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Dialetheism and Related Issues in Analytic Asian Philosophy: An International Workshop

Date: June 23–24, 2017.

Venue:
23rd: Shiran Kaikan [map: http://www.shirankai.or.jp/e/facilities/access/index.html],
24th: Large conference room in the basement, Faculty of Letters Main Building, Yoshida Campus, Kyoto University. (No. 8 of this map)

Aim:
Analytic Asian philosophy is a trans-disciplinary field in which philosophy, logic, Asian studies, Buddhology and other disciplines interact with each other to propose new perspectives to contemporary philosophy. This workshop will cover a wide range of cutting edge topics in Analytic Asian Philosophy such as dialetheism, meaning of life, intentionality, and catuskoti.

Speakers:
Ricki Bliss (Lehigh University & University of Hamburg)
Filippo Casati (Kyoto University)
Hsun-mei Chen (National Taiwan University & Kyoto University)
Yasuo Deguchi (Kyoto University)
Naoya Fujikawa (Tokyo Metropolitan University)
Jay Garfield (Smith College & Harvard University)
Chih-chiang Hu (National Chengchi University & Kyoto University)
Ryosuke Igarashi (Kyoto University)
Chi-Yen Liu (Kyoto University)
Kanit Mitinunwong (Chulalongkorn University)
Takuro Onishi (Kyoto University)
Graham Priest (City University of New York)
Mark Siderits (Illinois State University)
Damian Szmuc (University of Buenos Aires & CONICET)
Wen-fang Wang (Yang-Ming University)
Maiko Yamamori (Kyoto University)
Chun-Ping Yen (PhD, City University of New York)
David Premsharan (National University of Singapore)

Program:
June 23rd
9:15–10:15 Jay Garfield “Thinking Beyond Thought: Tsongkhapa and Mipham on the Conceptualized Ultimate”
10:15–10:45 Wen-Fang Wang “On Garfield & Priest’s Interpretation of the Catuskoti in MMK”
10:45–11:00 (Break)
11:00–11:30 Chi-Yen Liu “Bhāviveka’s argument of emptiness”
11:30–12:00 Kanit Sirichan “What Intentionality is About?”
12:00–13:30 (Lunch)
13:30–14:00 Naoya Fujikawa “Eloquence of Silence”
14:00–14:30 Ricki Bliss “Some Work for a Theory of Grounding?”
14:30–15:00 Chih-Chiang Hu “?Contradiction, ?Negation, and ?Catuskoti: Just Several Passages mainly from the Last Chapter of Dharmapāla’s Commentary on Āryadeva’s Catuhśataka”
15:00–15:15 (Break)
15:15–15:45 Maiko Yamamori “What and Why Paradoxes of Self-reference are Not Captured by Existing Structures”
15:45–16:45 Graham Priest “Dao Do Jing and Mūlamadhyamakakārikā: Making Sense of Ineffability”

June 24th
9:30–10:30 Yasuo Deguchi “Late Nishida and Dialetheism”
10:30–11:00 Filippo Casati “From Heidegger to Nishitani: Inconsistent Structures of Reality”
11:00–11:15 (Break)
11:15–11:45 Hsun-Mei Chen and Damian Szmuc “A Reexamination Vimalakīrti’s silence” Part I
11:45–12:15 Hsun-Mei Chen and Damian Szmuc “A Reexamination Vimalakīrti’s silence” Part II
12:15–13:45 (Lunch)
13:45–14:15 Ryosuke Igarashi and David Premsharan “The Catuskoti as an Illocutionary Device: An Anti-realistic Interpretation of Nagarjuna”
14:15–14:45 Chun-ping Yen “Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of barzakh“
14:45–15:15 Takuro Onishi “An inferential approach to the sevenfold predication in Jainism”
15:15–15:30 (Break)
15:30–16:30 Mark Siderits “Nirvana and the meaning of life”

Abstracts:

