Metaphysics and Metametaphysics with Buddhism: the Lay of the Land

Metaphysics and Metametaphysics with Buddhism: the Lay of the Land The present article is a much reworked version of a lecture delivered at the symposium on Buddhism and Contemporary Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. I thank Evan Thompson, Jessica Main, Ashok Aklujkar, Koji Tanaka and Bronwyn Finnigan for helpful feedback. Tom J.F. Tillemans University of Lausanne Metaphysics is ontology, the attempt to find the widest ranging and most fundamental description of what exists and how it exists. Of course, argumentation about that description has a very large place in contemporary analytic philosophy; in Buddhism it does too. And in both the argumentation quite easily moves to the second order matter of whether it is intellectually legitimate to search for such a description and how one should do so if it is. One's answers to those second order questions about metaphysics, then, constitute one's metaontological stance, or ''metametaphysics.'' The term is that of David Chalmers et al. 2009. As they point out, the prefix ''meta'' is being used here as it is used in ''meta-ethics'' and ''meta-semantics''. If metaphysics is concerned with the foundations of reality, metametaphysics deals with the foundations of metaphysics as a whole. Engagement and cross-cultural collaboration are the watchwords of this volume. What, then, would a cross-cultural metaphysics look like when significantly engaged with Buddhism? Presenting baldly the Buddhists' own abundant, and often obscure, arguments on specific issues of what there is, alas, often clouds the picture with detail. To begin to see the lay of the land we need to discern the broad recurring styles of Buddhist metaphysical argumentation. We can then move on to a critical look at Buddhist metaontology, its various stances on metaphysics as a whole, and the promise of those stances for cross-cultural thinking. Two broad styles of Buddhist metaphysical argumentation: the unqualified and qualified Indian and Tibetan Buddhist authors, whatever the school to which they belong, accord a large role to negative metaphysical argumentation, using much ingenuity to show that there are no entities of the sort F, or that things do not have F-properties. I see two recurring and quite different versions of this negative argumentation. I shall frame them initially in terms of the ''neither one nor many'' arguments (Skt. ekānekaviyogahetu; Tib. gcig du bral gyi gtan tshigs), the part-whole dialectic that one finds throughout Buddhist philosophy. In fact, however, the two styles need not be formulated in terms of part-whole issues: they are generalizable mutatis mutandis to a variety of Buddhist first order arguments, including those about the external world, the self, God, mind, time, causality, and relations. For example, consider the difference between an argument like ''There is no self because it is/would be neither one with the psycho-physical aggregates nor different from them'' and ''There is not REALLY a self because it is/would be neither REALLY one with the psycho-physical aggregates nor REALLY different from them.'' Call the first an "unqualified argument," in that it does not involve the qualifier REALLY. Generalize it as follows: (1) An F does not exist (or a thing does not have property F), because it is not A nor B …etc. The second sort of argument—e.g., ''The self does not REALLY exist because it is neither REALLY one… etc..''—is thus a "qualified argument,'' generalizable along the following lines: (2) An F does not REALLY exist (or a thing does not REALLY have property F), because it is not REALLY A nor REALLY B… etc. A typical example of that unqualified sort of metaphysical argumentation is found in the third chapter of the Pramāṇaviniścaya of the 6-7th century writer Dharmakīrti and in the commentator Manorathanandin's Pramāṇavārttikavṛtti (11th century). There we find a classic Buddhist argument against real universals: "a universal is not many different things and therefore not present in many different things"—nānekaṃ sāmānyaṃ tasmān nānekavṛtti. See Tillemans 2000, 22, n.84. The point is that a universal, if it were to be existent, would have to be present in its numerous instances, which in turn would imply that the universal was not one thing but many different things, like its instances. However, a univeral is not many different things; therefore it cannot be present in its many instances. The conclusion: "There are no universals (sāmānya)." There is no use of a qualifier here; the argument is a simple refutation of existence. As Dharmakīrti says elsewhere very categorically, na vai kiṃcit sāmānyaṃ nāmāsti, "there is no so-called universal whatsoever." See n. 15. One can find numerous other such examples of unqualified nonexistence proofs in the Epistemological school, in the Abhidharma, or in the Idealist Yogācāra school. They regularly show that various sorts of F's do not exist, but are only fictions (asadartha) or appearances (ābhāsa/pratibhāsa) that people commonly and mistakenly (bhrānta) believe to exist. See p. ?? for an example from Dharmakīrti showing his use of the terms asadartha and ābhāsa/pratibhāsa. There are other well-known terms used similarly by adepts of the first style of argumentation: prajñapti (designations), nāmamātra (mere names). These terms too are typically used by Buddhist Ābhidharmikas and Yogācāras to convey fictional status – such fictions are contrasted with what is a genuine entity (vastu), i.e., substantially existent (dravyasat). The Epistemologists, Ābhidharmikas, and Idealists are however metaphysical realists (dngos smra ba) and thus maintain that, if we are to avoid nihilism, there must exist some G's that underlie at least some of the commonly accepted fictitious F's. The Buddhist follower of the Abhidharma, for example, will say that partite, complex, things are nonexistent fictions but that impartite simples are fully real— they are the G's for the fictional F's (tables, chairs, people, etc.). Idealist Buddhists of the Yogācāra school hold that external objects (bāhyārtha) are the F's and mental states (citta) are the G's. Nominalist Buddhists, following Dignāga (480-540 C.E.) Dharmakīrti (late 6th-early 7th century), hold that universals (sāmānyalakṣaṇa) are the F's and particulars (svalakṣaṇa) are the G's. Now jump to 15th century Tibet for one of the clearest examples of the second sort. Sera Chökyi gyaltsan (Se ra Chos kyi rgyal mtshan, 1469-1544), a monastic textbook writer, gives the following example of a qualified argument, where ''REALLY'' plays a prominent and indispensable