Laura P. Guerrero

Conventional truth describes things as delivered by ordinary experience; ultimate truth captures the way that things are independent of our interests, practices, and cognitive faculties. It is notoriously difficult to provide an adequate analysis of either conventional or ultimate truth, however. This chapter develops a previous scholarly suggestion to understand conventional truth in Madhyamaka as deflationary truth. It points out that this suggestion is a good one only if a supplementary theory of meaning, which the deflationary theory of truth presupposes, can be given in a way that is consistent with both the limitations of the deflationary theory of truth and with Madhyamaka antirealist metaphysics. It then offers a presentation of Dharmakīrti’s theory of apoha in order to argue that the resources necessary to give the required account of meaning can be found in Dharmakīrti’s account of intentional mental content.

With the aim of bringing Vaibhāṣika’s distinctive fundamental ontology into clearer view, here I argue that the Vaibhāṣika describe two general kinds of ontological dependence relations that generate different kinds of ontological structure: (1) ordering relations that generate hierarchical ontological structure and (2) existential dependence relations among the dharma s that co-temporaneously bundle or asynchronously causally relate them. Ordering relations are defined in terms of the distinction between ultimately real and conventionally real entities. Existential dependence relations among dharma s are defined in terms of dependent origination ( pratītyasamutpāda ): the view that all phenomena that occur in time are dependent on other phenomena for their occurrence in the present moment. The Vaibhāṣika position is worthy of our philosophical attention because it challenges two commonly held views: (1) that fundamentality is to be understood in terms of ontological independence and (2) that causal dependence is distinct from ontological dependence.

In this essay, I argue that the Abhidharma philosopher Saṅghabhadra’s account of conventional reality and truth does lend itself well to Kris McDaniel’s recent pluralist proposal that the Abhidharma Buddhist distinction between conventional truth and ultimate truth is best understood in terms of a more basic distinction between two different ways an entity can exist: conventionally or ultimately. However, McDaniel’s suggested account of conventional and ultimate truth needs to be modified to take into account Saṅghabhadra’s views about the nature of ultimate truth, in particular his claim that there can be ultimate truths about what is conventionally real. For at least some Abhidharma thinkers, much of what is taken to be ultimately true in fact involves a recognition and appreciation of the relationship between what is ultimately real and what is conventionally real. Part of the ultimate truth is knowing the conventionality of the conventional. The account of ultimate and conventional truth I offer here takes this important feature of Saṅghabhadra’s view into account and is thus a better exegetical alternative to the account initially proposed by McDaniel.

Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadyamakakārikā argues against the Abhidharma view that their putatively fundamental entities—the dharmas —can enter into causal relationships. The Ābhidharmikas maintain that the mark of fundamentality is having a particular kind of nature called svabhāva —a Sanskrit term that roughly translates to "own-nature." Nāgārjuna's arguments target svabhāva, attempting to show that any entity that has a svabhāva could not enter into causal relations. Nāgārjuna's arguments, however, fail against the foundationalism of the Vaibhāṣika Sarvāstivāda Ābhidharmikas because he targets a notion of svabhāva that they do not hold. This essay defends Abhidharma foundationalism against four of Nāgārjuna's causal arguments by clarifying the Vaibhāṣika understanding of svabhāva and demonstrating how their view avoids Nāgārjuna's objections. I argue that the Vaibhāṣika characterize svabhāva only as a nature that does not reductively supervene on other entities. This characterization allows for various other dependence relations among dharmas, including causal dependence. Furthermore, the Sarvāstivāda view that entities exist in the past, present, and future, if interpreted as a form of ontological pluralism, avoids Nāgārjuna's criticism that causation's temporal process must involve change, inconsistent with svabhāva 's immutability.

