Appendix the Problem of the Nonexistent in Indian Philosophy of Logic and Language

APPENDIX THE PROBLEM OF THE NONEXISTENT IN INDIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LOGIC AND LANGUAGE Whatever is not what it pretends to be is unreal, declared the illustrious one ... what is it in that case that pretends? Candra1O.r61 A I: THE RABBIT -HORN IN AN ANCIENT INDIAN DEB A TE It would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that Indian logic, as the study of correct inferences became systematised around the beginning of the Christian era, mainly to provide a grid for the running polemics between the orthodox Nyiiya and the heterodox Buddhist philosophers concerning the existence of the self, God, external objects of perception, pennanent substances, universals, etc. Whenever philosophical existence-claims were debated in classical Indian philosophy, the logical status of empty tenns came up for discussion. And the rabbit's hom, the Eastern counterpart of the Homeric chimera, was cited always as a handy example. That existence-denials when construed as straightforward subject-predicate judgements create serious philo sophical problems was evident to Uddyotakara - the sixth-century sub-commentator on the Nyiiya aphorisms. He brings the problem of empty subject tenns of negative existentials to bear upon the (somewhat Humean) Buddhist counter-statement "The Self does not exist" before he starts arguing for his own positive (somewhat Cartesian) doctrine of a permanent soul that is distinct from the body and the stream of experience. In the statement "The Self does not exist" the property of existence is apparently denied of the self, or the property of nonexistence is predicated of it. But, Uddyotakara remarks, We cannot legitimately enquire which of a pair of [incompatible] properties belongs to a certain property-bearer as long as that entity itself remains unproven. The requirement that the existential presupposition has first to be fulfilled in order to enquire about the truth or falsity of any other predication about a certain subject immediately leads to a paradox if we apply it to the predication of existence itself. Can we first ask for a proof of the reality of an object before we go on to investigate whether that object possesses or lacks the property of being real? The puzzle 211 A. Chakrabarti, Denying Existence. 211-245. © 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers. 212 APPENDIX becomes more acute when simple unbreakable expressions like "I" are involved. It is not primarily due to any Cartesian considerations about the impossibility of doubting the doubter, but because "I" being simple cannot possibly lack reference that Uddyotakara says: No one ever doubts the existence of the self but only questions this or that specific account of its nature. Indeed, he goes further, and generalises that No direct proof of nonexistence (of an object which is first genuinely referred to) is possible.2 The Buddhist no-soulist will beg to differ. He believes that words like "I", "That table over there", "Cowness", etc pick out unrealities, and that it can be shown that what they refer to does not exist. This is how the imaginary dialogue proceeds in Uddyotakara's reconstruction: N(aiyayikil): No one can dispute the proposition that the self is existent. B(uddhist): This is not correct, for some philosophers (who believe that in order to be, something must have come into being) hold that it does not exist because it is not born. This is how they put the inference: The self does not exist Because, like the rabbit-hom, it is unproduced. N: But in the above, the words "The self does not exist" give rise to a contradiction. The expression "does not exist" is intended to be equi-referentiaP with the expression "The self', hence it does not coherently assert the nonbeing of the self. (If "The self' is vacuous how can it be equi-referential with any other expression?) B: Why so? N: By using the words "The self' we speak of its being. whereas by saying "does not exist" we go on to deny the same. Notice that by using the words "speak of' in the last remark Uddyotakara seems to have committed himself to the Russellian view that referential use of the subject term makes us state (rather than assume) that its designatum exists in conjunction with the rest of the predication. But later on Uddyotakara uses words like "posit" in the context of ruling that whatever we say about a particular jar (e,g, "The jar is not here", "The jar will not be here", "The jar was not here before", etc) posits the being of the jar, Therefore, we could say that he seems to anticipate the Strawsonian presupposition theory (which becomes clearer later). Positing (abhyupagama) is more like assuming than asserting. To return to our summary of the exchange between Nand B. B: Obviously, we do make true assertions of