arnold 2005
TRANSCRIPT
Asian PhilosophyVol. 15, No. 1, March 2005, pp. 77–111
Is SvasamEvitti Transcendental?
A Tentative ReconstructionFollowing S �aantaraks
Eita
Dan Arnold
Introduction1
There has emerged in recent years the recognition that the characteristically Buddhist
doctrine of svasamEvitti2 (‘apperception’, as I will render it for reasons to become
clear presently) was variously understood and developed in the Indian Buddhist
tradition. Thus, in his illuminating study particularly of some Tibetan debates
regarding this doctrine, Paul Williams identifies two principal understandings
of svasamEvitti that grow out of the Indian scholastic tradition. For some thinkers,
it seems to denote a special kind of (intentional) cognition—that kind, specifically,
whose object is other cognitions. When this claim is combined with the claim
that all cognitions must, in order to count as cognitions, be the objects of svasamEvitti
thus understood, the doctrine is clearly vulnerable to the charge of infinite
regress—that is (we will see), vulnerable to precisely the kind of critique against
svasamEvitti characteristically developed by the M�aadhyamika thinkers Candrak�iirti and
S�aantideva.3
But svasamEvitti was taken by other thinkers to denote whatever it is—and I will
suggest, as a plausible candidate, intentionality—that is constitutive of subjectivity. In
that case, to say of any cognition that it must involve svasamEvitti is just to say that it
exemplifies the feature in virtue of which sentient4 beings are to be distinguished as
such, apart from things like rocks. As Williams notes, this understanding of
svasamEvitti seems particularly to be the innovation of S�aantaraks
Eita.5 Recognizing this,
Williams is in a position to argue that the Tibetan thinker Mipham—who
understood the characteristically M�aadhyamika critiques of svasamEvitti as under-
mining only the claim that this is an ultimately existent phenomenon (while allowing
it to stand as conventionally real)—advanced the interpretation he did largely owing
Correspondence to: Dan Arnold, University of Chicago Divinity School, 1025 E. 58th Street, Chicago, IL 60637,
USA. Email: [email protected].
ISSN 0955-2367 print/ISSN 1469-2961 online/05/010077-111 � 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/0955236052000341050
to his having presupposed the doctrine of S�aantaraksEita; for as we will see, critiques
such as that developed by Candrak�iirti do not have any purchase against svasamEvitti to
the extent that it is thus understood.
What I would like to suggest is that on the view that can be developed followingS�aantaraks
Eita, svasam
Evitti is usefully understood as something very much like Kant’s
transcendental unity of apperception. Understanding the idea that S�aantaraksEita
identifies as a specifically transcendental one can help more precisely to distinguish
his formulation from that of Dign�aaga (to whom the doctrine of svasamEvitti can be
traced). Thus reconstructing S�aantaraksEita’s view can also (more importantly) give us
the conceptual tools to appreciate why the critique of svasamEvitti advanced by
Candrak�iirti does not—indeed, cannot—coherently be thought to undermineS�aantaraks
Eita’s version.6 So characterizing S�aantaraks
Eita’s innovation also has the
advantage that it can help us appreciate the extent to which Indian debatesconcerning svasam
Evitti quite closely parallel similar discussions in post-Kantian
philosophy; for Kant’s own statements of his doctrine of the ‘transcendental unity ofapperception’ were susceptible of comparably divergent interpretations—a further
indication that we are on something like the same conceptual ground here.Accordingly, I will begin to develop this proposal by first considering the various
ways in which Kant expressed his understanding of the ‘transcendental unity of
apperception’, and by indicating the two chiefly divergent understandings of it thatemerged in the course of subsequent philosophical discussion. I will then sketch
Dign�aaga’s initial statement and defense of the doctrine of svasamEvitti, identifying
some ways in which that maps onto one of the attested interpretations of Kant. We
will then consider the critique of Dign�aaga developed by Candrak�iirti, noting wherethis critique may hit its target.
I will then introduce S�aantaraksEita’s statement of the doctrine. Given the brevity of
S�aantaraksEita’s expressions on the matter (regarding which he does not advance an
argument so much as he stipulates a definition), it will be useful to develop thisstatement with reference to philosophical developments of Dign�aaga’s trajectory ofthought particularly in the hands of Dharmottara—and with reference, as well, to the
later figure of MoksE�aakaragupta, who interestingly combines S�aantaraks
Eita and
Dharmottara at the point where he adduces the former’s doctrine of svasamEvitti as
authoritative. This trajectory of thought will, further, be reconstructed with referenceto the other principal interpretation of Kant’s doctrine—the more properly
transcendental one.We will see, in concluding, that Candrak�iirti’s arguments fail to undermine the
understanding of svasamEvitti that can be developed following S�aantaraks
Eita—with the
invulnerability of S�aantaraksEita’s view now expressed as a function of its being a
basically transcendental idea. More precisely, while Candrak�iirti’s critique targets the
view on which svasamEvitti is considered a particular kind of intentional cognition
(considered, that is, to display intentionality), S�aantaraksEita’s is more like the view that
svasamEvitti is itself ‘intentionality’. Among other things, this difference has far-
reaching implications with respect to conceptions of truth and objectivity; for it is
precisely to the extent that thinkers like Dign�aaga take svasamEvitti as an example of
78 Dan Arnold
‘perception’ (and indeed, as the uniquely indubitable kind) that they cannot finally
take it as capable of being involved with what Kant considered to be objective
judgments. On S�aantaraksEita’s understanding, in contrast, the way is (at least in
principle) open to entertaining something other than subjective occurrences as the
locus of truth—though whether that is how S�aantaraksEita deployed the idea is another
question.
Kant’s ‘Transcendental Unity of Apperception’
Kant’s notion of the ‘transcendental unity of apperception’—or, as he also referred
to this idea, ‘pure apperception’, ‘original apperception’, and the ‘synthetic original
unity of apperception’—is foundational for the entire Kantian edifice.7 This idea
is pivotal for Kant’s ‘ Transcendental Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the
Understanding’; for it is the basis for the claim that all experience is demonstrably
structured in terms of the basic categories that Kant enumerates. It is, indeed,
the transcendental unity of apperception from which these categories are ‘deduced’.
These categories, in turn, represent the basis of Kant’s entire claim to have developed
a philosophical project that can be taken to concern the objective validity
of knowledge. Thus, while Kant’s ‘Copernican Revolution’ famously turned attention
away from objects in the world (‘things-in-themselves’) and towards the knowing
subject—by emphasizing that we could never have immediate cognitive acquaintance
with things-in-themselves, but only with things-as-they-appear-to-us—it was
because Kant thought he could show that how things appear to us is necessarily
structured in certain ways that he nevertheless claimed to trade in objectively valid
judgments.All of this is because the categories could, Kant argued, be derived from one
irreducibly primitive fact: that having any experience at all necessarily presupposes
the imposition of some perspectival unity on the relatively discrete data of perception
or (Kant’s term) ‘intuition’—subjectivity must, that is, consist in the ordering or
‘synthesis’ of the various causally efficacious ‘impingements by the world on a
possessor of sensory capacities’, in John McDowell’s phrase (1996, p. xv). Kant’s table
of categories then represents simply the various ways in which this basic fact can be
expressed. This is why Kant could say that the transcendental unity of apperception is
‘therefore that highest point, to which we must ascribe all employment of the
understanding, even the whole of logic, and conformably therewith, transcendental
philosophy. Indeed, this faculty of apperception is the understanding itself ’ (1965,
B134, note). Clearly stating the role this plays in the grounding of objectively valid
judgments, Kant emphasized that ‘[o]nly the original unity is objectively valid; the
empirical unity of apperception, upon which we are not here dwelling, and which
besides is merely derived from the former under given conditions in concreto, has
only subjective validity’ (B140).
While it is thus pivotal for his project, though, Kant had a hard time expressing
clearly just what the ‘transcendental unity of apperception’ is—a fact reflected not
only in the variety of terms he uses for it, but in his having developed the idea rather
Is svasamEvitti transcendental? 79
differently in the second edition of the first Critique. This is, indeed, among the
points regarding which the two editions of the Critique most significantly differ. Inthe first edition, Kant develops the point in ways, I think, that clearly respond to
Hume’s account of personal identity. Hume had famously argued that there wasnothing more to a person than a ‘bundle or collection of different perceptions, which
succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux andmovement’. For Hume, our misleading convictions regarding the continuity and
unity of such events were a function only of recognition or memory—of thosecausally produced states, that is, whose phenomenological content in some way‘resembled’ that of other such states:
For as such a succession answers evidently to our notion of diversity, it can only beby mistake we ascribe to it an identity; and as the relation of parts, which leads usinto this mistake, is really nothing but a quality, which produces an association ofideas, and an easy transition of the imagination from one to another, it can only befrom the resemblance, which this act of the mind bears to that, by which wecontemplate one continu’d object, that the error arises.8
Kant rejoins by elaborating a compelling question: how could we even recognizetwo moments as similar without already presupposing the very continuity putativelyexplained by this recognition? Thus,
If we were not conscious that what we think is the same as what we thought amoment before, all reproduction in the series of representations would be useless.For it would in its present state be a new representation which would not in anyway belong to the act whereby it was to be gradually generated. The manifold of therepresentation would never, therefore, form a whole, since it would lack that unitywhich only consciousness can impart to it. (1965, A103)
Kant’s strategy here displays the constitutively transcendental logic that is hispreoccupation throughout. That is, he can thus argue that Hume’s own account
(his own denial of a point like Kant’s) necessarily presupposes Kant’s point. ‘ Theremust be something’, Kant says, ‘which, as the a priori ground of a necessary syntheticunity of appearances, makes their reproduction possible . . . . For experience as such
necessarily presupposes the reproducibility of appearances’ (A100–101).But Kant states his point in ways that clearly invite various readings. Thus, for
example,
This transcendental unity of apperception forms out of all possible experiences,which can stand alongside one another in one experience, a connection of all theserepresentations according to laws. For this unity of consciousness would beimpossible if the mind in knowledge of the manifold could not become consciousof the identity of function whereby it synthetically combines it in one knowledge.(A108)
This way of putting the point raises the question: just what sort of ‘thing’ is it that isthus the locus (the agent) of such apparent actions as ‘synthetically combining’,
‘becoming conscious’, and ‘forming’ of experiences?The problem, then, is that this way of expressing the matter seems to imply an
empirical locus of these actions, something for which criteria of identity could be
80 Dan Arnold
adduced—which is to say, the problem is how this putatively ‘transcendental’
condition relates to (or whether indeed it must in some sense be) the empirical self.9
In this regard, Strawson helpfully characterizes most likely objections to Kant’s point
as thus turning on the point that ‘the ascription of states to a subject require[s] the
subject itself to be an intuitable object for which there exist empirically applicable
criteria of identity’ (Strawson, 1966, p. 107). It is, I think, something like this
problem that Kant has in mind in restating the argument in the second edition of the
Critique, where the emphasis is rather more on a strictly logical condition of the
possibility of experience. Thus:
It must be possible for the ‘I think’ to accompany all my representations;for otherwise something would be represented in me which could not be thoughtat all, and that is equivalent to saying that the representation would be impossible,or at least would be nothing to me. That representation which can be given priorto all thought is entitled intuition.10 All the manifold of intuition has, therefore,a necessary relation to the ‘I think’ in the same subject in which this manifoldis found. But this representation is an act of spontaneity, that is, it cannotbe regarded as belonging to sensibility.11 I call it pure apperception, to distinguishit from empirical apperception, or, again, original apperception, because it is thatself-consciousness which, while generating the representation ‘I think’ . . .cannot itself be accompanied by any further representation. (B131–132)
Despite this emphasis simply on its necessarily being possible that all experiences
(if they are to count as such) be expressed as the object of some subject’s judgment,
Kant’s restatement of the doctrine retains expressions that invite questions about
criteria of identity—as, for example, when he says that ‘the manifold representations,
which are given in an intuition, would not be one and all my representations, if they
did not all belong to one self-consciousness’ (B132).The subsequent course particularly of German philosophy can arguably be
understood in terms of the divergent interpretations of which Kant’s statements here
will admit. This is nicely brought out by Robert Pippin, who argues that the
philosophical project of Hegel is usefully understood as framed vis-a-vis Kant’s
‘transcendental unity of apperception’ (and this despite the relative paucity of clear
discussions of Kant in Hegel’s corpus). Contextualizing this project, Pippin
distinguishes what he calls the ‘logical condition’ reading of Kant’s point from a
much different, ‘Cartesian’ reading. On the former, ‘Kant is clearly referring to
apperception as a logical condition, that it must be logically possible for me to ascribe
my representations to myself . . . ’ (Pippin, 1989, p. 20). On the latter reading, in
contrast, ‘all consciousness, including what Kant is calling experience, is a species of
self-consciousness, representing objects is at the same time attending to the mind’s
activities and objects’ (ibid.).As we will see, the latter claim might just as well express the view of svasam
Evitti
advanced by Dign�aaga. We can anticipate this point by noting that at least some
developments of this reading of Kant turn out to be vulnerable to the same kind of
critique that the M�aadhyamikas Candrak�iirti and S�aantideva will direct at Dign�aaga and
his successors. Thus, for example, some of Fichte’s formulations of the Kantian
Is svasamEvitti transcendental? 81
doctrine seem to take that as claiming that all episodes of intentional consciousness
are necessarily accompanied by an additional intentional consciousness. In theseformulations, the claim seems to be (in Pippin’s words) that ‘in ‘‘thinking a
thought’’, two mental events occur, or two two-place relations, between my thinkingand its thought, and between me and my thinking a thought’. But if that is the right
reading, then this doctrine is clearly vulnerable to what Pippin calls ‘the iterationproblem’:
If consciousness and self-consciousness are treated as separate aspects of anyconsciousness, then the arguments that showed why consciousness of X must beaccompanied by consciousness of consciousness of X would all apply to the lattertoo, since self-consciousness, at least as suggested by this version of Fichte, wouldalso be an instance of consciousness and so subject to its conditions. (Pippin, 1989,pp. 46–47)
That is, if it is thought that any act of consciousness must, in order to count as such,
be accompanied by a further act of consciousness, then the latter—again, if it is tocount as such—must in turn be accompanied by a yet further act. We will see that
this could serve just as well as a concise statement of the characteristicallyM�aadhyamika argument against Dign�aaga’s idea of svasam
Evitti.