Jay Garfield (Smith College & Harvard University)
Title: Thinking Beyond Thought: Tsongkhapa and Mipham on the Conceptualized Ultimate
Abstract:
Given that the ultimate truth must be a possible object of knowledge, there must be a pramāṇa by means of which it is known. But only bodhisattvas on the path of seeing or above, or buddhas, are capable of directly perceiving the ultimate truth. So, for the rest of us, our knowledge of the ultimate is conceptual, and hence mediated by rjes dpag (anumāṇa)  and so must be conceptual in nature.  But the ultimate transcends all concepts, conceptions and signs.  And so it would appear that we can know nothing about it. But that would suggest that we can’t even know this, or that there are two truths to be known, including one about which we can know nothing, not even this… This raises important questions: is the object of inferential insight into the ultimate the ultimate truth itself, or merely some surrogate? If it is the ultimate, since the ultimate realized by buddhas and by bodhisattvas in advanced meditative equipoise transcends all conception but can in some sense be known conceptually, are there two ultimates or one? If two, what is their relationship to one another? If conceptual realization grasps only a surrogate, given that that surrogate is deceptive, is it knowledge at all? And if so, in what sense?  The rubric through which these questions are addressed by Geluk scholars and their interlocutors (such as Gorampa Sonam Sengye and Taktshang Loden Sherab) relies on the distinction between thee uncategorized vs categorized ultimate. I explore the resources that this distinction and the accounts grounded thereon provide for an understanding of the distinction between conceptual and nonconceptual knowledge of ultimate truth and for an account of ultimate truth and its role in epistemology more generally, focusing on the Geluk position as developed by Tsongkhapa and the Nyimgma perspective of Mipham Rinpoche and Bötrül.  I will conclude with some reflections on what we learn from this literature about rival Tibetan understandings of the relation between conceptual and nonconceptual knowledge.

Wen-Fang Wang (Yang-Ming University)
Title: On Garfield & Priest’s Interpretation of the Catuskoti in MMK
Abstract:
According to Garfield & Priest’s interpretation, the positive use of the catuskoti by Nagarjuna in MMK shows that he endorses, at least from the conventional perspectives, a four-valued semantics similar to Belnap’s FDE, while the negative use of the catuskoti by Nagarjuna in MMK indicates that, when the ineffable ultimate reality is also considered, what he really has in mind is a plurivalent five-valued semantics. Though feeling that their interpretation is interesting and heuristic, I argue in this talk that their interpretation suffers from a few problems: the problem of an adequate logic, the problem of conflation, the problem of the ineffability of the fourth koti, the problem of literature support, and the problem of a suitable explanation. I also discuss and reject both Cotnoir’s and Westerhoff’s interpretations of the use of the catuskoti in MMK, though I think that some insights from them, as well as several insights from Garfied and Priest, should be preserved. In the final part of the talk, I venture to combine these insights together and describe what I think to be the right semantics and logic of Nagajruna’s use of the catuskoti in MMK.
Keywords: Nagarjuna, catuskoti, plurivalent logic, MMK, FDE.

Chi-Yen Liu (Kyoto University)
Title: Bhāviveka’s argument of emptiness
Abstract:
To argue that everything is empty, Bhāviveka gave us an argument in Jewel in the Hand Treatise, which is based on Hetuvidyā (Buddhist logic). Here is the argument:
[T30, 268b21] In reality, conditioned things are empty like illusions because they are produced by conditions, and unconditioned things are not real because they are not produced like sky flowers.
First, I will explain the argument from Buddhist logic and discuss some rules of it. These rules guide people in their argument and prevent them from committing any fault in Buddhist logic. Recently, Fong criticized Bhāviveka for a serious fault in Buddhist logic (Fong, 2016), but I will argue that it is not a fair objection.