nonexistence, e.g. when we look at the empty floor and say "There is no cup here"; or speaking of a cup which is now broken we say, "That cup does not exist." We see no incoherence in that! N: A certain object which is denied in a certain place must be (assumed to be) existent in some other place. Thus, when "does not exist" is applied to the object to which ''The jar" is also applied, the application of the expression "The jar" cannot tolerate the absolute absence of the jar but only lets the predicate assert that it is absent from a certain place or at a certain time. Denial of being present in a specific place is done by predicates like" ... is not at home". denial of being there at a specific period of time by " ... does not exist now. or in the past.4 or in the future". But can we therefore stop denying the existence of figments of imagination, or impossibilities like unicorns and square-circles? Or, are we only to assert modestly APPENDIX 213 that as far as we can see there is no flying horse here, now? These anticipated worries are dealt with in the following fashion by Uddyotakara: N: The proposed comparison with (the unproblematic statement) "The rabbit-horn does not exist" would not work because the example is not appropriate. B: Why? N: The (compound) term "rabbit-horn" refers to a relation. Hence we are not here denying the being of a particular horn but only denying that a certain relation holds. This passage brings us right into the heart of the typical Nyaya strategy of dealing with Plato's Beard. The strategy is, as Ockham suggested (Summa Logieae II, Chapters 12-14), to treat every terminus fletus as complex and its simple parts as standing for real elements. Analysing "Carnivorous cows do not exist" into "Cows are not carnivorous" or (which, in the Nyaya idiom of property and location would read as) "Carnivorousness is not present in cows" has a definite Russellian ring about it. Now what is true of the general term "Carnivorous cows" may not be true of the singular term "The rabbit-hom". But is "The rabbit-hom" meant as a singular term at all? There is a little problem here which is partly logical and partly trans lational. Since Sanskrit does not use either definite or indefinite articles, the sin gular number of the word endings (inflections) allows us to take Uddyotakara's (and hence all subsequent Indian philosophers') example of an empty term as either a definite or an indefinite description. There is a fine example of this ambiguity and how it is pragmatically removed by contextual cues in the most ancient philo sophical grammar of Patanjali. A man who has lost his cow (a particular cow) is looking for her and asks another person, a cattle-minder perhaps, who sits on a high platform at a vantage point: "Do you see cow?" [We drop the article to give the literal equivalent of the Sanskrit.] Now, hosts of cows are grazing in front of the cattle-keeper, and yet he answers, "No" - truthfully, because here "cow" designates the particular cow intended by the speaker and not any old cow. Gautama in Nyaya Sutra 2.2.61 gives a long list of determiners or linguistic means of pinpointing the reference of a general term to a single individual. One such uniqueness-securing device is the use of relative pronouns like: ''That ... which ... " In a crowd of cows in different postures, "That cow which is sitting" might serve as a definite descrip tion. Thus, even if there were no occasion to distinguish between "a so and so" and "the so and so" [and in fact, not strictly between general and singUlar forms of expression], these philosophers were quite conscious of the problem of unique reference. The Naiyayika model, however, gradually became very much opposed to the occurrence of barely or baldly singular terms in our qualificative cognitions and their verbal expressions. Even proper names were understood as "applying to" the individual named in virtue of an associated property like its individual essence (something like: "Socrates" is true of whoever has Soeratesness), just as the word "jar" applies to anything falling under the concept of a jar. The classical Nyaya model of naming is Fregean (descriptivist) rather than Millian. Of course, in this particular case the context does not permit us to take "The rabbit-hom" (the definite article is an accidental necessity of English) logically as a definite description. The singular number is better taken as indefinite and the prescribed paraphrase can ran as: "Rabbits (or a rabbit) do(es) not have any hom." 214 APPENDIX Even "The rabbit" can be non-singularly used for the species, as in "The cow is a domestic animal." Russell's own example, "The golden mountain", invites the embarrassingly unanswerable question, "which one?" Since Russell was not thinking or talking about any particular golden mountain mentioned in a specific story, that question is never asked.

Load more