errrrr...

I've been trying to think about what exactly the relationship between conceptual and nonconceptual error is for Dharmakīrti. So we know that all perceptions that are structured by subject/object duality are erroneous (even though they're nonconceptual) with respect to the fact that they present the existence of an external object that is separate from the subject. The other nonconceptual distortion is that things look permanent (or at least not momentary).

But (I think, and here's where things get a bit murky) perceptions are also NOT erroneous with regard to the causal characteristics of the particulars involved on a whole slew of other things. If I'm cognizing the appropriate set of mental impressions to give rise to a perception of my cat, that perception isn't erroneous qua cat; it's just erroneous insomuch as I'm interpreting the unique particular that is the mental image containing the causal properties necessary to produce a judgement "hey, it's mrphball!" as being some enduring external thing. The only reason that perception and inference can function at all is that there are some aspects of the cognitive image that correctly track causal properties of the particulars that produce it.

But how far does this correct tracking go? Another way to ask this question would be, what appears in svasamvedana? My normal, samsaric perception of my cat is nonerroneous if I'm actually able to interact with her, etc. Does the nonerroneous part of this image STAY nonerroneous at the ultimate, svasamvedana level? Or is there some kind of radical discontinuity between the parts of perceptions that are nonerroneous conventionally and the parts that are nonerroneous ultimately? If I were to svasamvedana mrphball, would her causal characteristics still appear in some nonintentional, nondistributed way? Is that just prakāśa? Is that prakāśa different from the prakāśa of a cognition that would conventionally lead to a perception of my bike? What does it mean for the prakāśa of a particular svasamvedana to be different from another prakāśa? If they're all the same, why do we have cognitions of different things? If we have cognitions of different things because of error, how can we account for the many different nonerroneous parts of normal perception?

What makes the image---and not the concept or the object---the pramāṇa?

It seems like the basic set of stuff that has to be in place for a pramāṇa to occur is: 1) a real object 2) a properly functioning sensory organ 3) a real image of the real object 4) a correctly formed concept based on the real image 5) a prompt to action. The pramāṇa is the most important instrument in prompting action; if everything in this chain is in fact real/correct, telicly efficacious action occurs.

Since the concept is the final member of this chain and only it actually immediately prompts action, it seems like the concept should be the pramāṇa. Dharmakīrti rejects this because, even based on a real image, a concept can be formed incorrectly. Further, one can't form a correct concept unless the image has the causal capacity to produce the concept. So the correctness of the concept depends on the content of the image. This makes perfect sense.

However, why doesn't this same logic extend from the image through the sensory organ to the object? If one doesn't have properly functioning organs, the image won't be correct; if there is no real object, the sensory organ won't sense anything. If the pramāṇa is the thing that MUST be in place for telicly efficacious action to occur, it seems like this would be the object not the image. One can have an image, but unless that image accurately depicts a real object, that image won't lead to a pramāṇa.

Perhaps this is why, in the end, the image IS the object. Since all we can ever know of an object is our experience of it---that is, the image---we don't have any awareness whatsoever of any object other than the image. So it's hard to defend the idea that something we can by definition never have any awareness of is itself an instrumental awareness.

If the image is the object, it's kind of unclear what the sensory organ would be in this case. The image arises as a result of contact between the object and the sensory organ; if the object is already the image, the image is already there, and there seems to be no role for a sensory organ. The sensory organ couldn't be something extrinsic to the image/object because then it would have no role in relating the two. So what is it that allows the image to be the object? Reflexive awareness lets this happen. The capacity for the image and the object to be the same thing is what reflexive awareness provides. I think.

So saying that the image is the pramāṇa is, in the end, saying that reflexive awareness is the pramāṇa because reflexive awareness is a description of what the image of an object in cognition actually is. I think. And I guess reflexive awareness is also a description of how/why the image, the object, the instrument, and the cognition itself are all the same thing. More on this later....

One interesting consequence of this line of thought (if it's in fact correct; that might be a big if ^_^) is that it does not seem possible to justify the claim that the image, not the object, is the pramāṇa unless awareness is of an internal object, not an external object. If the object were other than the image, then the same line of reasoning that claims the image, not the concept, is the pramāṇa would extend all the way to the external object. It seems, then, that while it's easy and convenient to think about the production of a pramāṇa in terms of interaction between an external object and a sensory organ, in the end, Dharmakīrti's account is not compatible with external realism.