Secondly, Bhāviveka employed a famous strategy in his argument, which is called “restriction of the thesis”, to response to the accusation of nihilism. This strategy is strongly connected to Bhāviveka’s another distinct concept of the secondary ultimate reality—the teachings in accord with non-arising. The secondary ultimate reality is one of the special characters that distinguishes Bhāviveka’s thought from the other Mādhyamika school. Some claims that for Bhāviveka, the secondary ultimate reality serves as a bridge to connect the gap between the two realities and establish the Mādhyamika soteriological theory (Hsu, 2011). But how can the second ultimate reality play this kind of role? We still do not have a plausible account of it.

To answer the above question, I try to explore the relation between Bhāviveka’s secondary ultimate reality and counterfactual world. Secondary ultimate reality is also understood as the approximate ultimate reality, which is the expressible ultimate reality, and in this sense, it is the closest world that is expressible by concepts and languages to the ultimate reality. Based on this interpretation, I try to reformulate Bhāviveka’s thesis as a counterfactual conditional. Then we can see why the second ultimate reality is so crucial in Bhāviveka’s argument.

Kanit Sirichan (Chulalongkorn University)
Title: What Intentionality is About?
Abstract:
Intentionality is mainly the relation between thought and reality. The idea seems to be grounded on (Fregean) assumption that identity statement does not have informational content. The concept of intentionality characterises the distinctive feature of linguistic and mental content. For a thought to have content, there need to be a relation between what has content and what it is about. For a sign to have meaning, the question is what makes it meaningful. In case of the mind, as with Brentano, intentionality is the mark of the mental. For the mind to have content, there is the distinction between what it is and what it is about. A question is what kind of relation intentionality is to secure both sides of the relation. In this talk, I will look at three type of views – a later Wittgensteinian view which takes intentionality as the grammatical relation; Crane’s phenomenological view (2010) which argues for Husserlian meta-linguistic relation; and the Nonist view (Priest 2005) which seems to take intentionality as a descriptive relation. My tentative view is that to secure both sides of the relation, both grammatical relation and phenomenological one are required.

Naoya Fujikawa (Tokyo Metropolitan University)
Title: Eloquence of Silence
Abstract:
In the Buddhist tradition, the ultimate reality is regarded as ineffable, and Buddhists appreciate silence as an/the appropriate way to deal with it. But, what does silence exactly mean (if it means anything)? In particular, some interpreters claim that silence properly situated in a dialectic discourse has importance which mere silence without any dialectic discourse doesn’t. How does the former, and not the latter, do the job? And what exactly is the job?

In this paper, I try to answer these questions based on pragmatics. After confirming that silence can pragmatically convey different propositions in different contexts, first we see that silence can be an indirect, implicit way to express the proposition that the ultimate reality is ineffable. Now, stating that the ultimate reality is ineffable by using linguistic expressions is an explicit, direct way to express the same proposition. Both kinds of practice can convey the proposition that the ultimate reality is ineffable, and thus, be self-defeating and inconsistent (cf. the ineffability paradox). But, in addition to this proposition, in dialectic contexts, one’s being silent can pragmatically convey that it is self-defeating and inconsistent as well. In this respect, silence, when it is an implicit statement about the ultimate reality, is a more efficient way to express the predicament concerning the ineffability of the ultimate reality than explicit statements about it. We also see how paraconsistency is involved in the pragmatic inferences in question.

Ricki Bliss (Lehigh University & University of Hamburg)
Title: Some Work for a Theory of Grounding?
Abstract:
Jessica Wilson has recently argued that there is no work for what she calls a theory of big-G Grounding: the kind of grounding that theorists such as Fine and Schaffer invoke.  Instead, she argues, we can do all the metaphysical dependence work that needs to be done using only what she calls small-g grounding relations: identity, parthood, membership, and so on.  In this paper, I argue that, on the contrary, there may well be some work for a theory of Ground because we do not appear able to properly engage with important historical figures armed only with the small-g relations.  I focus on the particular case of the relationship between ultimate and conventional truth in Nagarjuna and argue that no small-g relation, or conjunction of small-g relations, can adequately capture the connection.

