By Carlo Fonseka
[Text of a lecture delivered at the Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Sri Jayewardenepura]
(Continued from last Wednesday)
Influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) became the gospel of the Logical Positivists. And positivism has been regarded as a philosophical defense of science and mathematics, which are regarded as the supreme ways of exercising human rationality and gaining knowledge. In later life, however, Wittgenstein judged that his Tractatus was fundamentally in error. But the definitive statement of his repudiation of it came only in his posthumous publication called Philosophical Investigations (1953). From 1939 until 1947 Wittgenstein was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. During this period he published almost nothing. His second philosophy was disseminated only to and through his students. As it happened, one of his students during that period was K. N. Jayatilleke who seems to have imbibed the best of both early and later Wittgenstein.
Work of K. N. Jayatilleke
K. N. Jayatilleke's monumental work Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge (1963) embodies a thorough examination of the epistemological foundations of Early Buddhism. Noting that "the origins of the Indian empiricist tradition and its early development in Early Buddhism are largely unknown to Western scholarship," Jayatilleke remarks that Radhakrishnan "went so far as to say that Early Buddhism was positivistic in its outlook and confined its attention to what we perceive".14 He focuses on Aldous Huxley's observation that "Early Buddhism for the most part respected the principle of verification and confined its statements to verifiable propositions".15 Then he quotes Huxley who said, "The Buddha … seems to have applied to the problems of religion that 'operational philosophy' which contemporary scientific thinkers have begun to apply in the natural sciences... [but] Buddha was not a consistent operationalist; for he seems to have taken for granted, to have accepted as something given and self-evident, a variant of the locally current theory of metempsychosis"16. Jayatilleke comments that Huxley has been misled into thinking that the Buddha had dogmatically accepted the doctrine of rebirth from the prevalent tradition.17
Rebirth and Karma
Jayatilleke argues that the Buddha accepted the reality of rebirth and karma on methodological grounds after critical reasoning. He asserts that the inductive inferences in Buddhism are made on data of perception, normal and paranormal. He claims that the doctrines of karma and rebirth are inductive inferences based on the data of extra-sensory perceptions.18 According to Jayatilleke, with one exception, all the knowledge claimed by the Buddha is based on data of perception and is therefore empirical. The exception is the nirvanic experience. Based on his understanding of verse 1076 of the Suttanipata, Jayatilleke judges that the nirvanic experience is transempirical; it can be realized and attained, but it cannot be empirically described. Jayatilleke explains that this is so because according to the Buddha the person who has attained the goal … does not have that with which one can speak of him - "whereof one can speak of him, that he does not have".19 So one has to be silent. At this point, as if to clinch the issue he quotes the celebrated conclusion of his philosophical guru's magnum opus Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent".20 No doubt because he was aware that modern science never has recourse to extra-sensory perception, Jayatilleke endeavored to present rebirth as a hypothesis testable by the cannons of modern science. He set to work to prove rebirth on the basis of empirical evidence. Sadly his early demise left the matter as inconclusive as ever. Jayatilleke cites several convincing examples to illustrate the proposition that many Buddhist teachings are based on the data of normal perception. Then he poses the question whether the putative extra-sensory experiences such as telepathy and clairvoyance on which the central Buddhist doctrines of karma and rebirth are based are veridical or delusive. Regrettably on the ground that the question falls outside the scope of his study he does not examine it.21
Enter Kalupahana
At the University of Peradeniya, D. J. Kalupahana was K. N. Jayatilleke's pupil and later colleague. In due course having moved to the University of Hawaii, Kalupahana took up from where Jayatilleke left off the intellectual project of trying to incorporate Buddhism into empirical human knowledge. By his own submission, Kalupahana is a pragmatist in the mould of William James. As to empiricism, he says that he has continually struggled to explain the Early Buddhist tradition as one based upon an extremely sophisticated empiricist foundation, not in the Humean version of British empiricism but in the Jamesean version of American pragmatism. Kalupahana avers that "it is not easy to find a passage where the Buddha claims that he has realized a truth that transcends linguistic expression. 22 He adds that "the Buddha's knowledge is confined to what is empirically verifiable and morally significant". 23 He implies that KN Jayatilleke's claim that the nirvanic experience is trans-empirical is based on an epistemological premise the Buddha would not have subscribed to. 24
Tilakaratne's Thesis
It fell to the lot of Kalupahana's doctoral pupil Asanga Tilakaratne to attempt a definitive scholarly demolition of Jayatilleke's statement about the trans-empirical nature of the nirvanic experience. He does so by a comprehensive, detailed and critical analysis of theories of transcendence and ineffability including Jayatilleke's version in Early Buddhism.25
Criticism of the work of Tilakaratne
