Indeed. Thanks for this.
You’ve said it more effectively, but that’s what I was trying to point to when I wrote that the four statements can be understood as a way to stop all the papañca-nizing about this.
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This is just wrong. Modern logic has come a long way since Aristotle. Constructive or intuitionistic logic does not use LEM and it is a bedrock logic that much of modern mathematics and computer science (through the Curry Howard corresponding ) relies upon. Scholars who wish to study logic and how it applies to Nagaruna I think should study modern logic and the role of constructive logic (which again does not assume LEM) in modern mathematics and computer science through subjects like homotopy type theory, category theory, topos theory and the like. Your statements reflect the status quo of beliefs about logic from more than a century ago, but we have since learned they are simply wrong.
LEM is simply not as important as the previous centuries of logicians thought and not assuming LEM has led modern mathematicians and logicians to great and profound insights. For instance it is a fact that Godels incompleteness theorem can be arrived at constructively without assuming LEM. Similarly Turing’s halting problem and thus the definition of the non-computable can be arrived at constructively without assuming LEM. Computer proof checkers use constructive logic at their core. The category for quantum mechanics is at heart a constructive logic. All this has been arrived at by explicitly NOT assuming LEM.
This is the way.
One quibble is that I think it skillful to refer to this as a ‘refutation by contradiction’ and not a ‘proof by contradiction’ to avoid confusion that we’ve seen arise in this thread.
However, I think @josephzizys’s argument could be formulated rather like this:
- Assume: There exist valid and authentic sutta where the Buddha said “they are not reborn” applies to a Realized One.
- Assume: There exist valid and authentic sutta where the Buddha said it is not appropriate to say, “they are not reborn” applies to a Realized one.
- #1 and #2 are contradictory.
- Therefore one must give up either #1 or #2.
- @josephzizys evinces a list of principles for why #1 should be given up and #2 upheld.
Please correct me if I’m wrong @josephzizys.
If I understand @Jasudho’s attempted resolution it is something like:
- Assuming both #1 and #2 are not actually contradictory.
- There was a hidden assumption in #2 by the people the Teacher was speaking to where ‘essence’ was presumed. He attempted to dissuade against this hidden presumption in this specific context and because of this #2 was stated over and over.
- Number #1 was stated because the people the Teacher spoke to in those contexts did not assume the hidden assumption of essence in the Teacher.
- BTW, #2 is less “core” than #1 for unspecified reasons.
Please correct me if I’m wrong @Jasudho.
@josephzizys’s reply to this is along the lines that it contains a lot of elaboration and presumptions that are not grounded in the actual text. Further, that If this is were the true intention of the Teacher he could have easily said as much in more straightforward language and he didn’t. I’m less clear on this, but I think @josephzizys further is saying that #1 necessarily presumes the very essence that #2 was meant to combat.
@Jasudho’s reply to this is that the elaboration makes sense and is concordant with a lot of other’s explanation and to further restate that #1 is “core” and therefore cannot be given up. I think he also disputes that #1 necessarily presumes an essence.
At least that is my best attempt at succinctly formulating the arguments and recapitulating them in language that makes sense to me.
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As I specifically said, anticipating this very argument, we are not discussing “modern logic”. We are discussing the logic that applied in Northern Indian in the second century CE; which barely even got to the point of Aristotle, let along going beyond his still relevant systematisation.
You can accept the law of the excluded middle or abandon the idea of proof by contradiction. You can’t do both. And no form of anachronistic modernism can rescue your trivialist position.
If you are stating that ancient India was aware of Aristotle and LEM then it is your argument - not mine - that contains an anachronism. Your supposition is that ancient Indian logic necessarily included something like LEM, but you have not demonstrated that. Are you suggesting that ancient India got LEM from Aristotle?
I do not accept the law of the excluded middle. I do abandon proof by contradiction. That leaves me with refutation by contradiction. It is apparent that you do not or cannot see the difference between the two. As others have pointed out you are making the error of conflating LEM and the law of non-contradiction. They are not the same. Not accepting LEM still leaves the law of non-contradiction and thus leaves the possibility of refutation by contradiction.
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You clearly stated logic doesn’t work without the LEM.
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Anyone wanting to know more about the difference between ‘refutation by contradiction’ and ‘proof by contradiction’ and why the latter implies LEM, but the former does not can refer here and here.
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@josephzizys @Jasudho so far your debate has mostly been about Realized Ones, but I went backed and checked my memory and found that ‘the self’ is itself ( pardon the pun 
) one of the undeclared:
“How is it now, Master Gotama, is there a self?”
When this was said, the Blessed One was silent.
“Then, Master Gotama, is there no self?”
A second time the Blessed One was silent.
Then the wanderer Vacchagotta rose from his seat and departed.