Chih-Chiang Hu (National Chengchi University & Kyoto University)
Title: ?Contradiction, ?Negation, and ?Catuskoti: Just Several Passages mainly from the Last Chapter of Dharmapāla’s Commentary on Āryadeva’s Catuhśataka
Abstract:
What is ‘?contradiction’? The question mark here, firstly, means that I know little on logic, especially on contradiction. Secondly, even the professionals have different opinions on contradiction. Thirdly, even we grant that contradictions are just sentences or propositions whose form is A & ~A, we add more things (negation, conjunction, proposition, truth values, etc.) to the list to be explained or clarified. And we use these logic-laden terms to translate and interpret what the Buddhists say even when we are not sure what they talk about when they talk about ‘?contradictions’, etc. in natural languages, that sometimes could make things even worse and frustrating. This paper, more like the fieldwork in anthropology, via case-by-case study on several passages from the text pertinent to the issues of contradiction, negation, and catuskoti, hopefully will try to make some things more explicit (or worse) and to see if there are any implications for us.

The Buddhist text on which this paper is primarily based is Dharmapāla’s (530-561 C.E.) Dasheng Guangbailun Shilun (大乘廣百論釋論 henceforth abbreviated as DGS), which is translated by Xuanzang (玄奘 602-664 C.E.) and extant only in Chinese. DGS is Dharmapāla’s commentary on Catuhśataka by Āryadeva (3rd Century C.E.), a disciple of Nāgārjuna (150-250 C.E.), but only the second half of DGS was translated into Chinese. It is said that there is an imagined debate between Dharmapāla and Bhāviveka (500-578 C.E.) in the last chapter of DGS, and that’s the issue which people usually focus on in this text. However, that issue will not be addressed in this paper (what a release!) and the issues of contradiction, negation, or catuskoti will be pursued instead.

Since Dharmapāla explicitly uses Buddhist logic (hetuvidyā) in his works, this paper firstly presents Dignāga’s logic system briefly, the faults of contradictions (viruddha/virodha) especially. However, one thing to note is that there is a Dignāga’s passage which shows that one of the meanings of viruddha is ‘contrary’ or ‘opposite’. Secondly, we take a look at the case that Dharmapāla seems to resort to some principle of ‘non-contradiction’ to criticize his opponents, and his opponents try to reply with the strategy of qualifications to avoid contradictions. Thirdly, the passages pertinent to opposition and to two kinds of negative usages are discussed. Then, fourthly, we try to show there is a passage which may suggest that the four positions in catuskoti are regarded as mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive. However, fifthly, after our examining in detail Dharmapāla’s argument in his negative catuskoti, things could get messy. Following the negative catuskoti, sixthly, we turn to his view of Buddhist logic or theory of consciousness-only as conventional tool or medicine. Hopefully, in the end, some tentative observations (if there is any) will be addressed in brief.

Maiko Yamamori (Kyoto University)
Title: What and Why Paradoxes of Self-reference are Not Captured by Existing Structures
Abstract:
Paradoxes of self-reference have occurred in philosophy, including Asian thoughts. Paradoxes are hard to understand; hence it may follow that thoughts which contain paradoxes are also hard to grasp rationally. Therefore for grasping such thoughts rationally, it is important to understand paradoxes. Structuring paradoxes are good way for it, and G. Priest and M. Pleitz try to show structures which capture paradoxes of self-reference. But do their structures work well? Do they cover all paradoxes of self-reference? My answer is no. In my talk, I will show what paradoxes of self-reference can not covered by such existing structures and show the reason.

Graham Priest (City University of New York)
Title: Dao Do Jing and Mūlamadhyamakakārikā: Making Sense of Ineffability
Abstract:
Both Daoism and Mahāyāna Buddhism hold that there is something that is ineffable, and explain why this is so, thereby describing it. There is an obvious contradiction here. It might be thought that this makes the views incoherent. It does not, as can be shown by applying some simple techniques of paraconsistent logic.