But Kant seems to have had it in mind to head off precisely this sort of regress; as
(we saw) he says, his point in distinguishing ‘transcendental’ from ‘empirical’apperception was to emphasize that the former is ‘that self-consciousness which,
while generating the representation ‘‘I think’’ . . . cannot itself be accompanied by anyfurther representation’. More compellingly, if Kant’s doctrine is interpreted in the
way that Pippin finds reflected in Fichte, then we undermine our ability todistinguish, in the way that Kant very clearly wanted to, Kant’s point from the
Cartesian appeal to the ‘I think’. Indeed, the distinctiveness of Kant’s constitutivelytranscendental approach is perhaps most evident in his critique of Descartes, whose
famous argument Kant adduced as a paradigm case of a ‘Paralogism’—that is, anargument that trades on an equivocation concerning the key term.12 It is, then,precisely against Descartes that Kant urged: ‘In the synthetic original unity of
apperception I am conscious of myself not as I appear to myself, nor as I am inmyself, but only that I am. This representation is a thought, not an intuition’.13 In such
passages, Kant emphasizes not only that he does not mean (as Descartes arguablydid) to adduce a putatively foundational sort of epistemic ‘certainty’,14 but also (and
therefore) that we cannot draw any inferences from this fact about, say, the empiricalexistence of a soul; rather, as transcendental, Kant’s is the strictly formal point that a
condition of the possibility of our having any experience at all is that our experiences(sensations, memories, fantasies) are unfailingly experienced from some perspective,and that they be expressible as judgments.
We can develop Pippin’s other alternative—the ‘logical condition’ reading ofKant’s doctrine—with reference to Strawson, who lucidly reconstructs Kant’s basic
argument. Strawson is particularly concerned to jettison Kant’s reference to the actionof ‘synthesis’ (which, as an action, would seem to require an empirical agent), instead
developing the point that ‘the thesis of the necessary unity of consciousness can itself
82 Dan Arnold
be represented as resting on a yet more fundamental premise—on nothing more than
the necessity, for any experience at all to be possible, of the original duality of
intuition and concept’ (1966, p. 97). From the way that Strawson develops this
reading, I think it becomes clear that he does not thus have it in mind to argue
(contra Sellars) that we can have unmediated cognitive access to uninterpreted data;
rather, the point is (in Robert Brandom’s phrase) to urge that we necessarily
presuppose a difference between ‘what is said or thought and what it is said
or thought about’ (Brandom, 2000, p. 163)—with this reference to ‘aboutness’
suggesting that we may be talking here about intentionality.
To begin with, Strawson nicely states (as we have already seen) the recurrent line of
objection to Kant. Again, then, Kant ‘speaks of the ‘‘abiding self ’’ of transcendental
apperception; but he certainly does not mean by this the (at least relatively) abiding
man . . . . Yet if he rejects this interpretation of the ‘‘abiding self ’’, does he not
evacuate the notion of ascription of experiences to a subject of its ordinary meaning,
without producing anything to fill the vacuum?’ (pp. 102–103). Strawson rejoins,
though, that the main point of this objection can be ‘conceded without detriment to
the Kantian position. It is not essential for Kant to maintain that his provisions are
sufficient to explain the actual occurrence of self-ascription of experiences. It is
enough if they are necessary to its possibility’ (p. 103). And what is thus necessary is
simply that subjective experience be constitutively perspectival:
The more fundamental point of the Kantian provisions is that the experiencesof such a subject must themselves be so conceptualized as to determine a distinctionbetween the subjective route of his experiences and the objective worldthrough which it is a route. The history of a man, we might way, is—amongmuch else—an embodiment of a temporally extended point of view on the world.(p. 104)
And again:
What is necessary is that there be a distinction, though not (usually) an opposition,implicit in the concepts employed in experience, between how things are in theworld which experience is of and how they are experienced as being, between theorder of the world and the order of experience. This necessary doubleness is the realpoint of connexion between what Kant refers to as ‘original (or transcendental)self-consciousness’ on the one hand and the objectivity-condition on the other.(pp. 107–108)
This point has the considerable advantage of facilitating an appreciation
of the constitutively transcendental logic that Kant is here using against, say,
Hume—of facilitating, that is, an understanding of why Kant can think that even
Hume’s denial of his point necessarily presupposes precisely that point. Thus,
against the objection that the notion of ascribing experiences to a subject
presupposes (empirical) criteria of identity for such a subject, the answer is that if
‘subjects must be conceived of as perceptibly belonging to a common world, they
must also be conceived of as each having his own experience of that world.
Properly understood, the objector’s point does not contradict the Kantian point;
it includes it’ (p. 105). Strawson concludes by summarizing the extent to which he
Is svasamEvitti transcendental? 83
has here reconstructed a point that he takes Kant only dimly and inadequately to
have developed:
. . . the simple-seeming notion of ‘a unitary consciousness to which diverseexperiences belong’ appears less and less adequate to express the fundamentalthought on which the argument rests. It yields its place, first, to that of thepossibility of empirical (personal) self-consciousness, then to that profoundernotion of transcendental self-consciousness, the necessary reflexiveness ofexperience, which appears as the basic condition of the possibility of empiricalself-consciousness. And it must do so; for it only expresses a coherent thoughtwhen interpreted in these terms. (p. 111)
But Strawson’s last point—that only on this reading does Kant’s insight reflect a
coherent thought—is, I think, one that Strawson better develops elsewhere. In
particular, Strawson’s Individuals—his 1959 ‘Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics’—
develops a transcendental argument with clear affinities to the one he reconstructs in
the foregoing consideration of Kant. Here, though, his approach is more
characteristic of those analytic philosophers who would defer particularly to ordinary
language. This is worth noting, since, as I have indicated, S�aantaraksEita does not really
argue for the interpretation of svasamEvitti he advances; rather, his understanding of
the matter is stated more in the form of a stipulated definition. Strawson’s alternative
statement of the basically Kantian argument, then, can give us a way to reconstruct
particularly S�aantaraksEita’s way of proceeding.
It is clear that the point Strawson develops in this way is recognizably the
same point he judges Kant to have grasped. Thus, Strawson here targets what he
characterizes as the ‘no-ownership’ view of subjective states—that is, the view
(arguably held by Hume) that mental events can coherently be thought not to be
constitutively perspectival. Against this, Strawson argues that experiences are
necessarily individuated with reference to their subjects, if it is to be ‘experiences’
that are being picked out at all: ‘It is not coherent [to deny this], in that one who
holds [the contrary view] is forced to make use of that sense of possession of which
he denies the existence, in pressing his case for the denial.’ This is because the defining
characteristic of the class of ‘experiences’ is that ‘they are ‘‘my experiences’’ or ‘‘the
experiences of some person’’, where the idea of possession expressed by ‘‘my’’ and
‘‘of ’’ is the one [the ‘‘no-ownership’’ theorist] calls into question’ (1959, p. 97). He
elaborates:
States, or experiences, one might say, owe their identities as particulars to theidentity of the person whose states or experiences they are. From this it followsimmediately that if they can be identified as particular states or experiences at all,they must be possessed or abscribable in just that way which the no-ownershiptheorist ridicules . . . . (Ibid.)
Here, then, we have what amounts to an interesting unpacking of Strawson’s claim
that Kant’s ‘transcendental unity of apperception’ can only express a coherent
thought when it is interpreted in the way he suggested specifically with reference to
Kant. The point is that ‘experience’ is constitutively perspectival, such that it must
always be at least intelligible to distinguish any particular example of such from what
84 Dan Arnold
it is that is putatively experienced; and (the point we have now developed) this
cannot coherently be denied insofar as, most basically, this is just what we mean by‘experience’. That is, there is no way to individuate even those ‘experiences’ of which
this would be denied except with reference to some subject whose experiences theyare. It is literally nonsensical, then, to deny that feelings of, say, hot or cold must
always be someone’s feelings of such; our subjective states, by definition, are not free-floating and unassigned, but are invariably experienced as ours. Any ostensibly
designated phenomena that are not so identified are, ipso facto, not ‘experiences’, notwhat it is that we are here talking about.But again, this point (as both Strawson and Kant stress) is not such as to warrant
any inferences regarding empirically identifiable existents—not, for example, such asto warrant the conclusion that there must therefore exist souls as the loci of
perspectival unity. This, then, is why Kant could say that the phenomenon he meantto identify is ‘that self-consciousness which, while generating the representation
‘‘I think’’ . . . cannot itself be accompanied by any further representation’. This pointbecomes clear if (as I think we are entitled to do) we take Kant’s ‘transcendental unity
of apperception’, as here understood, to thematize something like the idea ofintentionality.15 That is, the idea that subjectivity is a constitutively perspectivalphenomenon—that, in Strawson’s words, the history of a person just is ‘an
embodiment of a temporally extended point of view on the world’—amounts to theidea that conscious states are about their contents. This is the claim, to put the point
conversely, that ‘the objective world through which’ any subject is a route is what thatsubject’s experience is of (or ‘about’).
If that is right, then the reason it makes sense for Kant to say that this phenomenon‘cannot itself be accompanied by any further representation’ is that he here means to
identify precisely that phenomenon which is displayed in any act of representing—precisely that phenomenon, that is, in virtue of which any act could count as an act of
representing. Thus, if we call the phenomenon thus picked out ‘intentionality’, thepoint is the deceptively straightforward one that the fact of intentionality is not itselfintentional. That is, insofar as Kant has here given us simply the criterion for
individuating tokens of the type experience (viz., that they be ascribable to somesubject), the point is simply that this criterion for thus individuating these is not
individuated by itself.Depending, then, on how we read Kant’s claims regarding the ‘transcendental
unity of apperception’, the point is either (with Fichte) that all intentional cognitionsare themselves at the same time intended by (are the objects of ) an additional
intentional cognition—one of the type ‘apperception’; or (with Strawson and, I think,with Kant) simply that the criterion for individuating experiences as such is that theybe intentional—that they be, that is, some subject’s experiences of some object. The
former reading has the distinct disadvantage not only of failing to account for Kant’sown attempts to distinguish his view from that of Descartes, but of entailing the
‘iteration’ problem. This is, I have said in anticipation, precisely what Candrak�iirti willargue with respect to Dign�aaga. On the alternative reading, in contrast, we are not only
in a position to appreciate how Kant could think he differed from Descartes, but also
Is svasamEvitti transcendental? 85
(and more importantly) in a position to appreciate the claim that this ‘unity of
apperception’ is properly transcendental—that is, in the sense that it is necessarily
presupposed even in the very act of denying it. If, in contrast to Dign�aaga’s,
S�aantaraksEita’s account of svasam
Evitti can usefully be reconstructed as making
something like the same point, then we will be in a good position to appreciate its
invulnerability to Candrak�iirti’s critique. Let us turn, then, first to Dign�aaga.
SvasamEvitti in the Thought of Dign�aaga
It is well known that Dign�aaga (c. 480–540 CE)—and following him, Dharmak�iirti
(c. 600–660 CE)—developed a spartan epistemology that admitted only two
irreducible criteria of knowledge or justification, two ‘reliable warrants’ ( pram �aanEa):
‘sensation’ or ‘perception’ ( pratyaksEa), and ‘inference’ (anum �aana). The former
constitutively has as its object uniquely particular events or sensations (svalaksEanEa),
while the object of the latter is ‘universals’ or ‘abstractions’ (s �aam �aanyalaksEanEas).
Thus, for example, a perceptual cognition of a fire would be the kind of bare
cognitive occurrence that is produced by (again in McDowell’s phrase) ‘impinge-
ments by the world on a possessor of sensory capacities’—that is, this kind of
cognition would be distinguished by its being causally precipitated, under conditions
not necessarily of the subject’s choosing, by a really existent thing that, as it were,
presents itself to the subject, causally producing a certain representation. The resultant
phenomenological content of such a cognition, then, would necessarily be a function
of the size and color and shape of just this particular fire. An inferential cognition
of a fire, in contrast, would have as its content the kind of image of a fire that
appears before the mind’s eye whenever (say) one hears the word ‘fire’—something,
that is, that may very well appear the same way to a subject regardless of her
circumstances (and that may, indeed, present itself even in the absence of any
particular fire).16
While this may seem an intuitively plausible development of the insight that
Strawson characterized in terms of ‘the original duality of intuition and concept’, that
we are dealing with something different is clear when it is further urged (as it is by
Dign�aaga) that the only really occurrent sort of ‘perception’ has (in a sense that can be
variously specified) other mental events as its objects.17 Dign�aaga says as much in
developing a claim characteristically associated with all of the Buddhist thinkers in
the tradition of thought that he initiated—specifically, the claim that the word
pram �aanEa should finally be understood as referring not (as for most Indian
philosophers) primarily to such cognitive instruments as perception and inference,
but rather, to those cognitions that result from the exercise thereof.