So it seems this isn’t just about Realized Ones or unawakened people, but the Teacher was silent or undeclared and refused to answer that ‘the self does not exist’. I think this ‘self’ is what @Jasudho describes as ‘essence.’
BTW, tying it all together I think the above is very closely related to the difference between refutation by contradiction and proof by contradiction. That is, I think the Teacher intended a refutation by contradiction of ‘self’ or ‘being’ but did not intend to turn that into a proof by contradiction that ‘there is no self’ or ‘there exists no self.’ But to see this requires understanding the difference between refutation and proof by contradiction and it is not obvious and seems quite subtle or beyond trivial understanding.
Yeah, I went back and checked and cannot find anywhere where you said anything like this let alone specifically. You talked about Aristotle and how LEM is indispensable to logic and without it you can’t do anything by pointing out a contradiction. Which again, is just wrong.
Regarding this distinction between epistemic and metaphysical readings of Buddhism, there is another important instance of it that highlights a fixed view that all Mādhyamikas seem to share. This is that dependent arising is a metaphysical doctrine. That is to say a doctrine concerning existence, non-existence, and causation.
A growing number of scholars, including Hamilton (2000), Shulman (2008), Gombrich (2009), Heim & Ram-Prasad (2018), Jones (2022), and me (Attwood 2022) (refs here) now see this doctrine as specifically and narrowly related to the arising and ceasing of sensory experience. That is to say, many of us now see this as an epistemic doctrine and furthermore as an aide to pondering the arising and cessation of sense experience rather than an attempt at a philosophy.
A great unrecognised schism in Buddhism is between those schools that embrace the metaphysical reading (e.g. Theravāda and Mādhyamaka) and those that retain the epistemic reading (e.g. Prajñāpāramitā).
My work on Prajñāpāramitā–with strong influences from Sue Hamilton and Matthew Orsborn (aka Huifeng)–has led me to conclude that we generally downplay the important of cessation, i.e. the cessation of sensory experience in meditation. For example, the most interesting thing by far about the arising of sensory experience, is that it can all cease. While I haven’t experienced it first hand, the anecdotes from people who have undergone it, combined with the early results of neuroscience studies persuade me that the complete cessation of sensory experience is a real state that some human beings can deliberately get themselves into. And that this state, in which sensory experience is entirely absent, is what both nirvāṇa and śūnyatā properly refer to, at least in early Buddhism and Prajñāpāramitā Buddhism.
Indeed, I would say that the cessation of sensory experience is the context against which all Buddhist claims to knowledge must be seen. Dependent arising is interesting precisely because it reveals the mechanism by which sensory experience can cease without the loss of general alertness (i.e. nirvāṇa is not the same as deep sleep). Really, we’d be better off talking about dependent cessation.
The assumption that dependent arising is a metaphysical theory gives rise to further problematic assumptions. The idea that there are no real agents for example. Which is the first line of attack above in response to my game. I say “someone” is reborn, but the alert Buddhist metaphysician responds that according to (the metaphysical reading of) dependent arising, beings don’t exist or are not real (which is just the same thing, especially in Pāli and Sanskrit). In reality, says the Buddhist metaphysician, there are no agents, no patients, no actions, no results. So no beings are born, die, or reborn.
But if this is the case, there is no Buddhism and no Buddhist soteriology. And this is why so many mainstream Buddhists find Madhyamaka to be nihilistic. Mādhyamikas rescue Buddhism using a fudge known as “the two truths” or “two realities” (both are acceptable translations).
In this view because an agent is conditioned they are not real. But this is a bizarre definition of “real”. Since every known phenomenon is conditioned, this implies that nothing is real. This is presented as a kind of spectacular QED. But of course, everybody who ever had an experience then wants to know: but we do actions, we experience consequences, so if none of it is real, why do we bother with anything? If we don’t actually experience the consequences of our actions… then what does “morality” even mean. And so on. That’s enough of this all too familiar rhetoric.
If we take dependent arising to be an epistemic theory, then it relates to how we know the world, what we can know about it, and how we validate such knowledge. If something disappears from our sphere of knowledge, especially when we do that Buddhist thing of deliberately withdrawing our attention from sensory experience, epistemologists do not assume that it has ceased to exist or, worse, that it never existed in the first place. If you hear hooves, assume horses, not zebras (at least until you see the guy with coconut shells anyway).
The epistemic approach is entirely different. I look at a thing and I see it. If I close my eyes, now I don’t see it. Whether it existed in the past, or exists now, or will exist in the future, is completely irrelevant for this exercise. All I know is that “I see it” and then “I don’t see it”. If I open my eyes, I see it again. I have an experience or I don’t have an experience. It’s not about existence or non-existence at all, let alone some specific instance of existence. Not seeing something is not in the least bit complicated, unlike the cessation of something that did not exist to begin with.