Yasuo Deguchi (Kyoto University)
Title: Late Nishida and Dialetheism
Abstract:
This talk will explore the late philosophy of Kitarō Nishida (1870-1945), the founder of the Kyoto school, focusing his ideas such as active intuition and contradictory self-identity. With the help of contemporary logical devises such as non-transitive identity and a three-valued paraconsistent system, I will reformate those Nishida’s ideas so as to examine how and why he commits dialetheism and what role true contradictions play in his project to establish a version of philosophy of non-duality.

Filippo Casati (Kyoto University)
Title: From Heidegger to Nishitani: Inconsistent Structures of Reality
Abstract:
Current metaphysicians have almost unanimously told us that reality has a structure and that such a structure has consistent properties. Nevertheless, this has not been always the case. In the past, some philosophers have defended metaphysical pictures according to which reality has a structure but such a structure has inconsistent properties. In my talk, bridging both the Eastern and the Western tradition, I will discuss the metaphysics of Martin Heidegger and Keiji Nishitani, I will show that these metaphysics suggest an inconsistent structure of reality and I will try to make logical sense of it.

Hsun-Mei Chen (National Taiwan University & Kyoto University) and Damian Szmuc (University of Buenos Aires & CONICET)
Title: A Reexamination Vimalakīrti’s silence
Abstract:
This paper aims to reexamine Vimalakīrti’s silence (tūṣṇīm) in the chapter 9, the Entrance to the Gate of Non-differentiation (Advaya-dharma-mukha-praveśaḥ) of Vimalakīrtinirdeśa from three perspectives: the nature, context, and the propositional attitudes involved in Vimalakīrti’s silence. Vimalakīrti’s silence has long been regarded as the most profound expression of how to enter the gate of non-differentiation and has been investigated by Buddhist commentators for centuries, and even now, by contemporary philosophers such as Jay Garfield and Graham Priest. Those scholars mainly focus on the contradictory nature of Vimalakīrti’s silence, or at most, compare the context of this silence with Sāriputta’s in Chapter 7 of Vimalakīrtinirdeśa, Viewing the Sentient Beings. However, in this paper we would argue that since in Buddhist contexts, to have proper mental states is a crucial goal of all Buddhist practices, and since a propositional attitude is a mental state of an agent in relation to a certain proposition, one should take the propositional attitude of Vimalakīrti into consideration when discussing his silence toward what Mañjuśrī proposed. Moreover, if Vimalakīrti truly enters the gate of non-differentiation, which means he has already had some achievements in his practices, he should have a proper propositional attitude toward Mañjuśrī’s proposition. Most of the commentators, including Graham Priest, regard Vimalakīrti’s silence as a consent to Mañjuśrī. However, in this paper, we would argue against this view, defending that a void attitude should be a proper attitude for Vimalakīrti. Finally, we reexamine a more technical side of this discussion. Some philosophers, such as Graham Priest, suggest that in the context in question, the discussion about the ultimate reality incarnates an inconsistent situation, by means of which the ultimate is taken to be ineffable, but at the same time some things can be said about it. It is, then argued that this should be formally represented by allowing some things to receive more than one value. Thus, we end up this presentation by suggesting that the fact that something is true and ineffable can be alternatively represented within Priest’s plurivalent semantics, by letting the target sentences not to receive any truth-value, focusing at the same time on logical consequence understood as non-falsity preservation.

Ryosuke Igarashi (Kyoto University) and David Premsharan (National University of Singapore)
Title: The Catuskoti as an Illocutionary Device: An Anti-realistic Interpretation of Nagarjuna
Abstract:
This paper is intended as an analysis of Nagarjuna’s use of the catuskoti or Fourfold Negation. Our understanding of Nagarjuna’s enterprise in the Mulamadhyamakakarika (henceforth MMK) and the Vigrahavyavartani (henceforth VHV) will be centred on reading the catuskoti as an illocutionary device, thereby presenting Nagarjunian thought as anti-realist. That is to say, that we will attempt to establish that the kotis themselves are concerned with speech-acts rather than truth-tracking propositions, and that the perlocutionary effect of uttering or engaging with the kotis is to elicit a rejection of the particular kind of activity ascribed to his opponents; that is, curbing the assertion or denial of some proposition that describes some state of affairs in the world (or rather, is ontologically committed to some state of affairs). The end result of the catuskoti, on this reading, is quite neatly expressed in the matter of VHV 24 (see also VHV 21), where Nagarjuna states that the “speech” employed in the catuskoti “does not exist substantially”, and that the emptiness of all things is nonetheless established through the speech acts employed in the catuskoti, which are themselves devoid of substance and therefore empty.