In the terms first stated by Dign�aaga, and associated with his tradition thereafter,
this is the claim that the word pram �aanEa chiefly denotes the pram �aan
Eaphala, the result
or ‘fruit’ of a pram �aanEa—and that it is therefore only ‘figuratively’ (upac �aar �aat) that we
take the word pram �aanEa also to denote our cognitive instruments. As the second half of
Pram �aanEasamuccaya 1.8 puts it (in characteristically laconic terms), ‘Because of [its]
86 Dan Arnold
being comprehended along with its action, a pram �aanEa is real only as a result’.18
Dign�aaga’s auto-commentary explains:
In this regard, it is not the case, as for proponents of external objects, that a pram �aanEa
is something other than its result; rather, there arises a cognition, existing as theresult, containing the representation of an object; and this very [cognition] isunderstood as comprising the action [of a putatively ‘instrumental’ pram �aan
Ea].
Hence, the action is figuratively designated as being the pram �aanEa, though [the latter
is in fact] devoid of activity.19
The point, as Dign�aaga proceeds to make clear, is that when one has the experience of
(say) seeing a tree, all that can be said indubitably to have occurred is that a cognition
has arisen having that phenomenological aspect or representation ( �aak �aara or �aabh �aasa);
but that fact is explicable without reference to contact with anything external.20 Thus,
Dign�aaga asserts, in regard to cognitions whose phenomenological content is an
external object, that the only ‘cognitive instrument’ ( pram �aanEa) in play is simply the
fact of the cognition’s having that phenomenological content: ‘The pram �aanEa, [in the
sense of a cognitive instrument,] is [in this case] its being of the appearance of an
object’.21 Dign�aaga concludes: ‘Thus, [it should be understood that] the roles of the
means of cognition ( pram �aanEa) and of the object to be cognized ( prameya),
corresponding to differences of [aspect of] the cognition, are [only] figuratively
attributed to the respective [distinctive] factor in each case . . .’’.22 And again (in verse
form): ‘That which appears is the object known ( prameya), while the pram �aanEa and its
result are, [respectively,] the subjective aspect of [the cognition] (gr �aahak �aak �aara) and the
cognition [itself]; hence, these three are not separated’.23
This, then, is the context in which Dign�aaga brings into play that type of
‘perception’ ( pratyaksEa) which is ‘apperception’ (svasam
Evitti); thus, ‘Cognition arises
as appearing twofold: [having] the appearance of itself [as subject], and the
appearance of an object. In terms of these two appearances, the one that is
apperception (svasamEvitti) is the one that is the result.’24 To the extent, then, that
‘a pram �aanEa is real only as a result ’,25 and to the extent that that ‘result’ is (as Dign�aaga
here says) svasamEvitti, it turns out that the latter is the only really occurrent pram �aan
Ea
in any case—that, in other words, the only indubitably immediate cognition concerns
the occurrence of our own mental states. Of course, this is not typically regarded as
an example of ‘perception’, as that word is generally understood in English; but it is
important to recall that Dign�aaga has defined pratyaksEa only as being definitively ‘free
of conceptual elaboration’ (kalpan �aapodha).26 To say this much is not, ipso facto, to
say that ‘perception’ designates only sensory cognition, but simply that it denotes
whatever cognition immediately (that is, without the mediation of any concepts)
apprehends a uniquely particular object—which is as much as to say, that kind of
cognition whose phenomenological content is at the same time its direct object. And
we have now seen Dign�aaga argue that in the final analysis, svasamEvitti is the only
really occurrent type of such unmediated cognition.Richard Hayes has nicely expressed (in terms familiar from many modern versions
of empiricist foundationalism) the point that is advanced by thus arguing that the
Is svasamEvitti transcendental? 87
only thing with which we are immediately acquainted is the contents of our own
mental states:
At least one of the reasons that one might regard acts of awareness as sensa is thatwe are perfectly safe in saying that the fact of awareness itself cannot be denied . . . .It may be that ‘Tomorrow is Friday’ is a false proposition at the time that itconstitutes the content of a thought, but it is impossible to be in error regarding itsbeing the content of the thought of which it seems to be the content . . . . Similarly,if one has an awareness of blue, blue is certainly the content of that particularawareness, even if there is in fact nothing blue outside the cognition for one to beaware of.27
That is, this is the one kind of cognition with respect to which, it can thus be claimed,
one cannot be mistaken. The foundational status of this putatively immediate
acquaintance is clear from its relation even to propositional judgments (even, that is,
to those constitutively discursive cognitions that are to be characterized by Dign�aaga
as ‘inferential’); for insofar as all instances of cognition have an ‘apperceptive’
dimension, there turns out to be a sense in which even inferential (and hence,
conceptual) cognitions are (as cognitions) themselves ‘perceived’—which is just to say
that our acquaintance even with the conceptual contents of our minds is itself alleged
to be, in a sense, non-conceptual.28
Given the position so far developed, Dign�aaga can be taken to have developed a
basically representationalist epistemology, one with clear affinities with the project of
empiricists like Locke. Thus, Locke similarly argued that ‘[s]ince the Mind, in all its
Thoughts and Reasonings, hath no other immediate Object but its own Ideas, which
it alone does or can contemplate, it is evident, that our Knowledge is only conversant
about them’ (1975, p. 525). For Dign�aaga, too, the point in urging that svasamEvitti is
the only really occurrent sort of cognition may be that the only finally indubitable
(because uniquely immediate) knowledge we can have (hence, the only finally
warranted knowledge) concerns the contents of our own mental states; for while we
can always doubt that the world is as it is represented in cognition, what we cannot
doubt is that cognition occurs.29
There is, though, a real question here whether Dign�aaga may thus be seen to
uphold something more like a full-blown metaphysical idealism than simply a
representationalist epistemology.30 As in many of the Western philosophical
discussions where idealism seems to lurk, though, it is an exegetically complex
matter which of two claims is being made: the ontological claim that mental events
are all that really exist, or the strictly epistemological claim that mental events (such
as representational ‘sense data’) are all that we can directly know. On either reading of
the foregoing arguments from Dign�aaga, though, we still have to face a question
concerning, most basically, the relationships that are thought to be involved in
cognition—and here, the issues start to resemble issues that arise given one reading
(the ‘Cartesian’ reading) of Kant’s doctrine of the ‘transcendental unity of
apperception’.Thus, even if Dign�aaga’s is understood as the strong idealist claim that mental
events are all that exist—and accordingly, that svasamEvitti is the only finally occurrent
88 Dan Arnold
sort of ‘perception’ insofar as all that exists is causally explicable mental events that
have a particular sort of phenomenological content—there is still the question of howthe different ‘aspects’ of these mental events are to be related to one another. How,
that is, does ‘whatever appears as the content’ of the cognition (yad �aabh �aasamE
prameyam) relate at once to the ‘cognition itself ’ (samEvitti) and its ‘subjective aspect’
(gr �aahak �aak �aara)?31 Another way, I think, to ask this question is to ask how cognitioncould seem invariably perspectival (could seem invariably to be cognition of
something), when there is finally nothing other than it for cognition to be about. Byexplaining the cognitive process with reference only to mental events, then, one hassimply deferred the need to explain the subject–object relation; for even if this
relation is thought to consist only in different ‘aspects’ (and not, e.g. in ontologicallydistinct ‘substances’), we still have two terms here. Put in terms of intentionality,
then, the problem is that Dign�aaga still has to explain how the ‘subjective aspect’(gr �aahak �aak �aara) can seem, phenomenologically, to mean something—how, in
particular, it can (seem to) be about (what seems to be) the ‘objective aspect’(gr �aahy �aak �aara).
If, however, Dign�aaga’s is simply the claim that only something like internal ‘sensedata’ can be the direct objects of cognition,32 there is still a question concerningthis putatively immediate acquaintance with these contents of our mental
events; specifically, how does this (non-conceptual, ‘perceptual’) sense of ourown mental states relate to the (conceptual, discursive) knowledge that we are
presumably trying to explain?33 For the claim that even propositional cognitions are,qua cognitions, in a sense ‘non-conceptual’ does not advance our understanding of
whatever judgment is expressed in the cognition in question—does not, for example,explain the success (the ‘objectivity’) of discursive thought, does not provide it with
sure foundations such as it would otherwise lack. Indeed, to the extent that onestresses (as, I think, Dign�aaga clearly means to) this aspect of (necessarily discursive)
judgments—to the extent one stresses, that is, that all that is finally certain about anyjudgment is the bare fact of its occurring to some subject—we end up forfeiting anymeaningful claims to objectivity, and are consigned instead to the sort of solipsism
that follows from taking subjective representations as the locus of truth orjustification.34
Be that as it may, what we have on either reading of Dign�aaga’s argument involvesthe idea that Pippin identified with respect to the Fichtean reading of Kant’s doctrine:
the idea, that is, that ‘in ‘‘thinking a thought’’, two mental events occur, or two two-place relations, between my thinking and its thought, and between me and my
thinking a thought’. Thus, if Dign�aaga’s appeal to svasamEvitti advances the claim that
only mental events finally exist, the two mental events whose co-occurrence requiresrelating are the ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ aspects of any such moment; while if the
appeal to svasamEvitti advances simply a representationalist epistemology, the two
mental events to be related are (to take the case of one’s entertaining a proposition)
the conceptual thought one experiences oneself as having, and one’s non-conceptualawareness of the bare fact of having it. And in either case, the need to establish such a
relationship threatens to open up an infinite regress.35
Is svasamEvitti transcendental? 89
Candrak�iirti’s critique of svasamEvitti
Something precisely like the foregoing criticism was developed by Dign�aaga’s
co-religionist Candrak�iirti, whose Madhyamak �aavat �aara comprises an influential
critique of svasamEvitti. The basic structure of that critique, though, is perhaps
more clearly on display in the first chapter of the Prasannapad �aa, where Candrak�iirti
briefly rehearses the argument from the Madhyamak �aavat �aara. The presentation of this
argument in the Prasannapad �aa is interesting because of the extent to which it does
not have to do particularly with epistemology or ontology. Rather, in his engagement
with Dign�aaga in the Prasannapad �aa, Candrak�iirti chiefly attacks the coherence of
Dign�aaga’s categories of explanation—and more particularly, the coherence of
Dign�aaga’s claim to offer a conventionally valid account of our epistemic practices,
while yet using words like svalaksEanEa in something other than their ordinary sense.36
Here, then, the basic structure of the argument (i.e. as simply concerning relations) is
most clearly on display; for Candrak�iirti’s arguments in regard to ordinary usage turn
(as is eminently conventional in Sanskritic philosophical discourse) on the Sanskrit
grammarians’ k �aaraka analysis of verbal constructions—on the view, that is, that
actions can invariably be analyzed on the model of semantically complete verbal
constructions, which require the separate specification of (e.g.) subject, object,
agent, etc.It is the normative presupposition of these relata that leads, in the course of
Candrak�iirti’s critique of Dign�aaga’s use of the term svalaksEanEa, inexorably to a
consideration of svasamEvitti. Thus, on Candrak�iirti’s view, ‘svalaks
EanEa’ means
(as indeed it conventionally means in Sanskrit) ‘defining characteristic’. But
Dign�aaga’s understanding of svalaksEanEas as the uniquely particular objects of
perception—as, indeed, radically distinct from the kinds of things (like ‘defining
characteristics’!) that can serve as the referents of word—requires, as Candrak�iirti
recognizes, that svalaksEanEas neither be nor have any properties at all.37 Candrak�iirti
thus attacks Dign�aaga on the grounds that he has, with his peculiarly technical
understanding of svalaksEanEa, incoherently posited something that is simply self-
characterizing—on the grounds, that is, that (in the grammatical terms character-
istically favored in Sanskritic philosophical discourse) the act of ‘characterizing’
seemingly referred to by Dign�aaga’s use of the word svalaksEanEa must involve an
‘instrument’ (laksEanEa) that is identical with the ‘object’ (laks
Eya) characterized
thereby.
In this context, Candrak�iirti anticipates that Dign�aaga might adduce svasamEvitti as
the unique example of precisely such a case—that is, if Dign�aaga can argue that there
obtains a sort of cognition whose subject is at the same time the object thereof, he will
have shown the possibility of something ‘self-characterizing’. It is, then, to this
anticipated move that Candrak�iirti thus responds:
Perhaps you think there exists [the faculty of] apperception (svasamEvitti). Hence,
[you maintain that], given that [cognition’s] being an object obtains due to [its]apprehension by apperception, [cognition] is included among warrantableobjects.38 To this we respond: based on an extensive refutation of apperception
90 Dan Arnold
in the Madhyamak �aavat �aara,39 it doesn’t make sense to say a svalaksEanEa
is characterized40 by another svalaksEanEa, and that one by apperception.