One of the most important effects of undergoing cessation is that one’s sense of selfhood (I, me, mine) seems to stop arising. Note here that I don’t need to invoke a metaphysical self, I take selfhood to be a conditioned experience that arises and ceases. After all, my sense of self stops for 4 to 8 hours every day in sleep (ymmv), etc.
For epistemologists, the fact that I can’t sense my “self”, might imply that something has ceased to exist, but it may also simply imply that it is no longer accessible to my senses. I’ve come around to seeing the latter as far more likely (having spent years looking for zebras). I’ve noticed for example that people who have no self still manage to have conversations: to track who said what and whose turn it is to speak. This is only possible because the self is still functioning. So my view is that the self is just submerged into the subconscious and can no longer be sensed. And this allows some people to operate without conscious willing (cetanā). Which means that they are not making karma anymore. And karma driven rebirth must soon end.
In this view, the idea of an “unconditioned dharma” also becomes more comprehensible. Dharmas, qua the sensible elements of sensory experience, all arise in dependence on the presence of a condition (viz attention to that sense). If we systematically eliminate all the conditions for the arising of experience, using meditative techniques to withdraw attention, then we arrive at a state in which no conditions for the arising of sensory experience are present and no sensory experience arises. Then sensory experience is absent (śūṇya) and one is in the state of absence (śūyatā). That state is singular and can rightly be said to be a “dharma without a condition” (a-saṃskṛta-dharma). As we know, nirvāṇa is the one such state. Ergo: nirvāṇa = śūnyatā.
Whether or not you like this way of thinking or hate it, any open minded person has to admit that it’s a possible reading and has considerable explanatory power. If more than one reading is possible, then adopting one or the other reading and asserting that it is the only possible reading is a fixed view. It’s a hidden assumption.
A lot of these metaphysical issues are much simpler and easier to understand if we reframe them as epistemic issues. Though not, I am bound to admit, the problem of action at a temporal distance. This is because the Buddhist doctrines of karma and rebirth are unequivocally metaphysical doctrines. But at least we can say that the conflict between dependent arising and karma, aka the problem of action at a temporal distance, is less of a problem if only one of the doctrines is making metaphysical claims.
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Agree with the distinction between epistemic and metaphysical. Disagree that all Mādhyamikas share a metaphysical understanding. Concede that some do.
To my understanding every single extant school of Buddhism that embraces Prajñāpāramitā self-describe as Mādhyamaka. So I don’t understand the distinction you are making here.
Agree.
The Prajñāpāramitā are full of lines such as this, “no agents, no patients, no actions, no results.” How do you diagnose these as referring to epistemic in the case of Prajñāpāramitā, but as metaphysical in the case of your Mādhyamaka interlocutors?
If taken metaphysically yes. But it seems that you concur that if taken epistemically the Prajñāpāramitā are not nihilism. It seems we’re in agreement that metaphysical theories about doctrine are not appropriate. I wonder if that surprises you. For instance, I read DN1 as drawing this explicit contrast between dependent arising (epistemic/instrumentalist) versus all the other theories (metaphysical/ontological) that are presented.
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Disagree. I think karma and rebirth can be understood in an epistemic/instrumentalist fashion. I’d go even further and say that to prove no rebirth requires adopting or assuming a metaphysical/ontological notion.
- As monasteries grew in size and influence, Buddhism was becoming more noticeable, the competition for alms and prestige was becoming more required, the Buddhist monks had to defend those difficult doctrinal points against criticism of adherents of other schools of thought.
Then those philosophical rationalizations had to be refined further due to counterarguments from competitors and other Buddhist schools. Thus we have something like:
Early Buddhism ->vaibhasika → sutrantika → cittamatra → madhymaka
- Buddhists themselves wanted a philosophical answer to the points left unanswered by the Buddha rather than deeply meditate all the time and, perhaps, experience it for oneself.
As for Kamma & Rebirth: As I understand it, the Buddha has NEVER attempted to prove them. It seems that the only proof & explanation of them would be to develop the corresponding abhiññā and see for oneself. This crucial point seemed to have been overlooked by Buddhist philosophers, or… they were forced to debate this using common tools to both sides (logic).
The Buddha has also seemed to refuse to talk about very deep ontology such as mechanics of action at distance, etc.
Perhaps one of the reasons is that one cannot step outside of “one’s 5 aggregates” and witness how time & space objectively is. We can never, other than through abhiññā, perhaps, get “outside” of one’s 5 aggregates and see how they truly work.
IMHO.
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This is correct as far as I know. The only positive explanation given for how kamma and rebirth works is dependent arising. And if you interpret dependent arising as not about metaphysics or ontology it follows that kamma and rebirth are similarly not about metaphysics or ontology. On the other hand, the Teacher gave several negations for the proposals or assumptions of others about how kamma and rebirth work.