role at every stage: "Take the bases, paths and aspects as the topic of debate; they are not REALLY (bden par) established, because they are not REALLY established individual things nor REALLY established different things". See Tillemans 1984, 380. The Tibetan: gzhi lam rnam gsum chos can, bden par ma grub ste, bden grub kyi gcig dang bden grub kyi du ma gang rung du ma grub pa'i phyir. Once again we have an argument turning on oneness and manyness, but this time with the conspicuous addition of the qualifier, "REALLY". It should not, however, be thought that the use of qualified argumentation was only a late Tibetan development. In fact, such qualifiers are found quite frequently in Indian, Tibetan and Chinese Buddhist literature. Take the ''neither one nor many'' argument as it figures in verse one of Śāntarakṣita's Madhyamakālaṃkāra: ''[All] those entities asserted by ourselves and others are in reality (tattvatas) without any intrinsic natures (svabhāva), as they lack the intrinsic natures of oneness or manyness—like a reflection.'' The Sanskrit text of this verse as quoted in Prajñākaramati's Bodhicaryāvatārapañjikā (ed. P.L. Vaidya) 173, 17-18 is: niḥsvabhāvā amī bhāvās tattvataḥ svaparoditāḥ / ekānekasvabhāvena viyogāt pratibimbavat // In Chökyi gyaltsan’s argument the qualifier is the Tibetan term bden par (truly); in the passage from Śāntarakṣita it is the Sanskrit term tattvatas (in reality). Other expressions figure in other contexts. The Indian thinker Bhāviveka (6th century), for example, regularly used paramārthatas (absolutely, ultimately) and explicitly called it "a qualifier" (viśeṣaṇa). See e.g. Bhāviveka's reasoning against the Sāṃkhya as discussed by Candrakīrti in Prasannapadā 25, 9 - 26, 2: na paramārthata ādhyātmikāny āyatanāni svata utpannāni / vidyamānatvāt / caitanyavad iti / ''It is not ultimately so (paramārthatas) that the inner sense bases are produced from themselves, for they exist, just like consciousness.'' Note that while the use of tattvatas, paramārthatas, svabhāvena or some such equivalent term is probably more frequent in one branch of Indian Madhyamaka philosophy, the so-called Svātantrika school, Tibetan commentators, like Tsongkhapa and many others, add it to Prāsaṅgika-Madhyamaka argumentation abundantly too. We too do not restrict the use of REALLY to just one branch of the Madhyamaka. It might be thought that Candrakīrti's rejection of paramārthatas in this argument means he does not countenance qualifiers at all and could not use qualified argumentation. This is not right. While Candrakīrti does argue against using paramārthatas in the above argument from Bhāviveka, this can best be seen as a very specific case where (according to Candrakīrti ibid. 26, 2) it makes no sense – kim arthaṃ punar atra paramārthata iti viśeṣaṇam upādīyate ''But, in this context, why would one use the qualifier paramārthatas?'' He goes on to say that even from a customary point of view (saṃvṛtyāpi) production from self makes no sense, so why bother with the qualifier ''ultimately''? But there is no attempt to generalize here. Note that the term viśeṣa (particularity) also figures in Prasannapadā I concerning the propriety of taking certain subject terms in a neutral general fashion (sāmānyena), or according to the particularities (viśeṣa) of the debaters' positions – Bhāviveka, as a Svātantrika-Mādhyamika, advocates the neutral manner and Candrakīrti, the Prāsaṅgika, says that neutrality is, in certain crucial cases, impossible. See Prasannapadā 26 et sq. See Tillemans 1990, vol. 1, 47, n. 107 for a translation of the relevant passages. This is a specific debate between Indian Madhyamaka sub-schools as to whether certain terms can be accepted in common (ubhayaprasiddha) by both Mādhyamikas and metaphysical realists so that they can hence make ''autonomous inferences'' (svatantrānumāna). It does not imply that Prāsaṅgikas must reject all uses of qualifiers. The distinction between argumentation styles that we are speaking of is not formulated as such in Prasannapāda. It comes from Madhyamaka philosophy as interpreted by Tibetans, especially those following Tsongkhapa; they speak of argumentation that is dgag bya'i khyad par sbyar ba, ''with the added qualifier concerning what is being refuted'' versus dgag bya'i khyad par mi sbyar ba, ''without such an added qualifier''. The Sa skya pa thinker Go rams pa bSod nams seng ge (1429-1489), in his lTa ba'i shan 'byed, maintained that Mādhyamikas should use the unqualified style of argumentation— the tetralemma (catuṣkoṭi) should be taken as a series of unqualified refutations of existence, nonexistence, both, or neither. See Cabezón and Dargyay 2007, n. 180. Tsongkhapa and his dGe lugs pa followers, however, claimed that such an overly literal interpretation is uncharitable; he argued that the lemmas need to be qualified with REALLY if logical absurdities are not to result. We can go further: traditional Buddhist contexts regularly use several well-attested terms that can, and often are, used equivalently: for example the Sanskrit satyatas (really, truly), the Sanskrit dravyatas (substantially), svabhāvena (by its intrinsic nature), Chinese zhen 真, shi 實 , or shi you 實有 (truly, substantially) and others. In Tibetan we also have very important and suggestive terms that, to my knowledge, do not come from Sanskrit and do not have equivalents in Chinese texts: "from its own side" (rang ngos nas), "in terms of its own specific mode of being" (rang gi thun mon ma yin pa'i sdod lugs gyi ngos nas). All of these terms form a kind of semantic circle of interlocking and mutually explaining concepts. For our purposes, we shall disregard the terminological differences; we are deliberately and, I think, harmlessly simplifying things by using the word ''REALLY.'' This much will have to do as philological evidence that there is indeed a very important distinction to be made between qualified and unqualified metaphysical arguments in Buddhism. Of course, there are several Buddhist texts in which we cannot clearly determine whether the arguments were intended to be qualified or not. But the broad outlines of the distinction are attested often enough, sometimes even very clearly and explicitly. Let us now move on to the various Buddhist second order stances about metaphysics. As we shall see, a metaphysics relying on unqualified argumentation has some major drawbacks; the stance that seems the most promising is a type of quietism using qualified reasonings, involving the REALLY operator, to show that no metaphysical thesis can be established. The majority view: metaphysics is both legitimate and necessary Uncontestably