Moreover, this last [sort of] cognition [i.e. the one called svasamEvitti] doesn’t
exist at all, since—given that there’s no subject to be characterized (laksEya), owing
to the impossibility of [its] establishment by a separate svalaksEanEa—there is no
possibility of the operation of a characteristic without a locus.41
And, having thus referred the reader to his ownMadhyamak �aavat �aara, Candrak�iirti here
adds a lengthy quotation from the Ratnac �uudEaparipr
Ecch �aa S �uutra, the crucial part of
which is this:
Thought arises when there is an intentional object ( �aalambana). Is it, then, [the casethat] the intentional object is one thing, and the thought another? Or is that whichis the intentional object precisely the [same as] the thought? If, first of all, theintentional object is one thing and the thought another, then there will obtain [its]being two thoughts (dvicittat �aa). Or if the intentional object itself is the thought,then how does thought perceive thought? But thought does not perceive thought.Just as a sword-edge cannot be cut by that same sword-edge,42 and a finger-tipcannot be touched by that same finger-tip, in just the same way, a [moment of]thought cannot be seen by that same thought.43
At the end of the full passage, Candrak�iirti concludes: ‘ Thus, there is no [faculty of]
apperception; [and] since it is non-existent, what is characterized by what?’44 This
makes clear, again, that the discussion of svasamEvitti has in this context been chiefly
meant to address the possibility of there being something essentially self-
characterizing—of there being, that is, at least one example of a ‘characteristic’
(laksEanEa) that is not the characteristic of anything (which is how Dign�aaga must
understand svalaksEanEas)—or rather, of there being one example of a characteristic
which is at the same time the thing characterized (laksEya) thereby.45 Against this,
Candrak�iirti has argued that this idea opens an infinite regress—and in this way (as I
have already intimated), his point is much like the one that (Pippin noted) could be
leveled at the Fichtean version of Kant: ‘If consciousness and self-consciousness are
treated as separate aspects of any consciousness, then the arguments that showed why
consciousness of X must be accompanied by consciousness of consciousness of X
would all apply to the latter too, since self-consciousness, at least as suggested by this
version of Fichte, would also be an instance of consciousness and so subject to its
conditions.’That is, Candrak�iirti’s argument is, then, simply a statement of the extent to which
svasamEvitti can be thought to entail the ‘iteration problem’—as indeed is the case
on either of the interpretations that I have said can be gleaned from Dign�aaga’s
elaboration of the doctrine. It is important to note, though, the extent to which
Candrak�iirti’s version of that argument is informed particularly by Sanskritic
grammatical analyses; for not only does this tell us something distinctive about
characteristically Sanskritic philosophical discourse, but it shows as well that
Candrak�iirti takes Dign�aaga’s svasamEvitti as an action—that is, as some kind or episode
of cognition that will admit of the sort of agent–instrument–object analysis that can
necessarily be given for anything involving a verb.46 As we will now see, this is
Is svasamEvitti transcendental? 91
precisely the point that S�aantaraksEita denies with respect to svasam
Evitti as he
understands it.
S�aantaraksEita’s innovation: Svasam
Evitti as a defining characteristic, not an action
In attempting to reconstruct S�aantaraksEita’s distinctive reading of svasam
Evitti, it is
useful to begin with the figure of Dharmottara (c. 740–800); for even if we grant
(with Krasser, 1992) that Dharmottara’s dates make him a likely respondent to
S�aantaraksEita (725–788), it is, in my view, Dharmottara’s significant revisions in the
trajectory of thought initiated by Dign�aaga47 that best make S�aantaraksEita’s innovation
intelligible—a point we can appreciate by seeing how the much later figure of
MoksE�aakaragupta (fl. 12th century) combines the thought of Dharmottara and
S�aantaraksEita.
To begin, then, with Dharmottara: chief among his revisions is his attempt to
qualify Dharmak�iirti’s exhaustively causal account of perception. Dharmottara wants,
that is, to urge that useful knowledge consists in something more than being the
effect produced by specifiable causal factors—that, in other words, any pram �aanEa
worth the name must involve some judgment.48 This is, of course, difficult for him to
allow, since, as a purportedly faithful interpreter of Dharmak�iirti, Dharmottara must
explain the outputs of perceptual cognition as being constitutively ‘unsuitable for
association with discourse’.49 Nevertheless, this seems to be precisely what
Dharmottara allows in the course of revising Dharmak�iirti’s account of perception.This emerges clearly when Dharmottara explains why (as for Dign�aaga and
Dharmak�iirti before him) the word pram �aanEa ought to be understood as referring
principally to the cognitive outputs of our epistemic practices. As we saw, Dign�aaga’s
point in pressing this claim was to urge that it is finally only ‘apperception’
(svasamEvitti) that counts as a pram �aan
Ea. Dharmottara, though, has different reasons
for endorsing this characteristically Buddhist view that the word pram �aanEa really
denotes only the pram �aanEaphala. His point is that only the result of the completed
process of cognition represents the kind of ‘knowledge’ that can be thought
pragmatically to further human ends (and that should therefore count as ‘pram �aanEa’).
Thus:
It is intentional cognition that is a reliable warrant ( pr �aapakamEjn �aanam
Epram �aan
Eam).
And the capacity for intentionality is not based only on invariable concomitancewith the [causally efficacious] object [that produced the cognition]; for things likesprouts are not intentional even though [their production is] invariablyconcomitant with [causes] like seeds. Therefore, even given its arising [causally]from some object to be intended ( pr �aapya), a cognition still has some intentionalfunction ( pr �aapakavy �aap �aara) necessarily to be performed, by doing which the goal isobtained. And that [function] just is the [final stage of the cognitive process, i.e.the] result which is the reliable warrant, because of the exercise of which a cognitionbecomes intentional.50
My translation of Dharmottara’s argument as involving ‘intentionality’
(‘pr �aapakatva’) is, I think, warranted by a couple of points here. The word pr �aapaka
has, first of all, the sense of ‘leading to, conveying, procuring’51—and surely it is not
92 Dan Arnold
unreasonable to think that this semantic range overlaps with the idea of the
directedness or ‘aboutness’ of cognition. More suggestively, note that Dharmottara
here invokes the idea as specifically distinctive of cognition or consciousness; for the
whole point of his counter-example (‘things like sprouts are not intentional even
though their production is invariably concomitant with causes like seeds’) is that
whatever we mean by pr �aapaka is (a) not to be understood as exhaustively explicable
in causal terms, and (b) not to be understood as exemplified by insentient things like
sprouts. What he would thus seem to be proposing, then, is something like a
‘hallmark of the mental’;52 and his whole point here is that this criterion is to be
distinguished particularly from those insentient phenomena that can be exhaustively
described in causal terms. Thus, Dharmottara here argues, in effect, that what
distinguishes our epistemic practices as (in a word) epistemic is the fact of their
involving something more than causally efficacious ‘impingements by the world on a
possessor of sensory capacities’.
On Dharmottara’s reading, then, the point in urging that the word pram �aanEa
primarily denotes the cognitive outputs ( pram �aanEphala) of (say) perception is not, as
it was for Dign�aaga, that only ‘apperception’ (svasamEvitti) is finally indubitable; rather,
the point is the very different one that only judgments count as epistemically useful—
and hence, only judgments count as ‘reliable warrants’ ( pram �aanEas).53 As I have
indicated, though, this is a difficult reading to reconcile with the basic commitments
of the philosophical program initiated by Dign�aaga and Dharmak�iirti, for whom any
propositional content at all would seem to be excluded from the kind of ‘perception’
that they admit as a pram �aanEa. Accordingly, Dharmottara is at pains to make his
point, and it is not clear that he finally succeeds at framing that point as a non-
question-begging alternative to the view he is resisting.
This is particularly clear in the passage that I will now adduce as a bridge to
the view of S�aantaraksEita. Thus, again urging that the idea he has in mind will not
admit of an exhaustively causal description, Dharmottara tries to argue that
the phenomenological content of a perception (e.g. the appearing sense datum ‘blue’)
is causally related to the object perceived—and that the resultant judgment (‘that
is blue’) consists no longer in the bare sensing of immediately present content,
but rather in the recollection of a similarity between the currently sensed object, and
other things like it.54 And what he needs to argue is that while that judgment is
not directly caused by the same thing that causes the bare perception, it is
nevertheless in some sort of relation thereto. The question is: what kind of relation?
Dharmottara:
In this case, the relation between the thing known and the way we knowit (s �aadhyas �aadhanabh �aava) is not based on the relation of producedand producer, according to which there would be a contradiction within asingle thing; rather, [these are related] as being intended and intentional(vyavasth �aapyavyavasth �aapakabh �aavena).55
The challenge here, of course, is to understand Dharmottara’s alternative terms
(vyavasth �aapya and vyavasth �aapaka) in such a way as to avoid attributing to him
Is svasamEvitti transcendental? 93
precisely the sort of contradiction he has here set out to avoid. Whether or not he can
do so, it is clear at least that Dharmottara means to argue that the relation between
these two terms of a perception is to be understood as something other than a causal
relation (something, he says, other than a ‘janya–janaka’ relation)—which is precisely
why, I think, we can read him as again having in mind the relation between the object
intended (vyavasth �aapya), and an intending (vyavasth �aapaka) subject.
Whatever Dharmottara has in mind here, though, the later thinker
MoksE�aakaragupta suggestively adduces precisely the same formulation: ‘With respect
to cognition, the property of knower in relation to what is known is not explained as
being an object–agent [relation]; rather, [it is explained] as being an intended and
intentional [relation] (vyavasth �aapyavyavasth �aapakabh �aavena)’.56 MoksE�aakaragupta,
though, deploys Dharmottara’s formulation in a slightly different context—
specifically, in order to meet precisely the kind of objection leveled at the doctrine
of svasamEvitti by Candrak�iirti: viz. that this doctrine leads to an infinite regress if it is
understood as the claim that a cognition must, in order to count as such, itself be the
object of an additional cognition (one of the ‘svasamEvitti’ type).57
For MoksE�aakaragupta, though, that is not how svasam
Evitti is to be understood;
rather, it is to be understood as characterizing (in the phrase he borrows from
Dharmottara) the relation of ‘intended and intentional’. The point is that this
relation does not—on MoksE�aakaragupta’s reading as on Dharmottara’s—admit of
the kind of agent–action–object analysis that can be brought to bear, he seems to
allow, on any action. Interestingly, though, MoksE�aakaragupta (in characteristically
Sanskritic fashion) argues this point, too, by appeal to essentially grammatical
presuppositions—specifically, presuppositions concerning the adjectival relation of
‘qualification’ (visesEanEa). Thus, he says:
. . . if cognition were not apperceptive, then it would be impossible to say ‘an objectis cognized,’ because of the axiom that ‘a thought by which the qualification hasnot been comprehended does not engage the thing to be qualified’. In this case, anobject is the thing to be qualified; ‘it is cognized’ is the qualification, where‘cognized’ means ‘qualified by cognition’. If cognition were not intrinsically(svayam
E) understood in the form of this idea, then how could it be understood that
an object is qualified by cognition?58
The point, then, would seem to turn simply on the definitions of ‘cognition’ (jn �aana)
and ‘cognized’ (jn �aata). That is (if I understand the passage correctly), if ‘cognized’
(jn �aata) just means ‘qualified by cognition’ (jn �aanena visesEita), then it must, according
to the axiom here cited, already—‘intrinsically’ (svayamE), Moks
E�aakaragupta says59—
be known what the ‘qualifier’ (visesEanEa, i.e. jn �aana) consists in; otherwise, ordinary
expressions involving this qualification (‘an object is cognized’) would be
unintelligible.While the characteristically Sanskritic way of making it here is perhaps not
compellingly self-evident, MoksE�aakaragupta’s point becomes more clear if we attend,
finally, to the key passage that he adduces in between the immediately foregoing
passage, and the phrase borrowed from Dharmottara. It is here, then, that
MoksE�aakaragupta approvingly quotes S�aantaraks
Eita on svasam
Evitti—and the passage
94 Dan Arnold
that he thus adduces as authoritative does indeed represent a compelling rejoinder to
the standard objection to svasamEvitti (hence, to Candrak�iirti’s critique thereof), and a
compelling clarification of the force of MoksE�aakaragupta’s own grammatical argument
against the agent–object–action analysis. Thus, S�aantaraksEita (whom Moks
E�aakaragupta
here quotes) takes svasamEvitti to denote simply the ‘subjective’ aspect that defines
cognition as subjective: ‘Cognition is distinct from insentient forms; it is just this
apperception ( �aatmasamEvitti)60 which is its [cognition’s] not being an insentient
form’.61
That is, ‘apperception’ (svasamEvitti) refers simply to whatever it is in virtue of
which a cognition (vijn �aana) is constitutively to be distinguished from insentient
objects (jadEar �uupa). Turning to S�aantaraks
Eita’s text, though, we find that S�aantaraks
Eita
does not tell us much (beyond the fact of its warranting the word svasamEvitti) about
just what it might be in virtue of which this is so. Indeed, as I indicated at the
beginning, his statements on the subject really amount simply to his stipulating a
definition; all he here says, then, is that what he understands by svasamEvitti is
(we might say) simply the ‘defining feature of cognition’. We do not, I think, get
much help regarding this from consideration of the context in which S�aantaraksEita
says this, though it is important to note that this statement is ventured in the course
of his ‘consideration of external objects’ (bahirarthapar�iiksE�aa)—that is, in chapter 23 of
the TattvasamEgraha, which develops the argument that the characteristically Yog�aac�aara
analysis of our epistemic situation represents the best account of our conventional
intuitions.62
Thus, S�aantaraksEita had argued that ‘cognition does not perceptually cognize
(vij �aan �aati) any external object whatsoever’.63 In this context, the foregoing passage
from S�aantaraksEita is introduced by his commentator Kamalas�iila as answering the
following question: ‘But why do these various conceptions not apply as well in the
case of apperception?’64 The answer, we have already seen S�aantaraksEita say, is that
‘cognition is distinct from insentient forms; it is just this apperception which is its
[cognition’s] not being an insentient form’. Kamalas�iila elaborates: ‘For apperception
is not admitted as being intentional (gr �aahaka); rather, [it is admitted] as intrinsically
(svayamE)—that is, naturally—being itself luminous, like the light in the atmo-
sphere’.65 This claim then raises the question (made explicit by Kamalas�iila): ‘Then
why is it not accepted as being intentional?’66 S�aantaraksEita answers:
Its [cognition’s] apperception [does not exist] as being in an action-agent relation,since the threefoldness of [cognition],67 whose form is partless, does not makesense. Thus, because of its being of the nature of intellect, it makes sense that therebe apperception. But how could there be cognition of something distinct, havingthe nature of an object?68
The point of the first verse of this two-verse response appears to be that if
svasamEvitti referred to some action (to a particular kind of perception that can occur),
it would have to admit of the kind of agent–instrument–object analysis that can (in
the view of the Sanskrit grammarians) be given for any verbal construction; but for
S�aantaraksEita, it simply refers to the constitutively subjective aspect that defines any
Is svasamEvitti transcendental? 95
cognition as a cognition—with this aspect being, it would seem, distinguished from
those that can be described in strictly causal terms. With the second verse, though, weseem to be rather closer to the thought of Dign�aaga. That is, S�aantaraks
Eita makes the
additional claim that insofar as cognition is constitutively distinct from putativelymaterial objects, it makes more sense (in terms, perhaps, of ontological parsimony)
for the direct objects of cognition to be of the same nature—to be, that is, themselves‘of the nature of intellect’ (bodhar �uupa).69
Once again, it is a vexed question whether the claim thus made is that mentalevents are therefore all that exist, or simply the claim that the direct objects ofcognition must therefore be sense data. Be that as it may, S�aantaraks
Eita here deploys
the point in a way that is not obviously different from Dign�aaga’s appeal tosvasam
Evitti. Particularly S�aantaraks
Eita’s initial response, though—his definition of
svasamEvitti, that is, as simply what it is in virtue of which cognition is distinct from
‘insentient forms’—represents a potentially cogent rejoinder particularly to the
iteration problem. For it makes sense to say that a ‘defining characteristic’ isconstitutively different from any act that may be defined thereby. To the extent, then,
that svasamEvitti is (arguably as by Dign�aaga) thought to denote a special kind of
cognition that can occur (one whose object is other cognitions), it seems we wouldhave to allow (in Sanskritic terms) that it is therefore an action that will admit of the
standard analysis of a semantically complete verbal construction—that (in a morecontemporary idiom) it is therefore an intentional act whose object must be specified.