Given that these are our aims, here is a brief schematic of the shape that the paper is to take: 1) we will introduce the Garfield-Priest interpretation (henceforth GPI) as a standard reading of the catuskoti, and as a point of departure for the introduction of our system. We will attempt to educe the logical and philosophical problems of the GPI. 2) We will introduce our system, termed Signed Natural Deduction (SND) and the two speech acts which are present in the positive catuskoti: namely, assertion and denial. 3) We will introduce rejection as a separate speech act and construct a model for the negative catuskoti on this basis. 4) Having modelled both the positive and negative phases of the catuskoti, we will proceed to show how our reading evades the philosophical and logical difficulties encountered by the GPI. 5) We will conclude by offering some directions in which an interpretation of Nagarjuna’s overall enterprise might be taken, that is compatible with our reading of the catuskoti.

Chun-ping Yen
Title: Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of barzakh
Abstract:
Barzakh means ‘isthmus’, a dividing zone between two areas. In Islamic traditional thought, it commonly refers to a place where the soul resides after death until the Day of Judgment. Ibn ‘Arabi employs the term to designate anything that not only divides any pair of opposites but also brings them together and provides for their unity without dividing itself. This talk will focus on the contradictory nature of Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of barzakh. On the one hand, the barzakh is neither the pair of things it differentiates. So the barzakh, for example, separates an existent from a nonexistent is itself neither existent nor nonexistent. On the other hand, the barzakh is the essence of the pair of things it differentiates. In order to unify the pair of things it differentiates, the barzakh must meet one of the pair with the very face with which it meets the other. There can be no barzakh in the barzakh. Were it otherwise, there would be a barzakh within a barzakh where the barzakh itself would be divided into three parts, two independent sides and a mediator which bring them together.

Takuro Onishi (Kyoto University)
Title: An inferential approach to the sevenfold predication in Jainism
Abstract:
Saptabhangi, the sevenfold predication, is the canonical list of seven ways of correct predication upheld in Jainism. The list consists of three basic types of predication, that is, affirmation, denial and indescribable (simultaneous affirmation and denial), and their successive combinations. While many of modern philosophers and logicians interpret and formalize the sevenfold predication as a seven-valued (or many-valued) logic, Balcerowicz (2015) presents a different type of formalization using the device of parametrization. Based on his formalization, I propose an inferentialist interpretation of sevenfold predication which emphasizes inferential dependence between predicates.

Mark Siderits (Illinois State University)
Title: Nirvana and the meaning of life
Abstract:
Analytic philosophers have recently taken up the perennial topic of the meaning of life. A common theme in many of their discussions is that in order to overcome the existential suffering induced by awareness of our own mortality―the sense that our lives are ‘absurd’―we should identify with some project that transcends our own limits. The Buddhist claim that we should seek nirvāna may also be understood as a response to the problem of existential suffering. But Buddhists claim that identification (upādāna) is precisely what causes such suffering, so that identifying with something ‘larger than oneself’ is no cure. The roots of the Buddhist view, as well as some of its ramifications, will be explored.

Acknowledgement
This workshop is supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B), JSPS: Dialetheism and Asian Philosophy: Construction of international research basis for Analytic Asian Philosophy (16H03344).

Organizers
The workshop is organized by Yasuo Deguchi, Nayuta Miki, Hitoshi Omori, and Takuro Onishi. If you would like to attend this workshop, please contact Takuro (research assistant) at takuro [dot] onishi [at] gmail [dot] com