the majority of Buddhist philosophers see metaphysics and argumentation about it as an intellectually legitimate and religiously necessary pursuit. For them it is integral to the path to liberation that we have the right account of what exists and what does not; we need to know what is real and what is no more than a fiction that people commonly and mistakenly believe to be real. How promising is such a Buddhist metametaphysics when the widescale, fundamental description of all is to be framed in terms of a dichotomy between existent things and commonly accepted fictions, or mere erroneous appearances, that do not exist at all? What consequences ensue when Buddhists use— as they regularly do – a form of unqualified argumentation to show that most things in which we believe are just purely fictitious? Let's skip the thorny issues as to whether individual metaphysical arguments are good or not and see whether the general picture is acceptable. Nowadays, some of the most sophisticated reflection on what good metaphysics has been and should be comes from Australia, largely following the philosophy of David Lewis and the Canberra school. Frank Jackson calls this metaphysics "serious metaphysics" and others talk about “ontological seriousness” and the like. Here is how Jackson formulated things: ''Metaphysics is about what there is and what it is like. But it is not concerned with any old shopping list of what there is and what it is like. Metaphysicians seek a comprehensive account of some subject matter—the mind, the semantic, or, most ambitiously everything—in terms of a limited number of more or less basic notions…In sum, serious metaphysics is discriminatory at the same time as claiming to be complete, or complete with respect to some subject matter, and the combination of these two features of serious metaphysics means that there are inevitably a host of putative features of our world which we must either eliminate or locate.'' Jackson 1998, 4-5. So, is Buddhist metaphysics serious in this way? The short answer: typical Buddhist accounts do seem to fulfill the requirements of being discriminating and complete, but, seductive as that might be, seriousness involves more. In Tillemans 2016, ch. 12, I emphasized that Buddhist metaphysics fulfills major requirements of Jackson's serious metaphysics. I now think that it is more important to be clear on where it is significantly different. To get a feeling for why metaphysics in Buddhist garb might be thought to be in keeping with Jackson's program, consider what the nominalist Dharmakīrti says in the Pramāṇavārttika about universals failing the requirements for inclusion in a proper ontology:  ''It [i.e., the universal] does not come there [from somewhere else], it was not there already, nor does it exist subsequently, nor does it have any parts. [And even when in other places] it does not leave the previous locus. Oh my! It is just one disaster after another.'' Pramāṇavārttika 1.152: na yāti na ca tatrāsīd asti paścān na cāṃśavat / jahāti pūrvaṃ nādhāram aho vyasanasaṃtatiḥ //. On Dharmakīrti's life, oeuvre, and thought, see Tillemans 2011a. Paṇḍita Aśoka (11th century), in turn, in his "Refutation of Universals" (sāmānyadūṣaṇa), ridicules them as follows: ''One can clearly see five fingers in one’s own hand. One who commits himself to a sixth general entity fingerhood, side by side with the five fingers, might as well postulate horns on top of his head.'' Sāmānyadūṣana, pp. 101–2 (ed. H. Śāstrī), translated in Chakrabarti and Siderits’ introduction to Siderits, Tillemans, and Chakrabarti 2011. The F's in question, i.e., universals, cannot belong in a discriminating account of what there is. They are just too weird, ineffectual, and generally problematic to exist —the G's are only particulars. The second major requirement for seriousness would unpack as follows: besides being discriminating and parsimonious about what there is, a would-be nominalism needs to provide completely for the role and importance universals have for us in our thought and language. Now, some Western analytic philosophers have thought that the Buddhist position might just be able to fulfill this very requirement: it was once called by Hans Herzberger a "resourceful nominalism" and, in his view, presented marked advantages over "happy nominalism", as he dubbed the versions of the medieval flatus vocis account of universals, which take talk of common properties as not due to any entities, universals, but just the brute linguistic fact that people regularly use general terms. See Herzberger 1975. The Buddhist keeps a place for universals themselves, qua fictions, in his account of concepts and properties by analysing them as exclusions – the notion of fingerhood is analysed as actually being a notion of non non fingers. The ingenious twist for the Buddhist is that because absences and negative facts are unreal, an analysis in terms of non non F is less ontologically committing than would be acceptance of F-ness—we can continue to say that a, b, and c are fingers (i.e., non non fingers) and the grand nominalist theory in which there are only particulars would remain: universals, qua exclusions, are simply fictions created by language and thought. Now, I am not convinced that the Buddhist nominalist succeeds in replacing universals like blue with quasi-universals like non non blue. Indeed many Brahmanical thinkers, like the Mīmāṃsaka Kumārila Bhaṭṭa (sixth century), do have powerful replies to this move, accusing it of circularity—one cannot understand non-non-F without understanding F; understanding the exclusion (apoha) of non blue presupposes that one has understood blue. The jury is still out whether apoha and Buddhist nominalism can be a complete account or whether the circularity is fatal. On the apoha theory and Buddhist nominalism, it promises and problems, see Siderits, Tillemans, Chakrabarti 2011 and Tillemans 2011. We’ll leave that issue open. At the very least, it has to be said that the theory is some of the best metaphysics we will find in Buddhist texts. It is subtle and ingenious. Let's grant, then, for the sake of argument, that apoha-style nominalism may well satisfy two significant requirements of a modern program about how to do metaphysics. But, if we look deeper, is it actually serious metaphysics in Frank Jackson's sense? Where it would seem to fall down and where, I would maintain, Buddhist metaphysical theories regularly fall down – particularly those that proceed along the lines of the first style of argumentation—is that they leave the F's as fictions, commonly accepted because of a causal story about the longstanding