausibility of these not being the expression of a thought can be neutralized. But if cats and people are nonphysical mind-streams, why and how do I experience them as moving and speaking? And if the world I experience is projected by my own latent impressions, how can anything enter that world from outside of me, and be experienced by me, whether it is a physical object or a mind-stream?55 Perceiving each other and communicating with each other looks to be impossible for two different mind-streams without abandoning the principle that everything I perceive is the result of the maturation of a latent impression within my own mind-stream. As long as that principle is adhered to, it looks like the only two brands of idealism available are ones that are disavowed by the Buddhist: (i) the solipsistic view that I am the only mindstream in the universe, everyone I meet being only figments in my dream-world; (ii) the assertion of a plurality of mind-streams combined with the claim that they can never encounter one another or communicate. How can the Buddhists defend their version of idealism according to which different mind-streams can meet and interact, without compromising the above-mentioned principle? If it seems hard to make sense of the possibility of one Buddhist mind-stream perceiving another, it seems even harder to make sense of one mindstream perceiving objects projected by the latent impressions in another mind-stream. But if I cannot see anything that another mind-stream sees, how can we communicate successfully?56 (3) If the Buddhist idealist denies the existence of a physical spatio-temporal world, so that different mind-streams cannot be assigned to different bodies or different locations, how can we differentiate mind-streams? How, in principle, could they be individuated? And what, in practice, keeps them separate from one another, such that one does not experience the latent impressions produced by the perceptions and actions of another?57 There are many possible accounts of the story that has been told in this article. One, not the only, is as follows. The stage 1 arguments show that there are difficulties with direct realism that may motivate a move to representationalism. The stage 2 arguments show that representationalism will be forced to slide into idealism. The representationalist middle ground is not stable, for its own presuppositions render problematic the move from mental

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representations to the existence of external objects that purportedly cause the representations. The difficulties with idealism pointed to in the concluding remarks have not been explored in this article. But if further exploration were not to lead to satisfactory solutions, this could motivate four possible moves. (1) Attempt to modify idealism in such a way as to make room for satisfactory solutions. (2) Resuscitate direct realism. (3) Seek a kind of representationalism that asserts that we do have perceptual access to external objects. (4) Retain the representationalist admission of perceptual access only to forms within cognition, but argue for the existence of external objects by means of abductive reasoning to the best explanation (arthāpatti), rather than through a deductively valid modus tollens inference (anumāna) that aims at certitude.58

NOTES 1

In the light of these three differences, I regard it as surprising that Duckworth (2017) uses “panpsychism” rather than “idealism” for the view of Yogācāra Buddhism.

2

Some may be used to “content” being used of internal representations and “object” being used of external objects. I resist that usage for it leaves us with no common term that can be used by all three of these groups to refer to whatever it is that is the immediate object of perception, which makes it very difficult for them to talk to each other and for their views to be articulated in non-questionbegging ways. I thus use “content” and “object” synonymously to refer to the immediate object of perception, which for the direct realist is an external object, and for the other two groups is an image internal to consciousness. This also accords with Sanskrit articulations of these debates, where words like grāhya are used in this neutral sense to refer to whatever it is that is the immediate object of perception, whether an internal image or externally existing object.

3

For further elaboration of what these “latent impressions” are, see p. 160.

4

Cf. Matilal (1986: 223–7) and Ram-Prasad (2002: 238–40).

5

The common characterization of the Vaibhāṣikas as direct realists in fact requires a significant qualification. Although for them the five sense consciousnesses indeed make direct contact with an external object, the mental consciousness (manovijñāna) that sits above them and recognizes or discerns the physical object is presented only with a representation: It thus perceives the external object not directly but indirectly. I owe this qualification to Robert Sharf (2018), who deals with the Vaibhāṣika theory at length; see especially pp. 830–52.

6

Advaita Vedānta is not straightforward to place. It is true that for it there is nothing real other than consciousness, which makes it look like idealism, but its proponents make a firm distinction between the objects or contents of our experience and consciousness; they never claim that objects are just consciousness taking a certain form, or that objects are of the nature of consciousness, as the Buddhist idealist and the non-dualistic Śaiva assert. Indeed Advaita Vedāntins argue firmly against Buddhist idealists on this point. Buddhists collapse the

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distinction between objects and consciousness; for Advaita Vedāntins that distinction is fundamental. Without it, their view of the unreality of objects but reality of consciousness would be harder to maintain. 7

For a particularly well-expressed description of Naiyāyika direct realism, see Matilal (2002: 105–6).

8

The passage of the Nyāyamañjarī that this article discusses was edited by Kataoka (2003), translated into Japanese by Kataoka (2006), and translated into English by Watson and Kataoka (2010).

9

For which of Jayanta’s Buddhist arguments go back to which earlier author, see Watson and Kataoka (2010) and Watson (2014: 401, note 1). Kumārila, as mentioned, was not a Buddhist idealist, but rather a Mīmāṃsaka direct realist, so the idealist arguments that go back to him are found in passages where his Buddhist opponent is speaking. Kumārila preserves a stage of Buddhist argumentation that falls between Dignāga and Dharmakīrti in its level of development and sophistication: See Taber (2010), Watson and Kataoka (2010: 292–8, 303–11), Watson (2014: 405), and Watson (forthcoming, b).

10 One slight falsification or “tidying up” in my presentation is that the arguments in Blossoms of Reasoning are not as neatly divided into stage 1 and stage 2 as they are in this article. Some stage 1 arguments are presented as not only capable of establishing that the forms we perceive are not external objects, but as capable of discrediting the existence of external objects altogether. This is true not only of Jayanta’s Blossoms of Reasoning, but also of many other sources—both non-Buddhist and Buddhist—that present stage 1 arguments (such as that from necessary co-perception). 11 There are two questions here, not always clearly distinguished. (1) Do the arguments given by Yogācāra Buddhists, if successful, yield the conclusion of the non-existence of any objects external to consciousness, or merely the nonexistence of external objects that are the content of, or cause the content of, perception? (2) Did Yogācāra Buddhists take their arguments to establish the non-existence of any objects external to consciousness, or merely the nonexistence of external objects that are the content of, or cause the content of, perception? See Hayes (1988), Kapstein (1988), Oetke (1992), Lusthaus (2002), Schmithausen (2005), Arnold (2008), Kapstein (2014: 128ff.), Kellner and Taber (2014), Ratié (2014a), Kellner (2017), Perrett (2017: 62ff.). 12 On Vasubandhu’s explicit naming of citta, manas, vijñāna and vijñapti as synonyms at the beginning of the Viṃśikā, see Kachru (2021: 26–9). 13 On the precise use to which Vasubandhu puts dreaming in his proof of idealism, see Kachru (2021: 43–84). 14 Just as it is mistaken to think that the idealists’ thesis commits them to the view that objects are experienced “in the head” or “inside the subject,” so too it is at best misleading and at worst mistaken to attribute to the idealist the view that objects exist “in the head.” If one makes the mistake (from the idealists’ point of view) of thinking that cognition/consciousness is spatially located within the head/body, then one will take the idealists’ thesis to commit them to the view that objects exist inside the head/body. In order to enter the view of the idealist, one should rather think of cognition as filling the space between one’s body and

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the object, and indeed as comprising the nature of one’s body and the object and everything else in the universe. 15 Here and for the rest of the article I am setting aside the complication of the existence of a Yogācāra Buddhist idealist nirākāravāda, such as that held by Ratnākaraśānti. 16 Prābhākara Mīmāṃsakas held that we perceive both cognition and an object outside that, but they are not involved in the particular debate that I am writing about—between Naiyāyika and Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsaka direct realists, Sautrāntika representationalists, and Yogācāra Buddhist idealists. 17 To avoid sexist language I use “they,” “their” etc. to refer to “the idealist,” “the representationalist” and “the direct realist.” Third-person pronouns, plural in form but singular in meaning, have been a part of English since at least the sixteenth century. 18 Nyāyamañjarī § 3.1.3. Numbers following § refer to the section numbers given both in Kataoka’s (2003*) edition and Watson and Kataoka’s (2010) translation. 19 Nyāyamañjarī § 3.1.1. For other appeals to parsimony (or “simplicity” or “lightness”) in proofs of idealism, see Siderits (2007: 157–8) and Perrett (2017: 62ff.). Siderits, Finnigan (2017: 182–3) and Kachru (2021: 145ff.) all take Vasubandhu to be using parsimony as an argument against external objects at Viṃśikā 6–7. Although Vasubandhu does not name parsimony (kalpanālāghava) as the principle involved in his argument, that is indeed a reasonable way to interpret it. 20 Jayanta takes the argument from Kumārila’s Ślokavārttika, śūnyavāda 10–20. Dharmakīrti does not give an argument for idealism from parsimony; thanks to Birgit Kellner for this piece of information (email June 2nd, 2019). 21 For more on what these “latent impressions” are, see p. 160. 22 Nyāyamañjarī § 4.7.1. 23 Siderits (2007: 173) considers a realist response to idealist claims of parsimony that partly resembles this, and partly resembles Taber’s abovementioned response—that there is a complexity to the idealist theory that means it is not actually more parsimonious. 24 This argument comes from Dharmakīrti. Cf. Pramāṇavārttika 3:301–19 (on which see Kellner 2017: 108–9 and Taber 2005: 197–8, note 98) and Pramāṇaviniścaya 1:34–7. Jayanta’s Yogācāra Buddhist exponent of the argument cites Pramāṇavārttika 3:302: tatrānubhavamātreṇa jñānasya sadṛśātmanaḥ | bhāvyaṃ tenātmanā yena pratikarma vibhajyate || “A cognition [focused] on a [particular blue object] (tatra), having a similar nature [to other cognitions of other objects] insofar as it is [like them] a mere cognition, must have a nature in virtue of which it is differentiated in accordance with its object.” See Watson and Kataoka (2010: 313) for some evidence that Jayanta’s formulation of the argument has also been influenced by Dharmottara’s Nyāyabinduṭīkā. A particularly rich, and as yet completely unstudied treatment of the argument is found in the Nareśvaraparīkṣāprakāśa (pp. 17,3–26,19; see Watson 2006: 333, note 2) by Rāmakaṇṭha (c. 950–1000), who like Dharmottara and Jayanta

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was writing in Kashmir. A precursor of the argument is found in Ślokavārttika, śūnyavāda 19–20 (see note 26). 25 In the Pramāṇavārttika verses from which this argument derives (3: 301–19), Dharmakīrti is clearly arguing for a representationalist view against a direct realist one. See Kellner’s (2017: 108) description of those verses as defending “a Sautrāntika-style theory of perception based on causation and resemblance against Brahmanical interlocutors.” 26 A precursor of this point is found in Ślokavārttika, śūnyavāda 19–20: tasmād ubhayasiddhatvāj jñānasyākārakalpanā | jyāyasī bhavatas tv arthaṃ kalpayitvā bhaved iyam || tadasiddhāv aśaktatvāt, tenaivaṃ viprakṛṣṭatā | pratyāsannaṃ ca sambaddhaṃ grāhyaṃ mama bhaviṣyati ||. [Idealist:] “Therefore because it (i.e. cognition) is established for both of us, it is better to postulate a form belonging to cognition. [The difference between us is just that] for you [realists] this [postulating of form in cognition] is something you have to do after postulating an external object, because if a [form within cognition] were not established [cognition] would be incapable [of perceiving the object]. On the view that [cognition lacks form], the [thing to be perceived] is far away [from cognition]. [But] on my view the thing to be perceived is very close and connected [it being internal].” Jayanta echoes this wording in his formulation of the argument (§ 3.3.1). 27 Though not occurring in Blossoms of Reasoning, this is effectively the move that the Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsaka direct realist makes at Tattvasaṅgraha 244–5 (citing, with minor variation of wording, Ślokavārttika, śabdanityatā 406–7). See Ratié (2014b: 77–9, 288). 28 For more on the opposition between the form view and the causation view, see Watson and Kataoka (2010: 313). 29 This point was already contained, in condensed form, in the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya (p. 134,5–7): kiṃ punar asya sādṛśyam? tadākāratā. ata eva tad indriyād apy utpannaṃ viṣayaṃ vijānātīty ucyate, nendriyam. “What then is [cognition]’s similarity [to its object]? It is the fact that it takes on the form of [its object]. That is why although [cognition] arises from a sense-faculty it is said to perceive the object, not the sense-faculty.” For similar but slightly different remarks about sense-faculties in this same context of Buddhist rejections of direct realism because of considerations of object-specificity, see Pramāṇavārttika 3:303–305 and Pramāṇaviniścaya ad 1:34, p. 31,10ff. (On Pramāṇavārttika 3:305, see Kellner 2009–2010: 187–91). Those remarks are different insofar as here sense-faculties feature as a counterexample to causation as a possible explanation of objectspecificity, whereas there sense-faculties are being discussed as themselves the explanation of object-specificity. 30 Nyāyamañjarī § 3.3.2. 31 Nyāyamañjarī § 4.8.1. 32 Nyāyamañjarī § 4.8.2. 33 My thinking here was helped by an exchange with Birgit Kellner (email August 25th, 2021). She also pointed me to the following passage where Dharmakīrti makes fun of the direct realist’s position on similar grounds (it remains shrouded in mystery insofar as it does not provide any feature of cognition that accounts for object-specificity): Pramāṇaviniścaya ad 1:34, pp. 31,13–32,3.

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34 I am here adapting an argument used by the Buddhist Śāntarakṣita against a Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsaka direct realist. The latter, while defending a Mīmāṃsā conception of the self, asserts that cognition is permanent and one, all diversity falling on the side of external objects (Tattvasaṅgraha 242, citing Ślokavārttika, śabdanityatā 404). The Buddhist responds by pointing to the case of seeing a patch of ground first as an elephant and then as a horse (Tattvasaṅgraha 249 and -pañjikā ad loc.). See Ratié (2014b: 76, 80, 286–7, 290–1). 35 There is a fifth stage 1 argument that I will have to skip altogether, that from the impossibility of incompatible properties residing in an external object: see Nyāyamañjarī § 3.7 and Watson and Kataoka (2010: 321–2). 36 Pramāṇaviniścaya 1:54ab: sahopalambhaniyamād abhedo nīlataddhiyoḥ. 37 See, for example, Pramāṇaviniścaya p. 40,2–3: na hy anayor ekākārānupalambhe ’nyopalambho ’sti. 38 See also Matsumoto (1980), Kellner (2017: 113–15) and Saccone (2018: 106–11, 279–92). 39 See also brief remarks by Finnigan (2017: 188–90) and Kachru (2019: 66ff.). 40 Nyāyamañjarī § 3.2.4. 41 Nyāyamañjarī § 3.2.1–3.2.3. 42 Pramāṇasamuccaya 1:11cd. See Watson and Kataoka (2010: 308–10) on the evolution of this argument as it passes from Dignāga to Kumārila to Jayanta. On the argument in Dignāga, see Kellner (2010) and (2011). 43 Pramāṇaviniścaya 1:54cd: apratyakṣopalambhasya nārthadṛṣṭiḥ prasidhyati; “For someone who does not perceive a cognition, the perception of its object is not established [either].” See also Pramāṇavārttika 3:443ab and 3:446 for the point that perception of an object necessarily entails perception of cognition. 44 Taber (2010) focusses more on the argument as articulated by Kumārila; the other two publications on the argument as articulated by Jayanta. I disagree with two features of Taber’s interpretation of Kumārila’s argument. When Kumārila’s Buddhist idealist speaker states that cognition must be perceived before the object is perceived, I take this to be an unwanted consequence (prasaṅga) that follows from realist presuppositions (see Watson and Kataoka 2010: 311–12; Watson 2014: 405). It is contradicted by Buddhist presuppositions: Since cognition and object are non-different for the Buddhist, cognition clearly cannot be perceived before the object is perceived. The fact that Taber does not keep in view that this is a consequence of realist presuppositions is a significant factor in his dismissal of the argument: “Moreover, the notion that cognitions arise by themselves prior to cognizing their objects seems gratuitous and dogmatic as well and presents the spectacle of a kind of double event. First the cognition, aware of itself and its specific form, arises, then it ‘apprehends’ an object, which apprehension has exactly the same structure as the initial self-apprehension of the cognition—for the form that is evident when the object is apprehended supposedly belongs to the cognition!” (2010: 290). I think the argument is not as flawed as he sees it. It is not that it postulates two events with the same structure; rather it claims just that if an object existed outside of cognition, cognition would have to perceive itself before perceiving that object. (Vaḥ in Ślokavārttika, śūnyavāda 21b, meaning “for you [realists who hold that cognition illuminates an external insentient object],”

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underlines that what follows is a consequence that falls undesirably to the realist, not something seriously asserted by the Buddhist.) As to why it follows that cognition would have to perceive itself before it could perceive an external insentient object, see Watson and Kataoka (2010: 306, 308) and Watson (2014: 408). Secondly, Taber (2010: 286) takes na copalabdhir astīha nirākārāsu buddhiṣu (Ślokavārttika, śūnyavāda 31cd) to mean: “Moreover there is no perception [of an object] when cognitions are without form.” I understand it rather as: “Moreover there is no perception with respect to (i.e. perception of) cognitions that are without form.” On the first understanding cognitions are featuring as the subject of perception, on the second they are featuring as the object. The argument comes out as significantly different depending which of these two understandings one goes for. And if the second is correct, then support for one of Taber’s historical theses (p. 292) is removed. These two ways in which I understand Kumārila are how Jayanta understands Kumārila. But that is of course not sufficient in itself to decide the matter. 45 See Ślokavārttika, śūnyavāda 40–55 and Nyāyamañjarī § 3.6 for a Sautrāntika view according to which the form we perceive does not belong exclusively to cognition, but rather jointly to both cognition and the external object, being produced by their contact. 46 See Pramāṇaviniścaya 1:58c’d: bāhyasiddhiḥ syād vyatirekataḥ, “External [objects] could be established from co-absence.” This is cited at Nyāyamañjarī § 3.4.1. For the text and translation of Dharmakīrti’s commentary on it, see Krasser (2004: 142–3) and Kellner (2017: 115–16, and note 62). 47 See Nyāyamañjarī § 3.4.1–3.4.2. 48 See Abhidharmakośabhāṣya, p. 36,7–11: sati kāraṇe kāraṇāntarasyābhāve kāryasyābhāvo dṛṣṭo bhāve ca punar bhāvas tadyathāṅkurasya. saty eva cābhāsaprāpte viṣaye manaskāre ca kāraṇe viṣayagrahaṇasyābhāvo dṛṣṭaḥ punaś ca bhāvaḥ, andhabadhirādīnām anandhābadhirādīnāṃ ca. atas tatrāpi kāraṇāntarasyābhāvo bhāvaś ca niścīyate. yac ca tat kāraṇāntaraṃ tad indriyam. “When [most] causes are present [but] one further cause is absent, the effect is found to be absent, and when [that further cause is also] present, [the effect], for example a sprout, is then present. Now when a manifest object and a [second] cause, attention [on the part of a perceiver], are present, perception of the object is found not to occur for the blind or deaf etc., but to occur for the non-blind, non-deaf etc. Therefore in this case too the absence and presence [respectively] of a further cause is determined. And that further cause is the sense-faculty.” 49 Cf. Ratié (2014a: 363): “… a causal relationship presupposes the invariable copresence (anvaya) and co-absence (vyatireka) of the two related entities; but in the case at hand, we cannot ascertain that whenever there is an external object, there is a cognition bearing a particular objective aspect, and that whenever there is no external object, there is no such cognition, because we cannot experience these two entities separately.” 50 See Manorathanandin’s Pramāṇavārttikavṛtti, p. 220: ko hi viśeṣo bāhyo vā niyāmakaḥ pratibhāsasya prabuddhavāsanāviśeṣaḥ samanantarapratyayo vā. tatra vāsanāyāḥ sāmarthyaṃ svapnādāv upalabdhaṃ na tu bāhyasya, nityaparokṣatvāt. Ratié (2014a: 358) translates: “For what is it that determines the appearance [of cognition]: a particular external [entity], or rather, a particular imprint (vāsanā)

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that has [just] been awakened [and functions as an] immediate and similar antecedent (samanantarapratyaya)? Among these two [candidates, we] see that the imprint has this capacity in a dream for instance, but [we do] not [see] that an external [entity may have this capacity,] since it is forever imperceptible.” (I have removed a small misprint. And perhaps worth considering is that prabuddhavāsanāviśeṣaḥ is a bahuvrīhi.) Ratié discusses how her interpretation of this and the following passage differs from that of Arnold (2008). 51 See Nyāyamañjarī § 3.4.4.2. 52 See Tomlinson (2021: 277–8). 53 See, for examples of the idealist making this point against the representationalist but in a slightly different context, Ślokavārttika, śūnyavāda 51cd and Nyāyamañjarī end of § 3.6. One way the representationalist could respond is by availing himself of a claim made more commonly by direct realists (see e.g., Ślokavārttika, nirālambanavāda 108ab): Cognition has form in dreaming and imagining only because of previous encounters with external objects; so it remains true that cognition would lack form if there were no external objects. Thanks to Birgit Kellner and Mark Siderits for suggesting this move to me. 54 Here are two possible Buddhist idealist answers. (1) Since the background cosmology accepted by not only Buddhists but also many of their non-Buddhist opponents was that the universe is beginningless and cyclical, anything “newly invented” can always have been invented in a previous cosmic cycle. (2) An invention is necessarily partite. Its ultimate parts can have been cognized earlier, so that what one newly learns is just the convention for conceptualizing this collection of parts as a single entity. I thank Roy Perrett and Mark Siderits for these two suggestions. 55 See the last sentence of the vṛtti on Viṃśikā 10: itarathā hi vijñapter api vijñaptyantaram arthaḥ syād iti vijñaptimātratvaṃ na sidhyeta, arthavatītvād vijñaptīnām. 56 Some sources to be consulted in considering Yogācāra solutions to these problems are: Viṃśikā, especially verses 18ab, 19, 21, and the vṛtti thereon, Santānāntarasiddhi, Santānāntaradūṣaṇa, Yamabe (1998), Moriyama (2010), Perrett (2017), Tzohar (2017a) and (2017b: 268–75), Prueitt (2018), Kachru (2019). The common Buddhist idealist appeal to shared karmic seeds stored in the ālayavijñāna seems only capable of establishing that I can see something qualitatively similar but numerically distinct from what another person sees. For each mind-stream has its own separate ālayavijñāna with its own separate karmic seeds, and I can only see what is projected by my own karmic seeds. As Garfield (2019: 85) puts it, shared karma enables parallel subjectivity but not intersubjectivity. 57 See Oetke (1992: 220). 58 See Siderits (2020: 294–6) for the view that the inference of the sense-faculties (to which I compared the representationalist’s inference of external objects) is best seen as abductive reasoning to the best explanation (arthāpatti). See Watson’s (2021: 498–9) remarks on the way that Indian inferences (anumāna) were typically but mistakenly presented and understood as either yielding certainty or as fallacious.

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REFERENCES Sanskrit Sources Abhidharmakośabhāṣya: see Lee (2005). Nareśvaraparīkṣāprakāśa: Shastri, M. K. (ed.), Nareśvaraparīkṣā of Sadyojyotis with the Prakāśa Commentary of Rāmakaṇṭha, Delhi, 1989 (Original Edition Śrīnagar 1926). Nyāyamañjarī: see Kataoka (2003*), Numbers following § in the present article refer to the section numbers given both in Kataoka (2003*) and Watson and Kataoka (2010). Pramāṇasamuccaya: Steinkellner, E. (ed.), Dignāga’s Pramāṇasamuccaya, Chapter 1. A Hypothetical Reconstruction of the Sanskrit text with the Help of the Two Tibetan Translations on the Basis of the Hitherto Known Sanskrit Fragments and the Linguistic Materials Gained from Jinendrabuddhiʼs Ṭīkā. URL: https://www.oeaw.ac.at/fileadmin/Institute/IKGA/PDF/forschung/ buddhismuskunde/dignaga_PS_1.pdf (last accessed August 3, 2021). Pramāṇavārttika: Pramāṇavārttika, Yūsho Miyasaka (ed.), Acta Indologica II (Naritasan Shinshoji), 1971–72, 1–206. I follow the readings of this edition, unless stated otherwise, but I use the following chapter numbering: 1. Svārthānumāna, 2. Pramāṇasiddhi, 3. Pratyakṣa, 4. Parārthānumāna. Pramāṇavārttikavṛtti: Dharmakīrti’s Pramāṇavārttika with a Commentary by Manorathanandin, Sāṅkṛtyāyana, Rāhula (ed.), Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society 24. Patna, 1937. Pramāṇaviniścaya: Dharmakīrti’s Pramāṇaviniścaya, Chapters 1 and 2, Ernst Steinkellner (ed.), Sanskrit Texts from the Tibetan Autonomous Region 2, Beijing/ Vienna: China Tibetology Publishing House/Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2007. Ślokavārttika: Ślokavārttika of Śrī Kumārila Bhaṭṭa with the Commentary Nyāyaratnākara of Śrī Pārthasārathi Miśra, Swāmī Dvārikadāsa Śāstrī (ed.), Varanasi: Tara Publications, 1978. Tattvasaṅgraha: Tattvasaṅgraha of Ācārya Shāntarakṣita with the Commentary Pañjikā of Shri Kamalashīla, Dvarikadas Shastrī (ed.), 2 vols, Bauddha Bharati Series 1 and 2, Varanasi: Bauddha Bharati, 1981, 1982. Tattvasaṅgrahapañjikā: see Tattvasaṅgraha. Viṃśikā: Materials toward The Study Of Vasubandhu’s Viṁśikā (I): Sanskrit and Tibetan Critical Editions of the Verses and Autocommentary, An English Translation and Annotations by Jonathan A. Silk. Harvard Oriental Series 81, Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2018 Open Access Edition (First Published 2016).

Secondary Sources Arnold, D. (2008), “Buddhist Idealism, Epistemic and Otherwise: Thoughts on the Alternating Perspectives of Dharmakīrti,” Sophia, 47: 3–28. Arnold, D. (2015), Brains, Buddhas, and Believing: The Problem of Intentionality in Classical Buddhist and Cognitive-Scientific Philosophy of Mind, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. First published in 2012 by Columbia University Press. Chakrabarti, A. (1990), “On the Purported Inseparability of Blue and the Awareness of Blue: An Examination of Sahopalambhaniyama,” in Doboom Tulku (ed.), Mind

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Only School and Buddhist Logic, Dialogue Series 1, 17–36, New Delhi: Tibet House and Aditya Prakashan. Duckworth, D. (2017), “The Other Side of Realism: Panpsychism and Yogācāra,” in S. M. Emmanuel (ed.), Buddhist Philosophy: A Comparative Approach, 29–43, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Finnigan, B. (2017), “Buddhist Idealism,” in T. Goldschmidt and K. Pearce (eds), Idealism: New Essays in Metaphysics, 178–99, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Garfield, J. L. (2019), “I Take Refuge in the Sangha. But How? The Puzzle of Intersubjectivity in Buddhist Philosophy Comments on Tzohar, Prueitt, and Kachru,” Sophia, 58: 85–9. DOI: 10.1007/s11841-019-0708-7. Hayes, R. P. (1988), Dignāga on the Interpretation of Signs, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Iwata, T. (1991), Sahopalambhaniyama: Struktur und Entwicklung des Schlusses von der Tatsache, daß Erkenntnis und Gegenstand ausschließlich zusammen wahrgenommen werden, auf deren Nichtverschiedenheit (2 Vols.), Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Kachru, S. (2019), “Ratnakīrti and the Extent of Inner Space: An Essay on Yogācāra and the Threat of Genuine Solipsism,” Sophia, 58: 61–83. DOI: 10.1007/s11841019-0707-8. Kachru, S. (2021), Other Lives: Mind and World in Indian Buddhism, New York: Columbia University Press. Kapstein, M. (1988), “Mereological Considerations in Vasubandhu’s ‘Proof of Idealism’ (Vijñaptimātratāsiddhiḥ),” Idealistic Studies, 18 (1): 32–54. Kapstein, M. T. (2014), “Buddhist Idealists and Their Jain Critics on Our Knowledge of External Objects,” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 74: 123–47. DOI:10.1017/S1358246114000083. Kataoka, K. (2003), “Critical Edition of the Vijñānādvaitavāda Section of Bhaṭṭa Jayanta’s Nyāyamañjarī,” The Memoirs of the Institute of Oriental Culture, 144: 115–55. Kataoka, K. (2003*), This is an updated version of Kataoka (2003). Kataoka, K. (2006), “Jayanta no Yuishiki Hihan: Nyāyamañjarī Ninshiki Ichigenron Hihan Wayaku” [An annotated Japanese translation of the Vijñānādvaitavāda Section of Bhaṭṭa Jayanta’s Nyāyamañjarī], Tetsugaku Nenpo, (Faculty of Letters, Kyushu University) 65: 39–85. Kellner, B. (2009–2010), “Towards a Critical Edition of Dharmakīrti’s Pramāṇavārttika,” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens/Vienna Journal of South Asian Studies, 52/53: 161–211. Kellner, B. (2010), “Self-awareness (svasaṃvedana) in Dignāga’s Pramāṇasamuccaya and -vṛtti: A Close Reading,” Journal of Indian Philosophy, 38: 203–31. Kellner, B. (2011), “Self-awareness (svasaṃvedana) and Infinite Regresses: A Comparison of Arguments by Dignāga and Dharmakīrti,” Journal of Indian Philosophy, 39 (4–5): 411–26. Kellner, B. (2017), “Proofs of Idealism in Buddhist Epistemology: Dharmakīrti’s Refutation of External Objects,” in J. Tuske (ed.), Indian Epistemology and Metaphysics, 102–28, London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Kellner, B. and J. Taber (2014), “Studies in Yogācāra-Vijñānavāda Idealism I: The Interpretation of Vasubandhu’s Viṃśika,” Asiatische Studien/Études Asiatiques, 68 (3): 709–56. DOI: 10.1515/asia-2014-0060

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Krasser, H. (2004), “Are Buddhist Pramāṇavādins non-Buddhistic? Dignāga and Dharmakīrti on the Impact of Logic and Epistemology on Emancipation,” Hōrin, 11: 129–46. Lee, J. C. (2005), Abhidharmakośabhāṣya of Vasubandhu, Chapter IX: Ātmavādapratiṣedha, edited by Jong Cheol Lee, with critical notes by the late Prof. Yasunori Ejima, Bibliotheca Indologica et Buddhologica 11, Tokyo: Sankibo Press. Lusthaus, D. (2002), Buddhist Phenomenology: A Philosophical Investigation of Yogācāra Buddhism and the Ch’eng Wei-shih Lun, London: Routledge. Matilal, B. K. (1986), Perception: An Essay on Classical Indian Theories of Knowledge, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Matilal, B. K. (2002), “Naïve Realism, Nyāya Realism and the Causal Theory,” in Jonardon Ganeri (ed.) Mind, Language and World, 97–113, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Matsumoto, S. (1980), “Sahopalambha-niyama,” Sōtōshū Kenkyūin Kenyūsei Kenkyū Kiyō, 12: 298–65. Moriyama, S. (2010), “On Self-Awareness in the Sautrāntika Epistemology,” Journal of Indian Philosophy, 38: 261–77. Oetke, C. (1992), “Doctrine and Argument in Vijñānavāda-Buddhism,” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens/Vienna Journal of South Asian Studies, 36: 217–25. Perrett, R. W. (2017), “Buddhist Idealism and the Problem of Other Minds,” Asian Philosophy, 27 (1): 59–68. DOI: 10.1080/09552367.2017.1284372. Prueitt, C. (2018), “Karmic Imprints, Exclusion, and the Creation of the Worlds of Conventional Experience in Dharmakīrti’s Thought,” Sophia, 57: 313–35. DOI: 10.1007/s11841-017-0618-5. Ram-Prasad, C. (2002), Advaita Epistemology and Metaphysics: An Outline of Indian Non-Realism, London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon. Ratié, I. (2014a), “On the Distinction between Epistemic and Metaphysical Buddhist Idealisms: A Śaiva Perspective,” Journal of Indian Philosophy, 42: 353–75. DOI: 10.1007/s10781-013-9191-6. Ratié, I. (2014b), Une Critique bouddhique du Soi selon la Mīmāṃsā. Présentation, édition critique et traduction de la Mīmāṃsakaparikalpitātmaparīkṣā de Śāntarakṣita (Tattvasaṅgraha 222–284 et Pañjikā), Beiträge zur Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte Asiens 84, Sitzungsberichte (Philosophisch-Historische Klasse) 857, Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Russell, B. (1912), The Problems of Philosophy, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Saccone, M. S. (2018), On the Nature of Things: A Buddhist Debate on Cognitions and Their Object, Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde 94, Vienna: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien. Schmithausen, L. (2005), On the Problem of the External World in the Ch’eng wei shih lun, Studia Philologica Buddhica Occasional Paper Series XIII, Tokyo: International Institute for Buddhist Studies. Shah, N. J. (1972), Cakradhara’s Nyāyamañjarī-Granthibhaṅga, L. D. Series 35, Ahmedabad: L. D. Institute of Indology. Sharf, R. H. (2018), “Knowing Blue: Early Buddhist Accounts of Non-Conceptual Sense,” Philosophy East and West, 68 (3): 826–70. Siderits, M. (2007), Buddhism as Philosophy: An Introduction, Aldershot: Ashgate; Indianapolis: Hackett.

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Siderits, M. (2020), “Against reducing Arthāpatti,” in M. Keating (ed.), Controversial Reasoning in Indian Philosophy: Major Texts and Arguments on Arthāpatti, 289–310, London etc.: Bloomsbury Academic. Taber, J. (2005), A Hindu Critique of Buddhist Epistemology: Kumārila on Perception: The “Determination of Perception” Chapter of Kumārila Bhaṭṭa’s Ślokavārttika, Translation and Commentary, London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon. Taber, J. (2010), “Kumārila’s Buddhist,” Journal of Indian Philosophy, 38: 279–96. DOI: 10.1007/s10781-010-9093-9. Taber, J. (2020), “Philosophical Reflections on the sahopalambhaniyama Argument,” in B. Kellner, P. McAllister, H. Lasic and S. McClintock (eds), Reverberations of Dharmakīrti’s Philosophy: Proceedings of the Fifth International Dharmakīrti Conference Heidelberg, August 26 to 30, 2014, 441–62, Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press. Tomlinson, D. (2021), “Breaking the Stream of Consciousness: Momentariness and the Eternal Present,” in J. Doody, S. Hannan and K. Paffenroth (eds), Augustine and Time, 271–89, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Tzohar, R. (2017a), “Imagine Being a Preta: Early Indian Yogācāra Approaches to Intersubjectivity,” Sophia, 56: 337–54. DOI: 10.1007/s11841-016-0544-y. Tzohar, R. (2017b), “Thoughts on the Early Indian Yogācāra Understanding of Āgama-Pramāṇa,” Kervan—International Journal of Afro-Asiatic Studies, 21: 261–77. DOI: 10.13135/1825-263X/2255. Watson, A. (2006), The Self’s Awareness of Itself. Bhaṭṭa Rāmakaṇṭha’s Arguments against the Buddhist Doctrine of No-Self, Vienna: Publications of the De Nobili Research Library 32. Watson, A. (2014), “Light as an Analogy for Cognition in Buddhist Idealism (Vijñānavāda),” Journal of Indian Philosophy, 42 (2): 401–21. DOI: 10.1007/ s10781-013-9192-5. Watson, A. (2021), “Jayanta on the Question of God’s Existence,” in V. Eltschinger, B. Kellner, E. Mills and I. Ratié (eds), A Road Less Traveled: Felicitation Volume in Honour of John Taber, Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddismuskunde 100, 471–504, Vienna: Association for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies, University of Vienna. Watson, A. (forthcoming, a), “Jayanta on Whether Recognition Refutes Momentariness,” in D. Singh (ed.), Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures: Festschrift to Honour Prof. Shashiprabha Kumar, Springer. Watson, A. (forthcoming, b), “The Buddhist Argument from Necessary Co-perception (sahopalambhaniyama) to the Non-difference of Object and Cognition.” In preparation for submission. Watson, A. and K. Kataoka (2010), “Bhaṭṭa Jayanta’s Refutation of the Yogācāra Buddhist Doctrine of Vijñānavāda: Annotated Translation and Analysis,” South Asian Classical Studies, 5: 285–352. Westerhoff, J. (2018), The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Yamabe, N. (1998), “Self and Other in the Yogācāra Tradition,” in Committee for the Commemoration of Dr. Kitabatake’s Seventieth Birthday (eds) Essays on Japanese Buddhist Culture: In Honor of Dr. Tensei Kitabatake On the Occastion of his Seventieth Birthday, 15–41, Kyōto: Nagata Bunshodo.

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Huayan Buddhism’s Conceptions of the Realness of Reality: A Transformation from Subjective Idealism into Holistic Realism JEELOO LIU

1 INTRODUCTION Huayan Buddhism derived its name from the Huayan Sutra,1 translated into English as “The Flower Ornament Scripture” or “The Flowery Splendor Scripture.”2 The founder of the Chinese Huayan school was a Chinese monk named Dushun (557–640). Though Huayan’s major sutra came from India, Dushun established Chinese Huayan Buddhism by introducing a new terminology to replace some key Indian notions. He introduced the term “li” (Principle3) to stand for the ultimate realm of reality. This notion would prove to be one of the most important notions in Chinese philosophy.4 Dushun also uses “shi” (things or events) to replace the term “Form” (or “Color”) in traditional Buddhist texts.5 This substitution manifests a more intense interest

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in the affairs of the phenomenal world. With this substitution, Huayan’s first patriarch took a subtle step away from the strong negation of the phenomenal world manifested in the Huayan Sutra. The second patriarch of Huayan is Zhiyan (602–68), who studied with Dushun and further developed the systematization of Huayan philosophy. The third patriarch Fazang (643–712) took up Zhiyan’s lead to systematize Huayan philosophy by setting up different categories of existence and different doctrines on the nature of existence. His theory of the Ten Mysterious Gates6 gives a detailed account of the Ultimate Truth. His teaching was continued by Chengguan (738–839?), known as the fourth patriarch of the Huayan school. Following Fazang’s division, Chengguan came up with the famous “Four Dharma Realms.”7 This theory of four dharma realms would turn out to be the defining thesis for the Huayan school. Finally, the fifth patriarch, Zongmi (780–841) was a follower of Huayan and Chan Buddhism. He studied with Chengguan, but he also studied extensively with other Chan masters. With his commentary and demarcation, he worked on reconciling the different teachings of the two schools. In addition, he also tried to integrate Confucianism and Daoism into Huayan philosophy. His “Inquiry into the Origin of Humanity” was the culmination of his synthesis of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism into a cohesive exposition of the nature of human existence. The Huayan Sutra clearly advocates a form of subjective idealism, and yet Huayan Buddhism ultimately became a leading expounder of the realist conception of the world that is characteristic of Chinese Buddhism, especially of Chan Buddhism.8 The seemingly inconsistent positions between the Sutra and the patriarchs’ teachings often led to incompatible interpretations of Huayan’s metaphysical position.9 This paper investigates the conceptions of consciousness and reality in the Huayan Sutra as well as in the works of the five Huayan patriarchs. The conclusion is that the transition from subjective idealism to realism was a gradual process, with each patriarch adding richer dimensions of the notions of reality, emptiness, and consciousness. At the end, the version of realism that Huayan embraces is not our commonsense realism, but a special form of holistic realism that at the same time endorses and denies the realness of the material world.