Paradoxically the sternest and most cogent critic of Tillakaratne's thesis is Bhikkhu Bodhi, a distinguished and extraordinarily learned Buddhist scholar with solid ethnic and academic roots in the Anglo-American cultural tradition. In an article titled Nibbana, Transcendence and Language published in 1996 Bhikkhu Bodhi avers that Tillakaratne attempts to validate his thesis concerning the empirical nature of the nirvanic experience, on the basis of an 'acutely narrow selection' of texts. He points out that other texts give alternative expositions of the nirvanic experience which are difficult to accommodate within a purely naturalistic interpretation of nirvana. He emphasizes the fact that Tilakaratne himself concedes that the Nibbana Suttas of the Udana support the view of nirvana which Tilakaratne rejects. According to Bhikkhu Bodhi it is by "considerable bending and stretching of their manifest meaning" that Tilakaratne squares the Udana Suttas with a naturalistic view of nirvana. He declares that the Pali Nikaya texts on Nibbana "are straightforward enough to leave little doubt that Nibbana is a transcendent reality…". Then comes the censorious judgment that: "… it is only by a wilful denial of their explicit intent that one can get them to say something other than what they appear to be saying".26
Final Appraisal
On the whole Bhikkhu Bodhi does not appear to endorse the tradition of Sri Lankan Buddhist philosophical analysis represented by K. N. Jayatilleke, D. J. Kalupahana and Asanga Tilakaratne, which he contends is seeking to assimilate Buddhism into Anglo-American empiricism and positivism. He expresses his fear that the net result of their project might be the reduction of Buddhism to "little more than a system of ethical culture and mental training based on an especially insightful psychology".27 But in an article titled Two Paths to Knowledge published in 1999, Bhikkhu Bodhi categorically declares: "In contrast to the classical western antithesis of religion and science, Buddhism shares with science a common commitment to uncover the truth about the world. Both Buddhism and science draw a sharp distinction between the way things appear and the way they really are, and both offer to open our minds to insights into the real nature of things, normally hidden from us by false ideas based on sense perception and 'common sense'. … Buddhism includes within its domain the entire spectrum of qualities described by personal experience. This means that Buddhism gives prime consideration to values. But even more, values for Buddhism are not merely projections of subjective judgments which we fashion according to our personal whims, social needs or cultural conditioning; to the contrary, they are written into the texture of reality just as firmly as the laws of motion and thermodynamics…" 28 If Bhikkhu Bodhi's analysis is correct, there seems to be no escape route: the Buddhist approach to reality necessarily has to be the methodology which led to the discovery of the laws of motion and thermodynamics. And that is the empirical approach. If such an approach reduces Buddhism to what he (disapprovingly) calls "a system of ethical culture and mental training based on an especially insightful psychology" then the logical response necessarily has to be: So be it! For, if nothing else, it is eminently acceptable and entirely consonant with the modern scientific outlook. Nor must it be forgotten that empiricism is not exclusively Anglo-American. As already noted above, Radhakrishnan "went so far as to say that early Buddhism was positivistic in its outlook and confined its attention to what we perceive". That early Indian thought had an empiricist tradition is well known. Whether - as Bhikkhu Bodhi seems to imply - Anglo-American empiricism and positivism had specific characteristics which made them uniquely different from other forms of empiricism is debatable. In any case, the relevant question for us today is whether the central doctrines of Buddhism are consistent with the modern empirical theory of knowledge. For all its admitted problematic epistemological shortcomings including an inherent and permanent state of yielding inferences whose degree of reliability is less than absolute certainty, the empirical approach to reality has proved to be a highly reliable and extremely fruitful one for the conduct of human life on earth. What the Sri Lankan empirical tradition of Buddhist scholarship has sought to do is to validate the central doctrines of Buddhism in terms of modern empiricism, which has proved to be a surer guide to knowledge than philosophical speculation.
For his part, K. N. Jayatilleke endeavoring to interpret Buddhism in empirical terms, judged that knowledge of nirvana could not be validated in empirical terms. His judgment was that knowledge of nirvana necessarily had to be trans-empirical and therefore ineffable. Kalupahana rejected this view partly on the ground that if the ultimate reality envisaged in Buddhism is 'ineffable' Buddhism would lose its passport to the sacred domains of both modern psychology and philosophy. In his K. N. Jayatilleke Memorial Lecture titled K. N. Jayatilleke's Interpretation of Nirvana Revisited delivered in 1998, Asanga Tilakaratne systematically reaffirmed his view that the experience of nirvana can indeed be understood as part of conventional empirical human knowledge. 29
When all is said and done, the final question is: Can the central doctrines of Buddhism be exhibited as a system of causal relations where effects follow from causes, even as the conclusion of a valid argument follows from its premises. The project Jayatilleka, Kalupahana and Tilakaratne in their separate ways had set for themselves aimed at such a demonstration. Whether they succeeded and if so to what extent, has to be a matter of judgment. Though ironclad proof of such an achievement cannot be validly claimed by them, their work has collectively made a very plausible case for regarding the central doctrines of Buddhism as constituting part of empirical human knowledge. Those who believe that the sublime doctrines of Buddhism transcend profane knowledge and that Buddhism is concerned, not with objective factual knowledge but with an inner spiritual transformation, could still rejoice in the fact that by its intrinsic epistemological nature, an empirical project cannot yield absolute certainty.
The Island