Buddhist philosophers draw a distinction between two kinds of entities: ultimately real entities and conventionally real entities. Among Abhidharma Buddhist philosophers, who accept the fundamental existence of ultimately real entities, there is a debate over the existential status of conventionally real entities. The most prevalent interpretation of the general Abhidharma position is an anti-realist one: conventionally real entities do not exist. Here, however, I will argue that there is at least one Abhidharma philosopher who is not an anti-realist about conventionally real entities. Saṅghabhadra, a fifth-century CE Indian Buddhist philosopher belonging to the Vaibhāṣika-Sarvāstivāda tradition of Abhidharma Buddhism, offers an account of conventionally real entities that takes them to be real. According to him, conventional entities exist, although in a derivative and degenerate way—a way that is supervenient on and grounded in what is ultimately real. Saṅghabhadra’s view substantiates, in his specific case, Kris McDaniel’s argument that Abhidharma accounts of conventional reality are profitably interpreted as the view that conventional entities exist but enjoy a mode of being that is distinct from the fundamental mode of being enjoyed by ultimately real entities. In what follows, I will argue that the pluralist framework that McDaniel lays out for understanding the mode of being that non-fundamental entities enjoy fits well with and makes the most sense of, the account of conventional entities offered by Saṅghabhadra.

Jonathan Stoltz’s Illuminating the Mind: An Introduction to Buddhist Epistemology is an excellent book that will be valuable to those familiar with analytic epistemology but unfamiliar with, and curious about, Indian philosophical traditions. It is also a valuable book for those seeking to teach Buddhist epistemology to advanced philosophy students. Philosophers interested in cross-cultural philosophical methodology will also find this book an interesting case study.With respect to cross-cultural methodology, Stoltz aims to demonstrate the philosophical legitimacy of Buddhist epistemology to a “Western” audience by presenting the epistemological themes and arguments of various Buddhist thinkers in terms he thinks...

Some Buddhists claim that all phenomena are empty of inherent existence and thereby endorse a kind of global anti‐realism. Buddhist global fictionalists argue that for these Buddhists, ordinary discourse is best understood in global fictionalist terms. I argue here that these attempts fail because the types of fictionalism that these accounts are modeled after structurally rely on a non‐fictionalist domain of discourse to establish normative constraints within the target fictionalist domain. If the goal of appealing to fictionalism is to help explain how discourse involving reference to entities that are unreal can still be governed by non‐arbitrary norms of acceptance, such that some conventional claims can be meaningfully described as conventionally true in contrast to other such claims that are conventionally false, then Buddhist global fictionalism undermines its own goals. It does so by eliminating the very feature of a fictionalist account – the ability to appeal to a non‐fictionalist domain – that makes possible the norms that fictionalism is invoked to explain in the first place.

While committed to the view that Buddhist Reductionism offers the best account of the Abhidharma distinction of the two truths, Siderits (2009) argues that Buddhist Reductionism has the surprising consequence of making itself inexpressible. This inexpressibility follows from the semantic insulation between conventional and ultimate discourses that Siderits argues is required in order to preserve classical logic for both types of discourse, avoiding contradiction and bivalence failure. I argue that inexpressibility is a problematic consequence that threatens to constitute a reductio of Buddhist Reductionism.

Abstract:There is debate about the ontological status of conventional entities in Abhidharma thought. Buddhist texts often draw a distinction between two different kinds of entities, ultimately real entities (paramārtha-sat) and conventionally real entities (saṃvṛti-sat), but are often unclear about what the distinction entails. The debate about whether past and future dharmas are ultimately real reveals that Sam.ghabhadra and Vasubandhu—two prominent Abhidharma philosophers—fundamentally disagree about whether reality consists in one or many modes of being. Saṃghabhadra's Sarvāstivāda position is best understood as the ontologically pluralist view that a dharma can enjoy three distinct but equally fundamental temporal modes of being. Vasubandhu's position is that reality is univocal, that everything is real in the same sense. Because Saṃghabhadra is a pluralist and Vasubandhu is not, Saṃghabhadra affirms the reality of conventional entities whereas Vasubandhu does not.