2 SUBJECTIVE IDEALISM IN THE HUAYAN SUTRA The Huayan Sutra’s metaphysics can best be characterized as a form of subjective idealism, the view that the physical world is not real, but rather exists merely as the projection of individual minds. The Huayan Sutra says, “All acts are born from mind. Therefore it is said mind is like magic: If one gets rid of this false imagination, one extinguishes all paths of existence. Just as a skilled magician causes forms to appear, … so also is the world—All in it is illusion, without

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essence or origin, yet appearing variously” (Cleary 1993: Bk. 25: 880). The Huayan Sutra frequently likens this world to dream, illusion, phantom, echo, the magician’s conjuring, and a reflection in a mirror (Cleary 1993: Bk. 29: 880–6). Everything we perceive around us is also compared to a reflection or an illusion. As reflections, objects “have no location” and “no substantial nature” (Cleary 1993: Bk. 2: 175). As illusions, objects do not have a real beginning or end, nor do they have a definite origin or a final exit. In one synopsis, the Sutra says that all things and all worlds “have no true reality” (Cleary 1993: Bk. 5: 248). Idealism is in direct contrast to realism in its denial of the realness of the world along with the myriad things in the world. The Huyan Sutra says, Living beings and lands, all things there are in all times, in the same way, without exception, are all illusory. Making illusory forms of men and women, elephants, horses, cattle, and sheep, houses, ponds, springs, and such, gardens, groves, flowers and fruits, illusory things have no awareness and also have no abode. Ultimately of the character of nullity, they only appear according to imagination. (Cleary 1993: Bk 29: 880) According to this remark, worldly phenomena are formed because of the mind’s imagination. If the phenomenal world is like the magician’s conjuring or the artist’s painting, then the magician or the painter is simply the mind itself. “Mind is like an artist, able to paint the worlds. The five clusters all are born thence. There is nothing it doesn’t make” (Cleary 1993: Bk 20: 452). In the respect that it regards the world as being dependent on the mind for its existence/appearance, this metaphysical view is clearly that of idealism. Subjective idealism not only denies the realness of our present world, but also rejects the commonality among different mental constructions. In the Huayan Sutra, it is suggested that different minds create different worlds in which individuals reside, and each world is the result of one’s own conceptions and acts: The different individual actions Of infinitely many minds All come from accumulations of conceptions: The equanimous know them all. Defiled or undefiled, Learners’ minds, nonlearners’ minds— Untold numbers of minds They know at every moment. They know they are not one or two, Not defiled and not pure,

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And also without mixture— All arise from one’s own notions … All lands are manifestations Of the network of conceptions; By the means of the net of illusion One can instantly enter them all. … Everyone, according to his own acts, Experiences the resulting consequences. (Cleary 1993: Bk. 36: 968–9) According to the Sutra’s teaching, various minds have various mental activities that lead to various acts. Since worlds are created by mental acts, worlds manufactured by different minds must all be different. Hence, there are as many worlds as there are minds; no two worlds are alike. The Sutra says, “Just as when seeds are different, so are the fruits they produce. Because of differences in the force of acts, living beings’ lands are not the same” (Cleary 1993: Bk 5: 243). From the claim that there are infinitely many minds, it concludes that there are infinitely many worlds, differing from one another: “By the individual acts of beings, these worlds are infinite in kind” (Cleary 1993: Bk 5: 246). That is to say, Huayan’s subjective idealism construes the multiple worlds as the results of individual minds’ conceptions and denies commonality among multiple worlds. This is where Huayan Sutra’s metaphysics resembles Western subjective idealism. To say that the phenomenal world is the result of the mind’s fabrication is not to say that the mind really “creates” a genuine world. As the Sutra says, “All things have no provenance, and no one can create them” (Cleary 1993: Bk 20: 445). From Huayan Sutra’s perspective, minds are not real either. The unreal mundane world is not simply the experiential world external to us; sentient beings are part of it as well. In other words, our sensation, perception, and consciousness are all part of this unreal phenomenal world; furthermore, even our very existence is not real. As the Huayan Sutra says, “Living beings, too, are not other than illusion—on comprehending illusion, there are no ‘living beings’” (Cleary 1993: Bk 29: 880). Even though it is the individual’s actions that create the world, “in truth action has no agent” (Cleary 1993: Bk 26: 751) and “the doer has no existence” (Cleary 1993: Bk 10: 301). In essence, the Huayan Sutra’s subjective idealism ends up being a form of irrealism. Irrealism takes the rejection of realism one step further. Realism is the commitment to two dimensions of a thing’s existence: the independence dimension and the existence dimension. In this context, the thing in question is the commonsense world itself, or we should say, the phenomenal world. Realism’s independence dimension is the assertion that the nature of the world is independent of the cognitive activities of the mind. Realism’s existence dimension is the claim

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that the world truly exists. Whereas the various forms of idealism challenge the independence dimension of realism, irrealism challenges the existence dimension of realism. If the world and its nature are dependent on the mind’s mental activities, as idealism claims, the world could still inherit some degree of realness from the mind; if, however, even the mind is not real, then both the world and the mind simply do not exist. This is irrealism. It is not easy to distinguish sharply the philosophical positions between the Huayan Sutra and the five patriarchs, since most of the works by the patriarchs are either commentaries on the Sutra or elaborations of the Sutra’s esoteric teaching.10 Many of the patriarchs’ remarks seem to echo the teaching of the Huayan Sutra, and it is reasonable to attribute idealism or even irrealism to the patriarchs. Both iconic historians of Chinese philosophy, Yu-lan Fung and Wing-tsit Chan, take Huayan philosophy to be the exemplification of objective idealism.11 In my earlier work, I have also interpreted Huayan philosophy as a form of idealism rather than realism (Liu 2006: 255). I now think that there is a different interpretation of the patriarchs’ metaphysical views: They do not endorse subjective idealism or commonsense realism. Their shared conception of the connection between consciousness and fundamental reality simply could not be captured by the dichotomy between idealism and realism. This chapter cannot possibly expound all aspects of the five patriarchs’ philosophy. In what follows, I shall only present some highlights of their realist transformation of Huayan’s metaphysics.

3 THE REALIST TRANSFORMATION STAGE I: DUSHUN’S CLASSIFICATION OF BUDDHA’S TEACHINGS One major contribution by Dushun may be his introduction of the classification of Buddhist doctrines into five levels of teachings aiming to enlighten people with different afflictions and misconceptions. His Cessation and Contemplation in the Five Teachings (Huayan wujiao zhiguan) begins by explaining the pragmatic function of teachings: A teaching is like a prescription designed in response to a particular illness; hence, there are different prescriptions for various forms of illness: “Medicine is dispensed to quell attachments; when attachments are gone, the medicine is done with. Since illnesses are manifold, the medicines given are not one” (Dushun 1983: 45). This pragmatism of truth introduces the possibility of truth pluralism—There may be multiple contradictory truths that are all expedient means to alleviating different forms of ignorance and affliction; in that respect, they are all truths. Just as some medicines might not work for some illnesses and might even be poison for some patients, the doctrines taught by various scriptures and schools may also be right only for certain people and establishing only transitory truth. Once Dushun took this approach to resolve

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the doctrinal variances, later Huayan patriarchs were liberated to embrace only those Huayan Sutra teachings that they would endorse and could interpret those other remarks as “transitory truth.” According to Dushun’s classification, there are five different levels of Buddhist teachings—Cleary artfully translated it as “five methodical gates of cessation and contemplation”—all contained in the Huayan Sutra (Dushun 1983: 45). In this classification, the teaching that denies the realness of the self represents the teaching of Hinayana (xiaochen; the lesser vehicle). It is aimed to enlighten those who still adhere to their self-identity and self-insistence. Ordinary people are either obsessed with their bodies or with their souls, and both forms of selfobsession are the root of their afflictions. Earlier we saw that the Huayan Sutra denies that the self is real. This denial of the self could be seen as serving this pragmatic function of teaching. The second methodical gate represents the elementary teaching of Mahayana (dachen; the greater vehicle). This teaching denies the realness of worldly phenomena (xiang) by identifying their origination (birth) and non-origination (birthless) as one. To say that a thing’s origination and its non-origination are the same is simply to reject the individuation of particular things. To reject the individuation of things is also to renounce names, categorization, taxonomy; in other words, to eliminate language and conceptions. To achieve this pedagogical aim, the wise one teaches: “Names and characteristics are in the deluded one’s mind” (Dushun 1983: 53). This teaching not only rejects the individuation of particular things, but also denies their existence: “Moreover, all things are of the character of emptiness; none is not null” (Dushun 1983: 55). We can say that the irrealism manifested in the Huayan Sutra falls into this category. Particular things and worldly phenomena are not real precisely because their individual identities—their particular locations in space and time—are not real. Dushun quotes from the Sutra: “Because of emptiness without discrimination I speak of contemplation; all things are empty, no characteristic is not null” (Dushun 1983: 56). This irrealism is not, strictly speaking, idealism in the traditional sense, because the realness of the mind or the self is also rejected. The next three methodical gates are all closer to the truth that Dushun himself endorses. He interjects realism into Huayan’s philosophy by giving “emptiness” a different connotation. As he puts it: “This emptiness is not vacuity but turns out to be existence. Existence and emptiness are nondual; they are completely merged in one place” (Dushun 1983: 56, emphasis added). “Emptiness” does not signify nonexistence and is different from “nihilistic emptiness” (Dushun 1983: 57). Being empty in his interpretation is simply being empty of independent self-nature since all things are born out of causes and conditions. In this sense, “emptiness and existence merge into one, with no duality” (Dushun 1983).

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The third teaching introduces the complete integration between li (noumenon) and shi (phenomena). Under this teaching, the Realm of Principle and the Realm of Things do not appear to be separable or distinguishable. We do not need to exit from this world to reach nirvana. Dushun quotes from the Huayan Sutra: “Birth-and-death and nirvana are equal, without distinction” (Dushun 1983: 58). Contrary to the traditional Buddhist teaching, nirvana is in this world, not an eternal realm distinct from the realm of life and death. “Because emptiness and existence cancel each other out and neither remains, you dwell neither in birth-and-death nor in nirvana” (Dushun 1983). Dushun thus eliminates the positing of a transcendental realm separate from the experiential world. Furthermore, using the metaphor of water and waves, Dushun treats noumenon as simply the totality of phenomena. As he puts it, The waves are waves which are none other than water—the waves themselves show the water. The water is water, which is no different from waves—the water makes the waves. Waves and water are one, yet that does not hinder their difference. Water and waves are different, yet that does not hinder their unity. (Dushun 1983: 58)12 Water is not distinct from waves, but water is not identical to waves because the former is the whole while the latter are parts. In the respect that each part is a part of the whole, all parts entail the whole that entails all parts. Therefore, all parts manifest one another because of their mutual entailment. Dushun calls this mutual containment and interpenetration “one in one; one in all; all in one; all in all” (Cited in Chengguan 1983: 113). With this metaphor of water/ocean and waves, Dushun established the key concepts in Huayan terminology: Non-interference, pervading, interpenetration, mutual containment, interdependence, etc. This would become the way the Huayan patriarchs understood the relation between noumenon and phenomena, or ultimate reality and the world, from this point on. The fourth teaching is the gate of The End of Words and Views, which represents the immediate enlightenment of Mahayana (dachen). Dushun interprets the Huayan Sutra’s rejection of language and conceptualization as expounding this teaching. It serves a practical function, namely to make people aware that enlightenment can only be achieved through “experiential realization,” and “silence without speech is the real entry into the truth of nonduality” (Dushun 1983: 60). This experiential realization is “like someone drinking cool water—only he himself knows how cool it is” (Dushun 1983: 61). Interestingly, this remark also became a common saying in Chan Buddhism. The final, ultimate teaching is called the rounded (yuan) teaching of the one vehicle or the Huayan teaching. This teaching must therefore be the view that Dushun really wanted to promote. According to this teaching, the fundamental

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truth of the universe lies in the fact of the “interdependent conditional origination” of all things (Dushun 1983: 62). Dushun claims that all things “are devoid of real substantial nature,” and because they are born from conditions and do not exist of their own nature, things could be taken to be “illusory existence” (Dushun 1983). However, as he explained in the third methodical gate, emptiness and existence are two sides of the same coin. Calling things “illusory” does not mean that they do not exist. Dushun says, “We ask, ‘Does it both exist and not exist as well?’ The answer is no, because emptiness and existence completely merged into one, without duality, since in conditionally originating things emptiness and existence are one, with no duality” (Dushun 1983: 64). With this simple nonduality of existence and emptiness, Dushun explained away all the allusions to dreams, illusions, phantoms, echoes, the magician’s conjuring, and the reflections in the mirror in the Huayan Sutra. What appeared to be an obvious manifestation of idealism or irrealism in the Huayan Sutra is now interpreted as an expedient means to help people see the fundamental reality as an interconnected whole and indistinguishable parts. The fundamental reality is not constructed by the mind or consciousness; it is as real as it gets, but it is not what our commonsense takes it to be: A world full of individually existing entities with definitive beginnings and endings. Just as we could never define when a wave ends and another emerges, we should not treat individual things as particulars. Dushun’s other famous metaphor is the jewel net of Indra: “This illustrates how the many things interpenetrate like the realm of Indra’s net of jewels— multiplied and re-multiplied ad infinitum” (Dushun 1983: 66). In this way, not only contemporaneous things, but also all things in the past, present, and future, are interconnected. Dushun says that “tying many jewels to form a net is itself just one jewel … ‘One’ is the aspect of totality, containing the many in its formation. Since all would not exist if there were not one, this net is therefore made by one jewel” (Dushun 1983: 67). He is clearly advocating primacy of the whole, treating the whole as “the One.” In other words, the only real thing is the universe in totality. However, if the whole is real, then so must all its parts be since the whole would not exist without any of its parts. This is a form of realism, which I shall name holistic realism.13 Dushun was clearly the patriarch who defined the quintessential worldview of Huayan Buddhism.

4 THE REALIST TRANSFORMATION STAGE II: ZHIYAN’S MEREOLOGICAL IDENTIFICATION BETWEEN NOUMENON AND PHENOMENA AND HIS INTERPRETATION OF “CONSCIOUSNESS-ONLY” Zhiyan’s major work includes his Ten Mysterious Gates of the Unitary Vehicle of the Huayan (Zhiyan 1983), which is an elaboration of Dushun’s Contemplation of the Realm of Reality, and In Search of the Esoteric (in the Huayan Sutra)

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(Zhiyan 2002), which is his commentary on the Huayan Sutra. He highlighted two concepts in Dushun’s teaching: “conditional origination” and “One is all.” Since all phenomena in the world have conditional origination, we cannot separate the cause and the effect as distinct events. Zhiyan’s view of causation is that both cause and effect are “interdependent,” not just on each other, but also on all other phenomena in the world. His conception of causation is not the same as the Western notion of production; rather, it is the sense of ontological constitution: Without the rest, the one could not have existed. In this sense he depicts the simultaneity of cause and effect: If we explain cause and result by the comprehensive [Huayan] school, we introduce remote causal factors into the near; therefore when the house is complete, everything is produced at once. If there is a single thing that is not established, this house is not established either. It is like this: if the first step arrives, all steps arrive. If the first step does not arrive, then all steps do not arrive. (Zhiyan 1983: 134) Zhiyan reaffirms his teacher Dushun’s primacy of the whole thesis and pointed out the implication of atemporality inherent in the chronology of events in the universe. If we consider the whole universe as the totality, then all stages in the universe’s temporal development are already present from the start. Even the future is already inherent in the past. For the totality, there is no past, present, or future, but from one event to the next, we can still talk about past, present, and future: “It is like a long journey whose arrival lies in the first step: yet the arrival in this first step does not mean there are no subsequent steps” (Zhiyan 1983: 143). Here Zhiyan expounds an interesting view of time that is both a progressive time theory granting past, present, and future (the “A-theory” in McTaggart’s term) and an eternalism that considers all time frames as co-existing (the “B-theory” in McTaggart’s term). Change and becoming are permissible in this worldview, as he puts it: “The ten timeframes interpenetrate and interidentify, yet without losing the characteristics of succession and duration: therefore it is said that separate things variously become” (Zhiyan 1983: 139). Using the metaphor of a numerical series of one to ten as an example, Zhiyan explains how the parts are dependent on the whole and on one another: [I]f you count forward from one to ten you go up; if you count backward from ten to one you go down. As for “one,” it exists dependently, so in one there is ten, which is why “one” can be; without ten there can be no one, because it has no inherent identity and is dependent. Because the implication of ten in one is how one is established, so are two, three, four, and so forth

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all established. If one remained in its own identity, ten could not be formed; and if ten is not established, neither is one. (Zhiyan 1983: 127) Zhiyan gives another metaphor of pillars and house to explain how the whole is also dependent on the parts: [I]f pillars are not a house, then there is no house: if there is a house, there are pillars—so, because the pillars are identical to the house, when there is a house there are pillars. Because one is ten and ten is one, the establishment of one implies the establishment of ten. (Zhiyan 1983: 128) This mereological interdependence of parts and whole constitutes Zhiyan’s holism. With this analysis of the nature of existence, Zhiyan unravels the meaning of “many is in one, one is in many.” Since the One is nothing but the totality of the many, it is not a distinct realm of existence transcending the phenomenal world. Therefore, not only can we assert “many is in one, one is in many,” we can further assert that “one is many, and many is one.” Here Zhiyan clearly establishes the identity between the whole and the totality of its parts, or we should say, between noumenon and phenomena. As he puts it unequivocally: “In the [Huayan] school, phenomena themselves are [Principle (li)], or noumenon. … the essential reality is the Principle, or noumenon, while  the manifestation of characteristics and forms is phenomena” (Zhiyan 1983: 132). One special contribution Zhiyan made to Huayan’s realist transformation was to clarify the meaning of “mind-only” and “consciousness-only,” by which he sharply distinguishes Huayan’s view from that of the Consciousness-only school, a quintessential idealist teaching originated in the Indian Yogacara school.14 In the Ten Mysterious Gates, he interprets Lankavatara Sutra’s seeming idealist remark, “Outside mind there is no objective realm, no illusory views of sense data,” in terms of good and bad: Good or bad is according to the operation of the mind—which is why it is called creation by the operation of the mind. Since there is no separate objective realm outside of mind, we say ‘only mind.’ If it operates harmoniously, it is called nirvana … If it operates perversely, it is birth-anddeath … Purity and impurity are both only mind; therefore apart from mind there is nothing else. (Zhiyan 1983: 145)

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This separation of nirvana and the experiential world as different mindsets of the same mind was later taken to be a seminal teaching of Southern Chan Buddhism. In one single thought, one could be rid of all afflictions and enter nirvana; in the next thought, however, one could again be troubled by perverse thoughts and sink back down to the realm of birth-and-death. Nirvana and the mundane world are not “objective realms outside of mind.” If Zhiyan takes “mind-only” to be a statement about conditions of one’s mental states, then he does not advocate idealism. He took pains to render the idealist bent in the Huayan Sutra in a new light. He says, there are two kinds of “consciousness-only” doctrines. One is to claim that all phenomena are created by the Alaya (storehouse) consciousness and they cease to exist apart from consciousness. The other is to claim that all mentation is consciousness-only; thus birth-and-death or nirvana, purity and impurity, and other such realms are all within one’s consciousness—apart from consciousness they are nothing (Zhiyan 2002: 69).15 The former is clearly the teaching of the Consciousness-only school; the latter is what Zhiyan took Huayan to be advocating, “the ultimately correct understanding” (Zhiyan 2002). According to the Consciousness-only school, Alaya stores the seeds for all the phenomena of the world. Saying that the world is created by the Alaya consciousness has a negative connotation, because Alaya itself is part of the eight forms of consciousness and is impermanent. This school claims that external objects do exist in a sense—in the sense of being different from illusory images as in dreams and in one’s imagination. But it denies the existence of the external world in a realist sense—in the sense of being existent independently of mental activities (perception, cognition, intellection, and consciousness) of sentient beings. It also denies the permanence of the external world, since consciousness itself is constantly in transformation. As the manifestation of consciousness, the world cannot exist on its own. Everything is the outcome of the transformation of someone’s consciousness; nothing can exist independently of the mind. In contrast, according to Huayan’s teaching, saying that the world is consciousness-only does not mean all things are illusions constructed by the mind; rather, it means that one’s mental realm is generated by one’s consciousness. External things do exist outside the mind, though not independently of the mind—because everything, including entities and minds, are all interdependent. This view is not idealism in that it does not advocate the primacy of the mind. Mind does not exist independently of worldly phenomena as well. In the sense of mutual interdependence, mind and things have equal status: “all phenomena are equal” (Zhiyan 2002: 64). To dispel the irrealism manifest in the Huayan Sutra, Zhiyan argues that the metaphors of illusions and dreams are merely metaphors; in truth, the world could not possibly be mere illusions and dreams. He says, “The Sutra talks about illusions and dreams. However, if all phenomena are nothing, then how could there even be the distinction between dream-states and non-dream-states?

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This is how we know that not all phenomena could be nothing” (Zhiyan 2002: 65). He thinks that the Huayan Sutra’s various irrealist or idealist depictions of the world are merely to use “nothingness” to break down one’s adherence to inherent self-nature or independent existence, just as the Sutra also employs the realness of existence to destroy the insistence on nothingness. Ultimately, the dichotomy between being and nonbeing, between existence and nothingness, is built on the erroneous understanding of the nature of existence. Zhiyan says, Being and nothingness share the same fundamental reality; each does not have its own nature. To say that there is being, then this being is not really being. To say that all existence is nothingness, then this nothingness is not really nothingness. Because being is not really being, outside of nothingness there is no being that stands opposed to it. Because nothingness is not really nothingness, outside of being there is also no nothingness that stands opposed to it. This is called nonduality of being and nothingness. (Zhiyan 2002: 65) In other words, to engage in the debate on realism and irrealism is to commit the fundamental error of not seeing the nonduality of existence and nonexistence. In Zhiyan’s commitment to realism, all things are real in the sense of interdependent co-origination. If the totality is real, then so must be all its parts, since any void would simply destroy the whole. The realness of the world consists in the aggregation of causes and results; one is all and all is one.

5 THE REALIST TRANSFORMATION STAGE III: FAZANG’S EMPHASIS ON THE REALM OF THINGS Fazang was prolific and his many works were considered to accomplish the systemization of Huayan doctrines. He wrote an extensive commentary on the Huayan Sutra entitled Investigation of the Esoteric (tanxuanji). His Cultivation of Contemplation of the Inner Meaning of the Hua-yan: The Ending of Delusion and Return to the Source is highly esteemed in Chan Buddhism. Furthermore, his short treatise “On the Gold Lion” has been taken to be the representative illustration of Huayan’s conception of the fundamental reality. Fazang explains the metaphor of dream in the Huayan Sutra this way: (The metaphor of) comprehending a dream’s illusion means that the physical manifestations which our deluded minds consider to exist are under examination seen to be as unreal as a man conjured up by magic. The case is indeed like awaking from a night dream to the realization that everything in it was non-existent. (Fung 1983: 356)

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If everything we experience is like a dream, from which we can one day wake up and denounce as “unreal,” then the world we live in is certainly unreal. However, what the Sutra denounces as unreal, according to Fazang’s interpretation, is simply the mind’s “discriminations”: “whatever there is in the world is only the creation of one mind … means that all discriminations come only from one’s own mind. There has never been any environment outside the mind which could be an object of mind. Why? Because when the mind is not aroused, the environment is fundamentally empty” (Fazang 1983: 165). This interpretation turns a metaphysical thesis into an epistemological claim; or better, a claim about one’s intellectual grasp. Following Dushun’s introduction of the terms “li (noumenon, principle)” and “shih (things, phenomena)” in replacement of the traditional Indian notions of Emptiness (kong) and Form (xiang), Fazang uses the phrase “the Realm of Things” to denote our experiential world. This world depends on what he calls “the Realm of Principle” as its ontological basis, which Fazang sometimes calls “substance” (ti). Huayan patriarchs use the term “li” (noumenon, Principle, substance) to denote the ultimate reality. What they each mean by this term could be open to different interpretations. In Dushun’s water and wave metaphor, the noumenon seems to be the fundamental state of phenomena, so they are merely different states of the same world. The metaphor Fazang employs in explicating the connection between the Realm of Principle and the Realm of Things is the gold lion. Gold is like the Principle, whereas the lion made by gold is like the things. Fazang uses this metaphor to illustrate that the whole phenomenal world is like one single object, each part of which is inseparable from the other parts. Without any of the multiple parts of the lion, the whole lion cannot exist; without the whole lion, no part of the lion could possibly exist. By the same token, with any single thing lacking in the phenomenal world, the whole world would not exist; without the whole world, no single thing could exist. There is thus mutual entailment between the whole and its parts. We have explained that this kind of view is now considered a form of holism, the thesis that any single item within a particular system is part of the whole system and cannot be considered independently of the whole. Through Fazang’s elaboration, Huayan Buddhism is now celebrated for its holistic worldview. Thomas Cleary explains this view as follows: The Huayan doctrine shows that the entire cosmos is one single nexus of conditions in which everything simultaneously depends on, and is dependent on by, everything else. Seen in this light, then, everything affects and is affected by, more or less immediately or remotely, everything else; just as this is true of every system of relationships, so is it true of the totality of existence. In seeking to understand individuals and groups, therefore, Huayan thought considers the manifold as an integral part of the unit and the unit as an integral part of the manifold; one individual is considered in

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terms of relationships to other individuals as well as to the whole nexus, while the whole nexus is considered in terms of its relation to such individual as well as to all individuals. (Cleary 1983: 2) Fazang says, “I speak of parts because they are parts on the basis of their identification with the whole. If whole and part are not identical, the whole world would exist without parts, but then how could you have a building without parts? The parts would also then exist outside the whole, but then they would not be parts” (Cook 1979: 379). This seemingly paradoxical argument can be laid out as follows: 1. If the whole and parts of the whole are not identical, then the whole would exist without the parts and the parts would exist without the whole. 2. But if the whole exists without the parts, then it is not the whole consisting of its parts; if the parts exist without the whole, then they are not parts of the whole. 3. Therefore, the whole and its parts must be identical. If we want to properly understand this argument, we need to add a first premise to it: P1. Being identical means being coexistent. Now we see that the first premise assumes that the identity relation is not numerical identity—the identity of self-same object, but merely “necessary coexistence”—we can accept the argument as “valid.” Other than the interconnectedness between parts and whole, Fazang also presents the interconnectedness among the parts themselves. Given that each part is a part of the whole, all the parts entail the whole that entails all the parts. Therefore, all the parts manifest one another because of their mutual entailment. This thesis was taken up by Chengguan as the most important thesis of the “non-interference among things.”

6 THE REALIST TRANSFORMATION STAGE IV: CHENGGUAN’S REALM OF THE NON-INTERFERENCE AMONG THINGS In the Huayan Sutra, the noumenon is sometimes likened to a mirror, while phenomena or multiple phenomenal worlds are compared to reflections in a mirror. The Sutra says, “Like a clear mirror, according to what comes before

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it, reflecting forms, each different” (Cleary 1993: 301). Just as different people coming before a mirror receive different reflections while the mirror itself remains the same, different phenomenal worlds are created by different mental activities while the noumenon itself remains the same. Reflections do not alter the clarity of the mirror; by the same token, defilements of various mundane worlds would not contaminate the purity of the noumenon itself. Chengguan chooses a different metaphor for the noumenon: space. He explains it thus: “We take in general two senses of space; one is the sense of complete pervasion as it universally pervades all places, material and immaterial; the other is the sense of inclusion—in principle it contains all with nothing outside, there being not a single thing which goes outside of space” (Chengguan 1983: 111). He further explains that the noumenon is likened to space “because it is all-pervasive and all-inclusive” (Chengguan 1983: 110). From this interpretation, we see that the noumenon is something that encloses all phenomena and penetrates into every one of them. With both these metaphors, the noumenon is regarded as something other than the totality of phenomena. The mirror contains all its reflections, but without reflections, there would still be the mirror that is by nature clear and pure. Space encloses all objects, but without objects, there would still be space itself. The Huayan Sutra denies that the totality of phenomena is identified with noumenon itself. Phenomena and noumenon are by nature contrary: It is only through the elimination of all phenomena (all reflections; all objects) that one can see the original nature of the noumenon (the clear mirror, the empty space). Did Chengguan embrace this view too? Chengguan was deeply influenced by Dushun and wrote a commentary on the latter’s Contemplation of the Realm of Reality. His “four dharma realms” thesis; in particular, “the realm of the non-interference among things,” is a move toward realism. Chengguan introduces this notion when he explicates Dushun’s “contemplation of universality and inclusion,” which he takes to indicate “the reality-realm of non-interference among [things]” (Chengguan 1983: 74). In Chengguan’s terminology, the interdependence between the whole and parts is called “the realm of non-interference of principle and things,” while the interpenetration of parts is called “the realm of non-interference of all things.” The former depicts the harmony between the noumenon and phenomena; the latter depicts the collaboration and mutual dependence of all phenomena. The non-interference among phenomena (or things) is the most revolutionary thesis of the Huayan school. It goes beyond all Buddhist schools’ shared concern for the relationship between the noumenon and phenomena, and deals with elements of the phenomenal world themselves. It can be viewed as a direct affirmation of the value of phenomena.16 Chengguan’s “non-interference among phenomena” is a further elaboration of Fazang’s holistic theory. If all things relate to one another as units of the same web, then they must be mutually dependent and mutually supportive. The

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non-interference among phenomena is established on the basis of all phenomena being pervaded by the noumenon: “Pervasion is another name for noumenon, because its characteristic is boundlessness. As one atom in its totality is in all things, it is also like noumenon in terms of indivisibility” (Chengguan 1983: 113). With the relationship between noumenon and phenomena, Chengguan says that we sometimes view them as “noumenon vis-à-vis phenomena,” and sometimes as “phenomena vis-à-vis noumenon” (Chengguan 1983: 107). Since noumenon and phenomena are different aspects of the same thing, noumenon is not a realm separated from the phenomenal world. With his introduction of the four dharma realms, Chengguan seems to have clearly separated his view from that of the Huayan Sutra: Noumenon is no longer that which reflects phenomena or that which encloses phenomena. It is just the totality of phenomena seen in their true aspect. In addition, in Chengguan’s explication, noumenon is sometimes identified as “the principle of emptiness,” sometimes as “the principle of absence of inherent nature,” and sometimes as “the principle of having no self-nature and inherent identity.” In other words, the fundamental reality is nothing but the true nature of all phenomena—it is the truth of all things. Under Chengguan’s interpretation, noumenon is not any entity or underlying substance other than worldly phenomena themselves. In his own words: Since [this Principle] is the principle of things having no self or inherent identity, how could this Principle, or noumenon, exist outside of phenomena? Therefore noumenon is empty and without substance—taking phenomena as a whole, their fundamental emptiness is simply the real noumenon … Therefore noumenon is simply identical to phenomena. (Chengguan 1983: 104–5) This explanation seems to be providing a definition of “noumenon”: The Realm of Principle is not another realm of existence, but merely a different view (what is called “contemplation”) under which one regards the true nature of things to be without self-nature, without inherent identity, and to be “empty.” When one gains this contemplation, one’s mind is in the realm of nirvana. All false appearances cease to exist because the deluded mind is eliminated, just like all waves cease to be stirred when the wind has died down. Chengguan specifically emphasizes that emptiness is not “nihilistic emptiness or emptiness apart from material form” (Chengguan 1983: 74). Dushun puts it paradoxically, “because it is emptiness it is not emptiness” (Chengguan 1983: 75). In Chengguan’s analysis, there are several connotations of “emptiness” that other teachings have employed: 1. Emptiness as annihilation of form __ Emptiness as the great void (understood by non-Buddhists)

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2. Emptiness as existing outside of form __ Emptiness as nirvana (understood by Buddhists of the two vehicles) 3. Emptiness as empty of inherent essence __ Emptiness is not nihilistic emptiness; emptiness is not empty (understood by Huayan and other rounded teachings) Instead of endorsing Dushun’s pluralism of truth, Chengguan now resolutely rejects the view of emptiness as annihilation of form, calling it “a false doctrine,” “the delusion of the ordinary,” the teaching of “the lesser vehicle (Hinayana),” or simply “the wrong ideas” (Chengguan 1983: 77–8). The only truth, in Chengguan’s assessment, is the doctrine that emptiness and existence are identical—a thing is empty only in the sense of having no inherent essence or identity; it is not extinct. Chengguan writes, “Since forms come from conditions, they must lack inherent nature or identity—their lack of inherent nature due to dependence on something else is identical to the completeness of real emptiness” (Chengguan 1983: 79). In other words, what he means by the true meaning of “emptiness” has nothing to do with irrealism. This is a definitive confirmation of his realist conviction.

7 THE REALIST TRANSFORMATION STAGE V: ZONGMI’S ANALYSIS OF THE ORIGIN OF HUMANITY Zongmi was very prolific and wrote detailed commentaries on Dushun’s Gateway to the Contemplation of Huayan’s Realm of Reality (Zongmi 2002) and on his teacher Chengguan’s Gateway to the Essence of the Mind (Zongmi 2016). In his commentary on Chengguan’s work, Commentary on the Gateway to the Essence of the Mind (xinyao famenzhu), Zongmi embraces Chengguan’s view that the truth of the mind is its impermanence. Hence, on his view there is no mental substance—mind is not the noumenon on which all phenomena are based. He further defines the integration of being and emptiness this way: The magnificent being is not empty, and the genuine emptiness is not being. The nonduality of being and nonbeing is the middle path. If one can understand the truth of the mind and eradicate any erroneous idea, then one could enter nirvana in one instant. This teaching clearly expounds the immediate enlightenment of the Southern Chan school. However, his most noteworthy work is his Inquiry into the Origin of Humanity (yuanrenlun) (Zongmi 1995). In this remarkable philosophical treatise he first offers critiques of other erroneous teachings and then presents his own view. In Inquiry into the Origin of Humanity, Zongmi turned to the subject that had so far been downplayed by his predecessors: Humanity. Buddhism’s fundamental teaching is that humans are no different from other sentient beings or even inanimate things. In Buddhist texts the discourse has always been on

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“all living things (zhongsheng)” or “all sentient beings (zhongyouqing).” When the earlier Huayan patriarchs discuss human consciousness, they only refer to “the mind” or “consciousness,” even though other sentient beings most likely do not have such sophisticated mental capacities or the distinction between correct and erroneous ideas. Zongmi, however, begins his treatise by stating that human beings are “the most spiritual among the three powers [of the cosmos, i.e., heaven, earth, and humanity” ([707c25], Zongmi 1995: 43). He says, “Now, if I have received a human body and yet do not know for myself whence I have come, how can I know whither I will go in another life, and how can I understand human affairs of the past and present in the world? For this reason, I have studied for several decades without a constant teacher” (Zongmi 1995). This remark clearly shows that he finds the examination of humanity lacking in his predecessors’ discourses. By devoting his attention to humanity and to his experiential self, Zongmi not only brought Confucian humanism into Huayan philosophy, but also turned the abstract philosophical discussion on the meaning of emptiness, being and interdependence into the reflections on the worldly affairs of one’s mind and body. Zongmi aims to synthesize Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism by underscoring their common goal: To promote good and to combat evil. Inquiry into the Origin of Humanity consists of his critiques of the other deluded teachings on “the origin of heaven, earth, humanity, and things” ([708a13], Zongmi 1995: 44). In Zongmi’s assessment, the deficiency in both Confucianism and Daoism, which he called “the outer teaching,” is that the meaning of their teaching merely “lies in establishing [virtuous] conduct based on this bodily existence and does not lie in thoroughly investigating the ultimate source of this bodily existence” ([708a29], Zongmi 1995: 45). His aim is to investigate the “ultimate source” of existence, and he resolutely rejects the Daoist teaching of Dao (Nothingness) as the origin of life and death, because this teaching fails to recognize the conditional and temporary nature of existence. He writes, “Even though they [the Daoists] point to [Dao] as the origin, they still do not fully illuminate the pure and impure causes and conditions of conforming to and going against [the flow of] origination and extinction” ([708a29], Zongmi 1995: 45). Zongmi also criticizes the Confucian and Daoist shared cosmological view that the primordial qi is the source of life and extinction, in that qi is incapable of transmitting spirit and consciousness from one life to another. He argues, “since it has been verified that the consciousness of the spirit is not cut off, … we know that after death it is not a matter of suddenly going out of existence upon the dispersion of the vital force (qi)” ([708b17], Zongmi 1995: 45). From Zongmi’s argument against the theory of qi we see that he acknowledges the possibility of conscious afterlife and even reincarnation, as he claims, “there

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are those who see their previous births as clearly as if they were looking in a mirror and who recollect the events of past lives” (Zongmi 1995). However, he rejects the Buddhist teaching of “karmic retribution.” The third target of his critique is what he calls “the partial and superficial” teaching of the Buddha— the teaching of retribution based on our bodily existence. The problem with this teaching, according to Zongmi, is that “it is still not clear who generates karma and who experiences its retribution” ([708c23], Zongmi 1995: 49). It cannot be the corporeal mind embedded in the body, since it could not persist after the five senses perish with death: “since the mind is blocked off from the eyes, ears, hands, and feet by material substance, how, then, can they pass in and out of one another, function in response to one another, and generate karmic conditions together?” ([708c25], Zongmi 1995: 49). It cannot be the body either, since after the body dies, there is nothing to experience the retribution of pain and pleasure. Furthermore, if retribution continues into the next life, it would be “unjust” that the new body receives the pain inflicted in retribution for the previous body’s wrongdoings. Next, Zongmi turns to “the teaching of the Lesser Vehicle” and launches his critique. This teaching advocates the irrealism of the self, claiming that there is no self; body and mind are nothing but the continual arising and perishing of the force of causes and conditions. Salvation, according to this teaching, comes from attaining arhatship (the state of having achieved enlightenment): “as soon as one makes one’s body as ashes and extinguishes thought, one cuts off all suffering” ([709b16], Zongmi 1995: 53). Zongmi argues that this view also has not reached the origin of bodily existence, because it still adheres to the recycling of life and repeated births. However, the new body does not arise “in the absence of conditions,” and “there are times when consciousness does not operate.” Zongmi asks, “How, then, do we hold on to this bodily existence life-time after life-time without ceasing?” ([709b21], Zongmi 1995: 53). Zongmi’s next target is the specific idealism advocated by the Consciousnessonly school. This school treats the world as phenomenal appearances generated by the transformation of eight forms of consciousness. Zongmi quotes from Treatise on the Establishment of the Doctrine of Consciousness-Only (cheng weishilun): “It is like the case of being ill or dreaming. Because of the influence of the illness or dream, the mind manifests itself in the semblance of the phenomenal appearance of a variety of external objects” ([709c3], Zongmi 1995: 54). This view closely resembles the irrealism that we saw earlier in the text of the Huayan Sutra. Zongmi questions the consistency in this position: If objects that evolved from consciousness are illusory, “how, then, can the consciousness that evolves be real? … Logically, then, they are equally unreal and altogether lack existence” ([709c13], Zongmi 1995: 55).