And the problem is that if it is thought that intentional acts (‘cognitions’) count assuch only in virtue of their being thus intended, there is no way to stop a regress. It is
therefore fitting that the perennially vexed exegetical issues that arise with respect tothe trajectory of Buddhist thought centered on this claim concern the question of
whether or not we are dealing with idealism; for on the ‘Cartesian’ reading of Kant’ssynthetic unity of apperception (the reading arguably advanced by Fichte), too,
Kantian insights are taken in a decidedly idealist direction.But to the extent, however, that svasam
Evitti denotes (as for S�aantaraks
Eita) simply the
defining feature of cognition (as opposed to insentient forms)—the hallmark, that is,
of the ‘mental’—we seem rather closer to the ‘logical condition’ reading of Kant’sdoctrine, particularly as that is elaborated by Strawson. Thus, S�aantaraks
Eita has
suggested that svasamEvitti is simply the criterion for individuating tokens of the type
‘cognition’. And the stronger claim that I am now reconstructing S�aantaraksEita as
suggesting is that, in fact, even one who would deny this turns out necessarily topresuppose it. This is the force of my taking S�aantaraks
Eita to have intuited that this is a
basically transcendental point. That is, it is a condition of the possibility even simplyof identifying what it is that we are talking about that it be identified under adescription such as S�aantaraks
Eita’s;70 for (per Strawson’s reconstruction of Kant) even
denying of cognitions that they are subjective requires first having individuatedthem—and it cannot be cognitions of which one denies this if they are not
individuated as things that are subjective.Of course, S�aantaraks
Eita does not argue in this way,71 and it is not even clear that
this way of reading him is warranted by the two subsequent verses from his text that
96 Dan Arnold
we considered. But the verse quoted from S�aantaraksEita by Moks
E�aakaragupta,
understood particularly in light of Dharmottara’s characteristic revision in the
trajectory of thought initiated by Dign�aaga, recommends the view that S�aantaraksEita
can be taken to have understood svasamEvitti not as exemplifying intentionality—not,
that is, as itself simply another kind of intentional cognition—but as intentionality
itself—that is, as what it is in virtue of which any cognition could count as a
token of that type.72 The reason, then, why Kant could coherently claim that
‘pure apperception’ cannot (as he said) ‘itself be accompanied by any further
representation’—viz. because Kant means to identify simply that fact in virtue of
which any act could count as an act of representing in the first place—can apply as
well to S�aantaraksEita’s idea of svasam
Evitti. Thus, if ‘intentionality’ is the fact that
is picked out by S�aantaraksEita’s definition, the point to be made in response to
the M�aadhyamika critique of svasamEvitti is the deceptively straightforward one that
the fact of intentionality is not itself intentional—and hence, reference to the idea of
svasamEvitti does open up a regress.
That is, insofar as S�aantaraksEita has simply stated the criterion for individuating
tokens of the type cognition, the point is simply that this criterion for thus
individuating these is not individuated by itself—and we cannot, therefore, suppose
(as Candrak�iirti does with respect to Dign�aaga) that svasamEvitti must itself instantiate
an intentional structure; for svasamEvitti is here to be understood simply as the
‘intentionality’ that itself is displayed by any cognition (and hence, that is
presupposed by any act even of denying S�aantaraksEita’s point). And that something
like ‘intentionality’ is what is thus necessarily presupposed is what I have suggested by
considering S�aantaraksEita in light of Dharmottara and Moks
E�aakaragupta. Thus,
Dharmottara emphasized that even specifically perceptual cognitions ( pratyaksEa)
must, if they are to count as ‘reliable warrants’ ( pram �aanEa), yield some judgment—
and the judgment that thus completes an episode of perceptual cognition
as a pram �aanEa is, for Dharmottara (and contra Dign�aaga and Dharmak�iirti), not to
be understood as causally produced by the perceived sense datum (not to be
understood, that is, as exemplifying a janya–janaka relation); rather, it is to be
understood as exemplifying an intentional relation (vyavasth �aapya–vyavasth �aapaka-
bh �aavena).
And this is just the point that MoksE�aakaragupta borrows in introducing
S�aantaraksEita’s definition of svasam
Evitti—a definition that he adduces specifically to
head off precisely the kinds of objections thereto developed by Candrak�iirti. That is,
the reason that svasamEvitti cannot (contra Candrak�iirti) be thought vulnerable to the
iteration problem is that it constitutively involves not causal, but intentional
relations. In the context of this reading, then, S�aantaraksEita’s concise and
underdeveloped statement on svasamEvitti—his claim, that is, that this denotes
simply ‘cognition’s not being an insentient form’—can be reconstructed as the claim
that svasamEvitti denotes not a particular type of (intentional) cognition, but simply
the intentional structure that constitutively characterizes any token of the type
‘cognition’.
Is svasamEvitti transcendental? 97
Conclusion: Towards Inferentialism in Buddhist Philosophy?
Thus reconstructing S�aantaraksEita’s view gives us, I think, the conceptual tools to
appreciate why the critique of svasamEvitti advanced by Candrak�iirti does not—indeed,
cannot—coherently be thought to undermine S�aantaraksEita’s understanding thereof.
This is because svasamEvitti, on this understanding, cannot itself coherently be
thought to require explanation; for the offering of any explanation will, as itself
involving cognitive acts, necessarily presuppose precisely the point it purports to
explain: viz. the constitutively subjective, intentional character of cognition.
Otherwise, it cannot be cognitions that are being explained.
By thus reframing the debate on svasamEvitti in terms suggested by the
alternative readings of Kant’s ‘transcendental unity of apperception’, we are,
I think, in a position to better appreciate several points. Consider, for example,
the debate among Tibetan interpreters of Indian Madhyamaka, as that has been
studied (specifically with respect to this issue) by Paul Williams. Much of that debate,
I noted at the beginning of this essay, concerns the question of whether the
kind of critique characteristically advanced by the M�aadhyamikas Candrak�iirti and
S�aantideva is to be understood (with Tibetan interpreters like Tsong-kha-pa) as
refusing even the conventional validity of this idea—or whether (with Mipham,
as sympathetically understood by Williams) it is to be understood as arguing
only that it is not an ultimately obtaining fact, without denying its conventional
utility.Jay Garfield has recently defended the characteristically venturesome claim that
‘Tsong khapa and [his disciple and commentator] rGyal tshab are dead right, and
Mipham and Williams are dead wrong (both hermeneutically and philosophically)
. . .’.73 Garfield’s parenthetical distinction here is important, and, considered along
with the reconstruction I have here proposed, can help us clarify the issues at stake in
such a way as to appreciate that Garfield’s claim is problematic. Thus, Garfield is
right that it is important to consider the cogency of an interpretation such as
Mipham’s (as with any interpretation of philosophical texts) in terms both of its
exegetical adequacy to the (M�aadhyamika) arguments interpreted, and in terms of its
philosophical adequacy—that is, both in terms of the extent to which it can plausibly
claim to restate (in this case) the arguments of Candrak�iirti and S�aantideva, and the
extent to which the interpretation’s inferential relations with other things we believe
are defensible.In terms of the first point, the matter is not as straightforward as it may initially
seem.74 I have argued elsewhere75 that, as is particularly clear in chapter one of the
Prasannapad �aa, Candrak�iirti means to show that Dign�aaga’s philosophical project
cannot coherently be said to give an account of our epistemic practices as they are
conventionally described—and that it therefore cannot coherently be taken to be
even conventionally valid. Indeed, Candrak�iirti’s whole procedure is simply to argue
that Dign�aaga’s approach depends on its peculiarly technical usage of ordinary terms,
and that his usage therefore cannot make sense of ordinary usage—given which,
Dign�aaga cannot be thought to explain what he says he is explaining. What is
98 Dan Arnold
conventionally true, in other words, is just our conventions, and any technical
redescription thereof is, ipso facto, not conventionally valid.To the extent, then, that Dign�aaga’s category of svasam
Evitti is among the targets of
Candrak�iirti’s critique, it would seem that that we are entitled (with Garfield) to judgeinterpreters such as Mipham to be exegetically inadequate to Candrak�iirti’s thought.
But this conclusion can nevertheless be qualified. For in defending the view thatsvasam
Evitti should be retained as part of our conventionally valid account of the
world, Mipham clearly presupposed S �aantaraksEita’s understanding thereof;76 and we
have seen that Candrak�iirti’s critique does not have any purchase against that view—that (to put the same point less contentiously) it is not S �aantaraks
Eita’s view of
svasamEvitti that Candrak�iirti targets.77 It would be at least defensible, then, to claim
that Candrak�iirti did not mean to deny the conventional reality of svasamEvitti insofar
as one takes something like S �aantaraksEita’s view of it as the one that reflects our
conventional understanding—and insofar, then, as one thus takes Candrak�iirti to
refuse only the version of svasamEvitti that is comparable to the ‘Cartesian’ version of
Kant’s doctrine. This point would, to be sure, depend on the (historically
problematic) claim that though he had only Dign�aaga’s understanding of svasamEvitti
before him, Candrak�iirti nevertheless did not ‘mean’ for his critique thereof to applyas well to the version of the doctrine that would later be developed by S�aantaraks
Eita—
but insofar as Candrak�iirti’s critique clearly does not touch the latter, this neverthelessremains a viable move.