psychic baggage of habits and tendencies (vāsanā) we have accumulated, but nonetheless nonexistent and thoroughly erroneous. Here, for example, is how Dharmakīrti argues that universals are just fictions (asadartha) and appearances (pratibhāsa). It's a very typical case of argumentation of the first sort to prove that F’s are no more than ingrained erroneous appearances. ''[Objection:] Now, how is it that the exclusion of what is other (anyavyāvṛtti) could be a universal (sāmānya), since one excluded thing cannot be present in any others? [Reply:] It is [a universal] because it appears to be that way to the cognition [we have] of it (tadbuddhau tathāpratibhāsanāt). But indeed there is no so-called universal whatsoever (na vai kiṃcit sāmānyaṃ nāmāsti). A cognition based on words ends up combining elements, even though they are not [actually] combined, because of the power of beginningless tendencies [to make cognition do so] (anādivāsanāsāmarthyād). It is on account of how things appear to be (pratibhāsavaśena) to that [word-based cognition] that universals and co-reference (sāmānādhikaraṇya) are established, though they are fictions (asadartha), for [actual particular] things are neither combined [to be a universal] nor differentiated [into the various qualities we think they have.]'' Pramāṇavārttikasvavṛtti on verse 64 (ed. Gnoli 34-35): katham idānīm ekasya vyāvṛttasyānyānanugamād anyavyāvṛttiḥ sāmānyam / tadbuddhau tathāpratibhāsanāt / na vai kiṃcit sāmānyaṃ nāmāsti / śabdāśrayā buddhir anādivāsanāsāmarthyād asaṃsṛṣṭān api dharmān saṃsṛjantī jāyate / tasyāḥ pratibhāsavaśena sāmānyaṃ sāmānādhikaraṇyaṃ ca vyavasthāpyate | asadartho ’pi / arthānāṃ saṃsargabhedābhāvāt /. Jackson's program requires much more than that if we wish to conserve and not eliminate things: serious metaphysics requires that entities be ''located'' in the grand theory, i.e., that statements about an acceptable entity, if it is not itself one of the basic entities, must at least be entailed by the theory one espouses. If one is, for example, a physicalist, then the theory of everything is told in physical terms; nothing is acceptable unless its existence is demanded by the physical theory. Being yellow, for example, might be something described in the non-preferred, non-basic, vocabulary of a folk theory that uses color language, but there would be an entailment between the non-preferred vocabularly of colors and the preferred language of physical properties. Typically, non-basic F's would exist as supervenient upon the basic G's. F's are supervenient on G's just in case no two things can differ with respect to F-properties and not differ with respect to G-properties. In short, no F-differences without G-differences. Mind-matter, universals-particulars, ethical properties-physical properties, and many other such perennial dichotomies are the F's and G's for supervenience theorists. Now, there is nothing like location, inter-vocabulary entailment, or supervenience in the apoha theory, nor for that matter elsewhere in Buddhist metaphysics. Elsewhere I have gone into the ''theory of unconscious error'' that Buddhists repeatedly rely upon. See Tillemans 1999, chapter 10, p. 209-213. And indeed an error theory and talk of longstanding habits and mindsets is never very far off in Buddhist metaphysics, especially when pursued via the first sort of argumentation. Things like selves, partite objects and universals are explicable qua common ingrained mistakes, appearances, and fictions, but there is no inter-vocabularly entailment between talk of selves and talk of impersonal psycho-physical elements, partite and impartite objects, or universals and particulars. Does it matter much that Buddhist metaphysics would not address the location problem? Yes, I think it does. The danger is that much of it collapses into a thinly veiled eliminativism. Instead of some non-basic F's being located in the grand theory and hence existent, they are explained as commonly accepted and more or less tenacious errors; they are things that simply do not exist, and that people who know better might even do without at some time, e.g., when they attain nirvāṇa, arthatship, or when they have their first realisations on the ''path of seeing'' (darśanamārga) as ''noble beings'' (ārya). Recall that Frank Jackson spoke of a ''host of putative features of our world that we must either eliminate or locate.'' These are the F's we have been speaking about so far. Serious metaphysics is one of the most sophisticated programs on the market precisely because it attempts to locate the problematic entities that one wishes to keep and doesn't treat them as fictions or tenacious errors. Eliminativism is much less so. Are there ways to counter the specter of thinly veiled eliminativism and still arrive at a grand hierarchical theory of everything using Buddhist arguments? One approach is to explain our acceptance of fictions as due to their usefulness to us, and not just due to our ingrained and wrong mindsets. Mark Siderits (2003) has promoted this as a Buddhist approach that avoids eliminations of the fictional F's; instead of casting them out, we have Buddhist-style reduction of F's to the appropriate G's. Does it get us any further? I rather doubt it. First, pragmatism is not what Buddhist texts explicitly promote, nor, for that matter, do they seem to make a clear distinction between elimination and reduction, at least as far as I can see. But, what is probably more telling, it is not easy to imagine pragmatism on the wide scale that would seem to be required to make that distinction stick. I'll take up the issue in more detail below in the next section. A more promising metametaphysical stance: quietism What if one is not optimistic about the prospects for a grand hierarchical theory of everything? There are, after all, important contemporary philosophers who do not think there is, or could be, a legitimate discipline of ontology and who think that we should thus stay lucidly out of the fray as quietists whenever it appears on the scene. Rejection of metaphysics was, of course, frequent in the 20th century, whether with the logical positivists, the philosophy of the later Wittgenstein, or the ordinary language school. Arguably, the rebirth of modern metaphysics was with W.V. Quine's 1948 article ''On What There Is'', in which he argued that philosophy should adopt a univocal term ''existence'' and seek to determine just what one has to say exists when one speaks literally and in a univocal fashion. Cf., Putnam 2004, 78–79: “It [i.e., ontology] became respectable in 1948, when Quine published a famous paper titled ‘On What There Is.’ It was Quine who singlehandedly made Ontology a respectable subject.” Quietists typically argue (see e.g., Putnam 2004, 84-85) that this univocality of ''exists'' demanded by ontology isn't forthcoming – it is, following Huw Price, even a kind of category mistake to say that something like January exists in the same sense of ''exists'' as atoms do. Or it is argued that the clear literal-versus-figurative contrast needed to say what there is will not be forthcoming (Yablo 1998). Another modern approach (e.g., Hirsch 2009 and 2011, Price 2009) is to say that many metaphysical disputes are purely verbal disputes about the choice of language to use. These specific western metaontological approaches are not, to my knowledge at least, ever explicitly developed by Buddhists, although they probably could be collaboratively. Other quietist approaches elaborated in the west may have affinities with Buddhist arguments. I have argued elsewhere that the critique of a ''sideways on'' perspective (see McDowell 1981) bears a significant resemblance to Buddhist critiques of ''grasping at true existence" (bden 'dzin). See Tillemans 2016, chapter 12. And many important Buddhists were indeed quietists. They were typically followers of the school coming from Nāgārjuna (2nd century C.E.), Candrakīrti (6th century), Bhāviveka (6th century) et alii, in other words, Mādhyamikas or followers of the "Middle Way" school (madhyamaka). The passages in Buddhist texts that are generally cited in these discussions are well known. Two will suffice, namely, Nāgārjuna’s famous pronouncement in Vigrahavyāvartanī that “I don’t have any thesis and thus I don’t have that fault [of which you metaphysical realists accuse me]” Vigrahavyāvartanī 29–30 cited in Candrakīrti’s Prasannapadā (La Vallée Poussin edition) p. 16, lines 7–10: yadi kācana pratijñā syān me tata eva* me baved doṣaḥ / nāsti ca mama pratijñā tasmān naivāsti me doṣaḥ //. *Johnston and Kunst’s edition (see Bhattacharya 1986) reads eṣa (“this”), and I’ve followed them here. and the oft-cited verse 50 in his Yuktiṣaṣṭikā: “Superior individuals have no theses (pakṣa, phyogs) and no philosophical debates; how could there be any opposing theses for those who have no theses [themselves]?” Che ba’i bdag nyid can de dag // rnams la phyogs med rtsod pa med // gang rnams la ni phyogs med pa // de la gzhan phyogs ga la yod //. Tibetan text in Lindtner 1990, 114. What connection is there between quietism and the use of one or another of the two types of argumentation? I think it's clear that at least a signficant number of Mādhyamikas – perhaps even Nāgārjuna himself — did use the unqualified style of argumentation in the service of quietism. They, in effect, agreed that F's do not exist and are only fictions that are commonly (but mistakenly) accepted. On the other hand, and in sharp contrast to Dharmakīrti, Ābhidharmikas, Yogācāras, and other metaphysical realists, they said that there are no G's that are more basic. Thus they argued instead for a kind of panfictionalism: no F's exist, whatever F one might take, and there are no basic G's anywhere, just more of the same old fictions. For an attempt to interpret Madhamaka as panfictionalism, see Garfield 2006. This does lead to a kind of quietism. But the general picture is not attractive at all. Here is how a Buddhist panfictionalist gets to quietism and here is what I think goes badly wrong when she does. The point that the Mādhyamika adept of the first style of reasoning is seeking to prove is that under analysis everything supposedly turns out to be nothing but “false and deceptive” (mṛṣāmoṣadharmaka), to use a cliché term in Madhyamaka writings that is often taken pretty much literally. Things don’t exist, they just appear to, and people erroneously think and talk as if they did. There are no right answers (because there are no pramāṇas, “sources of knowledge”) about anything; at most there is just what people ignorantly think to be right, or in the phrase of the Tibetan Jo nang pa Mādhyamikas, “things that seem to exist to mistaken minds” (blo ’khrul ba’i ngor yod pa). From here we might rather easily go to a certain type of quietism about metaphysics. If it were to be accepted that everything just seemed to be thus and so but wasn’t at all, one could then say that deeper ontological inquiry was always pointless, as it could never be about anything but erroneous appearances. Suppose that, to take a very simplified analogy, ordinary people believed firmly in the reality of square circles, or to borrow from Bertrand Russell, in a barber who shaved all and only those people in his village who didn’t shave themselves. It would be pointless to construct a nominalism about square-circles or pursue the question whether the impossible barber is enduring or momentary, external, identical with, or different from his mind and body, and so on. The price to be paid for a cocktail of quietism and panfictionalism is potentially very high. It’s hard to see how the panfictionalist could account for the complex and evolving rational discriminations between truths and falsities that we do make, if all were just completely false and deceptive. Of course, at some point the global fictionalist or error theorist may well say that the world’s thinking some propositions to be true and others false is based on the brute fact of some erroneous beliefs turning out to be useful to us as white lies and others remaining relatively useless. But while we might perhaps (like an ethical irrealist) be able to take as “true” certain sorts of shared white lies, like beliefs in there being good or bad actions because such erroneous beliefs make people more respectful, gentle, and so on, it would be hard to see why many beliefs and statements—in ethics, physics, geography, car mechanics, or what have you—would be so useful on a wide and complex scale if one stripped them all of any truth. Cf. Stanley 2001, 46: “The problem facing a brute error theory of a discourse that is epistemically central…lies in explaining how a discourse laced through with falsity can nevertheless be useful.” Not only that, but the pragmatic account of why things ''exist'' could not easily be given on the scale demanded. Indeed very large scale or exclusive appeals to usefulness and human ends to explain the ''existence'' of everything would seem to involve a vicious circularity: in order to determine usefulness in human enterprises, one already needs to have a world largely in place, with people and many macroscopic objects too. In short, usefulness of carts, tables, and the like to people presupposes a context in which there are people, their environments, and