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Zongmi next turns to the teaching that advocates emptiness as the true nature of existence,17 and he acknowledges that the teaching that “mind and objects both being empty is precisely the true principle of the Great Vehicle” ([709c19], Zongmi 1995: 55). He criticizes this view as well, however. Against this teaching of emptiness, Zongmi asks: If the mind and its objects are both nonexistent, then who is it that knows they do not exist? Again, if there are no real things whatsoever, then on the basis of what are the illusions made to appear? Moreover, there has never been a case of the illusory things in the world before us being able to arise without being based on something real. If there were no water whose wet nature were unchanging, how could there be the waves of illusory, provisional phenomenal appearances? If there were no mirror whose pure brightness were unchanging, how could there be the reflections of a variety of unreal phenomena? ([709c26–29], Zongmi 1995: 56) In other words, to claim that something is a dream or an illusion, we must already acknowledge the existence of waking hours and reality. With this clearly articulated argument, Zongmi thoroughly divorces Huayan’s view from any idealist connotation in the Huayan Sutra. He thinks that the teaching of emptiness and unreality, be it of the phenomenal world or of the mind itself, is nothing but the “beginning gate” of the Great Vehicle. It is not the ultimate truth of reality. The ultimate truth, according to Zongmi, that directly reveals the true teaching of the Buddha, holds that “all sentient beings without exception have the intrinsically enlightened, true mind. From [time] without beginning it is permanently abiding and immaculate. It is shining, unobscured, clear and bright ever-present awareness. It is also called the Buddha-nature and it is also called the tathāgatagarbha” ([710a11], Zongmi 1995: 57). He further elaborates on this view that “from the very outset we are the Buddhas” ([710a24], Zongmi 1995: 58). The claims that “Everyone has an intrinsically pure mind as well as a Buddha-nature,” and “Everyone is a Buddha” express exactly the quintessential doctrine of Chan Buddhism. At this point, Zongmi has completely merged the teachings of Huayan and Chan. At the end of this treatise, Zongmi integrated all five different teachings as compatible truths.18 To him, these different teachings all serve the same pragmatic function: To exhort good and to ward off evil. Thus, with this treatise On the Origin of Humanity, Zongmi also turned the early Huayan’s metaphysical pursuit of truth and reality into Chan’s ethical quest for good and virtue.

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8 CONCLUSION In my earlier work (Liu 2006) I focused primarily on the Huayan Sutra and took the Huayan patriarchs’ explications of the Sutra as elaboration of their own views. But it has always puzzled me how this form of subjective idealism could be representative of Chinese Buddhism, as Huayan was definitely one such representative. I also could not see how the fifth patriarch Zongmi could also be a patriarch of Chan Buddhism, which clearly rejects any form of idealism. In this paper, by carefully tracing the development of ideas in the commentaries each patriarch made either on the Huayan Sutra or on their predecessors’ works, I was able to detect the subtle revisions of the teachings in the Huayan Sutra beginning with the first patriarch Dushun’s classification of different teachings. Beginning with Dushun, all the patriarchs’ emphasis on “contemplation (guan)” reveals that they think the different metaphysical views (idealism, illusionism, irrealism, nihilism, realism, among others) are merely different ways of contemplating the world, or, we may say, different perspectives on the same reality. Ultimately, Huayan Buddhism does not advocate that the mind or consciousness create, construct, or produce worldly phenomena. Discourse on the role of the mind or consciousness was gradually reduced in the lineage of their thought. Instead, the concern of the Huayan patriarchs shifted to the phenomenal world, the realm of things, culminating in Zongmi’s emphasis on the status of humanity and the moral mission of humanity in this phenomenal world. The realist transformation of Huayan philosophy is now complete.

NOTES 1

There are various Chinese translations of the Huayan Sutra, differing in length (most notably the following three versions: sixty scrolls, dated 420 A.D.; eighty scrolls, dated 699 A.D.; forty scrolls, dated 798 A.D.). Cleary’s translation is based on the longest version, eighty scrolls, which was produced by a monk named Shikshananda (652–710). This text is divided into thirty-nine books (chapters).

2

The Sanskrit title for this sutra is Avatamsaka. Thomas Cleary translates it as “The Flower Ornament Scripture” while Wing-tsit Chan translates it as “The Flowery Splendor Scripture.” This extensive Buddhist text gives a very “flowery” description of the various stages of enlightenment; it also expounds the correct worldview, the correct ethical conduct, among other things. It probably was not composed by a single author, but was a compilation of various works circulating in India and its neighboring regions around the first and the second centuries A.D.

3

The word “li” sometimes refers to the ultimate reality, sometimes refers to particular principles in things. In the former case, the translated word “Principle” is capitalized.

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4

According to Garma C. C. Chang’s analysis, “Li, in different contexts, can mean ‘principle,’ ‘universal truth,’ ‘reason,’ ‘the abstract,’ the ‘law,’ ‘noumenon,’ ‘judgment,’ ‘knowledge,’ and so forth” (Chang 1971: 142).

5

Garma C. C. Chang says, “Shih can mean a ‘thing,’ an ‘event,’ the ‘particular,’ the ‘concrete,’ ‘phenomenon,’ ‘matter,’ and so on” (Chang 1971: 142).

6

These ten gates (theories) describe the ten fundamental aspects of the nature of existence. They include the nature of dependent arising, the nature of characterless, non-generation, the entry into nirvana, etc. For their names and descriptions, see for example Fazang’s “A Treatise on the Gold Lion” (cf. Chan 1963: 411–13), and Fung Yu-lan’s explanation (cf. Fung 1983: 341).

7

They are: the Realm of Principle, the Realm of Things, the Realm of the Noninterference between Principle and Things, and the Realm of the Non-interference of All Things. We will explain these notions later.

8

The fifth patriarch Zongmi was at the same time a patriarch of the Southern Chan. In some introductions of the other Huayan patriarchs, all of them were also regarded as Chan masters.

9

Yu-lan Fung (1983) and Wing-tsit Chan (1963) take Huayan philosophy to advocate objective idealism, while Cook (1979) argues that Huayan’s patriarch preaches a form of realism in the Chinese tradition.

10 For instance, Zhiyan’s commentary is entitled “In Search of the Esoteric (Souxuanji) (in the Huayan Sutra)” while Fazang’s commentary is entitled “Investigation of the Esoteric (tanxuanji) (in the Huayan Sutra).” Both are detailed commentaries on the Huayan Sutra with their own interpretations and elaborations. 11 Wing-tsit Chan writes: “In comparing the idealistic position of [Huayan] and that of the Consciousness-Only School, Fung Yu-lan has observed that inasmuch as [Fazang] regards the permanent and unchanging mind as the basis of all phenomena, his system is one of objective idealism—implying thereby that the system of [Xuanzang] is one of subjective idealism [Fung 1983: 359]. Generally speaking, this is true. The fact remains, however, that in both schools, the external world, called external sphere by [Xuanzang] and the Realm of Facts by [Fazang], is considered manifestations of the mind. In both schools, these manifestations have universal and objective validity, although the degree of validity is higher in [Huayan]. The interesting thing is that [Huayan] presupposes a preestablished harmony while the Consciousness-Only School does not” (Chan 1963: 408). 12 As Whalen Lai remarks, with the metaphor of water and waves, “it makes sense … to speak of nirvanic suchness participating in the creation of the samsaric waves— and, in such a way, that the latter … is in essence (in ‘wetness’) no different from the original body of water (or from one another)” (Lai 1986: 3). 13 “Holism” is a common interpretation of Huayan’s philosophy by contemporary Huayan scholars in the West, see for example, Thomas Cleary (1983) and Francis Cook (1979). The opposite of holism is atomism. 14 The Consciousness-only School, known in Chinese as “weishi zong,” was founded by the great pilgrim and translator Xuanzang (596–664 A.D.). After his extensive pilgrimage to India, Xuanzang brought back to China over 600 Buddhist texts and translated over seventy-five of them in his lifetime. The basic teachings of the

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Consciousness-only school are based on the writings of Asanga and Vasubandhu (fourth to fifth century A.D.) of the Yogacara school in India. This philosophy is best characterized as a form of objective idealism, as it claims that the world is the creation of intersubjective minds. 15 When the Chinese text is cited without an English author, I am using my own translation. 16 Charles Wei-Hsün Fu explains that seeing all things co-existing harmoniously is the highest stage of spiritual progress, in which “the enlightened man … reaches a thoroughly naturalistic and humanistic understanding of the relational origination of all things in the world as the true Dharma-realm itself” (Fu 1984: 241–2). 17 The three sutras Zongmi cites here are the Middle Stanzas (zhongguanlun), Awakening of Faith (qixinlun), and The Diamond Sutra (jingangjing). The Middle Stanzas states: “There has never been a single thing that has not been born from causes and conditions. Therefore there is nothing that is not empty.” Awakening of Faith says, “It is only on the basis of deluded thinking that all things have differentiations. If one is free from thinking, then there are no phenomenal appearances of any object.” The Diamond Sutra says, “All phenomenal appearances are illusory.” ([709c19], Zongmi 1995: 55–6). 18 Zongmi writes, “When [the teachings that] have been refuted previously are subsumed together into the one source, they all become true … It is only because the previous traditions had not yet fully discerned [the matter] that I have refuted them one by one. Now I will reconcile root and branch, including even Confucianism and Daoism” ([710b4], Zongmi 1995: 59).

REFERENCES Chan, Wing-tsit (1963), A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chang, Garma C. C. (1971), The Buddhist Teaching of Totality: The Philosophy of Hwa Yen Buddhism, University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Chengguan (1983), Mirror of the Mysteries of the Universe of the Hua-yen (Huayan fajie xuanjing), CBETA T. D. No. 1883. In Cleary 1983: 69–124. Cleary, T., trans. (1983), Entry into the Inconceivable: An Introduction to Hua-yen Buddhism, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Cleary, T., trans. (1993), The Flower Ornament Scripture: A Translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra, Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications, Inc. Cook, F. H. (1979), “Causation in the Chinese Hua-yen Tradition,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 6: 367–85. Dushun (1983), Cessation and Contemplation in the Five Teachings (huayan wujiao zhiguan), CBETA T. D. No. 1867. In Cleary 1983: 43–68. Fazang (1963a), “A Treatise on the Golden Lion (jinshizizhang),” CBETA T. D. No. 1881. In Chan 1963: 409–11. Fazang (1963b), Hundred Gates to the Sea of Ideas of the Flowery Splendor Scripture (huayanjing yihai baimen), CBETA T. D.: No. 1875. In Chan 1963: 414–24. Fazang (1983), Cultivation of Contemplation of the Inner Meaning of the Huayan: The Ending of Delusion and Return to the Source (wangjin huanyuanguan), CBETA T. D. No. 1876. In Cleary 1983: 147–69.

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Fu, Charles Wei-hsiin (1984), "Chinese Buddhism and An Existential Phenomenology," in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.), Phenomenology of Life in A Dialogue Between Chinese and Occidental Philosophy, 229–51, Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Company. Fung, Yu-lan (1983), A History of Chinese Philosophy, vol. II, trans. D. Bodde, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Gregory, P. N., trans. (1995), Inquiry into the Origin of Humanity: An Annotated Translation of Tsung-mi’s Yüan jen lun, Kuroda Classics in East Asian Buddhism, Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press. Lai, Whalen (1986), “The Defeat of Vijnâptimatratâ in China: Fa-Tsang on Fa-hsing and Fa-hsiang,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 13: 1–19. Liu, JeeLoo (2006), An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy: From Classical Philosophy to Chinese Buddhism, Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Zhiyan (1983), Ten Mysterious Gates of the Unitary Vehicle of the Hua-yen (Huayan yicheng shixuanmen), T. D. No. 1868. In Cleary 1983: 125–46. Zhiyan (2002), In Search of the Esoteric (Souxuanji), CBETA T. D. No. 1732. Zongmi (1995), Inquiry into the Origin of Humanity (yuanrenlun), CBETA T. D. Vol. 45, No. 1886. In Gregory 1995. Material that appears in brackets reflects Gregory’s own interpolation. Zongmi (2002), Commentary on the Gateway to the Contemplation of Huayan’s Realm of Reality (zhu Huayan fajie guanmen), CBETA T. D. Vol. 45, No. 1884. Zongmi (2016), Commentary on the Gateway to the Essence of the Mind (xinyao famenzhu), CBETA T. D. Vol. 35, No. 1005.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Converging Outlooks? Contemporary Panpsychism and Chinese Natural Philosophy PIERFRANCESCO BASILE

1 INTRODUCTION In a paper entitled The Continuity of Being: Chinese Visions of Nature, neoConfucian scholar Tu Wei-Ming gives a brief characterization of the worldview underlying all Chinese culture and ways of life. Nature—the totality of all beings—is not conceived in terms of independent elementary parts, but as an organically related, deeply interconnected whole: All modalities of being, from a rock to heaven, are integral parts of a continuum which is often referred to as the “great transformation” (ta-hua). Since nothing is outside of this continuum, the chain of being is never broken. A linkage will always be found between any given pair of things in the universe. We may have to probe deeply to find some of the linkages, but they are there to be discovered. These are not figments of our imaginations, but solid foundations upon which the cosmos and our lived world therein are constructed. (1985: 38)

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The notion that there is a link connecting all things “from a rock to heaven” has momentous implications; if all things are ontologically connected, this is because at a fundamental level they all share a common nature. As Tu explains, Chinese philosophy of nature posits an undifferentiated psychophysical “something” as the basic stuff of which all things are made. This fundamental stuff—ch’i—also accounts for their dynamic nature. This means that ch’i is not solely a “psychophysiological stuff” (1985: 38) but also a “vital force endowed with all-pervasive spirituality” (1985: 37). Eventually, Tu says, “the continuous presence of ch’i in all modalities of being makes everything flow together as the unfolding of a single process” (1985: 38). These are fascinating views, not solely in themselves but also because they plainly contradict the way nature has been conceived by most Western philosophers of mind in the second half of the twentieth century. It is instructive to contrast the above passage by Tu with the following one, which has been written by one of the most influential thinkers within Western academia, the Korean American Jaegwon Kim: Through much of the twentieth century, especially during its second half, debates over the mind-body problem were shaped by physicalism, a philosophical worldview that has been inspired and fostered by an appreciation of the foundational position of physics among the sciences. The core of contemporary physicalism is the thesis that all things that exist in this world are bits of matter and structures aggregated out of bits of matter, all behaving in accordance with laws of physics. (2004: 129) As Kim frankly acknowledges, the basic metaphysical framework within which recent debates about the mind-body problem have been conducted is at the bottom a form of materialism. This is a view we have inherited from the seventeenth century and according to which nature is made of insentient, lifeless particles. Moreover, these particles are conceived as being wholly independent from one another; the only way they connect is when they are drawn together by mechanical laws to form larger wholes or aggregates. The philosopher-scientist Alfred North Whitehead criticized this conception long ago, arguing that such a metaphysics was “too narrow for the concrete facts” (1967 [1925]: 166) which both science and philosophy seek to explain; not even science, Whitehead furthermore observed, conceives of matter in such simplistic terms. Whitehead wrote these words in 1925, but their significance has been recognized only recently; in the last two decades, the most speculatively oriented philosophers of mind have contended that

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we lack any adequate conception of nature (Nagel 2012: 1–12; Seager 2020: 4–6; Strawson 2006: 4–6). The existence of mind, so their argument goes, is one of those “concrete facts” that cannot be explained within a materialistic metaphysics. This line of reasoning is then pushed one step further. If mind is to be conceived of as an integral part of nature and not as an anomalous, mysterious presence within it, why not speculate that nature itself may be in some way “mental”? Accordingly, some philosophers have also argued that the fundamental physical stuff out of which all things are made must be “experiential” as well as a form of “energy” (Griffin 1998: 77–8; Strawson 2020: 319–21). To affirm this view, Griffin contends, “would be finally to carry through the … principle that mind should be naturalized, because it would involve attributing the two basic features that we associate with mind—experience and spontaneity—to all units of nature” (1998: 78). Such a doctrine is what in traditional terminology is referred to as “panpsychism”; clearly, it involves a conception of ultimate reality very similar to the Chinese notion of ch’i.1 Undoubtedly, the view sounds strange at first hearing, but a closer look at the position reveals that there is much to be said in its support. In this paper, I will discuss what I take to be the key points in the panpsychist and anti-materialist argument I have now briefly outlined. But the reader should be warned: The paper is explorative, it has no final truth to convey—and eventually ends up on a rather skeptical note. Although I argue that materialism is too crude a view to be seriously entertained, I find myself unable to fully endorse the panpsychist conclusion. The notion that nature is made up of “psychophysiological stuff” (Tu 1985: 38) is in many ways attractive. But it also raises questions that are difficult to answer, and perhaps even just to articulate properly. Or so, at least, I will argue in what follows.

2 THE IRREDUCIBILITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS Tu recognizes that the notion of ch’i may be difficult to grasp, especially for the modern Western mind: The usual difficulty in making ch’i intelligible in modern Western philosophy suggests that the underlying Chinese metaphysical assumption is significantly different from the Cartesian dichotomy between spirit and matter. However, it would be misleading to categorize the Chinese mode of thinking as a sort of pre-Cartesian naiveté lacking differentiation between mind and body and, by implication, between subject and object. (1985: 37)

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One of Tu’s main aims in this passage is to defend the Chinese conception of ch’i from the charge of childishness. The Chinese conception of nature is not primitively animistic; rather, it is the result of a deliberate decision to avoid positing any clear-cut dichotomy between mind and matter. Why should one avoid positing any such absolute distinction? In a truly beautiful passage in the Meditations, right after having explained that mind and body are two quite different things, Descartes writes: Nature … teaches me, by these sensations of pain, hunger, thirst and so on, that I am not merely present in my body as a sailor is present in a ship, but that I am very closely joined and, as it were, intermingled with it, so that I and the body form a unit. If this were not so, I, who am nothing but a thinking thing, would not feel pain when the body was hurt, but would perceive the damage purely by the intellect, just as a sailor perceives by sight if anything in his ship is broken. (1986 [1641]: 56) The problem alluded to by Tu emerges here with the utmost clarity. If you cut reality into two wholly heterogeneous halves, such as mind and matter are taken to be within Cartesian dualism, you cannot explain their interaction. You don’t have one being anymore, but two dissociated entities. This is not, however, the way we experience ourselves; what one feels immediately—a sense of deep connection with one’s own body—becomes at once something utterly mysterious. The problem is intractable and was quickly recognized as such by postCartesian thinkers. In the second half of the twentieth-century mainstream theories of consciousness—such as behaviorism, identity-theory, and functionalism—have therefore been unanimous in their rejection of Cartesian dualism.2 This rejection, however, has taken a different turn in Western academic philosophy than in Chinese philosophy. Chinese thinkers avoid any clear-cut dichotomy between mind and matter by fusing the two opposite poles into one, that is, by admitting that the real is ultimately psychophysical; on the contrary, Western philosophers have tried to reduce one term to the other, explicitly affirming the primacy of matter over mind.3 Although supported by very ingenious arguments, it seems fair to say that all such attempts have been unsuccessful.4 Behaviorists tried to explain mentality in terms of behavioral dispositions (after the pattern: A given mental state M is a person’s disposition to act in a certain way under a given set of conditions), but they could not provide any convincing behavioral analysis of mental concepts. Moreover, a person might have a given experience, yet not what the behaviorist would identify as the corresponding behavioral disposition. A stoic like Epictetus may feel excruciating pains, but still be able to suppress his tears

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and lamentations. The feeling cannot be a behavioral disposition if the former is present while the latter is absent. Equally unsuccessful have been attempts to equate mental states with cerebral states, as in the so-called identity-theory. There is no doubt that cerebral states and mental states are correlated. The chemical equation “water = H2O,” however, cannot serve as a model for the equation “pain = firing of C-fibers.” All physical properties of water can be deduced from its chemical properties; in the case of pain, one may know everything about C-fibers, yet still fail to see why their firings should be accompanied by that feeling we call “pain.” The subjectivity of pain (its qualitative, experiential dimension) is not grasped by any physical description of the brain, however detailed and sophisticated that may be. Lastly, an analogous objection can be raised against accounts of mental states that define them as complex functions connecting inputs and outputs. Such models fail to explain not solely the subjectivity of mental states, but also their intentionality—that is, the fact that they can be about (or refer or point towards) something other than themselves. Evidently, conscious, sentient organisms do not merely react to stimuli provided by the environment; they also feel and represent it in a kind of “inner space,” one whose existence is known to us immediately. These remarks help clarify two important points. The first is methodological. A correct account of a given phenomenon (in this case, human mentality) should not conceal or obliterate those aspects of it that resist explanation in terms of one’s preferred theory. Surely the subjectivity and the intentionality of mental states are “hard,” real facts; any theory that fails to account for them must be rejected, if not as false, at least as being highly incomplete. The second point is ontological. The fact that consciousness resists incorporation within a materialistic framework suggests that it is something ultimate, a fundamental aspect of reality that cannot be explained in terms of anything else. All in all, the following conclusion appears justified on the basis of what has been said so far: Unless we want to become idealists and reduce matter to mind,5 we will have to posit some “psychophysical” stuff as the basic constituent of all things.

3 THE MASTER ARGUMENT FOR PANPSYCHISM: THE CONTINUITY OF BEING Believing that something like the Chinese ch’i constitutes the ultimate nature of reality could therefore be the more rational thing to do, better than to embrace dualism, materialism in any of its forms, or plainly (and absurdly) deny that consciousness exists.6

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Not solely the failure of the traditional dualistic and materialist theories suggests this; another line of reasoning points in this direction. The argument in question has been articulated in a variety of ways in recent literature (most clearly and successfully by Strawson 2006; see also Nagel 1979), but its central idea is old. The following passage from William James’s Principles of Psychology has lost nothing of its force: In a general theory of evolution the inorganic comes first, then the lowest form of animal and vegetable life, then forms of life that possess mentality, and finally those like ourselves that possess it in a high degree. As long as we keep to the consideration of purely outward facts, even the most complicated facts of biology, our task as evolutionists is comparatively easy. We are dealing all the time with matter and its aggregations and separations; and although our treatment must perforce be hypothetical, this does not prevent it from being continuous. The point which as evolutionists we are bound to hold fast to is that all the new forms of being that make their appearance are really nothing more than results of the redistribution of the original and unchanging materials. The self-same atoms which, chaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, jammed and temporarily caught in peculiar positions, form our brains; and the ‘evolution’ of the brains, if understood, would be simply the account of how the atoms came to be so caught and jammed. In this story no new natures, no factors not present at the beginning, are introduced at any later stage. But with the dawn of consciousness an entirely new nature seems to slip in, something whereof the potency was not given in the mere outward atoms of the original chaos. (James 1890: 146) The argument can be outlined as follows: 1. Consciousness exists. 2. Conscious organisms such as human beings and the higher animals have evolved in the course of time. 3. We cannot understand how unconscious matter could give rise to consciousness. 4. Thus, if conscious organisms have evolved, the stuff initially given for evolution cannot have been totally devoid of consciousness. 5. This means, in other words, that the stuff initially given for evolution must have been (somehow) already conscious. 6. Conscious organisms are made of the same fundamental stuff of which all other things are made.

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Hence: 7. Consciousness is a fundamental feature of reality—that is to say, the fundamental stuff (whatever that is) of which all things are made, must (in some way) include consciousness as one of its essential aspects. This straightforward argument leads to a conclusion that many find difficult to consider seriously, even only as a hypothesis to be rejected at a later stage. One such critic is John Searle, who refers to the panpsychists as “mysterians” and charges the view with “intrinsic implausibility” (2004: 150). Following the hint provided by Tu in the passage quoted at the beginning of the previous section, this difficulty is probably cultural rather than philosophical. The notion of a substantial ontological continuity between all things and the associated conception of ch’i are widespread within Chinese philosophy of nature; as Tu also notes, the notion permeates other areas of Chinese culture as well, most notably literature: Forming one body with the universe can literally mean that since all modalities of being are made of ch’i, human life is part of a continuous flow of the blood and breath that constitutes the cosmic process. Human beings are thus organically connected with rocks, trees, and animals. Understandably, the interplay between discrete species features prominently in Chinese literature, notably popular novels. The monkey in the Journey to the West came into being from metamorphosis from agate, the hero in the Dream of the Red Chamber … is said to have been transformed from a piece of a precious jade … Presumably, from the cosmic vantage points, nothing is totally fixed. (1985: 43) Analogously, transformations are basic themes in all Chinese paintings, in which mountains flow like rivers, or are depicted as if they were “frozen oceans” (1985: 43).7 Does it make sense to argue that such widespread, influential metaphysical concepts are simply absurd? Is it not much more likely that they are supported by some sound, serious thinking about the ultimate nature of things? These rhetorical questions do not show that panpsychism and Chinese philosophy of nature are true, of course; they do show, however, that such doctrines cannot be easily dismissed as “intrinsically implausible.” It is not solely a perspectival distortion, one due to cultural provincialism, that makes panpsychism—as well as the contiguous notion of ch’i—seem unintelligible in modern Western philosophy, but also a disregard of one’s own cultural past. As a matter of fact, even in the Western tradition the notion that matter is utterly insentient is relatively new.

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Notoriously, Descartes identified the realm of nature with the realm of the merely extended, thus turning it into a domain that could be explored by the measuring sciences (Hatfield 2003: 291–96). Tu observes that this is not possible on a Chinese conception of nature: To be sure, the theory of different modalities of ch’i cannot engender ideas such as the naked object, raw data, or the value-free fact, for the disinterested scientist to study, analyze, manipulate, and control. Ch’i, in short, seems inadequate to provide a philosophical background for the development of empirical science as understood in the positivistic sense. (1985: 37) In many ways, Descartes’s conception of the natural world as utterly insentient flies in the face of commonsense. As one reads in a famous passage of the Meditations: [O]n the one hand I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, insofar as I am simply a thinking, non-extended thing; and on the other hand I have a distinct idea of body, in so far as this is simply an extended, non-thinking thing. And accordingly, it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it. (1986 [1641]: 54) This is a striking passage: For how “intrinsically plausible” is a theory in which plants and animal bodies—including our own human living bodies—are conceived as being nothing more than extended things? Not surprisingly, before Descartes, other conceptions of the natural world prevailed in the so-called Western world. And even in his aftermath, Western philosophers developed alternative theories of nature as sentient and animated: Leibniz’s monadism, Spinoza’s psycho-physical monism, Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of the will, Nietzsche’s promethean naturalism, Whitehead’s organic philosophy—these are just a few, but notable examples.8

4 CONSCIOUSNESS, EMERGENCE, AND RATIONALITY Let us now turn to a consideration of the several steps involved in the argument for panpsychism. The first premise is obviously true, since it merely states that consciousness exists. This is logically true, for only a conscious being could try to refute it (this could be one way of understanding Descartes’s cogito). One may conceivably eliminate all things from the world, except one’s own conscious awareness; its existence must be recognized as axiomatic by any sound philosophical thinking.

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The second premise, that is, the thesis that conscious organisms are the products of evolution, is perhaps less obvious. The theory of evolution was originally developed to explain the transformations of biological organisms; in James’s argument, its basic explanatory principle is now generalized to account for phenomena outside the classical domain of biology. In James’s description, the panpsychist transfers a successful explanatory scheme to a new realm of phenomena. The point is worth making to prevent misunderstandings: The argument for panpsychism now under consideration is anti-materialistic, but it is not anti-scientific or anti-Darwinian.9 As James nicely puts it, The demand for continuity has, over large tracts of science, proved itself to possess true prophetic power. We ought therefore ourselves sincerely to try every possible mode of conceiving the dawn of consciousness so that it may not appear equivalent to the irruption into the universe of a new nature, non-existent until then. (1890: 148) This passage leads immediately to a consideration of the third step, that is, the origination of consciousness from unconscious stuff, which constitutes the key point in the argument. How could consciousness emerge from the utterly unconscious? Could this happen by merely putting the unconscious particles in motion and rearranging their configurations? It is difficult to see how this could happen. Once again, James states the problem with admirable force: Every one admits the entire incommensurability of feeling as such with material motion as such. “A motion became a feeling!”—no phrase that our lips can frame is so devoid of apprehensible meaning. (1890: 146) James’s words are aptly chosen. We have indeed no proof that consciousness could not emerge from nonconscious stuff; the very idea of such an emergence does not violate the law of noncontradiction nor any known metaphysical or natural laws. Still, he rightly observes, there is a problem of “incommensurability.” If mind and matter are conceived as completely heterogeneous, then the transition from “material motion as such” to “feeling as such” is not something we could ever understand—even if it were real, the emergence of consciousness out of matter would be for us something “devoid of apprehensible meaning.” The claim is not that radical emergence is impossible; the problem is that we cannot understand it. One simply fails to see why, given material particles in motion, consciousness should also exist. There is nothing in the notion of “insentient material particles” that explains why they should be accompanied by any mental states.

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To believe in emergence would therefore constitute a violation of what in traditional metaphysical terminology is called the principle of sufficient reason; we cannot acknowledge emergence as a mere fact, for reason craves understanding.10 As Leibniz says in his Monadology: Our reasonings are based on two great principles, that of contradiction, in which case we judge that which involves a contradiction to be false … And that of sufficient reason, by virtue of which we consider that we can find no true or existent fact, no true assertion, without there being a sufficient reason why it is thus and not otherwise, although most of the time these reasons cannot be known to us. (1989 [1714]: 217) Eventually, the problem of radical emergence boils down to this: Why should we regard the principle of sufficient reason as valid? Why should we base “our reasonings” upon it? In answering this question, a distinction must be made between two different readings of the principle. On the one hand, it can be read as a claim about the nature of reality—namely the claim that reality is intrinsically intelligible, open in principle to the grasp of an inquiring mind. Understood in this way, it is not clear that the principle is true. Science makes constant progress, but that does not mean that everything real has a rational explanation. On the other hand, the principle can be taken to express a truth about human reason, namely that it belongs to its nature to search for explanation. Since understanding is what philosophy is all about (it is its “core business,” so to say), it would be paradoxical to deny the principle’s validity—a curious form of intellectual suicide.11 All in all, there are very strong reasons for accepting the first three steps in the argument. But to do this is already to accept the fourth and fifth steps. Step four is the provisional conclusion that the original material cannot be wholly devoid of consciousness, which very nicely leads to step five, the claim that the particles composing conscious organisms must themselves possess some form of consciousness. Lastly, the sixth step involves the claim that all things are made of the same basic stuff. This assumption is needed to justify the transition from − those particles composing conscious organisms are (somehow) conscious (which corresponds to the fifth step) to

− all ultimate particles are (somehow) conscious (which is the argument’s conclusion).

Again, we have no proof that absolutely all existing things are made of the same basic stuff. If we posit basic constituents of a heterogeneous kind, however, then it becomes impossible to explain how they can interact with one

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another. Ontological continuity is a metaphysical postulate of Chinese natural philosophy, as well as the lesson to be drawn from the demise of Cartesian dualism. In Tu’s words: “The idea of forming one body with the universe is predicated on the assumption that since all modalities of being are made of ch’i, all things cosmologically share the same consanguinity with us and are thus our companions” (1985: 45).

5 PANPSYCHISM AND MENTAL UNITY At this point, we have smoothly reached the panpsychist doctrine that consciousness is a fundamental feature of reality. How good is James’s argument? Since it is impossible to prove that brute emergence is impossible, the argument is less than a proof. But it seems preposterous not to recognize its force; as James brilliantly puts it, when reasoning about consciousness’ place in nature, panpsychism is the line of least logical resistance. (Few people would reject the premises if they were confronted with them singly, although they may inconsistently want to reject the conclusion.) But how could rocks and mountains possess consciousness? Well, this is not a necessary implication of panpsychism. For instance, all players in a basketball team are human beings, but the team itself is not. Analogously, to say that a chair’s constituents are conscious is not to say that the chair itself is—the properties of the parts simply need not be properties of the whole they are parts of.12 The most serious objection against panpsychism—one which worried James and still plagues contemporary panpsychists (Roelofs 2016, 2020; Seager 2020)—is the combination-problem. If all fundamental natural particles (whatever they are) have some iota of experience, how could they possibly coalesce into the unified experience of a human being? If one assumes, as it seems right to do, that conscious experience presupposes a conscious subject, then all fundamental particles will have to be conceived as being themselves subjects, that is, as centers of experience embodying a unique standpoint or perspective upon the world. But how could such fundamental particles, each conceived as a subject of experience—a “micro-mind” so to say—give rise to a human mind? Consider the human brain: How are the experiences going on in the neurons related to our individual minds? One possibility is to conceive the human mind as an additional entity. On the assumption that the human mind is numerically different from all micro-subjects constituting the brain (an “extrasomething” on the top of them, so to say), then a special version of the problem of emergence arises. Surely, I have my own perspectival standpoint upon the world, one which is radically different from the perspectives of any of the single neuronal micro-minds. Alternatively, the human mind may be conceived as a

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collective entity. On this view, the human mind is not numerically different from the micro-minds of the neuronal micro-subjects, it is their “sum.” My mind would then be constituted by the neuronal micro-minds existing within my brain, and these more fundamental subjects would be parts of my own subjectivity. Thus, here is a forceful way of posing the combination problem: How could a subject of experience be part of another such subject? How could a mind be composed of other minds? It is widely acknowledged that we have at present no clear understanding of such a mode of combination (Goff et al. 2017). But the problem is worse than this, for such a mode of combination would seem to be impossible in principle. The experiences of the neuronal micro-subjects within my brain would have to be integral elements of that larger macro-subject which is my mind. The theory thus requires that the very same experience can be shared by more than one subject; this is, however, a scarcely intelligible conception. This point is not obvious and requires some explanation. Consider the way our perceptions of colors, tastes, or sounds are altered when they are set in a different perceptual context: The guitar chord D feels differently if you switch to it from a G- than when you do so from a C-chord; analogously, a specific shade of red feels differently if experienced in conjunction with a dark blue or with a dark orange. These are well-known phenomenological facts. They lend substantial support to the thesis that no experience can remain identical to itself while changing its phenomenal, experiential context. This may be called the “holistic” principle: What a specific experience feels like to a subject is a function of the way the other experiences in its conscious field feel like. If this is granted, however, then a given experience cannot be at the same time the experience of a neuronal micro-subject and of a human macro-subject. Since the perceptual context changes, the two subjects must have different experiences. As a way of side-stepping the problem, one could argue that the compositionproblem only arises for panpsychist theories that assume “number-pluralism,” the view of the universe as made up of many numerically distinct things (Sprigge 1983: 257–9). This assumption can be challenged, however. What if reality was a single cosmic “One” of which all existing things were modes or ways of being? If “number-monism” was true, so the argument goes, then reality could be regarded as a single subject, of which lesser subjects (such as human beings) are mere aspects. Within this metaphysical framework, the composition problem would not arise since now there are no independent micro-subjects to “combine” in the first place. A version of this position—cosmopsychism13—has been recently defended by Yujin Nagasawa: The composition problem does not arise, however, if we adopt cosmopsychism, because it is a top-down view. … In the bottom-up approach of panpsychism, the “smaller” consciousnesses are, the most fundamental

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they are. The consciousness of physical ultimates are the “smallest” and most fundamental, and any “larger” consciousnesses are compositions of them. In the top-down approach of cosmopsychism, on the other hand, the “larger” consciousnesses are, the more fundamental they are. The consciousness of the cosmos is the “largest” and most fundamental, and any “smaller” consciousnesses are derivatives of it. (2020: 266) Even granting the ambitious metaphysics that supports it, it is unclear that cosmopsychism avoids the difficulty that plagues pluralistic panpsychism. The notion of “combination” makes little sense within monism, but the fundamental problem remains. On the monistic view, my own mind would (somehow) be included within the larger conscious mind of the cosmos, together with all other existing minds. This coexistence, however, will inevitably alter the nature of my own individual experiences, for the cosmic subject will have them together with the experiences of all other sentient beings. A single conscious experience unifying a person’s boredom at one end of the world and another’s happiness at the other is not only very difficult to conceive, it is impossible as a reality; by being felt together within a single overarching experience, these feelings of boredom and happiness will have changed their original character. But if a mood changes, it is not the very same mood anymore. According to the specific version of cosmopsychism here under discussion, my mental states (thoughts, emotions, sensations, desires, dreams, and so on …) are also states of another conscious subject. This is not only incoherent; it also contradicts the sense I have of my own individuality. Even if was true, cosmopsychism would not be a theory we could sincerely believe in and live by, as it conflicts with an essential dimension of our self-experience. Furthermore, the theory would seem to be based upon a questionable analogy. As Nagasawa explains: It seems reasonable to assume that the consciousness of the cosmos is somehow comparable to the consciousness of individuals because, after all, it is a form of consciousness. If we can then show that the consciousness of individuals can be divided into “smaller,” less fundamental segments, then we have reason to think that the consciousness of the cosmos can also be divided into “smaller,” less fundamental segments. And it seems indeed possible to divide the consciousness of individuals into “smaller” segments. (2020: 266) Can I “divide” my own conscious experience into “segments”? When it comes to substantiating this claim, Nagasawa gives the following example: “A visual experience can be considered a unity which may be segmented into distinguishable colour experiences (e.g. experiences corresponding to red and

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green hues) or experiences of separable regions in space (e.g. experiences corresponding to the right-hand side and the left-hand side of the visual field)” (2020: 266). Now, it is true that I can analytically identify different sensations within the unified field of my conscious perceptions. Nevertheless, what I thereby identify are just specific sensorial data—not “subjects” in their own rights. The “segments” I find within my perceptual field are not the kind of mental entities needed to show that cosmopsychism could be true.