In terms of the philosophical adequacy of this alternative reading of svasamEvitti, I
have already tried to develop (following Strawson on Kant) a sympathetic reading of
the cogent transcendental argument to be made in its defense. We have seen, then, anargument to the effect that if svasam
Evitti picks out simply whatever it is in virtue of
which cognitions are to be distinguished from insentient objects (and I havesuggested, following Dharmottara and Moks
E�aakaragupta, that the criterion thus
identified is intentionality), then one cannot coherently deny its obtaining since onecould only claim to deny this of cognitions if these have already been individuated assuch—and it will not be cognitions of which this is denied if we have not thus
individuated constitutively subjective, intentional acts. That this is a defensiblereading of S�aantaraks
Eita is suggested by the fact that Mipham makes some arguments
that are very close to this.78
I would here like to conclude by briefly suggesting some additional philosophical
points that recommend this reading of svasamEvitti. Here, my argument dovetails, I
think, with the broadly inferentialist case against empiricist foundationalism
developed, in ways that basically follow Kant, by Wilfrid Sellars and (more recently)Robert Brandom.79 Sellars’s influential arguments against the ‘myth of the given’ canbe understood as directed particularly against the kind of representationalist
epistemologies in which Dign�aaga’s svasamEvitti can be said to play a pivotal role. Thus,
we saw that the whole point in Dign�aaga’s taking svasamEvitti as a type of ‘perception’
( pratyaksEa) is to advance the claim that we are immediately acquainted with the
contents of our own mental states—that we can know, without mastery of any prior
concepts and without awareness of the inferential relations of this claim with any
Is svasamEvitti transcendental? 99
other knowledge, at least that we have cognitions; and the point in taking svasamEvitti
as finally the only really occurrent kind of perception is, in turn, to advance the claim
that this is all that we can finally know with certainty.80 It is, then, fitting that
Dign�aaga’s doctrine of svasamEvitti has affinities with the ‘Cartesian’ reading of Kant’s
‘apperception’; for we here have the virtually Cartesian argument that the only thing
we cannot doubt is the fact that we have some experience.But to understand svasam
Evitti thus is not only to hold a view that (as Candrak�iirti
shows with respect to Dign�aaga) exemplifies the iteration problem; it is also (and
perhaps, in the end, more significantly) to take this putatively foundational sort of
cognition in such a way that it is finally incapable of being involved with what Kant
considered to be objective judgments.81 This is, I think, a useful way to characterize the
problems that are widely understood to follow given the radically sharp distinction
that Dign�aaga and Dharmak�iirti posit between perception and inference.82 That is, if it
is held (with Dign�aaga and Dharmak�iirti) that one’s acquaintance with the contents of
one’s mental states is constitutively non-conceptual; and if, further, it is held (also
with these thinkers) that one’s acquaintance with one’s own mental states is therefore
constitutively ‘unsuitable for association with discourse’83—that, in other words, one
can ‘know’ the contents of one’s mind without any knowledge of the inferential
relations of these with anything else that is known—then one is led inexorably to the
epistemological solipsism that is finally entailed by ‘psychologistic’ conceptions of
logic.84 This is clear if we consider, for example, familiar arguments to the effect that
knowledge even of one’s own mental states necessarily presupposes the attribution of
similar states to others—arguments, that is, to the effect that recognizing the
necessarily mediated character even of our awareness of our own mental states
represents the most compelling basis for a refutation of solipsism.85
If, however, svasamEvitti is taken to identify something like the transcendental unity
of apperception, the case is very different—which is precisely as Kant tried to
emphasize in developing his understanding of the transcendental unity of
apperception. As Kant put it,
the pure form of intuition in time, merely as intuition in general, which contains agiven manifold, is subject to the original unity of consciousness, simply through thenecessary relation of the manifold of the intuition to the one ‘I think’, and sothrough the pure synthesis of understanding which is the a priori underlyingground of the empirical synthesis. Only the original unity is objectively valid; theempirical unity of apperception, upon which we are not here dwelling, and whichbesides is merely derived from the former under given conditions in concreto, hasonly subjective validity. (B140)
It is, though, an interestingly complex question whether the Kantian reading of
svasamEvitti here proposed is finally such that it can be deployed in order to support
constitutively Buddhist doctrines. Recall, in this connection, that Kant emphasized
that we are not warranted in drawing inferences from the transcendental unity of
apperception to any empirically existent locus thereof—and that he criticized
Descartes’s characteristic arguments in this regard as fallacious.86 It is not necessarily
the case, then, that this idea commits one to refusing the constitutively Buddhist
100 Dan Arnold
denial of an �aatman. Nevertheless, there may be a real problem in reconciling
characteristically Buddhist commitments in this regard even with the idea that
experience is constitutively perspectival; for to the extent that Buddhists want to assert
that a ‘person’ is really just a causally continuous series of mental events, and that
such continua are finally independent of the causally continuous series of physical
events that are bodies,87 we must ask what could possibly keep all these mental
continua apart—what, as it were, channels them, such that they can represent distinct
perspectives on the world? And what can they be perspectives on (what can they be
about) if they alone exist?
Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception, then, may not presuppose that
empirically applicable criteria of identity can be given for the locus of ‘synthesis’ (that,
in other words, persons consist in the kind of ‘selves’ that Buddhists are constitutively
concerned to refute). To the extent, though, that Kant’s point concerns the
constitutively perspectival character of experience, it nevertheless provides a criterion
for individuating instances of such (viz. as being from different perspectives)—and it
is not clear to me particularly that the Yog�aac�aara stream of Buddhist thought (in the
context of which S�aantaraksEita makes the point we have here considered) is in a
position to do this.
Notes
[1] This paper was fostered partly by an exchange of scholarly work and correspondence with JayGarfield and Charles Goodman, whom I thank for the stimulation. (Cf. Garfield, 2004;Goodman, 2004.) Thanks also to Rick Nance and Rajam Raghunathan for their comments onan earlier draft.
[2] Also referred to as svasamEvedana (from the same verbal root).
[3] Williams’s study (1998) then concerns the question—much debated among Tibetaninterpreters of Indian Madhyamaka—of whether or not these M�aadhyamika critiques weremeant to show that svasam
Evitti is (not only not ultimately, but) not even conventionally valid.
See also the review article by Kapstein (2000).[4] Or we might instead (with important implications) say sapient (cf. Brandom, 2000, p. 2, et
passim). That is, if the ‘intentionality’ picked on this understanding of svasamEvitti is
understood as a particularly semantic phenomenon—as the kind of ‘aboutness’ that isparticularly displayed in judgments—then we are talking about the distinguishing
characteristic of a particularly conceptual sort of awareness. This would, of course, underminethe view (surely held by Dign�aaga) that svasam
Evitti is to be reckoned a kind of perception
(hence, as non-conceptual)—though as I will suggest in concluding, such a view might bephilosophically preferable.
[5] Williams (1998, pp. 19–35); cf. Blumenthal (2004, pp. 220–227).[6] This point cannot, perhaps, be held against Candrak�iirti, who had only Dign�aaga in his sights.
It may, though, count against S�aantideva—or at least against his commentator Prajn�aakaramati,who specifically addresses S�aantaraks
Eita’s understanding of svasam
Evitti, and tries to show that it
does not escape the M�aadhyamika critique. Cf. note 70, below.[7] For these different terms, see Critique of Pure Reason, A108 (‘transcendental unity of
apperception’), B132 (‘pure’ or ‘original apperception’), B157 (‘synthetic original unity ofapperception’).
[8] This and the preceding quote from Hume are from his Treatise of Human Nature, Book I,Section VI (Hume, 1978, pp. 252, 255, respectively); the emphasis is mine.
Is svasamEvitti transcendental? 101
[9] In that case, Kant’s would be a basically Cartesian argument—though as we will note, heclearly meant to emphasize that he did not intend for it to be read thus.
[10] That is, ‘intuition’ (or ‘perception’) involves (to invoke McDowell’s phrase again) simplycausally efficacious ‘impingements by the world on a possessor of sensory capacities’.
[11] That is, the ‘synthesis’ of manifold intuitions represents, for Kant, the point at whichdeliberative freedom becomes possible—with its arguably being the whole point of his entireproject to explain how freedom is possible in a scientifically describable world. It is in thisway that Kant characteristically contrasts ‘receptivity’ (the mode of ‘intuition’) and‘spontaneity’ (the mode of ‘thought’, ‘understanding’, or ‘judgment’).
[12] Specifically, there is an equivocation between ‘I’ as grammatical subject (‘I think’), and ‘I’ asnaming an ontologically distinct substance (‘therefore I am’). Cf. A344, ff. where Kantemphasizes that ‘[s]ince the proposition ‘‘I think’’ (taken problematically) contains the formof each and every judgment of the understanding and accompanies all categories as theirvehicle, it is evident that the inferences from it admit only of a transcendental employment ofthe understanding’ (A348). Husserl similarly argues that Descartes’s argument is problematicprecisely insofar as he compromises its essentially transcendental character—specifically, byintroducing ‘the apparently insignificant but actually fateful change whereby the egobecomes a substantia cogitans . . . and [the] point of departure for inferences according to theprinciple of causality. . .’ (1995, p. 24).
[13] B157. Cf., A117n: ‘. . . it must not be forgotten that the bare representation ‘‘I’’ in relation toall other representations (the collective unity of which it makes possible) is transcendentalconsciousness. Whether this representation is clear (empirical consciousness) or obscure, oreven whether it ever actually occurs, does not here concern us. But the possibility of thelogical form of all knowledge is necessarily conditioned by relation to this apperception as afaculty.’ In this and the preceding passage, Kant makes, inter alia, a point that woulddecisively cut particularly against Dign�aaga’s characteristically foundationalist deployment ofsvasam
Evitti. Thus, we will see that for Dign�aaga, the point in characterizing svasam
Evitti as a
species of ‘perception’ ( pratyaksEa) is to say that the acquaintance we have with our own
mental states is constitutively immediate (that is, non-conceptual, non-discursive). Kanturges precisely the opposite in thus arguing that the content of the transcendental unity ofapperception is ‘a thought, not an intuition’, and that whether it is clear or obscure is of noimportance. Kant’s point finds expression in the 20th century in the work of Wilfrid Sellars,whose influential critique of the ‘myth of the given’ (1963, pp. 127–196) develops the pointthat even our acquaintance with our own mental states necessarily presupposes mastery ofsome concepts, etc. More on this point when we turn to Dign�aaga.
[14] Cf. Brandom’s comment that the course of philosophy changed significantly with the‘replacement of concern with Cartesian certainty by concern with Kantian necessity’ (2000,p. 80; cf. pp. 163–164)—that is, with the replacement of a subjectively epistemic desideratum(‘certainty’) by an arguably objective one.
[15] And in fact, Kant’s doctrine is arguably the precursor to the idea of intentionality as that isdeveloped by thinkers as diverse as Brentano and Husserl, Sellars and Brandom.
[16] Indeed, this is as it must be if language is to be possible at all.[17] Among other things, this greatly complicates our picture of causally efficacious ‘svalaks
EanEas’
as what precipitates perceptual cognitions; for it is difficult to retain the view that perceptualcognitions alone are causally explicable if svalaks
EanEas are really something like ‘sense-data’—
given which, the grounds for distinguishing these from inferential cognitions become lessobvious. Consider, in this regard, Sara McClintock’s (2003, pp. 143–4) helpful statementthat, for S�aantaraks
Eita, sense data ‘are still causally produced, and as such they are still formed
and restricted by their causes. Even though an image of a patch of blue does not arise from agroup of causally functioning external blue particulars, it does arise from a causallyfunctioning internal particular, namely an imprint for the arisal of an image of a patch ofblue. The arisal of images in perception is thus not an arbitrary affair (and to that degree it is
102 Dan Arnold
real); rather, it is rooted in karmic imprints and ignorance.’ But of course, moments ofinferential awareness presumably could similarly be described as caused by ‘an imprint forthe arisal’ of such—in which case, perception would seem to lose its distinctive status.
[18] The Sanskrit (as given in Hattori, 1968, note 1.55, p. 97) is: savy �aap �aaraprat�iitatv �aat pram �aanEamE
phalam eva sat.[19] Tibetan at ibid., p. 183: ’di la phyi rol pa rnams kyi bzhin du tshad ma las ’bras bu don gzhan
du gyur ba ni med kyi, ’bras bur gyur ba’i shes pa de nyid yul gyi rnam pa can du skyes pa dang,bya ba dang bcas par rtog pa de nye bar blangs nas, tshad ma nyid du ’dogs pa ste, bya ba medpar yang yin no. My translation is adapted from that of Hattori (ibid., p. 28).
[20] Indeed, as Dign�aaga argues in his �AAlambanapar�iiksE�aa, cognition must be explicable without
reference to any external objects, must be taken to have other mental events as its directobjects; for (as he argues there) any account of external objects necessarily presupposes someversion of minimal part atomism, which Dign�aaga argues cannot coherently be adduced toexplain our cognition of macro-objects.
[21] Tibetan at Hattori, op. cit., p. 183: yul gyi snang ba nyid de ’di’i / tshad ma . . . ; cf. Hattori’stranslation, p. 29. Dharmak�iirti makes the same point at Ny �aayabindu 1.20: arthas �aar �uupyamasya pram �aan
Eam (Malvania, 1971, p. 81).
[22] Tibetan at Hattori, op. cit., p. 183: de ltar rnam pa du ma rig pa’i shes pa nye bar blangs pa delta de ltar tshad ma dang gzhal bya nyid du nye bar ’dogs pa yin te . . . ; here, the translation isthat of Hattori, ibid., p. 29 (though I have rendered the Tibetan equivalent of upacaryate as‘figuratively’ rather than, with Hattori, ‘metaphorically’).
[23] Pram �aanEasamuccaya 1.10. The Sanskrit (per Hattori, ibid., note 1.67, p. 107) is: yad �aabh �aasam
Eprameyam
Etat pram �aan
Eaphalate punah
E/ gr �aahak �aak �aarasam
Evitt�ii trayam n �aatah
EprEthak kr
Etam; cf.,
Hattori’s translation, ibid., p. 29.[24] Tibetan at Hattori, ibid., p. 183: shes pa ni gnyis su snang bar skyes te, rang gi snang ba dang
yul gyi snang ba’o. snang ba de gnyis la gang rang rig pa de ni ’bras bur ’gyur ro; cf. Hattori’stranslation, ibid., p. 28.
[25] Cf. note 18, above.[26] At Pram �aan
Easamuccaya 1.1.
