Buddhist Epistemology and the Liar Paradox

ABSTRACT

The liar paradox is still an open philosophical problem. Most contemporary answers to the paradox target the logical principles underlying the reasoning from the liar sentence to the paradoxical conclusion that the liar sentence is both true and false. In contrast to these answers, Buddhist epistemology offers resources to devise a distinctively epistemological approach to the liar paradox. In this paper, I mobilise these resources and argue that the liar sentence is what Buddhist epistemologists call a contradiction with one’s own words. I situate my argument in the works of Dignāga and Dharmakīrti and show how Buddhist epistemology answers the paradox.

KEYWORDS:

• liar paradox
• Buddhist logic
• epistemology
• contradiction

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Bronwyn Finnigan, Alan Hájek, Koji Tanaka, and three anonymous referees for their extremely helpful and insightful comments on various drafts of this paper. I would also like to thank Tom Tillemans for his guidance on Buddhist texts. I am very grateful to audiences of the Australian National University Philosophy Society seminar in May 2021 and the Australian National University Learning from Buddhist Logic workshop in August 2019 for many helpful discussions and, especially, to David Ripley for his extensive comments on an early draft of this paper.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 There are a small number of people who disagree with this definition, however (Rescher 2001; Lycan 2010; Paseau 2013).

2 I will be using the following abbreviations for editions of Buddhist texts: NB, Dharmakīrti’s Nyāyabindu (Malvania 1971); PSV, Dignāga’s Pramāṇasamuccayavṛtti (Hattori 1968; Tillemans 2000); PV, Dharmakīrti’s Pramāṇavārttika (Pandeya 1989); PVin, Dharmakīrti’s Pramāṇaviniścaya (Vetter 1966; Steinkellner 1979a, 1979b; Hugon and Tomabechi 2011); PVSV, Dharmakīrti’s Pramāṇavārttikasvavṛtti (Gnoli 1960); T, Taishō shinshū daizōkyō, 大正新脩大藏經, The Taishō New Edition of the Buddhist Canon.

3 I would like to thank the anonymous referee for pressing this point.

4 Skt. yadi viruddhārthavācinā svavacena bādhyate yathā sarvam uktaṃ mṛṣeti. This Sanskrit fragment comes from Prajñākaragupta’s Pramāṇavārttikabhāṣya. Sāṅkṛtyāyana’s edition of Prajñākaragupta’s text has virudhārthavācināṃ instead of viruddhārthavācinā (Sāṅkṛtyāyana 1943: 526 l. 19). Translation into English is by Tom Tillemans (private communication). This fragment was identified by Shōryū Katsura with the fragment of Chinese translation of Dignāga’s *Nyāyamukha Yinming zhengli men lun 因明正理門論 T32:1628.1a19–2 (Katsura 1977: 113).

5 Skt. dvividho hi padārthānāṃ virodhaḥ | avikalakāraṇasya bhavato ’nyabhāve ’bhāvād virodhagatiḥ | śītoṣṇasparśavat | parasparaparihārasthitalakṣaṇatayā vā bhāvābhāvavat.

6 Skt. śāstriṇo apy atadālambe viruddhauktau tu vastuni | na bādhā pratibandhaḥ syāt tulyakakṣyatayā dvayoḥ || yathā svavāci tac ca asyā tadā svavacanātmakam | tayoḥ pramāṇaṃ yasya asti tat syād anyasya bādhakam. The translation of this fragment is based on (Tillemans 2000: 138). I have changed Tillemans’s translation to match my terminology.

7 Tom Tillemans suggests that ‘the same force’ might refer to a psychological force that prevents one from holding contradictory beliefs. This is in line with the non-Buddhist theory of so-called ‘cognitive blockers’ according to which when an agent holds a belief, the presence of this belief in the agent’s mind prevents the agent from holding the opposing belief (Tillemans 2000: 133). However, this suggestion seems to conflict with what Dharmakīrti says about contradiction concerning universals in the NB III.72–75. As discussed earlier, Dharmakīrti claims that something can be both affirmed and denied, for example, one can affirm and deny that something is blue, or one can commit a fallacy of a contradiction with one’s own words and mistakenly state ‘My mother was barren’ as a thesis in a debate. It seems to follow that, at least in this sense, it is possible to hold the contradictory beliefs that underpin contradictory assertions and denials even though stating a contradiction is always a fallacy and constitutes losing the debate.

8 Self-invalidating contradictions with one’s own words are also possible. For example, ‘There is and there is not fire on the mountain’ self-invalidates if ‘There is fire on the mountain’ is supported by a means of knowing. Thanks to Alan Hájek for making this point.

9 I am grateful to an anonymous referee for rising this point and to James Bernard Willoughby for suggesting the name ‘universal self-impediment’.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian National University Research Scholarship (International, 595/2017).