complex interactions with a lot of quite different sorts of objects. If strategies to further human ends were themselves responsible for the genesis of all these entities, their genesis would seem to become unintelligible. Amber Carpenter 2015, 14–15 makes the same point about people being clearly presupposed in explanations that turn on human ends. Finally, while an unqualified approach might enable a Mādhyamika to show that some specific items don't exist, generalized quietism would remain at most a tentative stance. The reason is that an unqualified approach lacks an overarching diagnosis to show that ontology always goes wrong and that metaphysical positions/theses, or ontological claims, are therefore somehow all false or meaningless. Instead of a clearly articulated “master argument” to this effect, we would have a number of ad hoc Mādhyamika counterarguments against some specific metaphysical positions on the existence of specific things. This procedure is inconclusive. Even if the Mādhyamika were to be right in rejecting the going metaphysical arguments of the 3rd century, or the major positions held historically in Classical Indian philosophy, that is no assurance that better ontologies will not be found later by more sophisticated thinkers, somewhere in the East or West, and that they will not, at some point, carry the day. Qualified argumentation and quietism Enter the qualified approach in the service of quietism. Let us be clear that for us, and I think for Buddhists too, a genuine qualifier affects the truth value of the statement to which it is added. It is not simply used for emphasis or rhetorical force, as if one merely said ''Actually ..'' or ''In fact …” out of mere insistence; rhetorical force does not generally affect truth of the original statement. What is important on this qualified approach to Madhyamaka is that P may be true while REALLY P is not. Now suppose you argued, ''It is not REALLY so that P, because it is not REALLY so that Q and R, etc.'' This leaves you able to say that P, Q, and R are true/so but not REALLY true/so. That's precisely what the great Tibetan thinker Tsongkhapa (Tsong kha pa Blo bzang grags pa, 1357-1419) did by adding bden par (truly, really) and its equivalent operators to the arguments in Indian Madhyamaka texts, and it had a number of interesting consequences for him and for us. First, it allowed him to say that the truth of P, Q, and R, was not just a matter of them seeming to be true to all or most worldlings who mistakenly believed in them, but that they were true – in his jargon, they are established by means of knowledge (pramāṇa, tshad ma). Secondly, it allowed him to say that the culprit was the ''REALLY'' operator, as thinking that things are REALLY so is a very seductive but pernicious superimposition (samāropa, sgro 'dogs) on the otherwise innocent truths P, Q, R. The consequence is that one should reject all theses and positions that implicitly or explicitly involve ''REALLY.'' Thirdly, we could have something like an overarching diagnosis of where metaphysics goes wrong and why we should be quietistic about it. The diagnosis would be like this: philosophical/metaphysical claims that F's exist, as contrasted with innocent common sense claims, or even scientific claims, involve the ''REALLY'' operator; statements that may or may not be true taken innocently are false with the REALLY operator added. We have left “REALLY” as a term of art. Graham Priest, Mark Siderits and I used it in that way in a chapter in Moonshadows to try to make sense of the contrast between ultimate and customary truths in Buddhism. See Priest, Siderits, Tillemans 2011. One could also profer the somewhat comforting assurance that it is not just modern writers on Buddhism who use it; philosophers like Paul Horwich and Kit Fine do too in their discussions of ontology, or they use an equivalent term like “ROBUSTLY.” The catch, of course, is that we want to know better at some point what that REALLY operator involves and what difference it makes from just asserting a common variety proposition <P>, or "<P> is true." That, indeed, is not an easy task. Tsongkhapa himself was acutely aware that the difference was subtle and he devoted a large section of the last chapter of his Lam rim chen mo to what he called the problem of ''recognizing what is to be rejected'' (dgag bya ngos 'dzin), trying to find a kind of middle way between refuting too much (khyab che ba) – i.e., just saying that P, Q, R, are false – and too little (khyab chung ba) – i.e., construing what is to be refuted in a way that is just speculative and implausible, a straw man which nobody but a few extreme philosophers would worry about. So, how could we thread that needle with Buddhists ? A start would be to recognize that in many respects a similar issue arises when modern philosophers seek to distinguish neutral, even banal, discussions of what there is from discussions committed to ontology and metaphysical realism. So, let's look at some possibilities for collaboration offered by analytic philosophy. Kit Fine made a particularly useful distinction in his 2009 article “The Question of Ontology” between quantificational and ontological questions, a distinction that is not far from (though not completely identical with) Rudolf Carnap’s famous contrast between internal and external questions (Carnap 1950). Thus, we often ask things, like, for example, “Are there trees in Switzerland, in Antarctica?” “Are there properties in common that define the races?” “Is there a prime number greater than seventeen that satisfies such and such an equation?” “Is there a Higgs boson?” More generally, is there an x such that x is an F? All these are what Fine would term quantificational questions: if one asserts that an item a is an F, it is a simple logical inference of no metaphysical import whatsoever to assert “There is an x such that x is an F.” The move is a banal application of existential generalization, like what you find in first order predicate calculus, one which allows you to go from an atomic formula Fa to the existentially quantified statement (∃x) Fx. Many quantificational questions are of course important, subtle, and even technically abstruse, such as when, for example, one is asking a scientific question about whether there are certain types of subatomic particles. It is however striking that when one asks a quantificational question about the typical matters treated by metaphysics—e.g., Are there any numbers? Are there any common properties? Are there absences? Are there thoughts, minds? Are there good or bad actions?