6 IS EXPERIENCE-SHARING AN INTELLIGIBLE NOTION? The notion that one experience can be shared by two subjects is crucial to pluralistic monism, as well as to forms of monistic panpsychism that conceive of our minds as phenomenal parts of a larger universal Mind. Given that consciousness is holistic, an experience felt by two subjects would feel differently to them. And since an experience is just the way it feels (pain, considered as an experience, is nothing but a peculiarly aching sensation), such an experience would have two different identities. “Experience-sharing” must therefore be rejected as self-contradictory. On this basis, the following reductio can be constructed:14 1. Panpsychism entails the notion that two subjects can share the same experience. 2. Since experience-sharing is a self-contradictory notion, no two subjects can share the same experience. Hence, 3. Panpsychism is false. As a way of countering this argument, one could reject premise (1). This is not an easy move to make, however. For such a critic will have to abandon the notions of “mental combination” (if he or she is a pluralist) and of “phenomenal segments” (if she or he is a monist). He or she will then have to develop an alternative metaphysical model in terms of which to conceive of the relations between subjects.15 Luke Roelofs (2016, 2020) has recently argued that premise (2) is false; even on the assumption that consciousness is holistic, he contends, two distinct subjects could have an experience in common. Roelofs begins by summarizing the objection: [The concept of] experience-sharing conflicts with the holistic, perspectival nature of consciousness. Even if some sort of “element” were shared between two consciousnesses, this element will be experienced differently

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from the two perspectives, due to the other contents of their respective consciousnesses. And if they experience it differently, surely we should count it as a different experience; hence a single experience cannot be shared. (2020: 250) Then, he goes on to say: [T]he experience-sharer could accept that consciousness is holistic, but analyse it in terms of mutual influence among elements, so that the parts are fundamental but also heavily affected by each other. This would imply that the total experience of one component subject will depend on the experiences of the others; its phenomenology somehow reflects theirs. (2020: 250) Elsewhere, he makes the point thus: [T]he defender of experience-sharing can simply reply that the part and whole have experiences with the same phenomenal context, and hence with the same phenomenal character—it is just that one experiences the context and the other doesn’t. (2016: 3213) According to this view, (i) an experience e experienced by a micro-subject s and a macro-subject S has the character it has because of its relations to all other experiences of the macro-subject S; (ii) the micro-subject s, however, only experiences a subsection of the conscious field of the macro-subject S. But how can both (i) and (ii) be true? To see why (i) and (ii) form an inconsistent pair, it is important to recognize that experiences are always “owned” by a subject, that is, an experience never exists in a “transcendental vacuum,” but always as the experience of a given subject. Once this is acknowledged, one sees that the character of an experience e as perceived by the micro-subject s cannot be determined by experiences that s does not have. The following example may be helpful: A D-chord has a distinctive feel if one switches to it from a G-chord, yet only for someone who experiences both the D- and the G-chord. Analogously, a specific shade of red feels differently if experienced in conjunction with a dark blue or with a dark orange; but this difference can only be appreciated by someone who is also experiencing the different shades of blue and orange. The reason why (i) and (ii) cannot both be true is also this: Since the micro-subject s does not have most of the experiences of the macro-subject S, these other experiences that s does not have cannot possibly determine the character of s’s own experience. If one subject “experiences the context and the other doesn’t,” then the experiences of the two subjects simply cannot have the same phenomenal feel.

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The point can also be put thus: Phenomenal character (what an experience feels like) is a function of the phenomenal context; but the phenomenal context is not something that exists per se, but only for the subject experiencing it.16 This means that, if two subjects experience different phenomenal contexts, then the phenomenal character of their respective experiences must be different. Since an experience is its phenomenal character (an experience is what it concretely feels to the subject having it), the experiences of the two subjects will have to be different. Hence, it still seems to me that the notion of “experience-sharing” is highly problematic. As far as James is concerned, he did eventually—and after decades of intellectual tribulations—recognize both the unintelligibility of the notion and that it was required by panpsychism.17 He did not, however, reject panpsychism for this reason; how did he accomplish this remarkable feat? Quite simply, he was ready to accept the consequences of his argument and concluded that reality is self-contradictory. In his view, the principle of noncontradiction expresses a fundamental law of abstract thought (what he disparagingly called “intellectualistic logic”) but does not hold true of fundamental (experiential) reality. James’s full argument can be stated thus: 1. Panpsychism is most likely true. 2. Panpsychism entails the notion that two subjects can share the same experience. 3. Experience-sharing is a self-contradictory notion. Hence: 4. Panpsychism is most likely true, yet ultimately unintelligible. It is equally possible, however, to argue as follows: 1. Panpsychism entails the notion that two subjects can share the same experience. 2. Experience-sharing is a self-contradictory notion. 3. What is contradictory cannot be true. Hence: 4. Panpsychism cannot be true. Obviously enough, this is not a very satisfactory result. The conclusion of this second argument conflicts with what has been said in the previous pages, since the evolutionary argument forcefully points to the conclusion that panpsychism is true. If my overall argument is sound, then the philosophical challenge is to explain why panpsychism so strongly appears to be true,18 given that (in the strict logical sense of the term) it cannot be.

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7 CONCLUDING REMARKS: AN OPTIMISTIC SKEPTICISM I do not know if and how this challenge can be met. We seem to be confronted here with something like a Kantian antinomy—an inescapable contradiction between two opposite but equally reasonable claims. For Kant, this is the sign that we are illegitimately trespassing beyond the limits of human knowledge. Less dramatically, it could simply be a sign that we have not yet found a way of formulating the mind-body problem properly; we may simply lack the linguistic and conceptual resources that are required by this task. My own feeling is that a new start is required. When reviewing the numerous theories of mind developed in the last century (as has been done very briefly in this paper), one is at times assaulted by a suffocating sense of claustrophobia, as if one had abandoned reality and entered a labyrinth of empty abstractions. In his discussion of the notion of ch’i, Tu observes that Chinese philosophy distrusts analytical distinctions, focusing instead upon the fundamental identity that we know instinctively to exist between all things. “The loss of analytical clarity,” he notices, “is compensated by the reward of imaginative richness” (1985: 37). Perhaps, a deeper confrontation with Chinese ways of conceptualizing reality—with their explicit rejection of clear-cut distinctions, such as that between mind and matter—may have a therapeutic effect, forcing one to look at reality from a new angle, to abandon subtle but faulty conceptions, and eventually to regain a new, much-needed philosophical innocence.19

NOTES 1

Whitehead (1978 [1929]) seems to have appreciated this point; as he observed at the beginning of his metaphysical masterpiece, Process and Reality, his general position approximates “more to some strains of Indian, or Chinese, thought, rather than to western Asiatic, or European, thought” (7). Unfortunately, this remark is not developed at any length in his book. More recently, Graham Parkes has explicitly argued that “most of traditional Chinese and Japanese and Korean philosophy would qualify as panpsychist in nature.” For these philosophies, he goes on to say, “the world is a dynamic force-field of energies … classifiable in Western terms as psychophysical” (2009: 326).

2

Madell (1988) is a notable exception.

3

As Kim has put it, “there is no credible alternative to physicalism as a general worldview” (2004: 146).

4

For introductory critical discussions of these positions see Searle (2004) and Ravenscroft (2005).

5

This option too is not as silly as it may look at first sight; for reasons of space, it cannot be discussed here at any length; see Foster (2008) and Sprigge (1983) for forceful defenses of the position.

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6

“Absurdly,” because consciousness cannot be an illusion. This is impossible on logical grounds: If it were an illusion, it would have to be real since an illusion is itself a form of consciousness.

7

For a fascinating and accessible discussion of the way philosophical conceptions of nature have affected Chinese culture over the centuries, see Ball (2016).

8

As this (incomplete yet impressive) list makes clear, Tu expresses himself carefully and correctly when he says that “modern” Western philosophy—as opposed to Western philosophy as such—has difficulties in understanding the Chinese notion of ch’i. For an extended historical survey of nonmaterialistic conceptions of nature, see Skrbina (2005); for a more philosophical discussion, see Whitehead (1967 [1925]).

9

Always careful, James speaks of “a general theory of evolution” (1890: 146) in the long passage quoted at the beginning of the previous section, and not just of “the” theory of evolution; outside of biology, however, evolutionary theory is a metaphysical assumption rather than an empirically grounded scientific theory.

10 The importance of the principle of sufficient reason for the philosophy of mind and for philosophy in general is also emphasized by Nagel (2012: 16–17). 11 On this view, there is a profound connection between philosophy and natural science; philosophy differs from science simply because it raises questions of a more general and fundamental type. The impulse toward understanding, however, is one and the same. 12 Interestingly, Parkes (2009) explains that rocks and stones are objects of a special cult within Chinese culture. The Chinese tradition reveres rocks “for their age and beauty,” but also for “their being expressive of the fundamental energies of the earth in which we live” (2009: 338). On this point, see also Parkes (2008). 13 The view is also developed in Nagasawa and Wager (2016). The theory seems to be what is traditionally called “Absolute Idealism,” among its classical advocates are Bradley (1897) and Royce (1959 [1899/1901]), as well as Sprigge (1983). Cosmopsychism may take different forms, however; other versions have been proposed by Shani (2015) and Goff (2017). 14 See Basile (2010) for a previous version of this argument. 15 Such attempts have been made. Inspired by Whitehead’s metaphysics, Griffin (1998) envisions a pluralistic universe in which the subjects of experience do not combine, although they can act upon one another. Shani (2015) suggests that reality may be a cosmic subject, containing lesser subjects as its contents, but having only partial epistemic access to them. For critical discussions of these ingenious positions, which cannot be discussed here briefly without distorting them, see respectively Basile (2017) and Albahari (2020). 16 This is, I think, the (ontological as well as phenomenological) point Roelofs overlooks in his critique. 17 In the Principles of Psychology (1890) James seems sympathetic to a version of Leibnizian monadism; in his later metaphysical writing, A Pluralistic Universe (1909: 212, 214) he opts for a theory in which distinct streams of experience are capable of merging into one another; two admirable reconstructions of James’s life-long struggle with panpsychism are Ford (1982) and Sprigge (1993).

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18 “Appears to be true” rather than “must be true,” because I have not argued that brute emergence is impossible, only that it is unintelligible. 19 Thanks to Susanne Beiweis and Itay Shani for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

REFERENCES Albahari, M. (2020), “Beyond Cosmopsychism and the Great I Am: How the World Might Be Grounded in Universal ‘Advaitic’ Consciousness,” in W. Seager (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism, 119–30, New York and London: Routledge. Ball, P. (2016), The Water Kingdom: A Secret History of China, London: Penguin. Basile, P. (2010), “It Must Be True—But How Can It Be? Some Remarks on Panpsychism and Mental Composition,” in P. Basile, P. Phemister and J. Kiverstein (eds), The Metaphysics of Consciousness, 93–112, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Basile, P. (2017), Whitehead’s Metaphysics of Power. Reconstructing Modern Philosophy, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Bradley, F. H. (1897), Appearance and Reality: An Essay in Metaphysics, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press. Descartes, R. (1986 [1641]), Meditations on First Philosophy. With Selections from the Objections and Replies, trans. J. Cottingham and with an introduction by B. Williams, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ford, M. P. (1982), William James’ Philosophy: A New Perspective, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Foster, J. (2008), A World for Us: The Case for Phenomenalistic Idealism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Griffin, D. R. (1998), Unsnarling the World-Knot: Consciousness, Freedom, and the Mind-Body Problem, Berkeley: University of California Press. Goff, P. (2017), Consciousness and Fundamental Reality, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goff, P., W. Seager and S. Allen-Hermanson (2017), “Panpsychism,” in E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available online: Panpsychism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Hatfield, G. (2003), Descartes and the Meditations, New York: Routledge. James, W. (1909), A Pluralistic Universe, London: Longmans, Green and Co. James, W. (1890), The Principles of Psychology. Vol. I., New York: Henry Holt and Company. Kim, J. (2004), “The Mind-Body Problem at Century’s Turn,” in B. Leiter (ed.), The Future for Philosophy, 129–52, Oxford: Clarendon. Leibniz, G. W. (1989 [1714]), “Monadology,” in R. Ariew and D. Garber (eds), Philosophical Essays, 213–25, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Madell, G. (1988), Mind and Materialism, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Nagasawa, Y. (2020), “Panpsychism Versus Pantheism, Polytheism and Cosmopsychism,” in W. Seager (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism, 259–68, New York and London: Routledge. Nagasawa, Y. and K. Wager (2016), “Priority Cosmopsychism,” in G. Brüntrup and L. Jaskolla (eds), Panpsychism, 113–29, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

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Nagel, T. (1979), “Panpsychism,” in Mortal Questions, 181–95, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nagel, T. (2012), Mind and Cosmos. Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Parkes, G. (2008), “Thinking Like a Stone: Learning from the Zen Rock Garden,” in H. Wautischer (ed.), Ontology of Consciousness: Percipient Action, 475–505, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Parkes, G. (2009), “The Awareness of Rocks: East-Asian Understandings and Their Implications,” in D. Skrbina (ed.), Mind That Abides. Panpsychism in the New Millennium, 283–399, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Ravenscroft, I. (2005), Philosophy of Mind: A Beginner’s Guide, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Roelofs, L. (2016), “The Unity of Consciousness, between and within Subjects,” Philosophical Studies, 173 (2): 3199–221. Roelofs, L. (2020). “Can We Sum Subjects? Evaluating Panpsychism’s Hard Problem,” in W. Seager (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism, 259–68, New York and London: Routledge. Royce, J. (1959 [1899/1901]), The World and the Individual, 2 Vols., New York: Dover. Seager, W. (2020), “A Panpsychist Manifesto,” in W. Seager (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism, 1–11, New York and London: Routledge. Searle, J. (2004), Mind. A Brief Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shani, I. (2015), “Cosmopsychism: A Holistic Approach to the Metaphysics of Experience,” Philosophical Papers, 44 (3): 389–437. Skrbina, D. (2005), Panpsychism in the West, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Sprigge, T. (1983), The Vindication of Absolute Idealism, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Sprigge, T. (1993), James and Bradley. American Truth and British Reality, Chicago and La Salle: Open Court. Strawson, G. (2006), “Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism,” in A. Freeman (ed.), Consciousness and Its Place in Nature, 3–31, Exeter: Imprint Academic. Strawson, G. (2020), “What Does ‘Physical’ Mean? A Prolegomenon to Physicalist Panpsychism,” in W. Seager (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism, 317–39, New York and London: Routledge. Tu, Wei-Ming (1985), “The Continuity of Being: Chinese Visions of Nature,” in Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation, 35–50, Albany: States University of New York Press. Whitehead, A. N. (1967 [1925]), Science and the Modern World, New York: The Free Press. Whitehead, A. N. (1978 [1929]), Process and Reality. An Essay in Cosmology, New York: The Free Press.

PART FOUR

Illusionism

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CHAPTER NINE

The Magic of Consciousness: Sculpting an Alternative Illusionism BRYCE HUEBNER, EYAL AVIV, AND SONAM KACHRU

1 INTRODUCTION Both contemporary illusionists and premodern Buddhist philosophers appeal to magical illusions to clarify claims about the constructive nature of typical human cognition. Contemporary illusionists argue that phenomenal experiences are like magical illusions, which are produced when introspective mechanisms bundle the outputs of numerous neuro-computational systems, and present them as simple and unified phenomena; phenomenal qualities are the only phenomena they treat as illusory, and their account of the illusion always appeals to computational processes. By contrast, Buddhist philosophers, especially those working within the Yogācāra tradition, did not directly target phenomenal consciousness. They argued that a more diverse range of experiential contents were illusory; their account of the production of such illusions appealed to the stances we adopt in making the world intelligible; and instead of assuming that specific kinds of causal relations were ultimately real, they based their illusionism on appeals to transformative practices, which restructure experience in normatively significant ways. Our aim is to explore this alternative illusionism, and to show that it reveals a more intriguing understanding of experience. But we begin, as illusionists often do, with an appeal to a magic show.

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2 MAGIC SHOWS Magic shows in ancient India were a popular form of entertainment (Nagao 1983: 1). Ancient magicians—like their modern counterparts—intended to produce illusory experiences in the members of their audiences; and they made mundane objects do something, or appear to do something surprising. But unlike contemporary magicians who often make use of complex technologies and lighting techniques, ancient street magicians worked with everyday materials, and strategies for redirecting attention, to guide their audiences toward specific experiences. Consider a street magician, his apprentice, and the group of people who gather to watch them (Siegel 1991: 123–5). After several warm up tricks, and some witty banter, the magician produces a length of rope, wiggles it, and asserts that it’s a snake. When the apprentice ridicules him, the magician draws a sword and begins to chase him, evoking amusement within the crowd. Feigning exhaustion, the magician then squats down, and articulates a set of pseudo-philosophical claims: Why should I be angry with one who is deluded, entangled in Indra’s net of illusion. He needs not punishment, but enlightenment, freedom from the net. He mistakes this snake for a rope out of ignorance. I’ll teach him discrimination. I’ll show him reality. (Siegel 1991: 127) Waving a large piece of cloth in the air, the magician says “This cloth is like the veil of illusions,” and wraps the rope inside it. He then grabs a monkey skull. Stands up. And walks around chanting a nonsense mantra while claiming that he will soon remove the illusion. When the magician unrolls the cloth, a snake slithers out! Of course, this is street magic. So an observer has two options. They can allow the illusion to persist, treating the experiences of ropes and snakes as revealing exactly what they seem to reveal. This is the best option for preserving the enjoyment of everyday life. But they can also treat these experiences as illusions, which demand causal explanations. It’s hard to discover how magical illusions are created; and magicians often refuse to share their secrets, engaging in obfuscation when asked. But there is a root strategy, which is found in every magician’s book: If you redirect your audience’s attention at the right time, you can produce illusory experiences. And in the case of our street magicians, the apprentice seems to have replaced the rope with a snake while the crowd was distracted, preserving continuity between the perception of a rope and the perception of a snake; and since the audience remained ignorant of these causes, they reflexively bundled these experiences together (Siegel 1991: 128).

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So far, so good. But can this story about street magic channel attention in a way that clarifies the illusionist approach to consciousness?

3 ILLUSIONISM ABOUT CONSCIOUSNESS Suppose you’ve made a cup of coffee. It looks black in the cup. It smells lightly fruity. And when you taste it, you feel heat and wetness in your mouth. Slowly, a lightly bitter chocolate taste opens up, rounded out by hints of stone fruit and earthiness; and as the cup cools, the fruitiness comes further forward. Reflecting on this delicious cup of coffee, you might wonder how anyone could claim that its looks, smells, tastes, and feels are illusory. Contemporary illusionists argue that no experience has phenomenal properties. And they are often accused of denying that experiences exist. But, there are at least three ways to characterize phenomena like smells, tastes, and visual experiences (Frankish 2016): 1. We can assume they are distinctively phenomenal qualities, whose existence is independent of, or more fundamental than physical qualities; 2. We can assume that distinctively phenomenal qualities are produced by networks of neural mechanisms, yielding representational contents, or nonrepresentational states, which are real but add nothing to the world beyond what is revealed through scientific investigations; or, 3. We can deny that there are any phenomenal qualities to explain, suggesting instead that the apparent richness of experience is the output of introspective mechanisms that present experiences as being rich and full of feeling (Ross 2016: 216). Illusionists reject (1), arguing that distinctively phenomenal qualities are metaphysically suspect and ontologically superfluous. They reject (2) as internally unstable, since it requires phenomena that are irreducibly conscious, yet brought into existence through the operation of physical, chemical, and biological mechanisms. And pursuing (3), they treat the assumption that we are immediately aware of the contents of experience as a target for scientific explanation; they argue that this assumption is an artifact of interactions between the mechanisms that produce our sensitivity to the world, and those that produce our sense that we experience the world in a particular way; and they claim that once we understand how these mechanisms work, there is nothing left to explain. Contemporary illusionists thus seek mechanistic explanations of why people take themselves to experience simple phenomenal qualities, which seem as though they can be characterized in terms of intrinsically available features.

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And their primary aim is to show that we make a mistake when we apply determinate designations to a moment of awareness: introspection sees the complex sleight-of-hand performed by our sensory systems as a simple magical effect. And, as with a conjuring trick, the illusion depends on what the audience does not see as much as what they do. (Frankish 2016: 18) So, when we say, “This coffee tastes lightly fruity,” the contemporary illusionist argues that we are not referring to lightly fruity phenomenal qualities. We are using “lightly fruity” as a label to identify the operation of a semi-diffuse, difficult-to-explain, network of interacting mechanisms whose behavior clusters around the things that people around here call “lightly fruity.” More generally, they argue that phenomenal judgments should not be treated as evidence that the world includes the entities or events to which phenomenal terms apparently refer; instead, they claim that we should recognize that there are no phenomenal properties, and accept that phenomenal judgments are always false. Moreover, they claim that we should pursue the empirical hypothesis that phenomenal concepts track the operation of the complex physical processes that cause our phenomenal judgments; and since phenomenal terms lack referents, they argue that once we uncover a story about what generates these effects, we will have explained why experience seems to have the character it does. Of course, we don’t yet know which interactions between physical, chemical, and biological mechanisms produce experiences; but they argue that we should assume, “until positively shown otherwise, that the effects are achieved by some hard-to-imagine concoction of everyday physical causes and effects” (Dennett 2016: 227). 3.1 Locating the Illusion Although many contemporary philosophers treat simple phenomenal qualities as the primary target for a theory of consciousness, there is no widely shared understanding regarding the supposed referent of theoretical terms like “phenomenal qualities.” And it’s hard to say with confidence if there really is an illusion of the kind that contemporary illusionists commonly diagnose (Mandik 2016). Sometimes people take themselves to experience simple phenomenal qualities, but sometimes they take themselves to experience a complex and detailed inner world, whose structure goes beyond anything that they could make a single judgment about, or describe with a single term (Blackmore 2016: 53). So perhaps the illusion of consciousness lies closer to phenomena that Susan Blackmore (2016) considers. She acknowledges that questions like “Am

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I conscious now?” and “What am I conscious of now?” appear to have easy answers. But she contends that while it seems as though we’ve always been experiencing something precise and determinate, asking such questions leads us to construct a temporary unity of thoughts and perceptions, and to link this construction to a representation of a self. Moreover, she argues that since few of us know how to answer the question “What is it like the rest of the time?” we simply assume that the “bundling trick” is always happening. This would support the illusion of a persisting conscious stream. And once we learn to ask and reflect upon questions like “Was I conscious a moment ago?” or “What was I conscious of a moment ago?” it might become clear that we have no idea how to answer these questions while preserving the sense that we are persisting selves, with persisting streams of consciousness. Indeed, Blackmore (2016: 58) argues that if we try to figure out what was happening before we asked, using either tools from modern neuroscience, or disciplined forms of introspection, we will find “that there are lots and lots of parallel processes going on and no obvious way to tell which were conscious.” Alternatively, the illusion might arise from our attempts to isolate specific contents, and treat them as having an underlying existence that’s independent of everything else that is happening at a specific moment. Questions like “What is it like to taste coffee?” cannot receive determinate answers. Generic answers that apply to every coffee-drinking experience must ignore the complexities induced by the interactions between differences in the coffee, and differences in physiological, psychological, and social factors. By contrast, answers that focus on a specific experience, characterizing its internal complexity in all of its florid detail, must acknowledge variations at every time scale, such that numerous facets of the embodied experience of drinking coffee cannot be accommodated with a simplifying appeal to “phenomenal qualities.” Perhaps the failure to engage with such difficulties has made it difficult to specify what the illusion of consciousness is and how it arises. Or perhaps engaging with these issues would reveal that there is no unified story about how the illusions of consciousness are produced by neuro-computational mechanisms, and then manifested in everyday experience. But as we argue in the remainder of this paper, Yogācāra philosophers working in South Asia from roughly the third-seventh century CE provide a framework for addressing this wider range of issues. Perhaps beginning with communities of contemplative practitioners in the Northwest of the subcontinent, the Yogācāra tradition came to play an increasingly prominent role in pan-Indian philosophical discussions and in transmitting Buddhism to East Asia and Tibet. These Yogācāra philosophers center the claim that mundane experience reveals a kind of user-illusion, which obscures the complex interactive processes that construct experiences. But they argue that illusions permeate manifest experience; and they provide a diverse set of arguments to explain how different kinds

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of illusory contents are produced and sustained, without assuming that any specific kind of causal relation should be treated as ultimately real. We work up to these claims slowly; and we begin with a brief discussion of the scholastic context that frames Yogācāra illusionism.

4 BUDDHIST ILLUSIONISM Many Buddhists have claimed that illusions saturate mundane experience. But this claim meant different things, at different times, in different traditions. In the spirit of reconstructive clarity, we would distinguish three scholastic templates for Buddhist illusionism, which reflect diverging commitments to: 1. fictionalism in the service of quietism; 2. diverse standpoints; and 3. theoretical re-description. For Buddhist quietists, claiming that something is “like a magical illusion” entails that any attempt to grasp it—whether in thought or experience—will unfold within a conceptually mediated discourse. We find a straightforward example of Buddhist quietism in an early Mahāyāna text cited by Candrakīrti, entitled the Questions of the Noble Upāli. The Buddha says: “I have shown the peril of hell with the result that many thousands of beings have become upset, but there exists … no being who, having died, goes to a horrific bad destiny” (modifying MacDonald 2015: 196). Here, it is claimed that assumptions about hells, and the experiences of hell beings, derive from the power of vikalpa, or imagination (MacDonald 2015: 197–8). But what does it mean to claim that imagination shapes the experience of what is possible? For Buddhist quietists, this order of description doesn’t require appealing to a specific person engaging in conceptualization. Nor does it require specifying how a specific hell realm is conceptualized at a specific point in time. Instead, appeals to vikalpa identify a class of fictional and discursive contexts that organize understandings of hell. These appeals to fictional contexts are not claims about concrete phenomena—or even collections of concrete phenomena—which invite further specification in a more perspicuous theoretical idiom (MacDonald 2015: 199). Instead, they are more like appeals to “Ahsoka Tano,” who exists within discursive frames that are shaped by the films, television shows, novels, games, and comic books where this character appears, and by cultural practices where this name carries meaning and sustains beliefs about Ahsoka’s qualities and abilities. When Buddhist quietists claim that something is illusory, they can thus be understood as entertaining a kind of fictionalism about the relevant domain of objects. And their aim is to mitigate the effects of grasping at fictions, by helping us to become less invested in

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illusory things—to the extent that we no longer see them as requiring further explanation or theoretical re-description. Here too, we find a parallel to the case of fictional discourse. Wherever we stand on questions about the metaphysical status of fictional entities, we can say many true things about Ahsoka Tano (Thomasson 1999). But claiming that “Ahsoka Tano is not real” expresses the fact that you cannot share a cab with her, or run into her at the grocery store. And this allows us to characterize the kind of mistake someone would make if they became angry at Ahsoka for failing to pay her share of the cab fare: They would be treating her as possessing a kind of reality she does not have. Buddhist quietists made similar claims about the status of everyday objects: We can coherently discuss them, but treating them as possessing a robust kind of existence is a mistake, which reflects our habituation to experiences informed by a specific kind of fictional discourse. A second template for Buddhist illusionism focuses on diverse standpoints, highlighting the ways that experience can be shaped by different ways of life. Such illusionists do not appeal to abstractions such as discursive frames. Instead, they propose that affective and attentional biases shape our awareness of specific aspects of the world, yielding a kind of perceptual hijacking underwritten by patterns of perceptual categorization that lead us to highlight things that accord with self-interest. A clear example of this approach is found in the common Buddhist suggestion that four distortions, errors, inversions, or illusions (viparyāsas) shape mundane experience: 1. Perceiving changeable things as constant; 2. Perceiving things that perpetuate discomfort as pleasant; 3. Perceiving unattractive things as pure or worthy of pursuit; and, 4. Perceiving a self where there isn’t one (see Bodhi 2012: 437–8; Lang 2003). As Candrakīrti argues, the way that something comes into view depends on a way of life; and assumptions about what the world is really like can be revealed as illusory or erroneous, by showing that things are experienced differently from different normative standpoints. For example, some people are held to be attractive. Some, furthermore, treat attractiveness as a pleasurable and natural feature of the world; by contrast, Candrakīrti claims that yogins—as the result of their meditative practices—will see an attractive person as impure, recognize the impermanence of beauty, and understand that desiring attractiveness will foster pain rather than pleasure (Lang 2003: 8). More generally, the concern with standpoints led Buddhist philosophers to argue that perceiving things as befitting for a certain form of life requires ignoring different ways for the world to come into view. Simplifying, the claim was that different beings project different contents onto the world, rather than discovering things within

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a pre-existing world; and untutored experience mistakenly but reflexively identifies persisting things with identifiable properties that afford a unique range of experiential and practical possibilities. This form of illusionism thus focused on treating cognitive illusions as intrinsically social projections, which are anchored to specific standpoints, and specific ways of life. A third template for Buddhist illusionism focuses on a kind of perceptual error that was familiar to many philosophers working in India: A feature is projected where it is absent. This error invites an appeal to a contrastive ontology, where the projected content—such as a snake—does not exist in the way as the base onto which it is projected—such as a rope. Our final group of scholastic Buddhist illusionists held that a similar illusion pervades experience: We mistakenly perceive the world as organized around mereological wholes, projecting a stable categorical structure onto underlying dynamic volumes that are shaped and shaded in specific ways; and understanding this error requires taking up a wide-ranging ontological program to determine which sorts of items serve as the bases for projected illusions (Ronkin 2005). This approach invited detailed causal descriptions of the mechanisms by which errors are produced, beginning with sensory inputs and ending with experiences or interpretations of projected contents. And over time, a wide range of diverging philosophical positions emerged, with each providing distinct characterizations of the ontological contrast between illusory contents and the causally relevant bases that sustain them. 4.1 The Foundation of Yogācāra Illusionism Yogācāra illusionism incorporates lessons from each of these templates, suggesting that: We project a categorical structure onto the world, which is organized by tendencies toward conceptual construction; that all psychological processes depend upon standpoints; and, that understanding how cognitive and affective errors hijack perception reveals a plausible account of the causes and contents of manifest experience, as well as a set of strategies for reshaping experience in new and more salutary ways. But perhaps more critically, the Yogācāra philosophers we discuss to resist the tendency to treat subjective phenomena and objectively identifiable structures as possessing any kind of fundamental existence; and they argue that any time we carve up experience or causal flows, we must project a categorical structure in ways that allow us to make sense of things. So while they acknowledge that it seems like we can identify some phenomena as intrinsically subjective, they apply the lessons of categorical projection here as well. This is important, because they contend that once we provide an account of how cognitive awareness originates, dependent upon complex networks of causes and conditions, we will explain why subjects

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and objects have the status that they do from a specific standpoint; and this makes it possible to build “a bridge between impersonal modes of causal explanation that encompass nonconscious causal influences (biological, cognitive or social), and personal modes of interpretation that elaborate the meaning and purpose of any given experience” (Waldron 2014: 296). Consequently, it becomes possible to resist any attempt to distinguish a class of phenomenal qualities that exist in a way that is fundamentally different from the phenomena we take to be objectively explicable. We believe this approach has implications for the questions about consciousness we discussed in Section 3, and we return to these implications below; but for now, we turn to an examination of the distinctive characteristics of Yogācāra illusionism. In exploring this approach, it is easiest to begin with the claim that error sustains cognitive and affective illusions. In his Compendium of the Mahāyāna (Brunnhölzl 2018), Asaṅga considers the rope mistaken for a snake, noting that recognizing the snake to be a mistaken projection induces a correct perception of the rope. But he also claims that the perception of the rope is mistaken in a subtler way: Only colors, smells, tastes, and touches are manifest in experience; and “based on the mental state of [perceiving] color and so on, the mental state of [perceiving] a rope is to be discarded too” (Brunnhölzl 2018: 204). Finally, he argues that correctly conceptualizing the relationships between projected contents and the apparent foundation upon which they rest pushes us beyond the error-theoretic model, by using diverging standpoints to show that there is no ontologically privileged perspective from which to establish claims about what the world is really like. Experiential contents are encountered differently from different perspectives, and different vocabularies can be used to advance reductive analyses, fictionalist ontologies, or appeals to ultimately real entities. But Yogācāra philosophers argued that every description of ultimate reality illicitly privileges a specific perspective, and assumes that its words and concepts depict the world as it really is (Kachru 2021: 174; compare Daston 2019). And instead of appealing to “real” bases which produce illusory contents, they explored the significance of the fact that manifest experience seems to involve subjects who use words and concepts to refer to independently existing objects; they argued that the tendency to bifurcate experience into a pre-existing subject and pre-existing objects was the source of a pervasive illusion, which typically shapes subjective experience; and they proposed that this illusion undergirds misguided metaphysical theorizing about constructed experience, which aims to explain how the things “out there” are able to get “in here” (compare Corwin and Erickson-Davis 2020). We tend to overlook the distinctiveness of experience, assuming that we can affirm or deny its existence in the way that one might affirm or deny

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the existence of cats, genes, caloric, or dharmas. But as Sthiramati intimates (Friedmann 1937: 12), the process of experience cannot simply be defined or described. Partly because, to use a possibly later idiom, we can approach it firstpersonally, keeping in view questions about “how it appears,” and we can also approach it third-personally, appealing to causal relations and speaking of “what appears” (see the Trisvabhāvanirdeśa in Anacker 2005: 291). One may deny how something appears to be, without thereby denying that there is a story to be told about the process of appearing; so in clarifying the status of experiential contents, we must coordinate causal descriptions, while keeping track of how things seem from a first-person perspective—as both contemporary qualia realists and illusionists also note (see Rosenthal 2018). Yogācāra philosophers held that we can do this by adopting a stance-theoretic approach to experience, which resists the apparent necessity of assuming that an independent realm of causally efficacious phenomena sustains cognitive and affective illusions; and as we reconstruct this analysis, it involves recognizing that different stances can be adopted to cope with different kinds of experiential phenomena. We find this recognition of stances in the Yogācāra account of the three natures or modalities involved in experience (as detailed below), which involve: 1. The constructed contents of experience—or, how experience appears to us—known as its constructed nature. 2. The causal structures involved in experience, and the patterns of dependency exhibited by experiential events with respect to prior causes and actions, the details of which may exceed what is manifest in experience—known as dependent nature. 3. Experience without any conceptually constructed overlay; this involves speaking of the perfected nature of experience. Jointly, these modalities provide a framework for describing 1) how experience seems to essentially be, 2) how its seemingly essential structures are causally constructed, and 3) what experience can be when freed of such construction. It would be a mistake, however, to treat these natures as only, or even paradigmatically, descriptions of putatively ontological properties of experience; instead, within the context of Yogācāra philosophy, they function as meta-conceptual indications of the stances we should adopt, and hermeneutical strategies that we should employ, in making sense of various forms of experience. Importantly, the Yogācāra notion of stances thus goes beyond mere intellectual attitudes to be adopted by re-describing experience in different ways; as we argue below, their use of stances included complexes of perceptual, affective, and embodied strategies that collectively disclose specific phenomena and specific possibilities for engaging with the world (compare Kukla 2018).