[27] Hayes (1988, p. 136). Brentano (1973, p. 91) makes almost precisely the same point, in termswith striking affinities with Dign�aaga: ‘. . . besides the fact that it has a special object, innerperception possesses another distinguishing characteristic: its immediate, infallible self-evidence. Of all the types of knowledge of the objects of experience, inner perception alonepossesses this characteristic. Consequently, when we say that mental phenomena are thosewhich are apprehended by means of inner perception, we say that their perception isimmediately evident. Moreover, inner perception is not merely the only kind of perceptionwhich is immediately evident; it is really the only perception in the strict sense of the word. . . [for] the phenomena of the so-called external perception cannot be proved true and realeven by means of indirect demonstration. For this reason, anyone who in good faith hastaken them for what they seem to be is being misled by the manner in which the phenomenaare connected. Therefore, strictly speaking, so-called external perception is not perception.Mental phenomena, therefore, may be described as the only phenomena of which perceptionin the strict sense of the word is possible.’
[28] As much is conceded by MoksE�aakaragupta, who anticipates an objection to this effect: ‘But if
all cognitions are [instances of the kind of] perception that is apperception, [then] howwould conceptual cognitions like ‘‘this is a jar’’ not be non-conceptual, and how would the[mistaken] cognition of a yellow conch shell not be non-erroneous? We reply: evenconceptual cognition is non-conceptual with respect to itself; [such cognition] conceptua-lizes the external object with [propositions like] ‘‘this is a jar’’, but [it does] not[conceptualize] itself.’ (Singh (1985, p. 24): nanu sarvajn �aan �aan �aam
Esvasam
Evedanapratyaks
Eatve
ghatEo ‘yam ity �aadivikalpajn �aanasya nirvikalpakatvam
E, p�iitasan
Ekh �aadijn �aanasya-abhr �aantatvam
Eca
katham na bhavet? ucyate: vikalpajn �aanam api sv �aatmani nirvikalpam eva / ghatEo ‘yam ity anena
Is svasamEvitti transcendental? 103
b �aahyam eva-arthamE
vikalpayati, na tv �aatm �aanam.) This conclusion surely follows fromDign�aaga’s initial contention that our various cognitive instruments ( pram �aan
Ea) are only
‘figuratively’ so called, insofar as there is finally only the fact of occurrent cognitions havingvarious phenomenological aspects.
[29] It is helpful, in understanding Dign�aaga’s argument, to remain mindful of what is finally atstake for him—to remain mindful, that is, of the basically Buddhist point (viz. an �aatmav �aada)that is ultimately advanced by this epistemology; thus, Dign�aaga’s is the view that what isfinally warranted by the kind of cognition that is uniquely in contact with really existentphenomena is only the conclusion that there are sensations—which does not also warrant theinferential belief that these must be the states of a ‘self ’.
[30] This seems to be the view of Hattori; cf. inter alia, his notes1.65, 1.67 (p. 107). Alex Waymanhas long opposed the ‘idealist’ reading of this and cognate schools. In an article specificallyaddressing the relations between Dign�aaga and the Yog�aac�aara school, for example, Waymanwrites: ‘. . . if indeed the Yog�aac�aara school denies the reality of an external object, it wouldhardly be possible to find its position attractive to the Buddhist logicians who were to follow,since Dign�aaga and his successors . . . do not deny an external object; rather they call it asvalaks
EanEa (the ‘‘particular’’) and even sometimes describe it as param �aartha-sat (‘‘absolute
existence’’), to underscore the reality of this object of direct perception ( pratyaksEa)’ (1979,
p. 65). It should be clear, though, that none of these points self-evidently counts in favor ofWayman’s conclusions; for being ‘absolutely existent’ and uniquely ‘particular’ can just aswell describe sensations as external objects.
[31] Here, my terms are those of Pram �aanEasamuccaya 1.10; cf., note 23, above.
[32] And this claim, of course, is neutral with respect to the question of what might finally exist inthe world.
[33] This is the question that, I have noted, MoksE�aakaragupta tried to address (cf., note 28,
above)—though it seems that MoksE�aakaragupta’s expression simply states what the problem is,
rather than resolving the tension; for the concession that ‘even conceptual cognition is non-conceptual with respect to itself ’ does not make clear what is gained by identifying that fact.
[34] Consider, in this regard, Frege’s notion of ‘objectivity’ as consisting only in the kind ofintersubjective availability that is a hallmark of language, which thus stands in contrast to theeminently private and subjective status of ‘representations’. ‘It is in this way’, Frege thereforesaid, ‘that I understand objective to mean what is independent of our sensation, intuitionand imagination, and of all construction of mental pictures out of memories of earliersensations, but not what is independent of reason; for to undertake to say what things arelike independent of reason, would be as much as to judge without judging, or to wash the furwithout wetting it’ (Frege, 1959, sect. 26). Cf. Wolfgang Carl’s characterization (1994, pp.192–193) of Frege’s critique of the empiricist version of ‘psychologism’: ‘If empiricalknowledge includes or is even based on perceptual knowledge and if sense perceptionrequires sensations, then there can be no empirical knowledge without something subjective. . . . [Thus, Frege] considers the judgment component of empirical knowledge as the realsource or manifestation of its objectivity.’
[35] On the former (idealist) reading, this is because if any cognition, in order to count as such,must have separable ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ aspects, then either one of these aspects, as aseparable component of cognition, can be thought itself to have two such aspects; in thelatter (representationalist) case, this is (more straightforwardly) because if, say, a conceptualthought counts as a cognition only in virtue of one’s non-conceptual awareness of the fact ofhaving it, then it can be thought that the latter awareness, in order to count as such, mustitself be the object of a further such awareness.
[36] I have developed my understanding of Candrak�iirti’s critique of Dign�aaga at length in Arnold(forthcoming, chs 6–7).
[37] That is, that they are not themselves the properties of anything, nor themselves possessed ofany properties—for in either case, we would be left with something that is analytically
104 Dan Arnold
reducible, where Dign�aaga’s project requires that sense data be (as the only ‘ultimatelyexistent’ things) irreducible. Cf. in addition to Arnold (forthcoming), Arnold (2003).
[38] Candrak�iirti had just argued that only a svalaksEanEa that is understood as an object
(karmas �aadhanam) could be knowable ( prameyam). As throughout his engagement withDign�aaga, Candrak�iirti then argues that this requirement cannot be reconciled with ordinaryuses of the word, as exemplified by the expression vijn �aanasvalaks
EanEa (which Candrak�iirti
would read as ‘the defining characteristic of cognition’). This familiar reference to a clearlysubjective/agentive sort of svalaks
EanEa then requires that Dign�aaga must (if his concepts are to
track ordinary usage) allow that svalaksEanEa might also be understood as the ‘instrument’ of
this action (‘characterizing’). This absurdly entails that there are two kinds of svalaksEanEa:
‘one unique particular is warrantable (i.e. because of an object)—the one thus pointed out aswhat is characterized; and one is not warrantable—the one by which something ischaracterized’ (kim
Ecit svalaks
EanEamE
prameyamE
yal laksEyata ity evam
Evyapadisyate, kim
Ecid
aprameyamE
yal laksEyate ’neneti vyapadisyata iti). If the latter, too, is then to count as
knowable, it must at the same time be an object, and an infinite regress looms—which iswhat svasam
Evitti has here been posited to halt. Cf. La Vallee Poussin (1970b, p. 61.3–9).
[39] The reference is to Madhyamak �aavat �aara 6.72–78 (La Vallee Poussin 1970a, pp. 166–174).[40] Recall that Candrak�iirti is here arguing from the view according to which the verbal noun
‘laksEanEa’ (‘characterizing’) is to be analyzed as an action. The claim, then, that a svalaks
EanEa is
‘characterized’ is chiefly to be understood as the claim that it is the object undergoing thisaction (the laks
Eya)—and that it therefore requires some instrument of this action.
[41] La Vallee Poussin (1970b, pp. 61.10–62.3): Atha manyase svasamEvittir asti. Tatah
Esvasam
Evitty �aa grahan
E�aat karmat �aay �aam
Esaty �aam asty eva pramey �aantarbh �aava iti. Ucyate: vistaren
Ea
Madhyamak �aavat �aare svasamEvittinis
Eedh �aat, svalaks
EanEamE[ p. 62] svalaks
EanE�aantaren
Ea laks
Eyate tad
api svasamEvitty �aa iti na yujyate. Api ca, tad api n �aama jn �aanam
Esvalaks
EanEavyatireken
E�aasiddher
asamEbhav �aal laks
Ey �aabh �aave nir �aasrayalaks
EanEapravr
Ettyasam
Ebhav �aat sarvath �aa n �aast�iiti kutah
Esvasam
Evittih
E?
[42] Candrak�iirti adduces the same image in theMadhyamak �aavat �aara; cf. La Vallee Poussin (1970a:pp. 168–169).
[43] La Vallee Poussin (1970b, pp. 62.5–63.2): �AAlambane sati, cittamEutpadyate. Tat kim anyad
�aalambanam anyac cittamE, atha yad ev �aalambanam
Etad eva cittam
E? Yadi t �aavad anyad
�aalambanam anyac cittamE, tad �aa dvicittat �aa bhavis
Eyati. Atha yad ev �aalambanam
Etad eva cittam
E,
tat kathamEcittam
Ecittam
Esamanupasyati? Na ca cittam
Ecittam
Esamanupasyati. Tadyath �aapi
n �aama tay �aa-ev �aasidh �aaray �aa saiv �aasidh �aar �aa na sakyate chettumE. Na tenaiv �aangulyagren
Ea
tadev �aa _nngulyagramE
sakyate sprasEtEum. Evam eva na tenaiva cittena tad eva cittam
Esakyam
Edras
EtEum
E.
[44] Ibid., p. 63.8: Tad evamEn �aasti svasam
Evittis, tadabh �aav �aat kim
Ekena laks
Eyate?
[45] More generally, the possibility being addressed is that of there being any action whose subjectand object are identical.
[46] Consider, too, the conclusion of Candrak�iirti’s critique as that is developed in theMadhyamak �aavat �aara: ‘ Thus, if svasam
Evitti doesn’t exist, then who perceives your paratantra?
Since the agent, object, and action aren’t the same, it’s not suitable to hold that [a cognition]grasps itself.’ (6.76 [La Vallee Poussin (1970a, p. 172)]: de’i phyir rang rig yod pa ma yin na /khyod kyi gzhan dbang gang gis ’dzin par ’gyur / byed po las dang bya ba gcig min pas / de nyidkyis de ’dzin par rigs ma yin // ). As reflected in this verse, Candrak�iirti’s critique in theMadhyamak �aavat �aara is framed particularly against the characteristically Yog�aac�aara doctrineof the ‘three natures’ (trisvabh �aava). To the extent, then, that Yog�aac�aara doctrine typicallyclaims that the paratantra-svabh �aava alone is really existent—and that the ‘perfected’ nature( parinis
Epanna-svabh �aava) consists simply in the paratantra without the ‘imagined’
( parikalpita) fact of its being distinct from one’s subjective perspective thereon—Candrak�iirti wants to know: ‘If the paratantra-svabh �aava exists as empty of both subjectand object, then who is aware of its existence?’ (6.72 [La Vallee Poussin (1970a, p. 166)]: gal
Is svasamEvitti transcendental? 105
te bzung med ’dzin pa nyid bral zhing / gnyis gyis stong pa’i gzhan dbang dngos yod na / ’di yi
yod par gang gis shes par ’gyur /. . .) This is, I think, basically a question of the same form as
the one that (I indicated above) could be put to Dign�aaga if his account of svasamEvitti is read
as a statement of idealism; cf. note 31, above.
The main thing that Candrak�iirti’s critique in the Madhyamak �aavat �aara adds that is not in the
Prasannapad �aa is a refutation of the memory argument for svasamEvitti (which brings to mind
Kant’s argument contra Hume in the first edition of the Critique). See the bh �aasEya on
Madhyamak �aavat �aara 6.73 (La Vallee Poussin, 1970a, p. 168). Candrak�iirti’s conclusion is that
this argument is circular: ‘Apperception is taken as the proof of memory, while at the same
time memory is used as the proof of reflexive awareness. The argument is circular and
therefore invalid’ [adapted from Huntington (1989, p. 244, note 101)].[47] On Dharmottara as having significantly revised the commitments of Dharmak�iirti, see
Dreyfus (1997, pp. 354–364).[48] That is, in order for a pram �aan
Ea to count as usefully furthering human aims (which is
how Dharmak�iirti defines pram �aanEa at Ny �aayabindu 1.1), it must (as I would put it)
be expressible as the object of some propositional attitude, some ‘that’-clause (‘I believe—
feel, sense, recognize—that . . .’). This is, indeed, among the points of Kant’s contention that
‘It must be possible for the ‘‘I think’’ to accompany all my representations’. It is to this extent
that Lynne Rudder Baker (1987, p. 19) can rightly say: ‘Mental items that cannot be
identified by ‘‘that’’-clauses at all have no claim to being beliefs or other propositional
attitudes’. Dharmottara’s point, then, is that mental items not identifiable by ‘that’-clauses
have no claim to being pram �aanEas.