Buddhist Reasoning and a "Paradox" of material implication

 If Scott Walker is made of cheese, then Wisconsin is in the Midwest.


Or, better yet:


If Scott Walker is made of fresh curds, Wisconsin state workers have 5 weeks of paid vacation (like Sweden).


Oddly enough, if either of these two conditional statements is formalized in the typical way, they both will be considered true. Or, to be more precise, they will both be considered valid. The "paradox" here is that, intuitively, neither argument appears true or valid in any way at all. So why are they formalized in this way?


The key is a move away from content and toward structure that is typical of much Euroamerican thought starting at the end of the 19th century. In logic, this move is reflected in a separation of "validity" from "soundness." A "valid" argument is one that has the proper structure, whereas a "sound" one contains true premises. Whatever (potentially nefarious) motivations might underlie this separation, it certainly has proved useful, since it was essential to the development of computers. If your fridge has a microprocessor in it, this reasoning about Scott Walker would like perfectly fine to it. And this is why fridges do not run the world (yet).


But to get back to the formalization, what is it? A conditional is often formalized as a "material implication." Here's a simple version:


p ⇒ q 

This is read, "if p, then q." In our example, "p" and "q" stand for the sentences that are the "antecedent" (p = If Scott Walker is made of fresh curds) and the "consequent" (q = Wisconsin state workers have 5 weeks of paid vacation).

The next step is to understand that this type of conditional can be reduced to a simpler logical operation, namely, a conjunction ("and"). So:


p ⇒ q ≡ ¬(p∧¬q)


We can read this as: "the statement, 'if p then q', is logically equivalent to the statement, 'it is not the case that p and not-q.' 


This way of rendering the conditional makes a certain amount of sense. Take an obvious example: "if Obama was born in Hawaii, then he is a US citizen." Here, the intuition is that this is equivalent to saying, "It is not the case that Obama was born in Hawaii and yet he is not a US citizen."


While intuitive to a certain extent, this way of reducing a material implication to a simpler operation, the conjunction "and" (∧), completely ignores any relation between p and q. When we look at the possible values for this formalization, the problem becomes obvious:

p	q	¬q	(p∧¬q)	¬(p∧¬q)	p ⇒ q
T	T	F	F	T	T
T	F	T	T	F	F
F	T	F	F	T	T
F	F	T	F	T	T

This truth table shows that the conditional is false only when the antecedent is true (Obama was born in Hawaii) but the consequent is false (It is not the case that he is a US citizen). The problem, however, is especially the third and fourth lines: as long as the antecedent (p) is false, the conditional will always be true. Thus, we say, "If Scott Walker is made of fresh curds, Wisconsin state workers have 5 weeks of paid vacation (like Sweden)." And this conditional is always true because Scott Walker is not made of fresh curds (at least, not entirely).

Now, despite the political success of arguments that begin with a false antecedent ("If Saddam had WMDs, then ..."), most of the time we recognize that arguments of this kind make no sense (We just say, "But Saddam did not have WMDs!"). Yet in formal terms, a conditional with a false antecedent always remains valid, despite our intuition. And the reason it remains valid is that structure has been divorced from content, such that there is no relation between the antecedent (p) and consequent (q) that allows us to reason from one to the other. Instead, the relation between the two is a mere conjunction, which amounts to simply putting one next to the other without any relation between them. If we understood that the conditional required such a relation, then the minute the antecedent (p) was false, we would say, "Wait a minute! Your argument only makes sense if this first statement is true!"

Buddhist thinkers starting with Dharmakīrti recognized this problem, and for them the use of a mere conjunction amounts to a "mere co-occurrence" (sahabhāvamātra) of the antecedent and consequent. Dharmakīrti rejects mere co-occurrence as adequate to understanding the way we reason, and he thus developed the notion of a "natural relation" (svabhāvapratibandha) that attempts to describe more intuitively the way that we use reason.

More on that some other time....