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4.2 Mundane Experience as Illusory Mundane experience presents a world of persisting objects with essential qualities or determinate characteristics. We typically perceive tigers as possessing essential characteristics, which distinguish them from lions and leopards; and we assume that a stripeless albino tiger could be identified simply by examining their genetic makeup, and that they cannot be transformed into a leopard by painting spots on them (Gelman 2003). We also identify coffee mugs and coffee shops functionally, assuming that they retain their ontological status so long as they serve their intended purposes. We often identify works of art by reference to their history and origin (Gelman 2013). And we frequently perceive people as belonging essentially to specific groups (Rhodes and Mandalaywala 2017). The prevalence of essentialist thinking makes it easy to assume that the world is categorically structured. But Yogācāra philosophers held that the objects and properties that we typically perceive are imaginary projections, which come into view because we reflexively adopt a stance that prepares us to engage with kinds of things that are designated by generic terms; and they argued that such phenomena possess only the nature projected by cognitive construction (parikalpita-svabhāva). According to Yogācāra philosophers, inferences about the members of such categories always go beyond what is perceived, placing things within matrices of conceptual and empirical possibilities. Such inferences can organize practical activity in productive ways; and they will tend to persist wherever they prove conventionally useful for classifying things that are relevant to ongoing social practices and constructed material realities. But they can also sustain mistaken inferences, which lead us to adopt problematic assumptions about what is necessary and what is possible (for further discussion, see Huebner 2019). We expect the organisms that we identify as lions, tigers, and bears to be dangerous; and our assumptions about the minds of carnivores obscure numerous salient facts about their social and cognitive capacities (Bradshaw 2017). Likewise, we assume a position atop an imagined biological hierarchy; and where we forget that we are just food to a crocodile, it becomes easier to place ourselves in life-threatening situations (Plumwood 2012). And most importantly, failure to acknowledge the constructed nature of social categories plays a critical role in perpetuating oppressive and exclusionary practices. For example, practices of ethnic, racial, and gendered categorization are commonly employed to assert dominance over others; and assuming that our concepts track essential features of people in these contexts can lead us to act in ways that sustain the construction of these illusory categories. According to Yogācāra philosophers, the kinds of things that our words and concepts refer to are like magical illusions—they lack the kind of existence they appear to have. And we can develop a deeper understanding of why we encounter the world in this

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way, by cultivating an awareness of the habituated forms of ignorance (avidyā) that sustain our ability to think and act in these ways (Brennan 2019; McRae 2019; compare Fields and Fields 2014). 4.3 Cultivating Alternative Stances The cultivation of more skillful forms of awareness is the most distinctive feature of Yogācāra illusionism. They contend that we can pursue a sequence of progressive refinements to the affective, cognitive, and attentional strategies that allow us to engage with the phenomena that experience presents. And they propose practices of mental cultivation that aim to facilitate internalizing the awareness that mundane phenomena are manifestations of specific causal processes, which produce specific kinds of subjects as well as the worlds they encounter. Such practices begin by recognizing that subjects (graspers; grāhaka) and objects (things that can be grasped; grāhya) seem to be given in experience. They guide practitioners through a process of letting go of the assumption that their words and concepts must refer to ultimately real things, qualities, and features; and they facilitate the internalization of the awareness that all phenomena lack the apparently intrinsic characteristics that could make them the kinds of things they appear to be (Brunnhölzl 2018: 186). Yogācāra philosophers thus argue that we can experience the apparent duality between grasper and grasped as bearing innumerable marks of constructive imagination. We take aspects of experience to function as subjects and objects; we project a categorical structure onto the aspects of experience we have partitioned in this way; and we assume that the world must be intrinsically structured in ways that afford this duality. Initially, two forms of attention are cultivated to transform experience: Attention to the causes that bring about something’s apparent nature (Gold 2015: 149), and attention to the role of cognitive and linguistic assumptions in projecting a structure onto manifest objects (Brunnhölzl 2018: 186). Sculpting attention in these ways was thought to reveal that phenomena lack the nature projected by cognitive construction (Brunnhölzl 2018: 190). Specifically, it was claimed that the dependent nature (paratantra-svabhāva) of phenomena could be brought into view, in the sense that the entire experiential field could be encountered as arising dependent upon past causes and prior actions. From this perspective, it would be possible to formulate causal-historical narratives, which could explain why specific entities have the experiences they do. Such narratives employ teleological assumptions, to identify the causal pathways that generate capacities to have specific experiences. And by acknowledging the role of these assumptions, the practitioner can further decenter the assumption that the way things are is the way they must be, for this would reveal another way that we project structure beyond what is encountered (Kachru 2021).

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Through ongoing practices of mental cultivation beyond this point, Yogācāra philosophers contend that we can experience every entity and process as essenceless, and existing only as manifested in experience. Adopting this stance requires internalizing the awareness that concepts always lack referents, leaving only a “non-conceptual flow of wisdom” (Brunnhölzl 2018: 186). And this yields a pattern of experience with a perfected nature (pariniṣpanna-svabhāva), which is devoid of conceptual overlays, including those that have allowed people who have “acquired mastery” to appeal to more fundamental entities while explaining how the constructed nature is produced. While experiences structured by phenomena with constructed or dependent natures are mediated by the conceptual strategies we adopt in making mundane phenomena intelligible, experiences structured by flows of non-conceptual wisdom reveal that all phenomena lack intrinsic characteristics. And once apparent subjects and objects are experienced as lacking any essential characteristics, a stance structured by nonconceptual wisdom can be adopted, which prepares practitioners to encounter a world where nothing exists fundamentally or independently, and where entangled phenomena are perceived as unfolding without conceptual designations, and without the imposition of a subject who grasps things or a world that must be grasped. Yogācāra philosophers were optimistic that we can gain progressive mastery over the affective, cognitive, and attentional skills that facilitate adopting each of these stances, in the service of enacting individual and collective liberation. But they would not claim that these stances are hierarchically organized, with the third stance being “better” than the second or the first. Indeed, they seem to have held that each stance can be adopted skillfully to achieve specific goals. In the foundational Yogācāra text, Unraveling the Intent (Buddhavacana Translation Group 2021), the apparent natures of phenomena are thus revealed to be three forms of naturelessness. We read this reframing as a pragmatic measure, which guards against taking heuristic strategies, including those involved in the cultivation of these stances, to reveal a world that possesses an intrinsic nature. Shifting the discussion to three forms of naturelessness might seem like a futile dialectical exercise. But this is not a claim about what the world is “really” like. It is an attempt to highlight the therapeutic purpose of mental cultivation, and to suggest that different remedies are useful for addressing different tendencies to assume that we have encountered the world as it really is (see Unraveling the Intent Ch.7; compare Waldron, forthcoming). Different errors are made by people with different skills for adopting these stances; and different illusions structure the world as disclosed from within each stance. But with work, Yogācāra philosophers contend that it is possible to experience the constructed nature of phenomena as completely illusory, like an imaginary flower in the sky. With more work, it is possible to experience the dependent

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nature of phenomena as appearing because experience is interpreted as arising from causal processes that produce specific worlds and specific beings. And when experience seems to reveal the impersonal and nonconceptual nature of the processes that sustain the unfolding of events, it is possible to learn that this perfected nature is like space, empty of form and pervading the entire experiential field. 4.4 Can Attention Shaping Change Experience? Yogācāra philosophers held that philosophical and contemplative practices could be used to cultivate “mastery” over how experience (and its interpretation) unfolds, and that we can experience manifest subjects and objects as originating in ways that depend upon complex networks of causes and conditions. But this required displacing the assumption that we represent an independently existing external reality, attending to the recognition that experience is a manifestation of complex interactions within a perceiver-environment system, and dispelling the false duality of subjects and objects. But is it really possible to cultivate the awareness that manifest objects and their properties are illusory, by directing attention toward the networks of causal and historical forces that collectively bring subjects and their worlds into existence? The key hypothesis is that contemplative practices can sculpt attention: We can cultivate an analytic recognition of the salience of causal histories, internalize an understanding of the possibilities afforded by such causal histories, and transform experience to reveal different possibilities for action, and different ways of perceiving the illusory structure of dependently originated phenomena. There are many ways for such practices to unfold (Hopkins 1996: 53–5; Lodrö 1998: 194–5). For example, a meditator might 1. attend to the characteristics of apparently external phenomena (e.g., sights, smells, tastes, touches, sounds, and thoughts), working to recognize that they arise and fall away of their own accord; 2. contemplate such phenomena as effects of dynamic patterns of interaction between organisms and their environments, working to internalize an awareness that these seemingly external phenomena lack any kind of intrinsic nature; 3. contemplate the complex processes that have unfolded over the longue durée, producing organisms that are able to interact with the possibilities afforded by these phenomena; 4. attend to the experience of contemplating phenomena in this way, asking: “Does it exist? Does it not exist? Is it extinguished [after having first arisen]?” (Greene 2020: 17–18, based on Yamabe 2014);

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5. recognize that there is no subject to be found within experience, cultivate a meta-cognitive awareness of mental activity, recognizing that it too is empty of intrinsic existence; and, 6. contemplate the emptiness of mind, reaching a point where “there is no subject or object of contemplation,” yielding a non-conceptual experience of all phenomena, without any linguistic overlay, where “the locus of [deluded] mental activity is extinguished.” (Greene 2020: 18) These attention-shaping practices attempt to change how phenomena are encountered, by eliminating noise, enhancing the ways that specific features show up, creating novel patterns by transforming our engagements with phenomena, and integrating salient sources of information that we have habituated ourselves toward. In considering the plausibility that attention sculpting can transform experience, it might help to consider Val Plumwood’s (2012) description of a radical transformation of experience, triggered by a crocodile attack in Arnhem Land (Northern Australia). As she tells the story, being forced to confront the possibility that she was about to die in the mouth of a crocodile revealed a pervasive illusion that had structured her understanding of the kind of “self” she was, and the kind of “world” she inhabited. She recognized that she was not simply a member of a dominant and intelligent species, who could go where she wanted, and do as she pleased; she recognized that she was part of the food chain—specifically, “a small, edible animal whose death was of no more significance than that of a mouse” (Plumwood 2012: 13–14); and it became clear that the world “would make no exceptions for [her], no matter how smart [she] was, because like all living things, [she] was made of meat, was nutritious food for another being” (Plumwood 2012: 14). Of course, Plumwood already knew—in some sense—that crocodiles can attack and kill people. But the intellectual attitudes supported by this knowledge couldn’t disrupt her default sense of being an isolatable self, in touch with “real” features of the world. By contrast, in the mouth of a crocodile, and in the wake of this trauma, it was impossible to avoid the recognition that she was food; and she was compelled to recontextualize experience in ways that revealed the absolute contingency of the human perspective, and the possibilities this perspective appears to disclose. Yogācāra philosophers held that human experience depends upon patterns of cultural, environmental, and historical conditioning, which collectively sustain the projection of content onto networks of processes that produce people and the world they encounter. This claim might seem somewhat circular; but the crucial thing to notice is that Yogācāra philosophers were articulating “a mode of analysis in which consciousness only occurs through the interaction between an organism and its environment” (Waldron 2014: 285). When they asked

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“under what conditions does a specific experience arise?” they highlighted the ways in which people and their sociocultural worlds are not separate from one another … In an ongoing cycle of mutual constitution, people are socioculturally shaped shapers of their environments; they make each other up and are most productively analyzed together (Markus and Kitayama 2010: 421) No less importantly, they argued that this cycle of co-constitution is flexible, and that it is possible to change how this cycle unfolds. However, they realized that such transformations would be difficult to bring about, and that adopting a stance that discloses the illusory nature of mundane experience could easily evoke feelings of dissonance. If we assume that mundane experience reveals how things ultimately are, such feelings can only be resolved by treating alternative forms of experience as illusory or dreamlike (Plumwood 2012: 12). But if feelings of dissonance are cultivated and navigated in ways that transform experience, they can begin to disclose novel possibilities, and allow us to let go of the assumption that there is a perspective that reveals the intrinsic nature of phenomena. Plumwood (2012: 13) experienced an irreconcilable conflict between the mundane experience of being a “person” encountering an independent world, and the recognition that human bodies are also food and momentary events within a Heraclitean universe where everything flows; and she was compelled to face the possibility that “both [she] and the culture that shaped [her] consciousness were wrong, profoundly wrong—about many things, but especially about human embodiment, animality and the meaning of human life” (Plumwood 2012: 12). But can similar experiences be cultivated without the “help” of a saltwater crocodile? Consider a process that could transform coffee drinking through contemplative practices. A novice might assume that an intrinsic phenomenal quality makes coffee taste as it does. But attending to the taste, mouthfeel, and visual character of a cup of coffee can reveal that this experience exhibits pronounced complexity. It might seem obvious that sculpting attention would reveal the fundamental qualia that are integrated to produce specific taste experiences. But Yogācāra philosophers would argue that the color, smell, taste, and mouthfeel of coffee only appear as they do from the perspective of a specific attentionally sculpted stance, and they would claim that attending to the dynamic interactions between coffee drinkers and the fluids they ingest could disclose strategies for revaluing experiences of coffee. We might start, for example, by noticing that the sculpting of attention by practice or the dynamics of bodily states can transform the affective character of drinking coffee. Wellpoured coffee becomes more pleasant, the second cup of coffee from the same

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batch can taste very different, and things that used to taste acceptable become nearly undrinkable. Focusing on these differences, it becomes possible to recognize that the complexity of the experience and its affective character are reflections of sculpted attention, which transform the coffee drinker as well as the aspects of the coffee that are brought into view. And by attending to this fact, it becomes possible to experience coffee drinkers, and their experiences, as empty of intrinsic existence. This is where things get interesting: For Yogācāra philosophers, we can shift our attention toward the mind that contemplates the emptiness of these phenomena, and to the fact that this way of directing attention to the causes of transformed experience is also the result of attentional training—and this means that this mind is also empty of any intrinsic existence. And when it becomes habitual to analyze things like this, even without actively directing attention toward the mind, a form of quiescence with regard to the nature of experience will emerge on its own (compare Greene 2020). Against this backdrop, let us return to the metaphor of a magician. According to an early Buddhist text preserved in the Saṃyukta-āgama, the claim that consciousness is empty of intrinsic existence can be elucidated by appeal to the analogy to a master magician who creates an impressive illusion of a troop of elephants, horses, chariots, or infantry (Anālayo 2015: 79). This same analogy is deployed in Unraveling the Intent, where the mundane materials (e.g., grass, leaves, twigs, pebbles, and stones) used by the magician to generate the illusion are treated as the causal structure that is missed by those who are taken in by the illusion (see Nagao 1983: 11–12). Those who learn to attend correctly are said to perceive the grass, leaves, twigs, pebbles, and stones and thus to see through the illusion. And in learning to see through the illusion to the magician’s materials, as Prajñākaramati—in a later discussion of the metaphor of a magical illusion—puts it, one effectively learns to see as a magician does (Vaidya 1960: 180). Over the years, skilled magicians have developed numerous tools for evoking distractions, and manipulating attention, to sow the seeds of ignorance about how magic shows are carried out. As the contemporary theatrical pickpocket, Apollo Robbins notes, “Attention is like water. It flows. It’s liquid. You create channels to divert it, and you hope that it flows the right way” (quoted in Green 2013). But for some Yogācāra philosophers, the most important lesson of the magic show seems to have been that there is no magician separate from consciousness itself: The magic spell that sculpts attention is the flow of habituation, which Yogācāra philosophers call root awareness, or storehouse consciousness; and the materials that are used to hoodwink us are nothing but the reality or nature of conscious experience (see verse 30 of Trisvabhāvanirdeśa, in Anacker 2005: 294). We befuddle ourselves, and in this theoretical context, this means that however we attempt to classify things, consciousness will invariably lack the specific nature that experience presents it as having.

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5 CONCLUSIONS Like contemporary illusionists, Yogācāra philosophers acknowledged the apparent structure of experience. But they did not claim that experience is the output of representational mechanisms, which present experience as rich and full of feeling as contemporary illusionists do (Dennett 2016; Frankish 2016; Ross 2016). Instead, they articulated strategies for cultivating different forms of awareness which could reveal the contingent (and perspectivally dependent) character of experiential content and structure and so dislodge the apparent duality between grasper and grasped. On this basis, they proposed that every experience involves just the presentation of content (vijñaptimātra), and that every apparent content is illusory. That said, their arguments might seem to presuppose an emphasis on (kinds of) awareness that contemporary illusionists reject. As a result, it might seem strange for them to reject realism about subjective experience as well as claim that illusions pervasively structure experience. The typology of Buddhist illusionisms that we have offered—based upon different concepts and analogies in Sanskrit—tracks different ways of interpreting the claim that experience is “illusory” and different interpretations of the purported analogy between consciousness and a magic show. And we contend that Yogācāra philosophers attempted to articulate a package of interrelated views, which is supported by their account of attentional sculpting, and their characterization of the causal processes that collectively produce subjects and their worlds—processes which, we have argued, can be manipulated and transformed by cultivating different stances. Specifically, the Yogācāra philosophers argued that we inhabit a constructed world, which is continually built and rebuilt, in ways that depend upon complex networks of bodily and cognitive processes; they claimed that “consciousness only occurs through the interaction between an organism and its environment” (Waldron 2014: 285); and in light of the dependence of experience upon dynamic causal processes that produce subjects-and-their-worlds, they concluded that we cannot know our own minds—or more radically, that we cannot know what it would mean to make true claims about the nature of mental events. The two-stage approach developed by Jay Garfield (this volume) provides one way of understanding this package of views. He uses Madhyamaka analyses to show that the objects we experience are empty of intrinsic existence, as they possess an interdependent and conventional reality; and he deploys Yogācāra analyses to disrupt the apparent duality between subjects and objects, and to undercut the assumption that subjective awareness has an intrinsic existence. And critically, his arguments highlight epistemological considerations, which became central to Indian and Tibetan Buddhist debates following the regimentation of inferential practices by two later Yogācāra philosophers,

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Dignāga and Dharmakīrti. The clarity of this approach reveals the point where the proposal that illusions go “all the way down” is likely to run into difficulties: in an infinitely descending chain of illusions, or an interdependent web of illusions, there is nothing to ground the possibility of illusions (Vaidya this volume). And we contend that this is precisely where strategies articulated by earlier Yogācāra philosophers can provide guidance for understanding the claim that the apparent content of experience is always illusory. For the early Yogācāra philosophers, experience—which always involves the construction of subjects-and-their-worlds—is claimed to be illusory because it is an effect, which obscures its causal history because of the way that it arises dependent upon a plastic, context-dependent causal process of world construction. They did not focus exclusively on arguments about groundlessness; though they would have acknowledged that such arguments can help us to understand that there are no ontological grounds or natures to be found. Instead, they focused on the claim that experience is always an effect of a complex process of world construction which is organized by attentionsculpted causal pathways; they argued, additionally, that we can cultivate an understanding of how experience can be changed: This process helps to reveal where the magic lies! Put much too simply, contemplative practices can be used to internalize the awareness that neither physical nor experiential phenomena are fundamental; and from within this cultivated perspective, it becomes clear that any characterizations of phenomena—as physical or as experiential—will unfold from within a specific stance which has been adopted to make sense of specific aspects of the world. From this perspective, it becomes clear that there will still be work to do even if we discover a plausible story about the mechanisms or processes that produce experience. Put somewhat differently, adopting a stance that reveals such causes facilitates the contextualization of experience, but it does not exhaust the available kinds of experiences for creatures like us. By contrast, since conscious experience cannot be understood as fundamental, and since we cannot directly perceive the qualitative nature of experience, we cannot treat phenomenal qualities as ultimate explanatory targets. For Yogācāra philosophers, neither objects nor subjects exist in the way that they initially seem to exist; instead, an impersonal flow of causal processes brings subjects and their worlds into existence. Contemporary panpsychists might propose that this perspective helps to clarify the necessity of appealing to fundamental constituents of the world with qualitative features (Goff 2017; Strawson 2017). But this suggestion latches onto one side of the grasper-grasped duality, treating an effect of world construction as fundamental when it is not. Indeed, from a Yogācāra perspective, there is nothing that experience is like intrinsically; we cannot be aware of any qualitative state as it is in and of itself; and we must confront the fact that we don’t know our own minds, in the way that

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is required to seek an explanation of what experience ultimately is (compare Garfield, this volume). Perhaps more importantly, Yogācāra philosophers did not assume that successful description should always be guided by considerations of prediction and explanation. They focused on the transformative potential of restructuring experience, through internalizing attentional habits by way of contemplative practices; and in doing so, they realized that no aspect of manifest experience is exempt from analysis, and that nothing should be understood as explanatorily primitive or invariant. From this perspective, successful analysis does not consist in providing a story about computational mechanisms—it requires examining subjective experience, finding ways of manipulating it, and recognizing that neither experiences nor the mechanisms that produce them are fixed and inflexible. So while experiences are natural phenomena, which are embedded in various causal trajectories, they are also susceptible to continual re-description, and continual transformation. Yogācāra illusionism can thus be summarized as follows: it is a mistake to assume that things must be what they seem to be; we can always play with experience, transform it, and come to understand that the causal processes that undergird our experiences of ourselves and our experiences of the world are amenable to continual transformation and re-description.

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CHAPTER TEN

Cognitive Illusion and Immediate Experience: Perspectives from Buddhist Philosophy JAY L. GARFIELD

1 INTRODUCTION: THE BUDDHIST PERSPECTIVE ON THE ROLE OF ILLUSION IN OUR LIVES Buddhist thought and practice are aimed at solving the problem of ubiquitous suffering identified in the first of the four noble truths. One of Buddhism’s central insights, and the motivator of much Buddhist philosophy and practice, is contained in the second of these truths: The idea that the root cause of this suffering is confusion about the fundamental nature of reality, a confusion that leads to pathological attraction and aversion, the proximal causes of pervasive suffering (dukkha). That confusion in turn is analyzed in terms of

Thanks to Nalini Bhushan for helpful comments on an earlier draft, to the editors of this volume for excellent critical advice, and to Anand Vaidya for very useful and enjoyable debates about the issues I address here. I recommend reading this essay and his contribution to this volume together to get a sense of how difficult and controversial these ideas are.

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illusion. And illusion is glossed in that tradition—as in all Indian philosophical traditions—as a phenomenon whose mode of appearance is discordant with its mode of existence, as something that exists in one way, but appears to exist in another. Only by overcoming this illusion, Buddhists argue, can suffering be extinguished.1 That primal confusion that lies at the root of our existence is pervasive and complex. It involves taking that which is impermanent to be permanent, that which is a source of suffering to be a source of happiness, that which is only conventionally real to be ultimately real, that which is interdependent to be independent. And the important point for present purposes is that the thesis that our experience is permeated with illusion applies to our experience of our own minds as well. In the case of our own minds, pervasive confusion manifests first as the conviction that we are immediately and indubitably aware of the contents of our own minds, and second as the superimposition of subjectobject duality on primordial non-dual experience. Each of these deserves some preliminary comment. There is an overwhelming temptation—often ramified in philosophical theories of mind and consciousness, even today—to believe that to have a perceptual experience is to know the contents of that experience, that to be in a cognitive state is to know that state, and that these inner states are present to our introspective powers just as they are. Another way to put this, as did Sellars (2000) is that impressions and thoughts appear to be simply given to us as the events that they are, as instances of the types they instantiate. This is one of the deeper forms of the Myth of the Given, and one of the more difficult to extirpate. We forget too easily that our knowledge of these states is mediated by our language and conceptual apparatus. When we attribute beliefs, knowledge, or other intentional states to ourselves or others, we are engaged in an act of interpretation, using language to model our inner life. When we attribute sensory experiences to ourselves, we assign ourselves inner states constructed on the model of the external properties we take to be the typical causes of those states. This is not the place to argue for this position.2 I take it for granted in what follows. For present purposes, the important point is that even though some model such as this one for selfknowledge is overwhelmingly likely to be correct, it does not seem to us that this is what we are doing when we come to know or to report our own inner states. It appears to us that they are simply given to us as the states that they are. And this is an example of cognitive illusion. A second, subtler, cognitive illusion, one rarely thematized in Western philosophy (except by phenomenologists in the tradition of Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger and their contemporary followers in the so-called embodied, embedded, enactive approach to the philosophy of mind) is subject-object duality.3 There is another aspect to the illusion of duality: Just as it is hard to

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shake the feeling that we have immediate access to our inner states, it is hard to shake the feeling that we are unified, independent subjects who register the presence of objects around us, objects which exist pretty much as we find them, and that are delivered to us through our senses. A consequent aspect of this illusion is that our mode of self-knowledge is entirely distinct from our way of knowing objects: That we know ourselves reflexively, but everything else is known as object.4 Once again, a bit of reflection suggests that this is a deeply confused understanding of the structure of the world, of our place in it, and of the nature of our experience. We know that we are biological organisms embedded in a world; we know that our perception consists not in the transduction of properties that exist outside of our heads into an inner space, but rather in the construction of a cognitive model as a consequence of sensory stimulation, and that everything we experience as an object is in fact a perceptual-cognitive construction. So, we know that the illusion that we stand against the world taking it all in as transcendent subjects is just that—an illusion. But it is hard to shake. These two overarching cognitive illusions no doubt give rise to a cascade of more specific cognitive illusions. But it is this broad framework that concerns me here, and that concerns Buddhist philosophers—including Candrakīrti, Śāntarakṣita, Kamalaśīla, Tsongkhapa, Gorampa, Longchenpa, Patrul Rinpoche, Dōgen, and a host of others—who have thought about the structure of experience and the way that pervasive illusion manifests in the domain of self-knowledge. To overcome illusion one must first identify the illusion itself. It is of the very nature of illusion that, when under its thrall, we are not aware that we are its victims. When we see a mirage as water—if we are thirsty—we head in that direction. In order to avoid a pointless trek through the desert, we must first come to know that we are seeing a mirage, not an oasis. Only when we become aware of the illusion, can we determine just why it arises, and work to ensure that we do not succumb once again. In the case of the mirage, we discover that it is merely a refraction pattern produced by the temperature differences in the air over the desert sand. And when we understand its causal basis, we can then work to overcome the illusion and to see the world aright. We can put on polarized sunglasses, or we can learn to recognize the subtle differences between the light refracted in a mirage and that reflected from the surface of real water.5 Buddhists are not alone in identifying this illusion. It’s not just the philosophers in orthodox Indian traditions, such as Advaita Vedānta, who problematize this way of understanding experience; philosophers in the West, such as Hume (1711–76), Heidegger (1889–1976), and Sellars (1912–89) also criticize this view. Nor are the Buddhists’ Indian opponents—such as those in the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika tradition—the only ones who defend the accuracy of this

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experience of subjectivity. Many in the West have made philosophical careers out of articulating this view, prominently including Berkeley and Descartes, but also many contemporary philosophers among the “new phenomenologists,” embrace an account of the immediacy of our awareness of our own subjectivity despite their rhetoric of embedding, enactivism, and embodiment.6 In this essay, I will explore one of the most profound illusions diagnosed in the Buddhist tradition, and one of the most difficult to overcome: The illusion that our access to our own experience is immediate and largely veridical, that we have direct first-person access to our own minds; and that the duality between subject and object that structures our understanding of our experience is primordial. This is the illusion that we are subjects standing over and against a world. That is the conviction that while we may know the external world only through the mediation of our sensory and cognitive faculties, we know the world only in virtue of our immediate access to the output of those faculties. I will first explore the motivations for the doctrine of immediacy. I will then provide a brief account of Buddhist views about experience and the pervasiveness of illusion in experience. I will then turn to the real task of this paper. We will first consider Madhyamaka arguments for the mediated nature of even first-person knowledge. We then turn to Yogācāra critiques of dualistic understandings of experience and accounts of nonduality. This will set the stage for a consideration of Śāntarakṣita’s synthesis of Madhyamaka and Yogācāra, with a focus on how this synthesis demonstrates the connection between Madhyamaka and Yogācāra understandings of cognitive illusion. We will finish our survey of Buddhist responses to cognitive illusion with a visit to the Zen tradition, which offers a way to understand the world free of the illusions of subjectivity while at the same time recognizing their pervasiveness and inevitability. My aim is to show that the Buddhist tradition gets this issue roughly right, and that we can learn a great deal about subjectivity through careful attention to the multiple ways in which Buddhist philosophers have considered this issue. This is hence not simply an exercise in the history of philosophy; it is an attempt to shed light on contemporary debates on consciousness by drawing on Buddhist resources.7

2 WHERE WE START: THE ALLURE OF IMMEDIACY It is easy to see both why people spontaneously believe that they have immediate and veridical access to their own perceptual and cognitive states, and why philosophers have ramified this intuition into sophisticated theories that articulate and explain this supposed immediacy. Apperception, as Buddhists recognize when they enumerate six, rather than five sense faculties, including

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the introspective, or apperceptive sense faculty (manas-vijñāna), is perceptual in structure, presenting us with an apparent object, apparently distinct from our subjective apprehension thereof. Perception irresistibly feels like it presents the world to us as it is, independent of the peculiarities of our perceptual system and the conceptual resources that filter perception. In the same way, apperception feels like it presents our own cognitive, affective, and perceptual states to us just as they are, independent of the structure of our apperceptive system and of the conceptual categories in terms of which we understand our own inner states. In the case of perception, we experience the apple as though its redness, texture, and sweetness are just there, in the apple. They only await our veridical perceptual systems to deliver those properties to our mind, where they are reproduced just as they exist in the external world. The mediation of that experience by our eyes, nervous systems, and brain is invisible to us. This invisibility leads us to take that awareness to be entirely immediate. And even if we remind ourselves of this complex mediation of our perceptual encounter with external objects, we find ourselves thrown back on the sense that at least the sensory experiences themselves, the sensation of red, of sweetness, of smoothness, are immediately available to us, even if the apple itself is known only through their mediation. Something, we presume, is simply given in experience; even mediation presupposes something immediate to perform that mediation. This, I believe, is an almost irresistible attitude toward sensory experience. We might say that we have evolved to take our own experience to be given to us in this way. That does not, of course, mean that it is the correct way to understand our experience, only that it is natural for us to do so. Nature does not track truth, but rather reproductive success. In the case of apperception, the sense of immediacy is, if anything, even greater. For even if we can remind ourselves of the complex mediation of our perceptual experience, and even if we can shake the view that our perceptual experience is given to us in immediate awareness, it is hard to shake the idea that we know our own cognitive states—our thoughts, intentions, beliefs, imaginings, emotions—immediately. It just seems to us that we know what we believe just by virtue of believing it; that we know how we feel just by feeling that way. The mediation of introspective awareness by an introspective faculty is cognitively invisible to us, as is the conceptual structure in terms of which we categorize and know our experience of our own inner lives. Mediation therefore seems inconceivable: Our inner states present themselves to our awareness as though they are just given to us. But even though this is a perfectly natural attitude toward our awareness of our inner lives, once again, nature is no guarantee of truth. And what we see in each of these cases is the seductive power of the Myth of the Given, the myth that there is a dimension to our experience independent of our epistemic

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instruments, independent of our conceptual framework.8 We are seduced by the idea that, even if in the end we know the world only through perceptual and conceptual mediation, it can’t be mediation all the way down: There must be a basic level of experience to which we have immediate access, that we know veridically. But while this myth is powerful, both psychologically and philosophically, it is, as Sellars showed, a myth. And only by coming to understand that myth can we exorcise the philosophical demons it allows to possess us. As we will see in what follows, Buddhist philosophy of mind and epistemology offers a powerful tool for undermining the Myth of the Given.

3 MADHYAMAKA: MEDIATION AND FIRST-PERSON KNOWLEDGE The central insight in Nāgārjuna’s (c. second century CE) Madhyamaka, as adumbrated by his commentator and follower Candrakīrti (c. 600–50 CE), is that all phenomena are dependently originated and empty of any intrinsic nature; that nothing exists ultimately, and that the only mode of existence is conventional existence. This general picture is well-enough known now that it does not need detailed elaboration here.9 Candrakīrti, in Clear Words (Prasannapadā), distinguishes three dimensions of dependent origination: causal dependence, mereological dependence, and dependence on conceptual imputation. That is, from the standpoint of Madhyamaka, every phenomenon depends for its existence upon a network of causes and conditions; every whole depends upon its parts, and every part depends upon the wholes in which it figures; everything depends for its identity on conceptual imputation.10 For present purposes, I would like to focus on one of these, and on its relationship to emptiness, viz., dependence on conceptual imputation. When we say that every entity is dependent on conceptual imputation, this is sometimes heard as a kind of ontological idealism, but it is not. The point is not that the mind brings phenomena into existence as a cause, but that the identities under which phenomena appear to us—and hence the ontology of the world that we inhabit and experience—is entirely dependent upon the conceptual resources by means of which we understand the world. We might see this as grounded in the Indian idea of pramāṇa, a term that denotes an epistemic instrument or warrant, but which derives from the root ma, to measure. Now, it is well-known that within the Buddhist world, there is a school of thought associated with Yogācāra called the Pramāṇavāda school, associated with Digṅāga and Dharmakīrti, that developed a particular account of pramāṇa, restricting the number of pramāṇas to two, perception and inference. But I am not concerned with that school here, or its tenets, but

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with the much more general idea that our knowledge of the world is always mediated by cognitive instruments. Candrakīrti is quite open in his account, enumerating the four pramāṇas identified by the Nyāya school: Perception, inference, testimony, and analogy. But Candrakīrti does not close that list, but rather uses it as a source of examples. His point is that our knowledge of the world is always mediated, and that it is mediated through a multitude of conventional epistemic practices, that although this means that our access to the world is always deceptive, knowledge is nonetheless possible in the context of that global deceptiveness.11 We might follow the measurement analogy that would have been front and center in the minds of Indian philosophers in conversation with those Western philosophers in the twentieth century who were responsible for initiating the movement to which we now refer as naturalized epistemology. I have in mind the Austrian philosopher Paul Feyerabend (1924–94) and the twentieth-century American philosophers Willard Van Orman Quine (1908–2000) and Wilfrid Sellars, as well as Sellars’s student Paul Churchland. These more contemporary philosophers each emphasized, in slightly different but broadly congruent ways, the fact that our perceptual and conceptual apparatus function as—to use Feyerabend’s apt phrase—measuring instruments. That is, just as we use a telescope not to see a telescope or points of light refracted in lenses, but planets, stars, and nebulae, we use our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin not to perceive sensations, but to perceive objects.12 There are two closely related points to this analogy. First, we do not know the objects of our sensory experience directly, but rather through the mediation of our senses. Another way to put this point is that we do not register external objects or their properties and then somehow bring them into our minds. Instead, we construct them in our central nervous systems in response to sensory stimulation transduced into neural impulses which lead to the consequent upstream neural activity. Just as a radio telescope receives radio waves from distant objects and transduces them into visible images, our sensory faculties produce experiences in response to energy impinging on our periphery of which we are never directly aware. The apparent directness of perception is, as Feyerabend and Churchland remind us, an illusion. Secondly, we can only interpret the output of a telescope correctly if we have a reasonable understanding of how it works (perhaps most obviously true of radio telescopes, but true of optical telescopes as well). To put the point crudely, if we don’t know how the instrument that we are using to mediate our access to the world works, we don’t know whether we are looking through a high-fidelity telescope or a kaleidoscope; we don’t know whether we are using a properly constructed radio telescope or a virtual reality game. Once again, the same point applies to our senses. If we don’t know that our senses are working properly, we don’t know the degree to which what they

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deliver to us is accurate information. But even if we know that they are as good as anyone else’s, to really know what is going on in the world with which they put us in contact, we’d have to know how they work. And of course we have no clue regarding what anything on the other side of our senses could be like; we can only experience the output of these faculties, not the input. So, another aspect of the cognitive illusion that pervades sense perception is the illusion that what we experience is something external to us. To keep the Indian Buddhist view of sense experience in view, and to move further in the direction of Quine, Sellars, and Churchland, recall that Indian epistemologists and philosophers of mind, including Buddhist philosophers, identify a sixth-sense faculty, the manas-vijñāna, or introspective sense faculty, by means of which we know our occurrent cognitive, affective, and perceptual states.13 And that introspective sense is also a measuring instrument, a pramāṇa, and is delivering us a report on the contents of our mind. This means that our access to our own inner states is also mediated by an instrument that delivers us only indirect information about our inner life, and whose internal workings we do not fully understand. As a consequence, even our sense that we know our own cognitive states directly and accurately is an instance of cognitive illusion. Instead, our knowledge of the inner domain, like that of the outer, is mediated and delivers us not information about what they are, but about how they appear to us given our particular cognitive architecture.14 With these ideas in hand, we can return to Candrakīrti’s idea that all phenomena—inner and outer—depend for their identity on conceptual imputation, and hence exist only conventionally, not ultimately.15 Let us focus on some of what we can say for sure about our introspective processes. First, we learn to attribute mental states to ourselves and to others. They do not simply emerge in our consciousness as states of particular types. Secondly, the sortals under which we become aware of our inner states, and under which ascribe them to others and ourselves are necessarily conceptual. That is, we must acquire the suite of concepts involved in our shared conception of mind, including those of belief, desire, sensation, and so on in order to be capable of any attribution, and hence of any awareness of our inner states as states of any kind.16 That is what Candrakīrti means by conceptual imputation. Our awareness of our cognitive and perceptual states, just like our awareness of anything else is not direct; it is mediated by conceptual imputation. We owe our cognitive ontology and so our self-conception, to our conceptual repertoire. This in turn means that language is essential to our self-knowledge, and this in two important respects. First, it is through language that we acquire most of our concepts, particularly the sophisticated and abstract concepts pertaining to mind. But second, when we turn to the concepts of the propositional attitudes, it is language that is the model for our concepts. The concept of belief, for instance, is parasitic on the concept of assertion: To believe something is to be disposed to say it; when we attribute beliefs, we attribute states that stand

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to sentences just as utterances do, viz., as their contents. The semantics of belief reports are just like those of assertion reports. We report beliefs, and experience them, as Sellars was to argue much later, on the analogy of inner sayings, not by directly experiencing inner particulars. So, inasmuch as language is constituted by and derives its content from convention, so does thought. And this is the sense in which Candrakīrti can assert that thought exists only conventionally, that is, as dependently originated. All of this brings us emptiness. In the Madhyamaka framework, to be empty is to be empty of intrinsic nature. That is, to exist only in dependence on causes and conditions, to be mereologically dependent, and to be dependent on conceptual imputation; it is to exist only conventionally, not intrinsically. And this, we have just seen, is the mode of existence that our inner states enjoy. They are empty, dependent upon conceptual imputation, and have only conventional identities. This is not a second-grade kind of existence: To say that the objects of our experience exist conventionally is not, in a Madhyamaka framework, to say that their mode of existence is different from that of an ultimate reality that stands behind them. Instead, it is to say that nothing exists ultimately: The only kind of existence anything can have is conventional existence. This is simply because nothing exists independently of causes and conditions, independently of its parts and of the wholes in which it figures, or independently of conceptual imputation. And this at last allows us to understand the Madhyamaka analysis of the most fundamental cognitive illusion: The illusion of the immediacy of our knowledge of our own minds and of the givenness of our own inner states and processes—our direct knowledge of them as the kinds of things that they are, independent of any concepts. This is the illusion that Wittgenstein, Quine, and Sellars, each in their own way worked so hard in the twentieth century to diagnose and to cure. But we can put this just as easily in the terms of secondcentury Indian Madhyamaka: The fundamental cognitive illusion is to take our mental states to exist intrinsically rather than conventionally, and for our knowledge of them to be immediate, independent of conventions. This illusion is pervasive, instinctive, and profoundly self-alienating, obscuring the deeply conventional character of our own existence and self-knowledge. And this illusion is what, according to Buddhist philosophers, lies at the root of our grasping and aversion, and hence of the pervasive suffering of existence.