[49] Here, I am borrowing Dharmak�iirti’s gloss of kalpan �aa (‘conception’) to state precisely what it
is that ‘perception’ ( pratyaksEa) is without; cf. Ny �aayabindu 1.5 (Malvania, 1971, p. 47):
abhil �aapasamEsargayogyapratibh �aasaprat�iitih
Ekalpan �aa (‘Kalpan �aa is a thought whose appearance is
suitable for association with discourse’). The criterion ‘suitable for association with
discourse’ could, I think, be taken as basically co-extensive with the criterion ‘identifiable by
‘that’-clauses’ (note 48, above).[50] Malvania (1971, p. 79) (ad. Ny �aayabindu 1.19): pr �aapakam
Ejn �aanam
Epram �aan
Eam / pr �aapan
Easaktis
ca na keval �aad arth �aavin �aabh �aavitv �aad bhavati / b�iij �aadyavin �aabh �aavino ‘py a _nnkur �aader apr �aapakatv �aat /
tasm �aad pr �aapy �aad arth �aad utpatt �aav apy asya jn �aanasy �aasti kascidavasyakartavyahEpr �aapakavy �aap �aaro,
yena krEten �aarthah
Epr �aapito bhavati. sa eva ca pram �aan
Eaphalam, yadanus
EtEh �aan �aat pr �aapakam
Ebhavati jn �aanam.
[51] Cf. Apte (1992, p. 1130). More basically, the word is the agentive form of the verbal root
pra-ffiffiffi
�aap
p, ‘to obtain’; hence, it refers to whatever is an ‘effector of acquisition’.[52] Which is the role that ‘intentionality’ plays for Brentano and Husserl.[53] The acuteness of the problem for Dharmottara becomes clear especially in the context of
Dharmak�iirti’s commitment to ‘momentariness’ (ksEanEikatva); for on the view that the only
‘real’ existents capable of precipitating a perceptual cognition are radically fleeting moments,
even to take (what are really) different moments in a certain causal ‘continuum’ (samEt �aana)
to be moments of the same thing is already in a sense to have made a ‘judgment’—and
Dharmottara wants to allow that the latter is to be reckoned as part of the ‘pram �aanEa’. Thus,
‘It is a single moment that is to be apprehended by perception, while it is a continuum [of
such moments] that is to be ascertained by a conviction based on perception; and it is
precisely a continuum that is to be intended by perception, since a [single] moment cannot be
intended’ [Malvania (1971, p. 71): pratyaksEasya hi ks
EanEa eko gr �aahyah
E, adhyavaseyas tu
pratyaksEabalotpannena niscayena sam
Et �aana eva; sant �aana eva ca pratyaks
Easya pr �aapan
E�iiyah,
ksEanEasya pr �aapayitum asakyatv �aat].
[54] See Malvania (1971, p. 82.3–6).[55] Malvania (1971, p. 82.7–9): na ca-atra janyajanakabh �aavanibandhanah
Es �aadhyas �aadhanabh �aavo,
yena-ekasmin vastuni virodhahEsy �aat; api tu vyavasth �aapyavyavasth �aapakabh �aavena.
106 Dan Arnold
[56] Singh (1985, p. 23.8–10): atra-ucyate: na karmakartrEbh �aavena vedyavedakatvam
Ejn �aane
varnEyate / kim
Etarhi vyavasth �aapyavhavasth �aapakabh �aavena.
[57] Indeed, the foregoing statement from MoksE�aakaragupta is immediately preceded by an
imagined interlocutor’s appeal to precisely the kinds of examples adduced by Candrak�iirti—such as that a sword cannot cut itself. Cf. Singh (1985, p. 23.3–8).
[58] Singh (1985, p. 23.21–25): Api ca yadi jn �aanamEsvasam
Evedanam
Ena sy �aat, tad �aa ‘‘jn �aato ‘rtha’’ iti
durghatEahEsy �aat, ‘‘n �aagr
Eh�iitavises
EanE�aa buddhir vises
Eye vartate’’ iti ny �aay �aat. Tath �aa hy artho vises
Eyah
E,
jn �aata iti visesEanEamE, jn �aato jn �aanena vises
Eita iti. Jn �aanam
Ecet svayam
Ena bodhar �uupen
Ea prat�iitam
E, tat
kathamEjn �aanena vises
Eito ‘rthah
Eprat�iiyat �aam. Interestingly, the axiom here cited comes from
M�iim�aamEsaka discourse—in particular, from Sabara’s commentary on M�iim �aam
Es �aa S �uutra 1.3.33.
[59] In what amounts, I think, to a gloss of the sva- prefix in the word svasamEvitti. Thus, the word
svasamEvitti on this understanding might be said to refer not to ‘self-reflexive cognition’, but
to what is ‘intrinsically cognition’, or ‘cognition itself ’.[60] The term is used interchangeably with the more common svasam
Evitti (and is used here, no
doubt, for metrical reasons). This term, too, will admit of the range of readings mentioned innote 59, above.
[61] TattvasamEgraha 1999 (Shastri, 1997, p. 478): vijn �aanam
Ejad
Ear �uupebhyo vy �aavr
Ettam upaj �aayate /
iyam ev �aatmasamEvittir asya y �aa-ajad
Ear �uupat �aa //; for Moks
E�aakaragupta’s quotation of this, see
Singh (1985, p. 23.13–14).[62] The passages here considered are repeated by S�aantaraks
Eita in the context of the same
discussion in theMadhyamak �aalamEk �aara; thus, Tattvasam
Egraha verses 1999–2001 occur also as
Madhyamak �aalamEk �aara 16–18 (cf. Ichig �oo, 1989, pp. 194–197; these verses are also translated by
Blumenthal, 2004, p. 237). Again, it is an exegetically complex question whether the‘characteristically Yog�aac�aara analysis’ that is here advanced concerns a chiefly epistemologicalpoint (that sense data are the only direct objects of cognition), or a metaphysical one (thatmental events are all that exist)—though surely the former has a better claim to reflecting a‘conventional’ sense of the matter.
[63] TattvasamEgraha 1998c–d (Shastri, 1997, p. 477): vij �aan �aati na ca jn �aanam
Eb �aahyam artham
Ekathancana.
[64] Shastri (1997, p. 478): nanu ca- �aatmasamEvedane ‘py ete ‘nirbh �aas �aadayo vikalp �aah
Ekasm �aan
na-avataranti? The various conceptions in question (‘without aspect, etc.’) are those deniedin Tattvasam
Egraha 1998a–b. That is, there is no kind of cognition that cognizes an external
object—not ‘one without a phenomenological aspect, or with such an aspect, or with adifferent kind of aspect’ (anirbh �aasam sanirbh �aasam
Eanyanirbh �aasam eva ca).
[65] Ibid.: na hi gr �aahakabh �aavena- �aatmasamEvedanam abhipretam, kim
Etarhi svayam
Eprakr
Ety �aa
prak �aas �aatmatay �aa, nabhastalavartty �aalokavat. The latter is a standard image for talking aboutsvasam
Evitti.
[66] Ibid.: Atha kasm �aad gr �aahyagr �aahakabh �aavena na-isEyate? (literally, ‘as being the grasper of
something to be grasped’).[67] Kamalas�iila glosses: vedyavedakavittibhedena (‘as separate cognized, cognizer, and cogni-
tion’).[68] Tattvasam
Egraha 2000–2001 (Shastri, 1997, p. 478): kriy �aak �aarakabh �aavena na svasam
Evittir asya
tu / ekasya-anamEsar �uupasya trair �uupy �aanupapattitah
E// tad asya bodhar �uupatv �aad yuktam
Et �aavad
svavedanam / parasya tv arthar �uupasya tena samEvedanam katham //.
[69] The argument of verse 2001, then, is similar not only to the basic argument of Dign�aaga’s�AAlambanapar�iiks
E�aa, but also (fittingly, given that Dign�aaga’s own text is in turn dependent on
this) similar to an argument from Vasubandhu’s VimEsatik �aa. Thus, Vasubandhu had argued
that insofar as it is admitted that (a) the karma of sentient beings creates the experiencedworld, and (b) karma is an essentially mental function (cetan �aa, as it is glossed in theAbhidharmakosa), it follows that the more ontologically parsimonious account has it thatwhat is created by karma (viz. experienced ‘things’) is itself mental. Cf. Vim
Esatik �aa 7: ‘It’s
imagined [on the account Vasubandhu is refusing] that the dispositions [originating] from
Is svasamEvitti transcendental? 107
karma are here, and their result somewhere else; why [is their result] not accepted [as being]precisely where the dispositions are?’ [Levi (1925, p. 5): karman
Eo v �aasan �aany atra phalam
anyatra kalpyate / tatraiva nesEyate yatra v �aasan �aa kim
Enu k �aaran
EamE//].
[70] This is true, at least, to the extent (as Candrak�iirti would emphasize) that S�aantaraksEita can
plausibly claim to have identified the way in which people conventionally understand‘cognition’; and of course, it is S�aantaraks
Eita’s aim in ch. 23 of the Tattvasam
Egraha precisely to
argue that this account represents the best expression of our conventional epistemicpractices. As I noted at the beginning (note 6, above), S�aantideva’s commentatorPrajn�aakaramati had (unlike Candrak�iirti) a vantage point in history that allowed him toexplain how the characteristically M�aadhyamika critique of svasam
Evitti might apply as well to
S�aantaraksEita’s understanding thereof. In this regard, Prajn�aakaramati’s most significant point
is simply to deny that S�aantaraksEita’s definition reflects the conventional use of the word.
Thus, having quoted TattvasamEgraha 1999–2000 (Vaidya, 1988, p. 196), Prajn�aakaramati says
of S�aantideva’s critique (which is precisely like that of Candrak�iirti): ‘The refutation wasexplained having understood the meaning of the word that is well known in ordinary usage,[i.e.] as [involving] separate action and agent, since that is the meaning expressed by theword svasam
Evedana. But if, because of fearing faults [in your argument], even the meaning
of words that is familiar to everyone is abandoned, then you will be in contradiction witheverybody’ [Vaidya (1988, p. 196): kriy �aak �aarakabhedena vyavah �aaraprasiddham
Esabd �aartham
adhigamya d �uusEanEam uktam, svasam
Evedanasabdasya tadarth �aabhidh �aayakatv �aat. yadi punar
dosEabhay �aal lokaprasiddho ‘pi sabd �aarthah
Eparityajyate, tad �aa lokata eva b �aadh �aa bhavato
bhavisEyati). To be sure, Prajn�aakaramati then proceeds to argue (in characteristically
M�aadhyamika fashion) that even if this definition is admitted, S�aantaraksEita could not succeed
in demonstrating that svasamEvitti obtains ultimately (Ibid.: ittham api na param �aarthatah
Esvasam
Evedanasiddhih
E. . .)—though of course, S�aantaraks
Eita did not claim thus to establish it.
Be that as it may, it is interesting that Prajn�aakaramati here as much as allows that the mostpromising way to refute S�aantaraks
Eita’s point is simply to refuse that people conventionally
understand svasamEvitti as reflected in S�aantaraks
Eita’s stipulated definition.
[71] Though his Tibetan interpreter Mipham does; see Williams (1998, pp. 91–96).[72] The difference here is similar to the difference that Candrak�iirti, in his critique of Dign�aaga,
urges between ‘defining characteristics’ (svalaksEanEa) and adjectival ‘qualification’ (vises
EanEa).
That is, while any instance of the latter qualifies some particular example of the kind inquestion, a ‘defining characteristic’ is, rather, what makes something an example of that kindin the first place. This is why, for Candrak�iirti, it is incoherent to suppose (as Dign�aaga does)that unique particulars could be bare even of their own defining characteristics, and why wemust instead allow that we invariably perceive things under a description. Cf. Arnold(forthcoming, ch. 6).
[73] Garfield (2004, p. 2).[74] It should be said here that I am not a scholar of Mipham, and that I am not therefore
speaking here of the interpretation that I know him to have upheld; rather, I am speakingsimply in terms of the different possibilities that seem to me to be available for finessing theexegetical issues in question. See, though, Williams (1998): passim; and (for Mipham’sinterpretation particularly of Tattvasam
Egraha 1999 /Madhyam
Eak �aalamk �aara 16) Doctor (2004,
pp. 253–269).[75] Arnold (forthcoming, chs 6–7).[76] Cf. Blumenthal (2004, pp. 222–223); Williams (1998, p. 91, et passim).[77] Again, though, this point is harder to make with respect to the similar critique by S�aantideva,
whose commentator Prajn�aakaramati clearly knows the thought of S�aantaraksEita. See, however,
Williams (1998, pp. 85–106); and note 70, above.[78] See especially Williams (1998, pp. 91–96).[79] See, as well, McDowell (1998).[80] Cf. notes 27 and 29, above.
108 Dan Arnold
[81] Cf. B141–142: ‘. . . a judgment is nothing but the manner in which given modes of knowledgeare brought to the objective unity of apperception’.
[82] Dreyfus (1997) recurrently considers issues that follow from this.[83] Cf. note 49, above.[84] Cf. notes 13 and 34, above.[85] Cf. Inter alia, Strawson (1959, p. 98, ff.), for just such an argument. The thrust of Sellars’s
critique of the ‘given’, too, is that even our acquaintance with our own mental statesnecessarily presupposes mastery of some concepts, etc. Cf. Brandom’s characterization ofSellars’s critique: ‘. . . the idea that there could be an autonomous language game, one thatcould be played though one played no other, consisting entirely of noninferential reports (inthe case Sellars is most concerned with . . . even of the current contents of one’s own mind) isa radical mistake’ (2000, p. 49).
[86] Cf. note 12, above.[87] Cf. Inter alia, Franco (1997, pp. 67–132), Hayes (1993), Taber (2003).
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