—the answer will be a trivial “Yes, of course.” That thin answer will be forthcoming whatever one might also say in a discussion on ontology. Quantificational questions are thus to be contrasted with ontological questions, like “Does the x that is F exist?'' Here ''exist'' is used in some deeper, thicker, sense, one where ''exists'' means something like ''is fully real'' or is a constituent of a bedrock set of real entities. Interestingly, Fine himself sees no adequate way to define that thick sense of ''exists'' or the concept of a ''constituent of reality'' in any way other than by a circle of ideas to which they themselves belong. He takes it as primitive and says that we have a good intuitive grasp of the notions at stake and how to apply them. That, for him, is enough to ensure the bona fides of ontology. Arguably he is profoundly right about an inescapable circle; key normative concepts seem to be like that. He may not be right, however, in saying that our seeming “grasp” of this circle of concepts about the real and genuinely existent indicates their bona fides and the legitimacy of ontology. See Fine 2009, 175. Indeed, it is important to stress that Kit Fine himself is not pursuing a quietist anti-ontology line. He makes his distinction in order to better pursue ontology and logic without an encumbering prescriptive baggage about what existential quantification should be and without the distortions that come when one uses formal logical structures or criteria borrowed from science to specify what ontology is in terms other than those of ontology itself. He is thus arguing against the Quinean programme in ''On What There Is'' according to which there should be just one clear unambiguous sense of “there is” – the ontological should be the same as the quantificational—and deviations from the clear, univocal use that we supposedly find in the existential quantifier are just cases, for Quine, of sloppy thinking, loose uses of language, or worse, detestable double-talk. Kit Fine and many others reject that Quinean program; but Kit Fine, at least, certainly does not reject ontology. What the Mādhyamika would be doing, however, is much more radical, as it is a refusal of ontology across the board. Indeed, the semantic circle of which Fine speaks is not far from the circle of interlocking Buddhist concepts and terms we mentioned earlier and grouped under the term of art “REALLY”. It is an absolute conception, or in Buddhist terms, the notion that some things must exist paramārthatas (absolutely, ultimately) and that others are nothing more than them. Fine states: “This account of our method for settling ontological dispute requires that we have a grasp not only of an absolute conception of reality, of there being nothing more than …, but also of a relative conception, of there being nothing more to … than …., …” Fine 2009, 176. The italics are his. I think we are on East-West common ground here. When an atomist like Democritus says that there is nothing more to the universe than atoms and that there is therefore nothing more, or really more, to a chair than the constituent atoms, the Buddhist Ābhidharmika metaphysician— indeed almost all classical Indian philosophers— would feel they grasp the issue perfectly. The Buddhists would indeed typically proceed to argue that chairs are nothing but impartite simple components. The Mādhyamika quietist, however, is a unique case: he would be out of step with his East-West colleagues. He recognizes that we do intuitively feel we grasp the interlocking notions involved in an absolute conception of reality. But, contrary to Fine and the Buddhist metaphysician, the Mādhyamika Buddhist says that this is a seductive trap. He argues that the reductionism in the absolute perspective --- viz., the idea that there is some metaphysical bedrock of basic substantial entities, so that all others are nothing but them--- is unrealizable and in any case not needed at all for thought and language to function adequately. Furthermore, as we can see from the circle of Buddhist interlocking concepts sketched out at the beginning of the article, the absolute perspective is also a pursuit of basic things that exist purely in themselves and not relative to, or dependent upon, any others – such intrinsic existence would be incompatible with the essential Buddhist principle of everything arising dependently (pratītyasamutpāda). The consequence, for Mādhyamikas, is that there is no meaningful absolute perspective providing a set of things A so that any others would be nothing more than A’s. If some such a perspective were what ontology needed, then so much the worse for ontology. What happens then if we read Mādhyamikas like Candrakīrti using Fine's distinction, i.e., as contrasting a thin quantificational sense of ''there are …'' and an ontologically loaded sense of ''exists''? If we understand the Madhyamaka critique of ontology as turning on panfictionalism or a global error theory, that distinction seems inapplicable. Instead of any innocently true statements using the thin sense of ''there are…'', we would just be left with a bunch of falsehoods, for there would be no x's that are F; at most there would just wrongly seem to be such x's. But if we go with a Tsongkhapa-style interpretation and say that many ''there are…'' statements are innocently true (i.e. ''established by means of knowledge''), things could work out much better. We could have an intelligent interpretation of why Candrakīrti says that a Mādhyamika should content herself with lokaprasiddha, “what the world acknowledges,” and not seek anything deeper in metaphysics—a Mādhyamika would restrict her acceptance of true statements to those with the quantificational ''there are…'' and eschew ontological talk about existence or constituents of reality as impossible and, in any case, de trop: not needed for the world to say and think truly what it does. Similarly Candrakīrti could maintain (as he does in Prasannapadā I) that he has no difficulty following, in an innocent fashion, the world’s acceptance of universals (sāmānyalakṣaṇa) and particulars (svalakṣaṇa) alike; See Prasannapadā 1.75.2–4 (ed. La Vallée Poussin): tasmāl loke yadi lakṣyaṃ yadi vā svalakṣaṇaṃ sāmānyalakṣaṇaṃ vā sarvam eva sākṣād upalabhyamānatvād aparokṣam / ataḥ pratyakṣaṃ vyavasthāpyate tadviśayena jñānena saha /. “Therefore, in the world, when any and all subjects of characterization (lakṣya) whatsoever, be they particulars (svalakṣaṇa) or universals (sāmānyalakṣaṇa), are visible (aparokṣa) because they are directly perceived, they are therefore established as pratyakṣa (“perceptible”/”perceptions”), as are the cognitions that have them as objects.” See also Arnold 