4 YOGĀCĀRA: DUALITY AND NON-DUALITY The Yogācāra tradition offers a somewhat different analysis of emptiness and of cognitive illusion. It is a bit of a commonplace, both in canonical sources and in contemporary Buddhist Studies literature, to see Yogācāra and Madhyamaka as incompatible rival positions regarding the nature of reality. But this is not the only plausible approach, and there is a line of thought in Tibet that is

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gaining ascendancy in contemporary scholarship according to which they simply represent distinct perspectives on emptiness. As the Dalai Lama XIV put it felicitously in a public talk in New Delhi in 1999, Madhyamaka approaches emptiness from the side of the object of knowledge, while Yogācāra approaches emptiness from the side of the subject.17 I think that this is the most profitable way to see matters.18 This approach makes good sense of the most important difference between Madhyamaka and Yogācāra, and it shows us how to reconcile that difference as well. That difference is this: While Madhyamaka takes emptiness to be the emptiness of intrinsic identity or existence, Yogācāra takes it to be the emptiness of subject-object duality, or the absence of externality to mind of the objects of mind.19 Let us consider each of these formulations in turn, in each case considering how this analysis offers an account of cognitive illusion. We will see that when we join this Yogācāra understanding to that we glean from Madhyamaka, we get a more complete understanding of this illusion. Yogācāra accounts of experience suggest that just as we are wired for the illusion of immediacy, we are wired to thematize our experience through the framework of subject-object duality. We take ourselves, on this view, to be pure subjects and the object of our experience to be delivered to us by our sense and cognitive apparatus. They appear to stand over against us as distinct. We take ourselves to know ourselves immediately, and to know our objects only through the mediation of our epistemic instruments. And this duality of subject and object seems to be given to us as the primordial structure of our experience. Our continuous reciprocal causal interaction with that environment, on this view, allows our cognitive systems to construct a world of experience, complete with objects and their properties. That world of experience includes objects we experience as external, as well as objects—such as sensations and thoughts— that we experience as occupying an internal space. In each case, we take those objects to be distinct from the subject that apprehends them—as Wittgenstein put it in the Tractatus—just as the eye stands to the visual field, an unseen seer. But just a bit of reflection yields the conclusion that this duality is illusory, and this is a principal insight of the Yogācāra tradition (as well as of philosophers such as Heidegger and psychologists such as James and Eleanor Gibson in the twentieth-century West). As we argued above, perception does not deliver independently existing objects through our senses to our subjectivity; those objects do not exist outside of us with the same properties that appear as photocopies in inner representations. That is to say that we as subjects are not outside of the world of our experience. All of these aspects of our experience—the independence of our perceptual objects, subject-object duality, and immediate awareness of inner representations—are illusory; all are superimpositions.

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Instead, we are organisms embedded in an environment of which our bodies and faculties are a part. Our subjectivity is constituted by that embedding, and the only way in which we can become aware of any object is by constructing it as an object in our field of consciousness. Objects, that is, do not appear to subjects; they are aspects of subjectivity. This is not mysticism; this is just good sense, buttressed both by Buddhist insights and arguments and by contemporary cognitive neuroscience.20 This, then, is a second dimension of pervasive cognitive illusion. Madhyamaka analysis, as we saw in our discussion in the previous section, reveals that the objects we take to exist intrinsically are empty of that existence, and instead exist only interdependently, and conventionally. That points to an illusion regarding the objects of our knowledge, as well as the way to understand those objects correctly. Yogācāra analysis, on the other hand, reveals that the subjectivity that we take to be primordially dualistic in structure is empty of that subject-object duality, and is instead nondual in nature. That points to an illusion regarding the subject of knowledge, as well as how to understand that subjectivity correctly. And once again, on a Buddhist view, this is the root of suffering.

5 PUTTING THESE TOGETHER: ŚĀNTARAKṢITA’S SYNTHESIS It is a straightforward consequence of this analysis that Madhyamaka and Yogācāra are not incompatible schools of thought, but rather mutually supplementary: One exploring emptiness and illusion from the side of the object, and the other from the side of the subject. But while this analysis stems from an exegetical tradition with origins in Tibet, there is a second approach to the synthesis of these two traditions to be found in India. It is grounded in Śāntarakṣita’s remark in Ornament of the Middle Way that Yogācāra offers an account of conventional truth and Madhyamaka an account of ultimate truth. Here are the relevant root verses. 92. On the basis of Yogācāra We should understand the nonexistence of the external world. On the basis of Madhyamaka We should understand that the mind is empty. 93. Those who ride the chariot of these two approaches And who hold the reins of reason, Will master the Mahāyāna And the meanings of the texts. (translation my own)

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The autocommentary explains that this means that Yogācāra provides the complete analysis of conventional truth, and that Madhyamaka provides the analysis of ultimate truth. This claim is prima facie odd for two reasons. First, while it is clearly intended to vindicate both philosophical systems, it seems to place them in the very hierarchy that leads to the disparagement of Yogācāra in favor of Madhyamaka: Yogācāra, Śāntarakṣita seems to be saying, is OK if you only care about how things appear to be, but Madhyamaka tells you how they actually are. And this is how Śāntarakṣita’s Tibetan exegetes, such as Gyelstapje (rGyal tshab rJe, 1364–1432) read him.21 But second, although it is natural to think of Madhyamaka as presenting an account of ultimate emptiness, it seems downright weird to say that a system according to which subject-object duality and the externality of the objects of our experience are entirely illusory captures our ordinary conventional sense of the nature of reality. How many ordinary people think that way? Nonetheless, I think that Śāntarakṣita both avoids deprecating Yogācāra, and gets the relationship between Madhyamaka and Yogācāra just right. We just need to read him with care. On the Madhyamaka side, things are pretty straightforward: The ultimate truth is the emptiness of all phenomena, and that is the central idea of Madhyamaka. If we really want to understand the nature of reality, per se, Madhyamaka is the school that takes us there. But then what does that leave as the task of Yogācāra? Just to provide a second-best understanding of ultimate reality—to be Mahāyāna philosophy for dummies? Or as an account of how ordinary people think about reality? I don’t think that either of these alternatives makes any real sense. Śāntarakṣita is encouraging us to take Yogācāra seriously. And nobody thinks that the person in the street takes duality and externality to be illusory. So, he can’t mean that Yogācāra is meant to be an exposition of ordinary people’s commonsense view of the world. But we can see how to read Śāntarakṣita as articulating a coequal role for Yogācāra, and as explaining how Yogācāra provides an understanding of conventional truth if we think hard about what it is to understand conventional truth. To understand conventional truth is to understand not only what its content is, but also how it comes to be, and how it comes to be taken so seriously as truth. The Madhyamaka analysis of emptiness and its relation to conventional truth tells us what emptiness is, as well as what conventional reality is, but does not give us an account either of how we come to experience conventional truth, or of why it is that we take it to be more than conventional. That, Śāntarakṣita sees, is a central part of the task of Yogācāra. The principal analytic tool by means of which this is accomplished is the rubric of the three natures and three naturelessnesses adumbrated in the Sūtra Unraveling the Thought (Saṁdhinirmocana-sūtra).22 In the seventh chapter of that sūtra, the question is posed, “what does the Buddha mean by emptiness?” The reply is that emptiness is intended in

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three senses: Naturelessness with respect to characteristic, naturelessness with respect to causality, and ultimate naturelessness. In virtue of being natureless in each of these three ways, each object of experience also has three natures. Corresponding to naturelessness with respect to characteristic has an imagined nature; corresponding to naturelessness with respect to causality is the dependent nature; and corresponding to ultimate naturelessness is the consummate nature. These natures and their corresponding naturelessnesses provide a positive characterization of conventional truth while still allowing us to understand its ultimate emptiness. Let us briefly consider each pair in turn. To say that all phenomena are natureless with respect to characteristic is to say that things considered apart from their appearance to sensory consciousness do not have the properties we perceive them to have. We see roses as red and violets as blue, but the colors we see are generated by our visual faculties; different kinds of sense faculties are sensitive to different wavelengths of light, and so see different colors. To ask what the color of a rose or a violet is independently of who sees it makes no sense: Their color is not part of their nature. They are natureless with respect to that characteristic (and all other perceptible characteristics). Nonetheless, in ordinary perceptual experience, we imagine them to exist outside of our consciousness just as we perceive them. That is their imagined nature. To say that all objects of experience are causally natureless is to say that they arise as objects of experience only through their causal interaction with our sensory and cognitive faculties, that we do not simply encounter objects in an immediate way. Their dependent nature is the fact that they are not independently existing entities on which we simply happen to stumble, standing as objects over and against our subjectivity but rather are constructed through these complex, opaque causal processes, and so nondually related to us. These two natures provide an analysis of conventional reality and of our tendency to reify it. Conventional reality is the reality populated by things we imagine to exist independently of our minds with the characteristics we perceive them to have, but which in fact are constituted by our minds, and have those characteristics only in virtue of our deceptive cognitive processes. Since it is only through these processes that we can become aware of objects, and since these processes are invisible to us, we are systematically fooled into thinking that the world exists as it appears—that what is conventionally real exists ultimately.23 This is the Yogācāra analysis of the conventional. Note that nothing here is inconsistent with the Madhyamaka analysis; instead, Yogācāra supplements Madhyamaka with a cognitive and epistemological explanation of that reality and our relation to it, just as Śāntarakṣita suggests. Things are ultimately natureless because apart from the conditions of our own subjectivity, we cannot assign any nature whatsoever to them. The objects we apprehend, the contents of the worlds we inhabit, since they appear only subject to the conditions of our own consciousness, have no nature of their

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own. Their consummate nature is this fact: Their emptiness of subject-object duality, of characteristics, and of anything that could be their essence. This is the Yogācāra analysis of emptiness and of its relation to conventional reality. Once again, there is nothing here to contradict the Madhyamaka analysis of emptiness as absence of any intrinsic nature, or of emptiness as extensionally identical to dependent origination—the thesis of the identity of the two truths. On the contrary, we can see Yogācāra as providing an analysis of that claim in terms of profound cognitive illusion: The ultimate nature of things is their lack of any nature in virtue of their conventional reality. Conventional reality is the other side of this coin: It is simply the illusory aspect of things, and in particular, their appearance to us as though they existed ultimately. Śāntarakṣita’s synthesis, then, demonstrates that a Buddhist perspective on experience that takes both Madhyamaka and Yogācāra seriously can make sense of how deeply illusory our experience is.

5 ZEN: EMPTINESS, SELFLESSNESS, AND THE PARADOX OF SELF-ALIENATION Ideas from both the Madhyamaka and the Yogācāra traditions made their way through China into the Zen tradition, and there we find a somewhat different, and perhaps more profound and even troubling synthesis. We can get a good feel for this in several essays by the Chinese-educated Japanese Zen philosopher Dōgen (1200–53). I have in mind especially Gabyō (Painted Rice Cakes) and Genjōkōan (Actualizing the Fundamental Point). Dōgen saw clearly that the pervasiveness of cognitive illusion regarding our own subjectivity opens up a paradoxical abyss that threatens any conviction that we truly understand ourselves. The central idea is this: Since even our own subjectivity is present to us only in an illusory fashion, we are subject to illusion not only regarding the true nature of the experiences we appear to have, but even with regard to those appearances: It is not that we know our inner experience, but might be wrong about what lies behind it; we do not even know our inner experience. Commenting on the Zen aphorism that “a painted rice cake cannot satisfy hunger,” Dōgen writes in Gabyō: The paints for painting rice cakes are the same as those used for painting mountains and waters. For painting mountains and waters, blue and red paints are used; for painting rice cakes, rice flour is used. Thus they are painted in the same way, and they are examined in the same way. Accordingly, “painted rice cakes” spoken of here means that sesame rice cakes, herb rice cakes, milk rice cakes, toasted rice cakes, millet rice cakes,

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and the like are all actualized in the painting. Thus, you should understand the painting is all-inclusive, a rice cake is all inclusive, the dharma is all-inclusive. In this way, all rice cakes actualized right now are nothing but a painted rice cake. If you look for some other kind of painted rice cake, you will never find it, you will never grasp it. A painted rice cake at once appears and does not appear. This being so, it has no mark of old or young, and has no trace of coming or going. Just here, the land of painted rice cakes is revealed and confirmed. (Dōgen and Tanahashi 1985: 135–6) Dōgen is using painted rice cakes as a metaphor for the very illusion we are discussing: Something that appears to exist in reality, but which is only a facsimile of that reality, a painting, not a rice cake. In this opening passage, he rejects the seemingly obvious idea that although we apprehend only appearances (painted rice cakes), something real stands behind them (real, non-painted rice cakes). Instead, he suggests, it is painted rice cakes all the way down. Mountains and waters (a standard Zen metonym for the actual world of objects and processes) are painted as well. Nothing in our experience can be described as something that we encounter as it is: Our very experiencing it can only be understood as a way to paint it. Perception and conception are constructive, not reproductive, an idea that we have seen in our discussion of Yogācāra. He continues: Since this is so, there is no remedy for satisfying hunger other than a painted rice cake. Without painted hunger you never become a true person. There is no understanding of this painted satisfaction. In fact, satisfying hunger, satisfying no hunger, not satisfying hunger, and not satisfying no hunger cannot be attained or spoken of without painted rice cakes. For some time study all of these as a painted rice cake. (Dōgen and Tanahashi 1985: 138–9) In this passage, Dōgen turns the metaphor—which isn’t so hard to accept when applied to the external world, since that is pretty standard Yogācāra doctrine— inward to come to the real point. Even when we consider our own cognitive states, they, too are painted rice cakes. To the degree to which we are aware of them, we paint them. If we took anything to stand behind them, to the degree to which we become aware of, or even think of that supposed reality, we paint it as well. So, if we thought that the moral of Buddhist illusionism was that we only encounter experiences instead of real objects, we are wrong: It is that we don’t even encounter real experiences, only illusions of experiences. And if we thought, with a bit more sophistication that our encounter with those illusions

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was even an encounter with actual illusions, we are wrong, there, too: We only see illusions of illusions.24 This is about as vertiginous an account of experience as one could imagine. We are not, on this account, even immediately aware of the conscious states we mistake for direct access to external objects. We are not immediately aware of anything, and there is no foundation for perception or for conception. Dōgen invites us not only to peer into a bottomless abyss of groundlessness—the groundlessness of reality, of knowledge, and of consciousness itself—but to leap into it, in the recognition that the only way to know ourselves is to forsake even the possibility of self-knowledge. True self-knowledge, on this understanding, is not, as one might think, the achievement of immediate awareness of our minds or their contents, of an awareness of our own subjectivity or its structure; it is instead the recognition that there can be no such awareness. But this should not lead to despair. Instead, Dōgen urges, it leads to a profound self-understanding: We are nothing but conventionally real, interdependent beings among other beings, participants in a boundless and groundless web of dependent origination, in which nothing has any true nature, but in which everything can be understood in a matrix of interdependence. Dōgen articulates this terrifying but also reassuring vision in the following well-known passage from Genjōkōan: To study the self is to forget the self; to forget the self is to be actualized by the myriad things. When actualized by the myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of realization remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly. (trans. R. Aitken and K. Tanahashi in Dōgen 1995: 70) When we examine our own being, we discover that we have none, that all that we experience is a painted rice cake. That is not to deny our reality, but to affirm that reality as interdependent and groundless, like the reality of everything else. We are not consigned to a second-class reality as opposed to the reality of real rice cakes. Instead, we enjoy the only kind of reality there ever could be. But lest we think that this insight itself constitutes realization—the understanding of reality, or of our own nature as it is—Dōgen reminds us that this too is, and can only be, more illusion.25

6 KNOWING OURSELVES: LIBERATION FROM IMMEDIACY We have been exploring a trajectory of thought regarding illusion in the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition, beginning in ancient India, and landing in medieval Japan. The exploration is hardly exhaustive. We have omitted dozens

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of philosophers and hundreds of texts, metaphors, and arguments along that textual and ideological road. I hope, however, that this brief survey gives the reader a feel for the way in which initial Buddhist reflections on the way that primal confusion grounds pervasive suffering, coupled with the analysis of reality in terms of the two truths and their paradoxical union leads inexorably to a critique of the immediacy of experience, and thence to the insight that illusion is not something from which we escape, but something woven into the very fabric of our being. The most profound aspect of this understanding, I hope to have shown, is that this fabric is woven from threads that are themselves illusory: The conviction that we know ourselves, and the conviction that we even know the illusory experiences that mediate our awareness. This all suggests an aporia: true self-knowledge can only be the acceptance that there is none, and that even that fact is nothing but more illusion. The Great Death, as the Zen tradition often characterizes awakening, is indeed a leap from a high cliff; fortunately for us, the abyss into which we are asked to leap is bottomless. We need not fear a painful landing.

NOTES 1 For more detailed explorations of the second noble truth, see Gethin (1998) and Garfield (2015). 2 See Churchland (1978) and Garfield (1989) for defenses of this view. 3 See, for instance, Thompson (2010). 4 See Garfield (2022) for a more extended exploration of the illusion of subjectobject duality and its ramifications. 5 See Cowherds (2010), Chapters 1 and 2 for a more detailed discussion of the idea of illusion in Buddhist understandings of conventional truth, and Yakherds (2021) for an account of debates regarding the possibility of knowledge in the context of global illusion in Tibet. 6 See Gallagher and Zahavi (2013), Thompson (2010, 2017), and Zahavi (2008) for examples of this view. 7 I suggest reading this essay in conjunction with that of Huebner, Aviv, and Kachru in the present volume. They approach illusion through an exploration of Madhyamaka and Yogācāra thought, and draw attention to the continuity of that Buddhist thought with ideas we find in contemporary cognitive science and epistemology. But we pick up slightly different pieces of this large puzzle, and the whole picture emerges better when these essays are read together. 8 See Sellars (2000) and the essays in Garfield (2019) for a discussion of the connections between Sellars’s attack on the Myth of the Given and Buddhist philosophy of mind. 9 For more on Madhyamaka accounts of emptiness and the doctrine of the two truths, see Garfield (2015), Westerhoff (2009), and Williams (1989).

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10 See Cowherds (2010), Chapters 1–2 for more on this analysis of conventional truth. 11 See Cowherds (2010) and Yakherds (2021) for an exploration of Candrakīrti’s approach to pramāṇas. 12 See Churchland (1978), Feyerabend (1958, 1975), Preston (1997), and Quine and Ullian (1978) for more on this idea. 13 We should note that this general picture of sense perception and of introspection is a pan-Indian and not simply a Buddhist idea. 14 Anand Vaidya (present volume) argues that phenomenal realism can evade this critique. His argument relies on distinguishing three theses associated with phenomenal realism: (O) that there are phenomenal qualities; (N) that these qualities put us into immediate contact with [non-phenomenal] objects and qualities; and (E) that phenomenal qualities are introspectively accessible without the possibility of error. He then argues that—although many phenomenal realists accept all three—phenomenal realism is only committed to (O). He then argues that my critique of phenomenal realism is successful against, and only against, a version of phenomenal realism that accepts (E). The dispute between us might appear to merely verbal. One might think that I prefer to use the term phenomenal realism only for the conjunction of these three theses, and that Vaidya prefers to apply it to positions that accept (O), whether or not they accept (E) and (N). Since (N) is not material to the present dispute, let us set it aside, and focus on (E). If we do so, we will see that the dispute is genuine, and, I hope, why my position is preferable to Vaidya’s. One way of getting to the point is to ask what we are talking about when we talk about phenomenal properties. Let’s consider an analogy. My son once disputed the claim that Santa Claus was unreal by pointing out that he had seen him at the mall. He did see someone at the mall, and that person was fat, bearded, jolly, etc… But that person does not in fact descend chimneys around the world with gifts for good children. Could one argue that in fact Santa realism is true; one just has to detach the chimney-descent claim from the other claims in the cluster, and then say that Santa is the fat guy at the mall? No. No fat guy at the mall qualifies as Santa unless he can perform the chimney miracle. Mutatis mutandis for phenomenal properties. The very point of postulating them (in contrast to the distal properties with which they are meant to put us in contact) is that they are the properties of which we are immediately (and so incorrigibly) aware and which mediate (fallibly) our access to the external world. Drop that, and you simply have properties of which we happen to be aware, and which are no different in kind from external properties. No chimney miracle there. I deny that there are such things. So does Vaidya. So, he should be on my side here. Vaidya also argues in that paper against what he calls my foundational illusionism and structural illusionism. I am not persuaded by those arguments, either. To say, as he does, in response to foundational illusionism, that one can only experience illusory snakes because one has experienced real snakes, and therefore that we must experience some aspect of reality veridically is a non sequitur. The argument in Painted Rice Cakes is that everything we experience is experienced as existing independently when it does not do so. To respond to that would require showing that this obviously erroneous aspect of our experience is sometimes absent. He does not do so. And the argument against structural

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illusionism, that is against the claim that subject-object duality is illusory in fact concedes that that duality is a superimposition. But that is to concede the point, viz., that something that presents itself as a primordial aspect of experience is indeed constructed. So, I think that Vaidya is settling for a guy at the mall in each case, and giving up on the real meaning of Christmas. 15 The distinction between ultimate and conventional truth as articulated by Nāgārjuna in Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā) is central to the Madhyamaka understanding of ontology and knowledge. The term conventional here contrasts with ultimate, and denotes existence not only by agreement, but also as it is understood in the everyday world, or as it appears to language or to thought. I discuss this at greater length in 2015. 16 Once again, see Sellars (2000). 17 This idea, however, is not original to the present Dalai Lama. We find it expressed as well by the nineteenth-century Tibetan philosopher Büton, and even earlier in the fourteenth-century Tibetan philosopher Rongton. 18 See the essays in Garfield and Westerhoff (2015) for more exploration of the relationship between Madhyamaka and Yogācāra. 19 There is an extensive debate regarding whether Yogācāra should be seen as a kind of subjective idealism or as a Buddhist phenomenology. See Anacker (2015), Gold (2015), Kapstein (1988), Lusthaus (2003), Waldron (2003). I address this debate in 2015 and in my contribution to Garfield and Westerhoff (2015). 20 See Thompson’s excellent discussion of this issue in 2010. 21 See Blumenthal (2013) for the root text, autocommentary, and rGyal tshab rJe’s commentary in translation. 22 See Powers (1995) for an excellent translation of the Saṁdhinirmocana-sūtra. 23 For a contemporary development of this idea in the context of cognitive science, see Hoffman (2019). And for a sophisticated philosophical exploration of this idea from the standpoint of contemporary philosophy, albeit with a Buddhist inflection, see Westerhoff (2021). 24 This idea is reminiscent of Nāgārjuna’s remark in Reply to Objections (Vigrahavyāvartanī) that objects are the creations of an illusory man created by a magician; only Dōgen points out that the magician, as well, is illusory, as is anyone who conjured him… 25 This is, of course, deeply paradoxical. For a more extended treatment of Painted Rice Cakes and the paradoxes it engenders, See Deguchi, Garfield, Priest, and Sharf (2021).

REFERENCES Anacker, S. (2015), Seven Works of Vasubandhu: The Buddhist Psychological Doctor, New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Blumenthal, J. (2013), A Study of the Madhyamaka Thought of Śāntarakṣita, Ithaca: Snow Lion. Churchland, P. (1978), Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Cowherds. (2010), Moonshadows: Conventional Truth in Buddhist Philosophy, New York: Oxford University Press. Deguchi, Y., J. Garfield, G. Priest and R. Sharf (2021), What Can’t Be Said: Paradox and Contradiction in East Asian Thought, New York: Oxford University Press. Dōgen, E. (1985), Moon in a Dewdrop: Writings of Zen Master Dogen, trans. K. Tanahashi, New York: North Point. Feyerabend, P. (1958), “An Attempt at a Realistic Interpretation of Experience,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 58: 143–70. Feyerabend, P. (1975), Against Method, London: Verso. Gallagher, S. and D. Zahavi (2013), The Phenomenological Mind, London: Routledge. Garfield, J. (1989), “The Myth of Jones and the Mirror of Nature: Reflections on Introspection,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 50 (1): 1–26. Garfield, J. (2015), Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy, New York: Oxford University Press. Garfield, J., ed. (2019), Wilfrid Sellars and Buddhist Philosophy: Freedom from Foundations, London: Routledge. Garfield, J. and J. Westerhoff, eds (2015), Madhyamaka and Yogācāra: Allies or Rivals? New York: Oxford University Press. Garfield, J. (2022), Losing Yourself: How to Be a Person without a Self, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gethin, R. (1998), Foundations of Buddhism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gold, J. (2015), “No Outside, No Inside: Duality, Reality, and Vasubandhu’s Illusory Elephant,” Asian Philosophy, 16 (1): 1–38. Hoffman, D. (2019), The Case against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes, New York: Norton. Kapstein, M. (1988), “‘Mereological Considerations in Vasubandhu’s ‘Proof of Idealism”, Idealistic Studies, 18 (1): 32–54. Lusthaus, D. (2003), Buddhist Phenomenology: A Critical Investigation of Yogācāra Buddhism and the Ch’eng Wei-shih Lun, London: Routledge. Powers, J. (1995), Wisdom of the Buddha: Saṁdhinirmocana-sūtra, Berkeley: Dharma Press. Preston, J. (1997), Feyerabend: Philosophy, Science, and Society, Cambridge: Polity Press. Quine, W. V. and J. S. Ullian (1978), The Web of Belief, Seacaucus: McGraw Hill. Sellars, W. (2000), “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind,” in W. A. deVries and T. Triplett (eds), Knowledge, Mind and the Given: Reading Wilfrid Sellars’ “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind”, 205–76, Indianapolis: Hackett. Thompson, E. (2010), Mind and Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Thompson, E. (2017), Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy, New York: Columbia University Press. Waldron, W. (2003), The Buddhist Unconscious: The Alaya-Vijñana in the Context of Indian Buddhist Thought, London: Routledge. Westerhoff, J. (2009), Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka: A Philosophical Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Westerhoff, J. (2010), The Dispeller of Disputes: Nāgārjuna’s Vigrahavyāvartanī, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Westerhoff, H. (2021), The Non-Existence of the Real World, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Williams, P. (1989), Mahāyāna Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations, London: Routledge. Yakherds. (2021), Knowing Illusion: Bringing a Tibetan Debate into Contemporary Discourse, New York: Oxford University Press. Zahavi, D. (2008), Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person Perspective, Cambridge: The MIT Press.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

Interrogating Illusionism ANAND JAYPRAKASH VAIDYA

1 INTRODUCTION: FOUR KINDS OF ILLUSIONISM In “Illusionism and Givenness” (2017) and “Cognitive Illusions and Immediate Experience: Perspectives from Buddhist Philosophy” (chap. 10), Jay Garfield argues for four kinds of illusionism. Phenomenal illusionism1 holds that phenomenal consciousness is illusory; experiences do not really have qualitative, what-it’s-like properties, whether physical or nonphysical. Structural illusionism holds that the subject-object dichotomy of intentional consciousness is an illusion. There really is no subject that is distinct from an object. It just seems that way because of how we construct experience based on our brains. Foundational illusionism holds that it is illusions all the way down. All of the content of our experience is illusory in some sense. Accuracy illusionism holds that we are subjects of a persistent and constant illusion—an illusion under which what is presented to us in experience appears as if it is an accurate record of what is real and independent of the appearance. That is, we are subject to an illusion of the kind where what we see, for example, doesn’t really reveal anything about how things are, but we are drawn to that in our experience.2 Garfield draws on Vasubandhu, Candrakīrti, Śāntarakṣita, and Dōgen. He finds an alliance between these figures and twentieth-century Analytic

I must thank Jay Garfield and Galen Strawson for comments and criticism. Although I strived to take sides between them (they conflict with each other), I decided to be honest about where my own views lead, aiming to go beyond the opposition between them. Thanks to Manjula Rajan and Anya Farennikova for comments and discussion.

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philosophers, such as Wittgenstein, Quine, Feyerabend, and Sellars. His crosscultural and multidisciplinary philosophical goal is to defend these illusionist theses because they are at the root of our primal confusion, leading to our suffering. Something I will comment on critically at the close of this essay. I propose to show that one can resist phenomenal, structural, and foundational illusionism because they are false and provide a confused account of the human condition. Although accuracy illusionism is central to Garfield’s project, I shall not discuss it. There are, indeed, illusory aspects of our experience, but that doesn’t mean it is all illusion. Garfield holds the extreme position constituted by phenomenal, structural, and foundational illusionism. I argue that (i) it cannot be illusions all the way down in the sense that we never fully track any property of the world; (ii) phenomenal realism does not succumb to the Myth of the Given—one of Garfield’s arguments for rejecting it; and (iii) the subjectobject duality of conscious experience is not an illusion. Like Garfield, I also see an alliance between Indian philosophers and twentieth-century philosophers. I draw upon Vātsyāyana and Uddyotakara from the Nyāya tradition, and Wittgenstein, Fodor, Tyler Burge, Galen Strawson, and Kevin Falvey from the Anglo-analytic tradition. Let me close this introduction with an illusionist thesis I do endorse. Incompleteness illusionism holds that perception of the world is illusory because it is incomplete with respect to the world as a unified totality.3 My inspiration for endorsing incompleteness illusionism derives from the first two lines of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.4 1.0: The world is everything that is the case. 1.1: The world is the totality of facts, not of things. If one accepts these claims, then incompleteness illusionism is based on the fact that perception is essentially perspectival and that the world is never presented singularly and completely. Incompleteness illusionism doesn’t rest on whether one takes a realist reading of 1.0 and 1.1, where there is only one set of facts, or an anti-realist reading, where there are multiple sets of facts depending on whose world we are talking about. The argument below presents a line of reasoning that aims to show that we never see anything completely. Argument for Incompleteness Illusionism 1. The world is everything that is the case, it consists of the totality of facts. It is a complete entity. 2. All perceptions are of the world, but only a part of the world is presented in any perception. 3. So, the world is never presented completely.

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4. So, every perception is a presentation of the world other than it is. 5. If every perception is a presentation of the world other than it is, then every perception has illusory content pertaining to the world as a complete entity. 6. So, every perception has illusory content pertaining to the world as a complete entity.5

2 ARGUMENT AGAINST FOUNDATIONAL ILLUSIONISM Vasubandhu, at Verse 1 of his Twenty Verses, holds that all we ever experience is appearance. This is all appearance only; for even non-existent objects are presented to us, as, for instance, a person with faulty vision sees unreal hairs, etc. (Das 2018: 430) Vasubandhu goes on to compare waking life to dreaming life. At Verse 36 and 47 he argues that just as there are no external objects in a dream, but appearances only, in waking life there are, thus, only appearances, and no external objects.8 Garfield’s version of Buddhist illusionism appears stronger than Vasubandhu’s appearance only thesis. Garfield endorses foundational illusionism, that it is illusions all the way down: [I]f we thought that the moral of Buddhist illusionism was that we only encounter experiences instead of real objects, we are wrong: It is that we don’t even encounter real experiences, only illusions of experiences. And if we thought, with a bit more sophistication that our encounter with those illusions was even an encounter with actual illusions, we are wrong, there, too: We only see illusions of illusions.[chap. 10: 259–60]9 Garfield appeals to the Japanese Zen Buddhist philosopher Dōgen to illustrate foundational illusionism: [Dōgen] rejects the seemingly obvious idea that although we apprehend only appearances (painted rice cakes), something real stands behind them (real, non-painted rice cakes). Instead, he suggests, it is painted rice cakes all the way down. Mountains and waters … are painted as well. Nothing in our experience can be described as something that we encounter as it is: Our very experiencing it can only be understood as a way to paint it. Perception and conception are constructive, not reproductive.10 [chap. 10: 259]

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Foundational illusionism fails to consider the metaphysics of illusion in relation to reality from the perspective of conceptual coherence. Illusory experiences are asymmetrically dependent on real experiences. It is only because we have real experiences that we can make sense of saying something is an illusion. The concepts are conceptually related to one another. Argument against Foundational Illusionism 1. Illusions are asymmetrically dependent on reality. You can’t have an illusion of F unless either (i) you have experienced F or (ii) you have experienced something(s) G, H, I, which either alone or in combination are F-like and can be a basis for the illusion of F. 2. If there exists an infinite descending chain of illusions or web of illusions, then there would be nothing that grounds the possibility of having an illusion. There cannot be illusions all the way down in the same way as there cannot be lies all the way down. 3. So, some experiences are not illusory with respect to some of their content, even if much of what is constructed on the basis of them is illusory. To defend the argument, I first turn to Vātsyāyana, a leading expositor of Gautama’s Nyāya-Sūtras. He responded to a Buddhist who claimed that there is no difference between waking and dreaming with respect to external objects.11 Argument against Waking Life Being Similar to Dreaming Life 1. The experience of external objects (by way of pramāṇas) is false and misleading, akin to the experience of dream objects. (hypothesis for reductio). 2. Dream objects are known to be false only in contrast with real objects, experienced in waking life (as apprehended by pramāṇas). 3. If we do not experience real objects in waking life, we do not know dream objects to be false. 4. We do know dream objects to be false. 5. Therefore, we do (generally) experience real objects in waking life (by way of pramāṇas). For additional support I turn to Uddyotakara, a later commentator on the Nyāya-Sūtras. He draws on parasitism to refute a Buddhist who considers motion to be unreal. All false cognitions imitate primary cognitions. You must state the original cognitions upon which the false ones are based. For we never find such a

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difference (between imitators and genuine things) without an original, as seen in the case of a mistaken cognition of a post as a man. There being an existing post, one has the cognition “that is a post” regarding a person (in the distance). Or, there being a man, a post is mistaken for a man. (Dasti 2012: 4) Thus, if we blur the line between illusions and reality or eliminate reality, we cannot understand what an illusion is. Turning to twentieth-century Anglo-analytic philosophers of mind, I will use Jerry Fodor’s work to support premise (1); and Tyler Burge’s work to explain the clarification at clause (ii) of (1). In A Theory of Content and Other Essays (1990), Fodor articulated a view of mental content known as causal asymmetric dependence, that error is asymmetrically dependent on truth. It is because we possess, for example, the concept of a cow based on interactions with cows that we can make the mistake of applying the concept of a cow to a horse. The possibility of error in applying the concept cow rests on the genuine possession of the concept of a cow, such that it is a misapplication as opposed to some other kind of failing. That is, error presupposes truth. Adapting Fodor’s example to the famous case of the post seen as a person, his view exactly corresponds to Uddyotakara’s: It would be impossible to see the post as a person if one didn’t possess the concept of a person through reliable interaction with persons. Concepts don’t always track reality. There are no centaurs, but we have the concept of a centaur: The parts that go into a centaur, the upper body of a human and the lower body of a horse, all exist. Now consider witches: A tribe could believe there are witches, without seeing any. They organize their lives around not going out during the afternoon because of their fear of witches, and their belief that they are prominent in the sky during the afternoon. A member of the tribe gets lost outside one afternoon; looking up at the sky a cloud appears to him as a witch. Does asymmetric dependence require the actual existence of the entity involved in the error? No, just as in the case of the centaur. In his (2005) Disjunctivisim and Perceptual Psychology, Burge claims that a closely associated thesis of perceptual anti-individualism is that, “a constitutively necessary condition on perceptual representation by an individual is that any such representation be associated with a background of some veridical perceptual representations” (2005: 1).12 Burge holds that perceptual anti-individualism is a foundational part of vision science. His view allows us to see how the cloudwitch case does not pose a problem for asymmetric dependence. The core idea is that perceptual representation is only possible against the background of some veridical perceptual representations. It cannot be all non-veridical. The concept of a witch must include features about what a witch looks like. For

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example, that it looks like a person, but has some different features, such that a cloud could appear as a witch to the person who has the concept of a witch. What is important is that the features that are part of the concept of a witch can code properties that are multiply realizable across a variety of things, such as clouds, where those things can trigger the perceptual system so that the witch concept is deployed rather than the cloud concept. While Garfield’s articulation of foundational illusionism is engaging, Nyāya’s parasitism, Fodor’s asymmetric dependence, and Burge’s perceptual anti-individualism, all provide resources for resisting foundational illusionism. Garfield is correct to point out that perceptual experience has illusory content. Nevertheless, perceptual experience isn’t always non-veridical, some of it tracks reality. Interestingly, he says, “Nature does not track truth, but rather reproductive success” [chap. 10: 249]. This I find implausible: reproductive success depends on truth. A species cannot survive and reproduce without eating things that are actually food for them. That there might be some variation in what counts as “food” doesn’t mean that nature never tracks truth. It just means that nature is not intolerant to narrow variations. But we cannot make sense of nature being tolerant of wide variations while saying that reproductive success is all that matters. Humans cannot survive on chalk even though it looks like cassava root. It is a mistake to contrast reproductive success with truth, unless one gives an account of what truth is, such that it can stand in stark opposition to reproductive success.13

3 ARGUMENT AGAINST PHENOMENAL REALISM SUCCUMBING TO THE MYTH OF THE GIVEN Garfield (2017) holds that phenomenal illusionism does not succumb to the Myth of the Given. He argues that phenomenal realism does so succumb, and that this is a reason to endorse phenomenal illusionism.14 Garfield says: The sphere of knowledge can only exist in the space of reasons; the space of reasons is constituted by publicly enforced norms of enquiry, assertion, and language use. And those norms require that the relevant objects of knowledge themselves be public. But the experience, posited by phenomenal realists, is private. It is hence not even a candidate for knowledge; nor are its putative objects candidate objects of knowledge. But once again, if it is unknowable, it is entirely idle. If we have phenomenal consciousness, we could never know it; whatever it is we confuse with phenomenal consciousness, if it is something of which we have knowledge, it is not phenomenal consciousness. (2017: 77)

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And, [T]he very bifurcation of experience into the subjective and the objective presupposed by the realist about phenomenal consciousness is illusory, and the entire framework in which we understand our inner experience is subject to massive illusion. (2017: 82) He further says: There is something that a yellow mango is like. It is yellow, oblate, sweet, etc … To say that it is like that is to ascribe to it perceptible properties … [T]o say what something is like is to list its perceptible properties. [T]o the extent that experience has a subject-object structure, when we say what something is like, we characterize the objective, not the subjective, pole of experience. (2017: 74) And, Nagel’s sleight of hand … is to convert what the world is like for a bat to what it is like to be a bat. That is to confuse the object with the subject, and to ask us to assign properties to our subjectivity, as opposed to the objects we experience … When I have described the mango to you, I have said all I can ever say about my experience of it. If you ask me what it is like to be me, simpliciter, you ask me to describe consciousness itself, apart from any object of consciousness. There is no such thing. Consciousness is always consciousness of something, and when the object is subtracted, nothing remains to be characterized. (2017: 74–5) I must begin by acknowledging the importance of Garfield’s critiques of phenomenal realism: They are unique and interesting. However, he thinks phenomenal realism succumbs to the Myth of the Given because he assumes that phenomenal realism must unfold into three separate theses, two of which, N and E below, lead the realist into the Myth of the Given. While some phenomenal realists might accept all them, I do not. The three claims are: O: Existence, there are phenomenal qualities. N: Nature, phenomenal qualities put us in direct/immediate contact with objects and qualities.15

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E: Knowability, phenomenal qualities are introspectively accessible without the possibility of error. Some phenomenal realists accept O, N, and E.16 I will argue that phenomenal realism need not succumb to the Myth of the Given by detaching N and E from O, thus: Argument against Phenomenal Realism Being Committed to the Myth of the Given 1. Phenomenal realism is only committed to O, and not N or E. 2. O does not commit one to the Myth, since O is only an existence claim. 3. So, phenomenal realism does not succumb to the Myth of the Given. I will first show why N is incoherent before moving on to an examination of E. At Philosophical Investigations 246, Wittgenstein says: In what sense are my sensations private?—Well, only, I can know whether I am really in pain; another person can only surmise it.—In one way this is wrong, and in another nonsense. If we are using the word “to know” as it is normally used (and how else are we to use it?), then other people very often know when I am in pain.—Yes, but all the same not with the certainty with which I know it myself. It can’t be said of me at all (except perhaps as a joke) that I know I am in pain. What is it supposed to mean—except perhaps that I am in pain? Other people cannot be said to learn of my sensations only from my behavior,—for I cannot be said to learn of them. I have them. The truth is: it makes sense to say about other people that they doubt whether I am in pain, but not to say it about myself. Although it is controversial how best to interpret Wittgenstein here, the passage can be interpreted as suggesting that “knowledge” and “doubt” as they are ordinarily used in most contexts don’t really apply to an adult person who has mastered their use and is currently in pain. That is, Wittgenstein is pointing out that when a person has mastered the use of “pain” in their community, it will be absurd to think of ordinary cases where they would talk of knowing they are in pain when they are genuinely in pain. He is not talking about someone in a doctor’s office who has to state that they know they are in pain or in a philosophy class where they can talk of knowledge of pain (because language is on holiday). He is pointing to the ordinary absurdity of saying one knows one is in pain. Consequently, since knowledge and doubt are related, if knowledge doesn’t apply, neither does doubt.