I don’t think it’s that hard to guess what happened. After the departure of the Buddha and the arahats and other aryas whom he had personally recognised, there were no longer any universally recognised and unquestioned authorities on the right view in the sangha - there was no one to whom one could turn for the actual right view. Naturally, authority in this case began to be gained by those who distinguished themselves, for example, by their ability to answer questions and explain, without necessarily having the right view, and without necessarily being correct in their explanations and answers at all. How things developed further, I think, is obvious.
SN44.10 is about the Buddha not wishing to confuse Vacchagottta and is not related to the four statements.
The end of the sutta makes this explicit.
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Myself, I think the situation is different. I’ve been looking at the Atthirāgasutta SN 12.64 and this is what I think it says … (in part)
These four fuels (cattārome āhārā ) stabilize (anuggahāya) continuity and rebirth (ṭhitiyā sambhavesīnaṁ) in being (bhūtānaṁ) and existence (sattānaṁ): solid food (kabaḷīkāro āhāro), whether coarse or fine (oḷāriko vā sukhumo vā), contact (phasso), conscious intent (manosañcetanā) and consciousness (viññāṇaṁ).
Where greed (rāgo), relishing (nandī) and craving (taṇhā) exists (atthi) for solid food (kabaḷīkāre), having been established there (patiṭṭhitaṁ tattha), consciousness increases (viññāṇaṁ virūḷhaṁ).
Where established (yattha patiṭṭhitaṁ) consciousness increases (viññāṇaṁ virūḷhaṁ), existing there (atthi tattha) intelligible form (nāmarūpassa) occurs (avakkanti).
Where existing (yattha atthi) intelligible form (nāmarūpassa) occurs (avakkanti), there (tattha) existing (atthi) conditions grow (saṅkhārānaṁ vuddhi).
Where existing (yattha atthi) conditions grow (saṅkhārānaṁ vuddhi), existing there (atthi tattha) ahead (āyatiṁ) is rebirth (punabbhavābhinibbatti).
Where there is (yattha atthi) future rebirth ( āyatiṁ punabbhavābhinibbatti), existing there (atthi tattha) ahead (āyatiṁ) is birth, aging and death (jātijarāmaraṇaṁ).
Where there is (yattha atthi) future birth, aging and death (āyatiṁ jātijarāmaraṇaṁ), this (taṁ) is full of sorrow (sasokaṁ), anguish (sadaraṁ) and trouble (saupāyāsanti), I say.
[…}
Where no intelligible form (natthi nāmarūpassa) occurs (avakkanti), no conditions (saṅkhārānaṁ) grow (vuddhi).
Where no (yattha natthi) conditions grow (saṅkhārānaṁ vuddhi), nothing there (natthi tattha) is future (āyatiṁ) rebirth (punabbhavābhinibbatti).
Where no (yattha natthi) rebirth is ahead (āyatiṁ punabbhavābhinibbatti), nothing there (natthi tattha) is future (āyatiṁ) aging, birth and death (jātijarāmaraṇaṁ).
Where no (yattha natthi) birth, aging and death is ahead (āyatiṁ jātijarāmaraṇaṁ), this (taṁ) is at peace (anupāyāsanti), without sorrow (asokaṁ) and anguish (adaraṁ), I say.
There is an interesting quote in MN79
“Udāyin, if someone should recollect his manifold past life thus: one birth, two births… thus with all its details and particulars, should he recollect his manifold past life, then either he might ask me a question about the past, or I might ask him a question about the past, and either his answer to my question might commend itself to my mind, or my answer to his question might commend itself to his mind. And if someone with the heavenly eyesight, which is purified and surpasses the human, should see beings, passing away and reappearing… should understand how beings pass on according to their kammas, then either he might ask me a question about the future, or I might ask him a question about the future, and his answer to my question might commend itself to my mind, or my answer to his question might commend itself to his mind.
“Rather let the past be, Udāyin, and let the future be. I shall teach you the Dhamma: When this exists, that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises. When this does not exist, that does not come to be; with the cessation of this, that ceases.”
The Buddha, as written in the sutta, IMHO, seems to imply that: “Unless you have direct perception of rebirth/kamma then you won’t find satisfactory answers and we cannot talk about this”.
Interestingly, the last paragraph seems to suggest that Dependent Origination does NOT involve the past or the future lives.
“Rather let the past be, Udāyin, and let the future be. I shall teach you the Dhamma: When this exists, that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises. When this does not exist, that does not come to be; with the cessation of this, that ceases.”
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(Edited because i realised all this has been discussed above and i need to read it all before shooting my mouth off )
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Sure. But why are you guessing at all? Why not cite and analyse some evidence for example? Or why not cite an established explanation?