2005, 460–61. Essentially, Candrakīrti interprets the word pratyakṣa to mean both “perceptible” and “perception” (which is perfectly legitimate in Sanskrit) and says that universals and particulars alike are perceptible and that any cognitions that grasp them are perceptions. This, in effect, means that universals and particulars are on the same footing (contrary to Dignāga): both are customarily real and both are ultimately unreal. The passage has its parallel in Candrakīrti’s Catuḥśatakaṭīkā 13, translated in Tillemans 1990, 1:175–79 and discussed on page 41ff. See Dreyfus 1992, 42n58, for a summary of the point about Candrakīrti’s recognizing universals and its dGe lugs interpretations. or he could argue (as he in fact does in Madhyamakāvatāra VI) that the external world is unproblematically acceptable for him, that causality exists as accepted by the common man; he could even accept absences (abhāva) and negative facts as no less existent than anything else. The recurrent attempts of the metaphysician and epistemologist to try to do better or go deeper than the world might indeed be (as he says in Catuḥśatakaṭīkā 13) a type of intoxication (smyos pa) that make them no longer even know what the world does and hence become “completely unversed in ordinary matters” (’jig rten pa’i don dag la gtan ma byang ba). Translated in Tillemans 1990, 1:177 and 179 (sections 8 and 17). This is, arguably, the Buddhist stance on metaphysics that would have the most radical impact cross-culturally. It would part ways with contemporary analytic metaphysics and would resemble, in some important respects, the later philosophy of Wittgenstein: diagnoses of intoxication coupled with description, rather than revision, of our thought and language. See, e.g., Wittgenstein 2009, §124. ''Philosophy must not interfere in any way with the actual use of language, so it can in the end only describe it. For it cannot justify it either. It leaves everything as it is.'' Like Wittgenstein’s quietism, an uncompromising Candrakīrtian stance will probably not readily enjoy favor in quite a number of philosophical establishments and may be accused too of being “bloodless.” Seeing through intoxicating promises of metaphysics is, however, a substantial and difficult task, and a quietist needs the help she can get: it is probably high time for the anti-metaphysical to look East. Remaining matters Finally, there are two big themes that need to be at least mentioned here to flesh out the prospective picture of a Madhyamaka-inspired metametaphysics. First, the question will still remain whether at least some metaphysics, East or West, couldn’t still be pursued when stripped of the quest for underlying REAL entities. Some philosophers—especially those of a Quinean persuasion, who see philosophy as continuous with science— maintain that one can take up ontological questions by simply applying criteria of explanatory and predictive power, and especially parsimony. For them usual scientific methodology is thus extendable to metaphysics, while elucubrations about the absolute or the REAL are both impossible and superfluous. There are Mādhyamikas, notably Svātantrikas (not Candrakīrtians), who seem to have gone in broadly this direction too, conserving some metaphysical debates; they argue for "deeper" customary truths about universals, the external world, mind, time, etc., all the while remaining quietist about the REAL. The debate is sophisticated. Elliott Sober (2009) and Michael Huemer (2009) have examined the prospects for using parsimony arguments to settle metaphysical issues quasi-scientifically. Those prospects are not as rosy as W.V. Quine had hoped. In Tillemans (2016) I have argued that the doubters (including notably Candrakīrtians in their debates with Svātantrika coreligionists) may well be right to think that doing metaphysics is not merely a matter of epistemic business as usual—notably, parsimony arguments applied to decide typical problems of ontology would rely, after all, on unavowed intuitions about the REAL. See chapter 12 ''Serious, Lightweight or Neither: Should Madhyamaka go to Canberra?'' in Tillemans 2016. Second, what would remain of traditional Buddhism if a thoroughgoing, modernized Candrakīrtian metametaphysics carried the day? My own view is that a systematic advocacy of lokaprasiddha impacts not just Buddhist metaphysics, but Buddhist ethics and religious dogmas as well. Note that much of Candrakīrti's (and Tsongkhapa's) Madhyamaka philosophy on typical Buddhist metaphysical issues – impermanence, the reality of universals, external objects, the special reflexive nature of mind, foundational status of perception and sense data,—does embrace the world and describe its thinking. Their hard revisionist edge comes on matters dogmatic and ethical. Crucially, these Mādhyamikas justify belief in accounts of karmic causality and retribution spanning multiple lives-- whose truth is supposedly only known through scripture – by saying that such beliefs can still be in accord with the world's own conceptions of rational justification. For Candrakīrti's own failed attempts in Catuḥśatakaṭīkā 12 to show that belief in supra-sensible things like karma accords with lokaprasiddha, see Tillemans 2011b and 2016, chapter 8. It is implausible to think that one could rationally ground ethics on facts that are supposedly inaccessible to any human epistemic procedure, and are only knowable via scripture, if one also believes that morality and other customary truths are those that the world accepts, or should accept, by its own standards and epistemic practices. Customary truth as lokaprasiddha should thus lead to a major rethink: a Madhyamaka Buddhism without reliance on humanly inaccessible facts (atyantaparokṣa, literally “completely imperceptible”) known only via scripture, especially karmic causality spanning multiple lives and multiple forms of existence. Many traditionalists will no doubt bridle at the suggestion that karma theory should ever be challenged, but such is the type of discussion needed for Buddhism to figure rationally in future cross-cultural philosophy.  References Arnold, Dan A. 2005. “Materials for a Mādhyamika Critique of Foundationalism: An Annotated Translation of Prasannapadā 55.11 to 75.13.” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 28.2: 411–67. Bhattacharya, K. 1986. The Dialectical Method of Nāgārjuna. Translated from the original Sanskrit with introduction and notes by Kamaleswar Bhattacharya; text critically edited by E. H. Johnston and Arnold Kunst. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. 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