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Based on Wittgenstein’s comments about self-ascriptions of knowledge of pain being incoherent in the situation I have described, I will make the following analogical argument with respect to “direct,” “indirect,” “immediate,” and “mediate” being applied to the phenomenology of perception. The Incoherence Argument 1. It doesn’t make sense to speak of knowledge where real doubt is not possible, such as in a case where one is in pain. To say, “I know that I am in pain,” when one is in the midst of it, is empty, since there is no possibility of doubt for the person in pain. 2. The case of knowledge of pain when one is in the midst of it is analogous to the case of the application of “direct” and “immediate” to experience in the case of phenomenal qualities, since there is no possibility of indirect contact or mediated experience phenomenologically. 3. So, it doesn’t make sense to speak of “direct” contact or “immediate” experience, when there is no possibility of “indirect” contact or “mediated” experience phenomenologically. Moving off this argument I will construct an extended argument for the non-application of “direct,” “immediate,” “indirect,” and “mediate” to either the phenomenology of perception or to perceptual systems. The inspiration for this argument comes from Stephen Phillips’s (2020) introduction to Gaṅgeśa’s Jewel of Reflection on the Truth About Epistemology. Phillips informs us that the English “perception” and its Sanskrit equivalent “pratyakṣa” suffer from an ambiguity between the state that is the output of a process, and the process(es) that generate the state. These terms are ambiguous and need to be clarified before one can make a philosophical point about perception or pratyakṣa. His cross-linguistic observation allows for an extension of the incoherence argument, which I call the no application argument. Before I present this argument I need to clarify the common philosophical use of the terms “direct” and “indirect.” In their most common philosophical use they are found within the philosophy of perception where there is a distinction between direct and indirect realism. Direct realism holds that there is no intermediary object in perception between the subject and the object. Indirect realism holds that there is such an intermediary object. Often enough the object is said to be a representation of the objects and qualities out in the world that through contact with a subject’s perceptual system leads to the construction of a representation. The no-application argument below aims to show that this use of “direct” and “indirect” is really a confusion because there are two distinct levels at which “perception” can be used. The personal

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conscious level of experience where a subject sees something. The sub-personal nonconscious level where the perceptual system processes information that enables personal level conscious perception. On my view talk of representations is not something that is owned by indirect realists and incoherent in the realist framework. Rather, it is how one understands what work they do and at what level they are said to do that work.17 The No Application Argument 1. The distinction between direct and indirect realism about conscious perception is coherent only if both “direct” and “indirect” apply to the same domain with respect to perception. 2. The term “perception” is ambiguous between “perceptual state” and “the system of perceptual processing that produces a perceptual state.” 3. A pair of contrast terms, such as “direct” vs. “indirect,” apply in a domain only if both apply in the same domain. 4. The term “direct” cannot apply to a perceptual state because the term “indirect” has no application, since there is nothing that can be indirect conscious perception. 5. The term “indirect” cannot apply to a perceptual system because the term “direct” has no application, since perceptual processing always involves processing, whereby it is indirect in relation to the cause of the processing. 6. Therefore, the distinction between direct and indirect realism is confused. Perceptual states are not properly described as being “direct,” and perceptual systems are not properly described as being “indirect, since the opposites do not apply”18 There is a confusion across levels at play. With respect to the no application argument, (1) holds that we need a univocal reading of “direct” and “indirect” for them to be genuinely in conflict with one another.19 (2) follows from Phillips’s cross-linguistic observation. (3) follows from the analogical argument based on Wittgenstein’s comments on knowledge of pain. The heart of the no application argument is at (4) and (5). Perceptual states have a phenomenology where objects and qualities are presented. It makes sense to talk of objects and qualities either being present or not in experience, because, for example, the rope is either present or absent in one’s experience. As subjects of experience we present objects to ourselves by changing, for example, our visual field. However, it makes no sense to talk of experience being “direct” because there is no way for experience to be “indirect.” In order to defend (4) let’s consider two cases where one might think that one is having an indirect experience to show that the use of “indirect” has no application.

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LSD creates light tracers. After about three hours on a sufficiently high dose of LSD, if one moves one’s arms while watching them, they appear to have tracing lights following them. Are LSD-induced tracer experiences cases of indirect perceptual experience? No. These experiences are presentations of movement with light tracers. The presentation is different from a normal (nonLSD) experience of motion, but it doesn’t shift from direct to indirect. Another example: Mirror reflections allow us to see ourselves. We see ourselves by looking at a mirror, and often we can see the mirror as well. Are mirror reflection experiences cases of indirect perceptual experience? No. The presentation is different, but it doesn’t shift from direct to indirect.20 Perceptual systems cannot be said to be direct or indirect simpliciter. To defend (5) one need only recognize that those terms are qualifiers with respect to a system. While it makes no sense to talk of them in the simpliciter voicing, we can say X is direct for system Z because it lacks Y or X is indirect for system Z because it has Y. Under this triadic relation it makes sense to say something is indirect or direct because (i) we are talking at the same level, not crossing levels, such as when we talk about the direct (phenomenology) of perception vs. the indirect (processing) of a perceptual state as the output of a perceptual system, and (ii) we are revealing what is meant by those terms by saying what is present or absent that makes X either direct or indirect. Simply put: From the perspective of phenomenology, experience just presents. It doesn’t do so directly or indirectly. From the perspective of processing, experience is the output of a process. As a consequence, it cannot be immediate because there is always temporal delay and spatial distance. If it cannot be immediate, it cannot be mediate. There is no debate between the two terms at that level alone. Processing always involves application of something internal to a system to an input. Phenomenology always involves presentation. So far the argument against N has shown that the terms “direct,” “immediate,” “indirect,” and “mediate” have no coherent literal application to either the phenomenology of perception or to perceptual systems. However, because the Myth of the Given is formulated around the term “given,” which Sellars singles out as problematic, we should ask: What is the status of it? At the processing level there is input into a system, but there is no sense in which the input is “given.” Nobody is giving anything to the system. The system is in a position to have an input enabled through various causal factors obtaining, and our sensory system being designed to take input. At the phenomenological level it makes no sense to talk of something being “given” either. Literally nothing is “given” phenomenologically. Nothing feels “given” in perception, such that the term makes sense phenomenologically. Objects, qualities, scenes are presented in perception, not given. Sellars was right, we should drop “given.”21 Thus, any argument for how phenomenal realism succumbs to the Myth that moves off N—the claim that there is something immediate, direct, or

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given in experience—is mistaken. N-based arguments assume that the Myth of the Given applies to accounts of experience that utilize the terms “direct” and “indirect.” But if there is a Myth to worry about, it shouldn’t rest on the distinction between direct/immediate and indirect/mediate. Because, to borrow a phrase from Ryle, those distinctions applied either to perceptual states alone or systems alone is a category mistake. Perceptual systems neither have nor do not have directness or immediacy, and perceptual states are neither indirect or mediate. Those contrast terms don’t apply to the same use of “perception.” One of them may make sense at one level, direct for phenomenology and indirect for perceptual system. But really we should abandon them. Instead, we should recognize that the phenomenology of conscious experience is open to contrast terms, such as “presented,” “clear,” and “vivid” where their opposites, “not presented,” “unclear,” “blurry” also apply; and the classification of information processing systems is open to contrast terms, such as “simple,” “open,” and “digital” where their opposites, “complex,” “closed,” and “analog” also apply. This takes us to E—the epistemic claim that something is known through introspection without the possibility of error. Could E be the source of how phenomenal realism succumbs to the Myth of the Given? As we saw in Section 2, Garfield thinks that we only ever encounter illusions of illusions when we look within. On my understanding (he doesn’t offer this version of the argument), the argument is the following.22 1. Introspection is how we know our own minds. 2. All perceptual experiences have illusory content. 3. Introspection is just like perception. 4. So, all introspective experiences have illusory content. 5. To encounter our mind as it really is we would have to have no illusory content via introspection. 6. So, we only ever encounter illusions of illusions. (1) needs clarification. Let us distinguish between mechanism and possession accounts of our knowledge of our own minds. Strawson (2015), for example, holds a possession view, since in having experience e one knows something, because the having is the knowing.23 Garfield appears to be attacking mechanism views, which hold that having an experience isn’t sufficient for knowing until one applies a mechanism m that can be used to capture the character and content of one’s experience when one has e. Given that Garfield’s argument is directed at mechanism accounts, one ought to ask: are possession accounts immune from Garfield’s concern? On Strawson’s possession account there is a primitive sense of “know”: When one has experience e thereby one knows something. Garfield should concede

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that possession accounts are superior to mechanism accounts in avoiding a fatal version of the Myth of the Given—assuming that introspection gives immediate and incorrigible access without any illusory content because introspection accounts are mechanism accounts. After all in attacking introspection accounts he likely has in mind the view advocated by various Naiyāyikas. But given that Garfield holds that we only ever encounter illusions of illusions, he will be troubled by possession accounts as well. For they hold that there is something that is incorrigible that we have in experience. This residual knowing, benign for Strawson, will lead Garfield to the criticism that even possession accounts succumb to the Myth of the Given.24 So: does a phenomenal realist need to retain E? They need not accept E, understood even as the more inclusive claim E* that either phenomenal properties are introspectively incorrigibly accessible or that having an experience is a kind of knowing about one’s experience where one couldn’t be wrong. Borrowing from the work of Kevin Falvey25 on selfknowledge, I will argue that a phenomenal realist can accept what is impossible to deny about self-knowledge with respect to phenomenal qualities, privileged access, while denying what, arguably, leads to the Myth of the Given, sole authority and incorrigibility. That is, if the Myth of the Given only applies to phenomenal realism when it makes an epistemological claim about knowing phenomenal qualities, as opposed to only an ontological claim about the existence of phenomenal qualities, one can block the application of the Myth of the Given by severing the link between the epistemological claim and the ontological claim. Phenomenal realists must accept privileged access. A person S has privileged access to p, when they have a unique standpoint with respect to p that no one else could occupy. Privileged access does not entail sole authority. A person S has sole authority with respect to p when they are an authority on p and no one else could be. Sole authority does not entail incorrigibility. A person S has incorrigibility with respect to p when S couldn’t be wrong about p. So, privileged access does not entail incorrigibility. Does this argument hold? Phenomenal realists can deny sole authority. Others can know the bodily signs which constitute some of our conscious states, and are reliable indicators of them. That is why some poker players can identify the tell of another when they are bluffing. If there were no relation between a tell and bluffing, poker games, and the term “poker face,” would be pointless. Phenomenal realists can deny incorrigibility. Often there are complex multisensory experiences, such as when itches-tickles-and-pains are mixed: It is impossible to identify each moment as being only itch, tickle, or pain when they happen in fast succession When we philosophically think of a case of pain isolated from the context in which it occurs we think we couldn’t be wrong about it. But actual pains occur in contexts that can be confusing to the subject.

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Young children often have pain-inducing experiences, falling down, yet don’t have pain expressions. Are they really in pain? Thus, while phenomenal realists must accept O—that phenomenal qualities really exist—they can deny N—that they are direct and immediate—and E— that they are incorrigibly known. By denying N and E, phenomenal realism, like phenomenal illusionism, avoids the Myth of the Given. Whether endorsement of O independently of N and E is as attractive a position as the ONE conception is another issue. The basic point is that phenomenal realism need not be rejected in virtue of it succumbing to the Myth of the Given. Nevertheless, I concede that Garfield might be correct. This version of phenomenal realism might simply be uninteresting because of the separation between ontology and epistemology.26

4 ARGUMENT AGAINST THE SUBJECT-OBJECT DICHOTOMY BEING AN ILLUSION When Garfield criticizes Nagel’s articulation of the notion of what it is like in relation to phenomenal consciousness, and says, “[c]onsciousness is always consciousness of something, and when the object is subtracted, nothing remains to be characterized (2017: 74–5),” he recognizes that ordinary conscious states, such as perceiving a yellow lemon on a table, have two properties: (i) the generic property of being dual with respect to the existence of a subject pole and an object pole, and (ii) object dependence. In accepting that there is a subject-object dichotomy in ordinary conscious experience, Garfield is, at minimum, from my point of view, acknowledging the intentionality of ordinary conscious experience as articulated in Brentano’s (1874) Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. Every mental phenomenon is characterized by … what we might call, though not wholly unambiguously, reference to a content, direction toward an object (which is not to be understood here as meaning a thing), or immanent objectivity. Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself. (Brentano 1874/1973: 68) While Garfield accepts that the intentionality of conscious experience displays a subject-object duality, he also holds that this is an illusion.27 However, the evidence as to why it is an illusion is conclusive relative to some traditions of philosophy, but inconclusive relative to testimony. There is an intermediary position about the nature of consciousness superior to the view that the subjectobject dichotomy is an illusion. Here my argument focuses on testimonial evidence from mystics or subjects that testify to the existence of non-dual consciousness—consciousness where the subject-object dichotomy collapses.28

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Argument against Subject-Object Dichotomy Being an Illusion 1. Most people’s conscious experiences have a subject-object duality to them because they are states of intentional consciousness. 2. Some people report having conscious experiences where the subjectobject duality collapses and there is no intentionality. 3. Although, for many of us what is reported by mystics is not something we understand based on our own experience, the testimony of mystics provides evidence of conscious experiences without a subject-object dichotomy. 4. Therefore, conscious experience has subject-object duality as a contingent feature. It is essential to intentional consciousness, but not to pure consciousness. One way to understand this argument is to apply it to Śaṅkara’s Advaitin metaphysics: it is because all that is real is pure non-dual consciousness that the subject-object duality is an illusion from the perspective of fundamental reality. If all that is real from the perspective of fundamental reality is pure non-dual consciousness, then it follows that there are three illusions: (i) the subject of experience, qua being an individual subject; (ii) the object of experience, qua what is presented to a subject of experience; and (iii) the subject-object duality under which a subject of experience takes an object to be something external, independent, and non-identical to herself.29 This position is not the only analysis available. The distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental need not track that between real and illusory. It doesn’t follow from the fact that non-fundamental things are not fundamental that they are illusory or unreal. For example, while Śaṅkara held that non-fundamental reality, non-dual pure consciousness, is real and everything else is an illusion from that perspective, one of his critics, Rāmānuja, held that both fundamental and non-fundamental reality are real.30 The subject-object duality is a contingent feature of the type conscious experience. The duality is absent in pure consciousness but present in intentional consciousness. Therefore, the duality is only a contingent feature of consciousness simpliciter. To argue that it is contingent and illusory or contingent because illusory, one must go further. If the duality is an illusion like the rope-snake illusion, then one must answer a subject question and an object question. The subject question: who has the illusion of the dichotomy? Since in the case of the rope-snake illusion there is someone who has the illusion. The object question: what is the thing that is presented otherwise as having the duality when in fact it doesn’t? Since in the rope-snake illusion there is a rope that is presented otherwise as a snake. Śaṅkara would say that it is pure non-dual consciousness which is the answer to both questions. It is pure non-dual consciousness which is the subject of the subject-object illusion, because the self is illusory, qua being an individual self;

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and it is pure non-dual consciousness that is perceived otherwise as having the subject-object duality by an illusory self. If the Buddhist illusionism that Garfield endorses offers the same response that Śaṅkara does, I find the answer unsatisfying. Garfield holds that in all cases of conscious experience the subject-object duality is an illusion.31 He is also a phenomenal illusionist who denies that there are qualitative, what it is like properties in conscious experience.32 Thus, Garfield’s account endorses the following inference. 1. The subject-object dichotomy is an illusory aspect of conscious experience. 2. So, qualitative properties present in conscious experience are illusory as well. However, this inference looks problematic. It is possible that qualitative properties are real, but how they structurally show up for us is an illusion, as straight oars show up for us as bent when submerged in water.33

5 CONCLUSION: RESISTING ILLUSIONISM Garfield argues for three kinds of illusionism: foundational illusionism— illusions all the way down; phenomenal illusionism—qualities are illusory; structural illusionism—the subject-object dichotomy is illusory. Although I find Buddhist illusionism, and Garfield’s articulation of it, important because it offers an account of our primal confusion and how we can ease our suffering, I have, nevertheless, argued that these three kinds of illusionism can be interrogated. I concede that my arguments are not conclusive or demonstrative of the falsity of the kinds of illusionism that Garfield presents and defends. And I concede to Garfield that I have not engaged his accuracy illusion because I find that the real question is “how much of our experience is an illusion?” And not: does our experience suffer from an accuracy problem? Both the none and all positions to the “how much” question are clearly false for me, since there is always the incompleteness illusion and we do track some features of an objective world for which we do acquire reliable concepts. What is important to me is discovering different kinds of illusions in our experience and isolating what is not an illusion, on a gradient view of our relation to reality. Garfield characterizes the fundamental illusion that is problematic thus: The fundamental cognitive illusion is to take our mental states to exist intrinsically rather than conventionally, and for our knowledge of them to be immediate, independent of conventions. This illusion is pervasive, instinctive, and profoundly self-alienating, obscuring the deeply conventional

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character of our own existence and self-knowledge. And this illusion is what, according to Buddhist philosophers, lies at the root of our grasping and aversion, and hence of the pervasive suffering of existence. ([chap. 10: 253], emphasis added) I hope I have shown how this characterization can be interrogated. For example, our knowledge of our mental states could not be immediate, there is temporal delay. The illusion is not instinctive, and not necessarily self-alienating. In conclusion it is worth pointing out that Garfield’s endorsement of phenomenal illusionism leads to a potential problem for the Buddhist project of helping us overcome our suffering. Garfield argues. 1. Suffering exists. 2. The root cause of suffering is confusion about the fundamental nature of reality. 3. Confusion is to be analyzed in terms of specific illusions, such as the illusion of a self and subject-object duality in perceptual experience. 4. Only by overcoming these illusions can suffering be extinguished. 5. So, to overcome suffering we must overcome these illusions. The fourth noble truth of Buddhism states that there is a path to overcoming suffering: The eight-fold path. One step on this path is having the right view. If the right view required sustained ontological and epistemological understanding, philosophizing would be a necessary condition for overcoming suffering. I  don’t think that having the right view requires ontological and epistemological understanding, which has been debated throughout Buddhist philosophy across Abhidharma, Yogācāra, and Madhyamaka.34 If it did, it would appear to put high cognitive demands on us all. Rather, the right view might only require that one jointly understands that there is no permanent self across all times and that all things are dependently originated so as to help one engage in practices that ease suffering, such as meditation. Given the complexity involved in settling how Buddhist ontology relates to its soteriology, I set aside the issue of whether the arguments I have offered undermine Buddhist soteriology. I don’t think they do. While there are intriguing arguments in favor of Garfield’s position, there is also a tension in Garfield’s phenomenal illusionism and the Buddhist path to overcoming suffering. Consider an argument offered by the phenomenal realist, David Chalmers (2018: 53), in his critique of phenomenal illusionism. 1. People sometimes feel pain. 2. If strong illusionism is true, then no one feels pain. 3. So, strong illusionism is false.

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The Buddha aims to give us a way to ease our suffering (dukkha). The least controversial kind of suffering is phenomenal pain. While one might deny that existential angst causes suffering, no one really denies that phenomenal pain causes suffering. The connection between phenomenal pain and suffering is stronger, almost analytic with respect to the concepts, than what we find when we think about other causes of suffering. If strong illusionism makes it the case that no one feels pain, since pain is an illusion, then a major project within Buddhism becomes incoherent.

NOTES 1

See Frankish (2017) for an articulation and defense of phenomenal illusionism in Anglo-analytic philosophy of mind. Garfield (2017) discusses phenomenal illusionism in relation to Buddhist philosophy of mind.

2

I thank Jay Garfield for pointing out this fourth illusion and its centrality to his engagement with Buddhism. One core way he articulates this is as follows: “Perception irresistibly feels like it presents the world to us as it is, independent of the peculiarities of our perceptual system and the conceptual resources that filter perception. In the same way, apperception feels like it presents our own cognitive, affective, and perceptual states to us just as they are, independent of the structure of our apperceptive system and of the conceptual categories in terms of which we understand our own inner states” [chap. 10: 249]. However, neither perception nor apperception feels like they present the world to us as it is. Rather, they feel as if they present something to us irresistibly. Whether that be the world as it is, is, altogether, not part of what is irresistibly presented. That is an afterthought, a highly processed, intellectual one.

3

All types of illusionism discussed here are to be distinguished from Alva Noe’s (2002) view that the world is a grand illusion, where visual experience is held to be far less stable and detailed than we suppose it to be.

4

See Wittgenstein (2001: 25).

5

It is important to note two things. First, the totality of perceptions cannot provide a way to refute the argument because no individual has the totality of perceptions at one time nor does the collection of all people at all times provide a way in which the world as a complete fact is seen. Second, one should not take this argument to be about seeing something completely vs. seeing the world as complete. For example, one might argue that even though we see an apple from a given perspective what we see is the apple as complete. The notion of complete here is different than the one used in the argument above. When we say we see the apple completely we mean not as a fragmented object, for example, an apple with a bite in it. However, we still don’t see the apple completely, parts are excluded. More importantly, though, we simply never see the world as Wittgenstein describes it.

6

Verse 3: The production of appearances at particular times and places is established, just as in the case of dreams. “In dreams, even without the presence of any external object, certain objects like flies, gardens, women, men, etc., are

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seen, only at certain places [within those dreams] and not everywhere. Even when a particular place is fixed, they are seen only at certain times [during those dreams], and not always. Hence, even without the presence of any external object, appearances may arise only at particular times” (Das 2018: 431). 7

Verse 4: The causal efficacy of objects of appearances is established just as in the case of nocturnal emissions. “The analogy is that even though there is no sexual intercourse in a dream, the dreamer still discharges semen.”

8

In making this argument Vasubandhu is responding to the objection that if there were no external causes, then appearances could occur at any place at any time. He argues that it doesn’t follow from the fact that something just is an appearance that it can occur at any place at any time.

9

The claim that we “see illusions of illusions” is hard to understand. On my view, it would appear that the occurrence of “see” is an instance where there is no illusion in play. Thanks to Strawson for pointing out that this occurrence should be examined.

10 Note the “it” in “paint it.” It would seem then that there is something external which is painted. 11 See Dasti (2012: 6) for this reconstruction. 12 Anti-individualism is a general thesis advocated by Tyler Burge. The basic idea, applied here to the case of perception, is that what seems to be internal to an agent is actually determined by factors that depend on the agent’s environment. 13 At footnote 14, Garfield aims to rebut my argument here by pointing to an argument in Painted Rice Cakes. He points out that the argument from asymmetric dependence is irrelevant, since the real point is about ontological independence, not asymmetric dependence. He says, “[E]verything we experience is experienced as existing independently when it does not do so. To respond to that would require showing that this obviously erroneous aspect of our experience is sometimes absent” [chap. 10: 262]. I have no understanding of why anyone would say that everything we experience is experienced as existing independently when it is not obviously so. Most, if not all, things we experience we experience as existing dependently. I experience the computer and table before me as dependently existing on my engagement with them. I believe they exist without me, but I don’t experience them that way. Most things I experience, I experience in relation to myself in a dependent way. I experience them as not connected to me, but that doesn’t mean that I experience them as being independent of me. I have beliefs about their existence independently of me, but I don’t experience them that way unless I take my beliefs into my experience and conceptualize my experience that way. I think Garfield is describing our experience as if we all have experience the way he characterizes it, instead of thinking of how people might describe their experience differently. I take it that many would agree with him, but I doubt his words capture how everyone would at all times describe their experience. To say that we experience things either independently or dependently is highly intellectualized. 14 Garfield (2017: 82) says, “The Indian Yogācāra Buddhist analysis presents yet another perspective on why this kind of phenomenal realism represents yet another form of the Myth of the Given, and on why that Myth is indeed a Myth. The Myth of the Given is the Myth that there is some level of our experience

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that is immediate, immune from error, given to us, as opposed to constructed, and that the level of experience constitutes the foundation or transcendental condition of the possibility of, knowledge of anything else … The idea that there is an immediate level of phenomenal consciousness, a primitive sense of subjectivity, a way our inner life is, independent of how we might imagine it, is only the latest version of that Myth. But the very idea that anything in our conscious life is immune from illusion, that there is anything that it is like to be a subject, per se, that there are inner experiences that we just have and in virtue of just having them we know immediately, is itself but one more cognitive illusion.” And in this volume [250] he says, “We are seduced by the idea that, even if in the end we know the world only through perceptual and conceptual mediation, it can’t be mediation all the way down: There must be a basic level of experience to which we have immediate access, that we know veridically. But while this myth is powerful, both psychologically and philosophically, it is, as Sellars showed, a myth. And only by coming to understand the myth can we exorcise the philosophical demons it allows to possess us. As we will see in what follows, Buddhist philosophy of mind and epistemology offers a powerful tool for undermining the Myth of the Given.” 15 Garfield points out that N should be stated as follows: Inner experience puts us in direct/immediate contact with phenomenal qualities. I don’t agree, but I do see that if we put things his way, his argument is much stronger. His way of putting things assumes that there is a distinction between inner and outer experience. I don’t think there is such a distinction. There is experience, and there is what it is of. Of course Kant discussed experience of the inner as temporally regulated, and experience of the outer as spatially regulated. But that is not the distinction of “inner experience” that Garfield appears to be pointing to. Garfield also says, “Our inner states present themselves to our awareness as though they are just given to us [chap. 10: 249].” This is a hyper-intellectualized claim. There is no other way for inner states to present themselves to our awareness. What would it be like for our inner states to be presented in a non-given way or constructed way? Were we to see the construction as it unfolded we would only be seeing the process as given. 16 Strawson (2006, 2015) appears to be one phenomenal realist who might succumb to Garfield’s critique, since he does hold versions of N and E. With respect to E, Strawson denies the relevance of introspection to knowing one’s own mind, which Garfield attacks, but Strawson accepts knowability when he says, “[T]o have experience is already to know what it is, however little one reflects about it. There is, to repeat, a fundamental respect in which the having is the knowing. This is because the knowing is just—just is—the having (it involves no ‘introspection’). The having is all there is to the knowing, in this fundamental sense of ‘know’; it’s (non-discursive) knowledge ‘by acquaintance’” (2015: 219). 17 My own view is influenced by Strawson’s (2015) “Real Direct Realism.” However, it is different from his. 18 My argument here is not only about Garfield’s use of “direct” and “indirect,” but of the whole literature within Western, and if Garfield is correct, Indian, philosophy that uses the distinction. 19 Strawson (2015: 244) holds that, direct realists can acknowledge three central existents: The subject of experience S, the experience/representation E/R, and the object O. He argues that indirect realism is correct to insist on E, but wrong when

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it proposes that E stands between S and O. Rather, S has E, and S’s having E is S’s perceiving O. E is necessary, and given appropriate causation, sufficient for S’s consciously perceiving O. Strawson holds that according to direct realism, “one doesn’t perceive objects, one ceives objects (‘ceives’ derives from ‘capere’, to take hold of).” While I agree with Strawson’s account of direct and indirect realism, I find that the terms “direct” and “indirect” are the source of a levels confusion. 20 It should be clarified here that we are discussing the phenomenology of the experience, not the causation or the epistemology of the experience. But simply what it is like to have the experience. Clearly the causation is indirect, since a mirror is involved. And depending on how one thinks about the epistemology, it can be argued to be indirect. The phenomenology, however, is neither direct nor indirect. 21 See the opening lines of Sellars’s Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (1963: 127). He says that one can reject the notion of “the given” without flying in the face of reason. Strawson, however, argues that there is a sense in which we can use the term “given.” He says, “[W]hat is given in perceptual experience is not just cow-under-a-tree-in-a-field: in the normal case…perceptual experience is in effect also assertion, or at least affirmation” (u.p.s: 9). And, “I have endorsed a use of ‘the given’ that allows us to say that the given, in a particular case of veridical visual experience, is a cow under a tree in a field. In so doing I’ve gone beyond the … use according to which what is given, in such a case, is identical to what could be given in imagination or hallucination: cow-under-a-tree-in-a-field-ishness, or there-is-a-cow-under-a-tree-in-a-field, but not a cow under a tree in a field—i.e. not an actual cow under an actual tree in an actual field” (u.p.s.: 15). While the sense he articulates is reasonable and acceptable, the term “the given” should be jettisoned in favor of “presented” where we can qualify the term through the process, such as presented through imagination or presented through perception. Hallucinations have presentational content, but their presentation is not through properly functioning perception. Rather, they are cases of presentation through projection. 22 Garfield [chap. 10: 254] says, “[P]erception does not deliver independently existing objects through our senses to our subjectivity; those objects do not exist outside of us with the same properties that appear as photocopies in inner representations. That is to say that we as subjects are not outside of the world of our experience. All of these aspects of our experience—the independence of our perceptual objects, subject-object duality, and immediate awareness of inner representations—are illusory; all are superimpositions.” Conjoin this with the following statement [chap. 10: 259–60], “[I]f we thought that the moral of Buddhist illusionism was that we only encounter experiences instead of real objects, we are wrong: it is that we don’t even encounter real experiences, only illusions of experiences. And if we thought, with a bit more sophistication that our encounter with those illusions was even an encounter with actual illusions, we are wrong, there, too, we only see illusions of illusions.” And [chap. 10: 252], “[R]ecall Indian epistemologists and philosophers of mind, including Buddhist philosophers, identify a sixth-sense faculty, the manas-vijñāna, or introspective sense faculty, by means of which we know our occurrent cognitive, affective, and perceptual states. And that introspective sense is also a measuring instrument, a pramāṇa, and is delivering us a report on the contents of our mind. This means

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that our access to our own inner states is also mediated by an instrument that delivers us only indirect information about our inner life, and whose internal workings we do not fully understand. As a consequence, even our sense that we know our own cognitive states directly and accurately is an instance of cognitive illusion. Instead, our knowledge of the inner domain, like that of the outer, is mediated and delivers us not information about what they are, but about how they appear to us given our particular cognitive architecture.” 23 Section 246 from Wittgenstein’s Investigations might also signal a possession account: “Other people cannot be said to learn of my sensations only from my behavior, –for I cannot be said to learn of them. I have them.” 24 See Garfield (2017: 82): “But the very idea that anything in our conscious life is immune from illusion, that there is anything that it is like to be a subject, per se, that there are inner experiences that we just have and in virtue of just having them we know immediately, is itself but one more cognitive illusion.” 25 The argument here is based on conversations with Falvey. It is not a direct record of what he is arguing. See (2000a, 2000b) for further insight. 26 At endnote 14, Garfield rebuts my argument by saying that one cannot really detach O from E because, “The very point of postulating them [phenomenal properties] (in contrast to the distal properties with which they are meant to put us in contact) is that they are the properties of which we are immediately (and so incorrigibly) aware and which mediate (fallibly) our access to the external world. Drop that, and you simply have properties of which we happen to be aware, and which are no different in kind from external properties. [chap. 10: 262]” The point of Garfield’s response is that I am arguing for a position that has no real use. His response is relevant and important. Let me briefly note that there are two notions of immediacy, temporal and spatial. Nothing is presented in the temporally immediate sense. Everything has a processing time. Nothing is presented in the spatial sense of immediacy, since there is distance between distal properties and our cognitive and sensory apparatus. So, I just reject immediacy. Furthermore, nothing feels immediate. If incorrigibility is tied to immediacy, and there is no immediacy, then there is no incorrigibility. The point of positing phenomenal properties is that our experience can be phenomenally characterized and phenomenal properties are the referents of phenomenal characterizations. Whether or not the properties referred to by phenomenal characterizations are to be found at the fundamental level of characterizing the world is a further issue of central debate between illusionists and panpsychists. 27 Garfield (2017: 82) says, “[T]he very bifurcation of experience into the subjective and the objective presupposed by the realist about phenomenal consciousness is illusory, and the entire framework in which we understand our inner experience is subject to massive illusion.” 28 See Maharaj (2018) for a discussion of the epistemology of mystical experience with respect to the collapse of the subject-object dichotomy. My argument builds on his work, but is distinct from it. 29 See Forsthoefel (2018) for a review of Śaṅkara. My understanding is derived from lectures by V.N. Jha on the Tattvabodha. 30 See Barua (2010) on Rāmānuja. 31 See Garfield (2017: 82). 32 See Garfield (2017: 73–5).

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33 At footnote 14, Garfield rebuts my argument against structural illusionism. He says, “[T]he argument against structural illusionism, that is against the claim that subject-object duality is illusory, in fact concedes that that duality is a superimposition. But that is to concede the point, viz., that something that presents itself as a primordial aspect of experience is indeed constructed” [chap. 10: 262–3]. I think Garfield is right to think that my argument is odd here and supports his position. It can be read that way. But he misunderstands the position and fails to consider a potential fallacy in his own reasoning. The point is that there are two types: dual and non-dual consciousness. One is about intentionality (dual) the other about pure phenomenality (non-dual). To hold that the dual version is illusory, one needs to show that the other is the fundamental, and that the dual presents as a “primordial aspect of experience,” when in fact it is non-dual that is fundamental. But dual consciousness doesn’t present itself as primordial. What it does, for most of us, is present itself as how things show up. For mystics, it is different. We assume that because things happen this way for us, they happen to all of us this way all of the time. And, thus, we might be skeptical of mystics because we don’t share their experience. My argument, however, aims to show that there are two types of consciousness, on a par with Block’s distinction between phenomenal and access consciousness, but instead focused on structure: dual vs. non-dual. The two kinds, be they constructed or deconstructed, are simply two distinct kinds. Rather than accepting the view, common in some schools of Indian philosophy, that non-dual consciousness is the nature of fundamental reality and that dual consciousness is an illusion, the two kinds view holds that there are just two distinct kinds of consciousness that serve different roles. Since intentionality is such a prevalent part of animal cognition, dual consciousness shows up as pervasive in animal experience. 34 Of course, and very likely, I am a deeply mistaken neophyte. In Vasubandhu’s Twenty Verses at verse 8 he considers the following objection: If consciousness arises through the senses in response to objects external to the senses, how can reality be consciousness-only? He responds: The teaching of the Buddha was only for neophytes. In other words, it is an exoteric (publicly presented) teaching, but has an esoteric (hidden or secret) meaning. See Anacker (1998: 169).

REFERENCES Anacker, S. (1998), “The Twenty Verses and Their Commentary,” in S. Anacker (trans. and ed.), Seven Works of Vasubandhu, 157–79, Delhi, India: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. Barua, A. (2010), “God’s Body at Work: Rāmānuja and Panentheism,” International Journal of Hindu Studies, 14 (1): 1–30. Brentano, F. (1874/1973), Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, trans. A. C.  Rancurello, D.B. Terrell and L. McAlister, London: Routledge. Burge, T. (2005), “Disjunctivism and Perceptual Psychology,” Philosophical Topics, 33 (1): 1–78. Chalmers, D. (2018), “The Meta-Problem of Consciousness,” Journal of Consciousness Studies, 25: 6–61. Das, N. trans. (2018), “Vasubandhu’s Twenty Verses with Auto-commentary,” in G. Rosen, A. Byrne, J. Cohen, and S. Shiffrin (eds), The Norton Introduction to Philosophy, 429–39, New York and London: W. W. Norton & Co.

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Dasti, M. (2012), “Parasitism and Disjunctivism in Nyāya Epistemology,” Philosophy East & West, 62 (1): 1–15. Dennett, D. (1988), “Quining Qualia,” in A. J. Marcel and E. Bisiach (eds), Consciousness in Modern Science, 42–77, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Falvey, K. (2000a), “The Compatibility of Anti-Individualism and Privileged Access,” Analysis, 60 (1): 137–42. Falvey, K. (2000b), “The Basis of First-Person Authority,” Philosophical Topics, 28 (2): 69–99. Fodor, J. (1990), A Theory of Content and Other Essays, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Forsthoefel, T. (2018), “Advaita Vedānta of Śaṅkara,” in P. Bilimoria and A. Rayner (eds), Routledge History of Indian Philosophy, 233–42, New York: Routledge. Frankish, K. (2017), “Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness,” in K. Frankish (ed.), Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness, 11–39, Exeter, UK: Imprint-Academic Publishing. Garfield, J. (2017), “Illusionism and Givenness,” in K. Frankish (ed.), Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness, 73–83, Exeter: Imprint-Academic Publishing. Garfield, J. (2022), “Cognitive Illusion and Immediate Experience: Perspectives from Buddhist Philosophy,” in I. Shani and S. K. Beiweis (eds), Consciousness, Nature, and Ultimate Reality: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, London: Bloomsbury. Goff, P. (2017), “Is Realism about Consciousness Compatible with a Scientifically Respectable Worldview?” in K. Frankish (ed.), Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness, 83–98, Exeter: Imprint-Academic Publishing. Maharaj, A. (2018), Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Noe, A., ed. (2002), Is the Visual World a Grand Illusion? Exeter: Imprint Academic Publishing. Phillips, S. (2020), Jewel of Reflection on the Truth about Epistemology: A Complete and Annotated Translation of the Tattva-cintā-mani—Volume 1: Perception, London: Bloomsbury. Sellars, W. (1963), “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind,” in his Science, Perception, and Reality, 127–96, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Strawson, G. (2006), “Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism,” Journal of Consciousness Studies, 13 (10–11): 3–31. Strawson, G. (2015), “Real Direct Realism: Reflections on Perception,” in P. Coates and S. Coleman (eds), Phenomenal Qualities: Sense, Perception, and Consciousness, 214–53, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wittgenstein, L. (1921/2001), Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus, 2nd ed., London: Routledge Publishing. Wittgenstein, L. (1953/2009), Philosophical Investigations, 4th ed., London: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing.

INDEX

Abhinavagupta 10, 95–9, 102–4, 106, 108, 110–11, 112n.1, 112n.2, 112n.7, 112n.8, 112n.9, 112n.10, 113n.15, 113n.17, 113n.18, 113n.21, 113n.23, 113n.25, 114n.25, 114n.27, 114n.29, 114n.30, 114n.31, 115n.32, 115n.34, 115n.36, 115n.37, 115n.38, 115n.39, 116n.44 acosmism 51 advaita 48, 50, 52, 56, 62–3 integral advaita of Aurobindo 9, 48, 50–2, 62–3 Advaita Vedānta 8, 11, 23–4, 26, 28–33, 35, 37–8, 41n.15, 42n.22, 50–1, 64n.14, 65n.17, 103–4, 107–8, 115n.32, 165n.6, 247 Albahari, Miri 6, 8, 41n.18, 46, 49, 64n.12, 65n.16, 218n.15 analytic philosophy 138n.2, 284n.1 anti-individualism 271, 285n.12 Anuttara 52 appearance 36, 38, 41n.15, 41n.18, 86, 115n.35, 160, 162, 170n.50, 179, 192, 195, 199n.17, 206, 246, 257–9, 267, 269, 284n.6, 285n.7, 285n.8 apperception 79, 248, 284n.2 asymmetric dependence 285n.13 Ātman 6, 28, 34, 40n.8, 42n.22 atomism 198n.13

atoms 80, 82–3, 192, 206 attā 123 attention 158, 170n.48, 194, 224–5, 229, 234–6, 238, 240–2 Aurobindo 48, 50–1, 53, 56, 58, 62, 64n.5, 65n.19, 65n.20, 65n.21, 65n.23, 66n.28 avidyā 26, 42n.22, 234 awareness 41, 53, 77, 80, 84, 86, 88, 101, 106, 109, 113n.22, 113n.5, 124, 126, 147, 179, 196, 208, 226, 229, 234, 236, 248–9, 252, 260–1, 286n.15 background awareness 89n.9 cognitive awareness 82, 84, 230 higher-order awareness 84 immediate awareness 254, 260, 287n.22 root awareness 239 self-awareness 40n.9, 89n.4, 155 unity of awareness 109 visual awareness 82 Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā 144, 167n.16, 168n.27 behaviorism 204 being 5, 8, 23–39, 39n.2, 39n.4, 39n.6, 40n.7, 40n.8, 40n.9, 40n.10, 41n.14, 42n.20, 47, 51, 53, 61–2, 65n.22, 82, 147, 188, 193–4, 201–2, 206, 211, 260–1 infinite being 53 See also sat

292

belief 74, 89n.5, 119, 246, 249, 252, 285n.13 Bergson, Henri 100, 113n.12 Berkeley, George 11, 131, 144–5, 248 big bang 60, 103 biology 59, 73, 122, 206, 209, 218n.9 bliss 53, 106 body 59, 72–3, 76, 78, 81, 83–5, 88n.1, 95, 103, 106, 109, 125, 127, 129, 132, 135, 144, 147, 166n.14, 194, 203, 260, 271 and universe 207, 211 See also rūpa boredom 213 brahman 24, 26, 28, 30, 34, 36–7, 39, 39n.1, 39n.5, 39n.6, 41n.12, 42n.22, 53, 56, 65n.19, 65n.20, 129–30 brahmanical 146, 168n.25 nirguna 53 saguna 53 Brentano, Franz 280 Brouwer, Luitzen E. J. 97, 99, 101–2, 109–10, 115n.32, 115n.40, 116n.42, 116n.44, 116n.45 Buddha 120–1, 123–4, 126, 128, 130, 132, 195–6, 228, 256, 284, 289n.34 Buddha-nature 196 Buddhaghosa 121, 130, 132, 136 Buddhism 2, 6, 12, 14–15, 46, 81, 119, 131–2, 136, 138n.1, 143, 146, 155, 178, 193, 227, 245, 283–4, 284n.2 Chan Buddhism 178, 183, 187–8, 196 Chinese Buddhism ix, 12, 178 Citta-mātra 11, 137 Huayan Buddhism 12, 177, 178, 189 Madhyamaka 15, 240, 248, 250, 253, 255, 257, 261n.7, 261n.9, 263n.15, 263n.18, 283 Mahāyāna Buddhism 14 Nikāya Buddhism 10, 138n.1 Sautrāntika 12, 80, 83, 138n.1, 144–5, 149, 157, 167n.16, 168n.25, 170n.45 Secular Buddhism 138n.4 Vaibhāṣika 12, 83, 144–5, 165n.5 Vijñānavāda 143 Yogacārā Buddhism 6, 11–2, 14, 137, 143–5, 149, 160, 165n.1, 166n.11, 167n.15, 167n.16, 167n.24,

INDEX

171n.56, 223, 227, 230–42, 248, 250, 253–9, 261n.7, 263n.18, 263n.19, 283, 285n.14 Zen Buddhism 15 Burge, Tyler 15, 268, 271–2, 285n.12 Candrakīrti 15, 228–9, 247, 250–3, 262n.11, 267 causality 10, 72, 84, 86, 88n.2, 95, 97, 109, 257 mental causality 99, 104, 111 causation 84–5, 138, 153, 160, 168n.25, 168n.29, 185, 287n.20 causation view 153–4, 168n.28 karmic causation 10, 119, 130, 134–5, 137 mental causation 9–10, 71, 73, 75, 77, 88, 96, 111, 122, 124, 127, 130, 135, 137, 138n.2 cause 71, 74, 120, 157, 185 Chalmers, David J. 4–5, 34, 64n.9, 73, 76, 89n.8, 89n.9, 112n.3, 283 Chengguan 178, 190, 192 ch’i (qi) 13, 194, 202–5, 207–8, 211, 217, 218n.8 Churchland, Paul 77, 251, 261n.2, 262n.12 cognition 9, 11, 40n.8, 72, 76, 78, 81, 83–5, 87, 146, 148–63, 165, 166n.14, 167n.16, 167n.24, 168n.26, 168n.29, 168n.33, 169n.34, 169n.43, 169n.44, 170n.45, 170n.49, 170n.50, 171n.53, 187, 223, 270 animal cognition 289n.33 cognitive science 3, 77, 261n.7, 263n.23 combination problem 49, 62, 64n.9, 64n.10, 98–9, 112n.4, 212 concept 74, 124n.3, 126n.4, 127, 129, 231, 233, 235, 252, 271, 282 causal concept 74 mental concept 74 phenomenal concept 226 conceptual imputation 250, 252–3 Confucianism 178, 194, 199n.18 Neo-Confucianism 6 consciousness 1–2, 4–9, 11, 13, 23–4, 29–39, 40n.9, 40n.10, 41n.13, 45, 48–9, 52–4, 65n.20, 72–4, 76–7, 79, 81–2, 84, 87–8, 96, 98–9, 104, 106, 109–10, 112n.9, 114n.25,

INDEX

123, 125–6, 126n.4, 127, 130, 132, 143–4, 146–8, 156–8, 160–1, 163–4, 165n.2, 165n.5, 165n.6, 166n.11, 116n.14, 178, 180–1, 184, 186–7, 194–5, 197, 198n.11, 198n.14, 204–15, 218n.6, 225–7, 231, 237–40, 246, 248, 252, 255, 257, 260, 273, 280–1, 289n.34 absolute consciousness 52, 104 access consciousness 289n.33 alaya (storehouse) consciousness 14, 187, 239 autonomy of consciousness 85 character of consciousness 87 cit 8, 23, 33, 53 cosmic consciousness 2, 8, 45–9, 51–2, 61, 98–9, 108, 213 dream consciousness 36, 38 dual consciousness 289n.33 ego consciousness 127 fundamentality of consciousness 1 hard problem of consciousness 4, 34 intentional consciousness 267, 281, 289n.33 minimal consciousness 84 non-dual consciousness 280, 282, 289n.33 phenomenal consciousness 4, 13, 15, 223, 267, 272–3, 280, 286n.14, 288n.27 present consciousness 35 primordial consciousness 34–5 pure consciousness 52, 65n.20, 106, 110, 281 self-consciousness 73 sensory consciousness 257 unconditioned consciousness 41n.18 universal consciousness 35 Consciousness-Only School, the 186–7, 198n.11, 198n.14 content 29–30, 33, 35, 39, 39n.4, 76–7, 87, 155, 158–9, 165n.2, 165n.6, 167n.11, 218n.15, 227, 229–31, 237, 240, 246, 252–3, 256–7, 260, 270, 278, 280, 287n.21, 287n.22 content of perception 12, 127, 144, 167n.11 content of consciousness 14, 34, 215 illusory content 228, 230–1, 240–1, 267, 269, 272, 278–9

293

intentional content 75, 84–5, 225 mental content 27, 271 phenomenal content 8, 29–31, 33, 35, 72, 77, 223, 225, 231–2, 240 convention 253, 282 cosmology 59–60, 65n.20, 104, 107, 111, 171n.54 cosmopsychism 8, 41n.15, 45–51, 54–6, 58, 61–3, 63n.1, 63n.5, 64n.12, 66n.28, 96, 98, 107, 111, 112n.9, 212–14, 218n.13 cosmopsychist 46, 49–51, 54, 64n.8, 110 cosmos 5–6, 8, 23, 34, 47, 49, 57–9, 189, 194, 201, 213 culture 96, 238 Chinese culture 201, 207, 218n.7, 218n.12 Dalai Lama XIV 263n.17 dao 57, 194 Darwin, Charles Robert 73 Daoism 61, 178, 194, 199n.18 decombination problem 41n.15, 49, 99, 112n.8 See also individuation problem dependent arising 85, 119, 121–3, 125, 130, 136, 198n.6 Descartes, René 72–3, 88n.1, 112n.11, 131, 204, 208, 248 desire 72, 74, 113n.22, 119, 129, 132, 213, 252 determinism 102–4, 107 non-determinism 109, 111 Deussen, Paul 51 dharma 10, 76, 80, 178, 191–2, 199n.16, 232, 259 Dharmakīrti 10, 79–80, 82–7, 146, 155, 157, 166n.9, 167n.20, 167n.24, 168n.25, 168n.33, 170n.46, 241, 250 direct realism 164, 275 direct realist 144–9, 151–4, 156, 160, 165n.2, 165n.5, 166n.9, 167n.16, 167n.17, 168n.27, 168n.33, 169n.34, 179n.53, 286n.19 disposition 73–4, 77, 79, 87, 123, 124n.3, 124n.4, 124n.5, 130, 132, 134, 135–6, 204–5 See also saṅkhāra

294

doer 130, 135, 180–1 doership 104, 116n.44 See also kartṛtva Dōgen 15, 247, 258–60, 263n.24, 267, 269 double-aspect theory 64n.5 dream 1, 36, 41n.12, 41n.18, 147, 149, 160, 171n.50, 179, 184, 187–9, 195–6, 213, 269–70, 284n.6, 285n.7 dreamer 147, 160, 285n.7 dream-world 36, 38, 164 Dream of the Red Chamber 207 dual-aspect monism 8, 13, 110, 115n.38, 131 dualism 6, 8, 12, 64n.5, 73, 144, 149, 205 Cartesian dualism 204, 211 predicate dualism 133 property dualism 13, 131, 133 substance dualism 15n.2, 73, 131 duality 184, 234, 236, 240–1, 246, 248, 254–6, 258, 261n.4, 263n.14, 268, 280–2, 287n.22, 289n.33 subject-object duality 246, 254–6, 263n.14, 267, 280–2, 287n.22, 288n.28, 289n.33 See also nonduality of existence and emptiness dukkhā 123, 129, 245, 284 See also suffering, pain Dushun 177–8, 181–5, 189, 191, 193, 197 effect 25, 37–9, 42n.21, 71, 74, 83, 96, 103–5, 112n.1, 119–21, 130, 133, 136, 138, 157–8, 185, 217, 226, 228, 236, 241 See also cause Einstein, Albert 100, 103, 113n.12 embodiment 89n.3, 107, 238, 248 emergence 4, 7, 32, 75, 97, 209–10 brute emergence 211, 219n.18 radical emergence 209–10 strong emergence 15n.1 weak emergence 15n.1 emergentism 9, 76, 96–8, 111, 112n.4 British emergentism 75 emotion 73, 89n.5, 135, 147, 213, 249 empiricism 2 emptiness 106, 178, 182–4, 192–3, 196, 237, 239, 250, 253–8, 261n.9

INDEX

Epictetus 204 epiphenomenalism 78, 133 essence 24, 28, 32, 34, 38, 76, 108–9, 112n.9, 179, 193, 258 event 9, 24–5, 27, 40n.7, 71–8, 87, 90n.10, 95, 105, 107–8, 119, 121–2, 131, 133, 135, 169n.44, 177, 185, 195, 226, 236, 238, 246 awareness event 147 mental event 75–8, 81, 83, 87–8, 89n.5, 119, 133, 232, 240 quantum event 104 See also shi evolution 53–4, 65n.18, 65n.21, 206, 209, 218n.9 evolutionism 53, 206 evolution of consciousness 53 theory of evolution 73 existence 8, 23–30, 33–4, 36, 38–9, 39n.4, 40n.6, 41n.12, 53, 76, 79–80, 87–8, 150, 164, 166n.10, 166n.11, 178, 180, 182–4, 188, 193–6, 198n.6, 237, 239–40, 246, 250, 253, 255, 263n.15, 271, 273 experience 1, 3, 5, 9–12, 14–15, 28, 30–3, 35, 41n.12, 46, 49, 54, 58, 60, 65n.19, 73–6, 79–80, 86, 88, 89n.8, 100, 106–8, 121–4, 126, 131, 133–6, 144, 147, 149–50, 154, 156, 158–60, 164, 165n.6, 166n.14, 189, 195, 203–4, 211–16, 218n.17, 223–42, 246–54, 256–61, 262n.14, 267, 269–70, 272–3, 275–82, 284n.3, 285n.13, 285n.14, 286n.15, 286n.16, 286n.19, 287n.20, 287n.21, 287n.22, 288n.24, 288n.26, 288n.27, 289n.33 experiencer 29, 35 immediate experience 28, 32 mystical experience 57, 60–1, 65n.26, 288n.28 See also qualia fallacy 289 Falvey, Kevin 15, 268, 279, 288n.25 Fazang 178, 188–90 Feyerabend, Paul 251, 262n.12, 268 fictionalism 228 five aggregates (pañca-khandha) 79, 120, 123, 125, 130, 132

INDEX

fivefold laws of nature (pañca-niyāma) 120, 122, 136 Fodor, Jerry 15, 268, 271–2 form 65n.22, 106, 123–4, 134, 146–63, 165, 165n.6, 166n.10, 168n.26, 168n.28, 168n.29, 169n.44, 170n.45, 171n.53, 177, 189, 192–3 See also rūpa four distortions (viparyāsas) 220 four noble truths 245, 261n.1, 283 freedom 99, 105–6, 111, 113n.22, 116n.43 Kantian conception of freedom 88n.2 See also svātantrya free-will 10, 86, 96–7, 99, 102, 104, 108, 115n.32 Freud, Sigmund 129 functionalism 204 Galileo, Galilei 98 Garfield, Jay L. 14–15, 171n.56, 240–1, 267–9, 272–3, 278–80, 282–3, 284n.1, 284n.2, 285n.13, 285n.14, 286n.15, 288n.24, 288n.26, 288n.27, 288n.31, 288n.32, 289n.33 Gasparri, Luca 41n.15, 51 Gibson, Eleanor 254 Gibson, James J. 254 Gisin, Nicolas 10, 97, 99–107, 109–11, 113n.13, 113n.14, 114n.31, 115n.32, 116n.44 givenness 31–2, 253 God 15, 39n.1, 103 Goff, Philip 62, 98 gold lion, the 189 Gorampa 247 grasper and grasped 234, 240–1 hallucination 287n.21 happiness 213, 246 Heidegger, Martin 3, 246–7, 254 hell realm 228 Hempel, Carl 4 higher-order representation (HOT) 40n.9 Hinduism 6–8, 45, 50–1, 61 holism 189, 198n.13 Hume, David 247 Husserl, Edmund 3 Huxley, Thomas H. 73

295

idealism 6–8, 11–13, 41n.18, 46n.5, 103, 126, 131, 137, 143–4, 146, 148–50, 152, 155, 160, 164–5, 165n.6, 166n.13, 167n.19, 167n.20, 179, 181–2, 184, 187, 195, 197 absolute idealism 54, 218n.13 British idealism 46 Buddhist idealism 12, 145–6, 163–4 German idealism 2, 73 objective idealism 52, 181, 198n.9, 198n.11 ontological idealism 250 panpsychist idealism 54 realist idealism 103, 113n.15 subjective idealism 12, 178–81, 197, 198n.11, 263n.19 identity 128, 185–6, 190, 192–3, 217, 250, 252, 254 identity-theory 74–5, 205 token-identity 72, 77–8 type-identity 77 ignorance 43, 88n.1, 129, 132, 181, 224, 234, 239 perceptual ignorance 151 See also avidyā illusion 13, 15, 35–6, 41n.15, 41n.17, 53, 86, 103, 178–9, 180, 184, 187–8, 196, 218n.6, 223–4, 226–32, 235, 237, 239–41, 246–8, 251–5, 258–61, 261n.4, 261n.5, 261n.7, 267–71, 279–83, 284n.2, 284n.3, 285n.9, 287n.22, 288n.24, 288n.27, 289n.33 illusion of consciousness 226–7 illusionary content 228, 230–1, 240–1, 267, 269, 272, 278–9 illusions of illusions 278, 285n.9 illusion of Māyā 108 magical illusion 228, 233, 239 perceptual illusion 86 rope-snake illusion 281 illusionism 7, 13–15, 197, 223, 230, 267–8, 282–3, 284n.3 accuracy illusionism 15, 267, 282 Buddhist illusionism 228–30, 240, 259, 269, 282, 287n.22 foundational illusionism 15, 267–9, 272, 282

296

illusionists 8, 50–1, 53, 65n.16, 223, 225–6, 229, 232, 240, 268, 288n.26 incompleteness illusionism 15, 268, 282 phenomenal illusionism 15, 267, 272, 280, 282–3, 284n.1 structural illusionism 15, 267, 282, 289n.33 Yogācāra illusionism 14, 228, 230–1, 234, 242 imagination 124, 178–9, 187, 201, 228, 234, 287n.21 immediacy 32, 248–9, 253–4, 261, 278, 288n.26 impressions 79, 163, 246 latent impressions 144, 148, 160, 163–4, 165n.3, 167n.21 See also vāsanās indeterminism 102–3, 105, 111 individuation problem 46, 48–9, 54, 62, 64n.11, 66n.28 See also decombination problem Indra, the jewel net of 184, 224 inference 144, 156–63, 165, 171n.58, 233, 250–1, 282 infinite 56, 65n.24, 99–103, 107, 113n.14, 115n.32, 277 infinite regress 40n.6 information 60, 65n.26, 98, 100–3, 105, 107, 113n.13, 113n.14, 115n.32, 124, 167n.20, 237, 252, 276, 278, 288n.22 integrated information theory 97 intention 39n.1, 72–4, 77, 86, 108, 119, 127, 249 intentional action 128, 134–5 intentionality 3, 75, 80, 107, 205, 280–1, 289n.33 interdependence 136–7, 183, 187, 191, 260 mereological interdependence 186 intersubjectivity 171n.56 introspection 226–7, 278–9, 286n.16 involution 54, 65n.18, 65n.21 inwardness 28–9, 52 irrealism 180–2, 184, 187–8, 193, 195, 197 James, William 60, 206, 209, 211, 216, 218n.9, 218n.17 Jayanta 145–6, 149, 154–6, 166n.9, 166n.10, 167n.20, 167n.24, 168n.26, 169n.42, 169n.44

INDEX

jīva 34, 41n.12, 42n.22 Journey to the West 207 judgment 198n.4, 226 Kalupahana, David J. 122 Kant, Immanuel 11, 25, 87, 88n.2, 217, 286n.15 Kamalaśīla 247 karma 87, 105, 120, 127–31, 134, 137, 160, 171n.56, 195 Kāśmīr Śaivism 9, 11, 48, 50–1, 54, 63, 64n.5, 65n.17, 103, 108, 144 Kim, Jaegwon 75, 202, 217n.3 Klawonn, Erich 24, 30, 33 knower 106 knowing 75, 147, 274, 278–9, 286n.16 knowing objects 247 knowledge 11, 25, 73, 113n.22, 115n.35, 125, 156, 160, 198n.4, 217, 237, 246, 251–5, 260, 261n.5, 263n.15, 274–6, 278, 283 first-person knowledge 248 perceptual knowledge 156 self-knowledge 247, 252–3, 260–1, 279 kartṛtva 104 Kumārila 146, 155, 166n.9, 167n.20, 169n.42, 169n.44 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 6, 73, 98, 208, 210, 218n.17 Locke, John 144–5 locked-in syndrome 84–5 Longchenpa 247 magic 95, 178, 188, 224–5, 239, 241 magic show 223–4, 239–40 magical illusions 223, 228, 233, 239 magician 178–9, 184, 224, 239, 263n.24 Malebranche, Nicolas 73 manifestation 8, 23, 30, 32, 38–9, 52, 57–8, 61, 63, 81, 106, 135, 198n.11, 234, 236 immanent manifestation 10 manifestation of consciousness 52, 187 phenomenal manifestation 30 principle of manifestation 33 materialism 3, 12, 95, 202, 205

INDEX

mathematics 99–104, 107, 115n.40, 116n.44 intuitionist mathematics 97, 99–104, 109–11, 115n.32, 115n.41, 116n.42 Platonic mathematics of infinity 101 see also number Māyā 99, 104–5, 108, 110, 114n.31 illusion of Māyā 108 meditation 61, 106 memory 78, 148–9, 155, 160 mental state 4, 60, 74, 77–9, 83–5, 89n.5, 147, 187, 189, 204–5, 209, 213, 231, 252, 282–3 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 3, 246 metaphysics 3, 11–12, 63n.5, 65n.22, 72, 113n.12, 178, 202, 208, 213, 218n.15, 269 Abhidharma metaphysics 81, 83 Advaitic metaphysics 281 Cārvāka metaphysics 81 Huayan metaphysics 178–9 materialistic metaphysics 203 metaphysics of mind 11, 64n.14, 80 panpsychist metaphysic 49 trope metaphysics 10 middle path, the 121, 193 mind, the 1–3, 7–8, 11–13, 23, 26, 30, 34–6, 39n.5, 45, 50, 64n.10, 71–3, 75–6, 80–2, 86, 89n.3, 95–7, 100, 105–6, 126–9, 144, 160, 164, 171n.56, 178–82, 184, 186–7, 189, 192–7, 198n.11, 203–5, 209, 211–13, 217, 237, 239, 246, 250, 252, 254–5, 260, 278, 286n.16, 287n.22 cosmic mind 213–14 mind-body problem 13, 72, 131, 202, 217 mind-body relation 96, 144 mind-body supervenience 75–6 Mīmāṃsaka 145, 149, 166n.9, 167n.16, 169n.34 mirage 86, 247 monism 6, 8, 13, 47–8, 51–2, 54, 56–7, 59–61, 63n.5, 110, 208, 213 anomalous monism 75 dual-aspect monism 8, 13, 110, 115n.38, 131 existence monism 47, 54, 56 generative monism 47, 55

297

mereological monism 47, 55 number-monism 212 pluralistic monism 214 priority monism 47, 54–8, 63n.4 Russelian monism 73 token-monism 47, 63n.2, 63n.4 type-monism 63n.2 motion 105, 123, 150, 209, 270, 277 Müller, Max 51 mysticism 46, 59, 61, 66n.26, 255 mystics 61, 65n.21, 280–1, 289n.33 Myth of the Given 246, 249–50, 261n.8, 272–4, 277–80, 285n.14 Nagarjuna 250, 263n.15 Nagasawa, Yujin 212–13 Nagel, Thomas 280 Naiyāyika 40, 145, 149, 166n.7, 167n.16, 279 natural philosophy 88n.2 Chinese natural philosophy 13 Chinese conception of nature 208 naturalism 73, 76–8, 80, 208 neuroscience 3, 78, 84, 104, 227, 255 nihilism 197 nirvana 183, 187, 192–3, 198n.6 Nietzsche, Friedrich 208 nonduality of existence and emptiness 184, 188 nonexistence 37, 166n11, 182, 188, 255 non-interference among things, the 190–1 nothing 26, 29, 33, 36, 39n.4, 41n.18, 187–8, 199n.17, 250, 260–1 nothingness 26, 188, 194 number 99–102, 104, 107 real number 99–104, 107, 113n.14, 115n.32 noumenal 52, 88n.2 noumenal realm 11 noumenon 183, 186, 189–93, 198n.4 nunc fluens 27 nunc stans 27 Nyāya 15, 144, 251, 268, 272 Nyāya-Vaiēseṣika tradition 247 objectivity 88, 97, 110, 120 omniscience 34 On the Gold Lion 188 One, the 47, 53, 55–9, 186 Oneness 36, 54, 56

298

pain 31, 33, 73, 78–9, 85, 88, 129, 195, 204–5, 214, 229, 274–6, 279–80, 283–4 See also dukkha Pali Canon 138n.1 pañca-khandha (the five aggregates) 120, 123, 130, 132 pañca-niyāma (the fivefold laws of nature) 120, 122 panentheism 98, 110 pantheism 110 panprotopsychism 8, 73 panpsychism 5, 7–8, 12–13, 48, 64n.6, 64n.7, 73, 97–8, 110, 112n.4, 143–4, 165n.1, 203, 207–9, 211, 213–14, 216, 218n.17 micro-panpsychism 98 micro-reductive panpsychists 49 panpsychist 12–13, 49, 54, 64n.8, 89n.8, 203, 207, 209, 211–12, 241, 288n.26 panpsychist metaphysic 49 panpsychist property 133 panpsychist property dualism 133 panpsychist idealism 54 parādvaita 9, 48, 51 Patrul Rinpoche 247 Peirce, Charles Sanders 6 perception 3, 10–12, 32, 49, 73–5, 78, 86, 89n.5, 100, 119–20, 123–7, 130–1, 134, 136–7, 149, 152, 155, 157–9, 161, 163–4, 165n.2, 166n.10, 166n.11, 168n.25, 169n.43, 170n.44, 170n.48, 180, 187, 212, 214, 224, 227, 230, 231, 247, 249–51, 254, 259–60, 262n.13, 268–9, 275–8, 284n.2, 284n.5, 285n.12, 287n.21 person 39, 42n.22, 49, 78, 81, 108, 110, 123–4, 130, 204, 213, 228–9, 238, 259, 274, 276 first-person 74, 96–7, 99, 107, 109, 116n.44, 232, 248 third-person 5, 96, 99, 109, 111, 116n.45, 232 personal identity 75, 83, 89n.4 phenomena 4, 23, 45, 49, 52–3, 58, 60, 72, 74, 76–7, 79–85, 87–8, 89n.7, 127, 158, 179, 182–3, 185–7,

INDEX

189–93, 196–7, 198n.11, 209, 223, 225–6, 228, 231, 233–7, 239, 241–2, 250, 252, 256–7 mental phenomena 9, 73, 75–6, 78–9, 81, 120, 230, 241 phenomenal 4, 8, 30–1, 41n.12, 49–50, 52, 72, 78, 81, 83, 86, 89n.8, 178–80, 186, 189–91, 195, 197, 212, 214–15, 223, 226, 232 phenomenal character 37, 78, 215–16 See also concept, content, consciousness, illusionism, realism, properties phenomenalism 6, 11, 126, 131, 137, 146 phenomenality 4, 30–1, 289n.33 phenomenology 13, 76, 99, 105–6, 115n.33, 275–8, 287n.20 Buddhist phenomenology 263n.19 phenomenology of perception 275, 277 Phi 98 philosophy of mind 2, 5, 7–9, 79, 112n.2, 218n.10, 246, 284n.1 Buddhist philosophy of mind 14, 138n.3, 250, 261n.8, 284n.1, 286n.14 physicalism 3–7, 9, 11–14, 72–3, 80, 84, 86–7, 137, 144, 149, 202, 217n.3 Cārvāka physicalism 72 neurophysicalism 76–8, 89n.5 non-reductive physicalism 131, 133 pan-physicalism 144 reductive physicalism 131 physics 59–60, 71, 74, 76, 80, 100–2, 104, 113n.14, 122 Plato 55 and Platonism 6 pleasure 88, 129, 195, 229 Plotinus 57, 61, 65n.20 and Neo-Platonism 6, 46, 57, 61 pluralism 57, 193 truth pluralism 181, 193 positivism 2 pramāṇa 250–2, 262n.11, 270, 287n.22 pratyabhijñā 51, 102 primacy of the whole 184–5 principle (li) 177, 189, 197n.3, 198n.4 properties 4, 25–6, 75–6, 79–80, 83, 88, 89n.9, 131, 133, 169n.35, 211, 230,

INDEX

232–3, 236, 246–7, 249, 251, 254, 257, 262n.14, 272–3, 280, 287n.22, 288n.26 dispositional properties 73 formal properties 80 functional properties 81–2 fundamental properties 12, 73 intrinsic properties 4, 73 macrophenomenal properties 73 microphenomenal properties 89n.8 mental properties 75, 86, 133 phenomenal properties (qualities) 3, 13, 64n.8, 72–3, 88, 89n.8, 89n.9, 223, 225–7, 231, 238, 262n.14, 273, 275, 279–80, 286n.15, 288n26 physical properties 83, 133, 205 protophenomenal properties 89n.9 structural properties 89n.9 qualia 4, 14, 75, 85, 232, 238 raw feel of experience 4, 14 quantum field 60 quantum field theory 60 quantum physics 100, 102–3 quiddity 73 quietism 228 Quine, Willard Van Orman 15, 251–3, 268 realism 7, 11–12, 15, 54, 113n.15, 150, 178–82, 184, 188, 191, 197, 198n.9, 240 direct realism 12, 144–6, 164–5, 166n.7, 168n.29, 275 indirect realism 144, 275–6, 286n.19 holistic realism 12, 178, 184 phenomenal realism 15, 262n.14, 268, 272–4, 277–80, 285n.14 reality 1, 5, 7–8, 11–15, 24, 26–8, 30, 32, 34, 36–7, 41n.12, 41n.18, 42, 48–9, 52–6, 58–9, 61, 76, 80, 87, 90n.10, 100, 105, 109–10, 116n.44, 120, 126, 129, 133, 178, 196–7, 204–5, 207, 210, 211–13, 216–17, 218n.15, 229, 239–40, 253, 256–61, 262n.14, 269–72, 281–2, 289n.34 absolute reality 24, 26, 108 eternal reality 24 experiential reality 45

299

external reality 11, 236 fundamental reality 7, 9, 26, 56, 58, 60–1, 143, 181, 184, 188, 192, 216, 245, 281, 283, 289n.33 intrinsic reality 5 mind-independent reality 11 nature of reality 60, 210, 253, 256 objective reality 111, 120 reality of consciousness 166n.6 reality of time 10, 107, 109 time-transcendent reality 107–8 ultimate reality 7–8, 47, 61, 65n.26, 177, 183, 189, 197n.3, 203, 205, 231, 253, 256 unreality 24, 26, 36–8, 41n.15, 166n.6, 196 Realm of Principle, the 183, 189, 198n.7 Realm of Things, the 183, 189, 197, 198n.7 reason 39n.4, 61, 87, 88n.2, 198n.4, 210, 272, 287n.21 recognition 51, 62, 73, 102, 166n.44, 236–7, 260 See also pratyabhijñā reductionism 3, 72, 75, 80–1, 87 Reid, Thomas 144–5 reflection 52, 75, 78, 127, 179, 184, 190–1, 194, 277 representationalism 12, 145–6, 151, 157, 164–5 representationalist 12, 144–6, 148–9, 151, 154, 156–65, 167n.16, 167n.17, 168n.25, 171n.53, 171n.58 results (vipāka) 120 rūpa 79, 123, 126 nāma-rūpa 130–2 See also body, form Russell, Bertrand 150, 164 Saccidānanda 53, 65n.19 sākṣin 29 Śaṅkara 9, 24–5, 28, 34, 36–9, 39n.6, 40n.8, 41n.17, 42n.22, 47–8, 51, 56, 64n.14, 281–2 saṅkhāra 123–4, 128, 130, 132 Śāntarakṣita 15, 169n.34, 247–8, 255–8, 267 Sariputta 132–3 sat 8, 23–4, 26–8, 30, 33, 36–9, 39n.1, 39n.4

300

Sartre, Jean-Paul 3 Schaffer, Jonathan 47, 56–7, 59 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph 88n.2 scholasticism 6 Abhidhamma scholasticism 138n.1 Schopenhauer, Arthur 5, 208 Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of the will 208 self, the 1, 10, 25–6, 28–9, 34–5, 74, 115n.32, 119–20, 123–5, 127–8, 130–1, 134–5, 153, 160, 169n.34, 182, 194–5, 227, 229, 237, 281–3 See also attā, ātman, brahman, soul self-luminosity 31–2, 34 Sellars, Wilfrid 15, 246–7, 250–3, 261n.8, 268, 277, 286n.14, 287n.21 sense faculty 249, 252, 287n.22 senses 42n.22, 80–2, 84–5, 191, 195, 247, 251–2, 254, 257, 287n.22, 289n.34 Shani, Itay 98, 218n.15 shi 177, 183 Siderits, Mark 80 Śiva 10, 51–2, 107–8, 110 soul, the 34, 39, 88n.1, 89n.4, 106, 114n.31 solipsism 149 space 60–1, 100–3, 107, 182, 191, 214, 236 inner space 205, 247, 254 transcendent space outside of time 108 spanda 52 Spinoza, Baruch 6, 131, 208 spiritus 6 stances 223, 232, 235, 240 standpoint 40n.18, 47, 51, 87, 211, 228–31, 250, 262, 279 Strawson, Galen 2, 15, 268, 278–9, 286n.16, 286n.19, 287n.21 subject 2, 7, 32, 34, 41n.12, 41n.15, 41n.18, 45–6, 48–50, 52, 54–6, 62, 81, 88n.2, 106, 108–11, 115n.40, 116n.42, 116n.43, 116n.44, 116n.45, 130, 144, 147, 149, 151, 154, 160, 166n.14, 203, 211–16, 218n.15, 230, 234–7, 240–1, 247–8, 254–5, 267, 273, 275–6, 279–81, 286n.14, 286n.19, 287n.22, 288n.24

INDEX

macro-subject 212, 215 micro-subject 211–12, 215–16 subjectivity 2–4, 10, 28–9, 42n.18, 49, 64n.8, 75, 80, 96–7, 99, 105–11, 112n.7, 112n.9, 113n.22, 116n.45, 171n.56, 205, 212, 248, 254–5, 257–8, 260, 286n.14 cosmic subjectivity 110–11 first-person subjectivity 96 foundational subjectivity 96, 109, 111 ontological subjectivity 86 substance 39n.4, 40n.6, 52–3, 58, 74, 76, 80, 114n.25, 124, 130–1, 133, 137, 189, 192, 195 mental substance 125, 127, 193 substrate 95, 101, 149 suffering 195, 245–6, 253, 255, 261, 268, 282–4 See also dukkhā sufficient reason 210, 218n.10 Sufism 46 supervenience 3, 79, 81, 133 mind-body supervenience 75–6 svātantrya 105 Svātantryavāda 10, 96–7, 102, 108 Taber, John 148, 167n.23, 169n.44 Taiji 57 theoretical re-description 228–9, 242 this-ness 105, 109 three naturelessnesses 256 three natures 256 time 10, 23, 27, 35–6, 41n.12, 60–1, 97, 99, 102, 107–9, 111, 113n.22, 114n.31, 115n.32, 116n.44, 160, 182, 185, 206, 224, 227–8, 283, 284n.5, 284n.6, 285n.8, 288n.26, 100 Einsteinian time 100, 107, 113n.12 Heraclitus-time 107 objective time 35 Parmenides-time 107 reality of time 10, 107, 109 subjective time 35 truth 89n.9, 90, 99, 108, 111, 122, 181–2, 184, 192–3, 196, 249, 271 conventional truth 255–8, 261, 261n.5, 262n.10, 263n.15 transitory truth 181–2

INDEX

301

truthbearers 90n.10 truthmakers 90n.10 truth pluralism 181, 193 ultimate truth 178, 196, 255–6, 258, 261 universal truth 198n.4 Tsongkhapa 247 Tu, Wei-Ming 201–4, 207–8, 217, 218n.8

Vedānta 2, 11 Vidyāraṇya 26, 31, 39n.4, 42n.22 viññāṇa 123, 124n.5, 127, 132

upādāna 38 Upaniṣads, the 38 unity-in-diversity 47, 55–6, 59–61, 63

yogic abilities 106

Vaidya, Anand Jayprakash 64n.11, 262n.14 vāsanās 144, 148, 160 See also latent impressions vedanā 123, 126, 130

Whitehead, Alfred North 6, 202, 208, 217n.1, 218n.15 Whitehead’s metaphysics 218n.15 See also sāksin Wittgenstein, Ludwig 254, 274, 284n.5

Zen tradition 258–9, 261 zero-point field 60 Zhiyan 178, 184–8, 198n.10 Zhuang Zhou 1 Zhuangzi 1 Zongmi 178, 193–7, 198n.8, 199n.17, 199n.18

302

303

304

305

306

307

308