Abstract
Perhaps more than any other contemporary scholar, Mark Siderits has illuminated the deep connections between ontology, explanation, epistemology, and philosophy of language in Indian Buddhist philosophy. His ground-breaking interpretations of Abhidharma and Madhyamaka—particularly concerning reductionism, emptiness, and the two truths—have largely set the terms of debate in Anglophone Buddhist philosophy. This chapter is very much in the spirit of Siderits’ work, though it will reach conclusions somewhat at odds with his own. The first part of the chapter will examine the ontological and explanatory reductionism of much Abhidharma thought. The thorough-going reductionism of Abhidharma yields a two-tiered ontology of ultimately real and (merely) conventionally real entities, and a correspondingly two-tiered account of ultimate and conventional truth. The second part of the chapter will take up the Madhyamaka critique of Buddhist reductionism and the philosophical consequences of the view that all things are empty (śūnya) of inherent existence (svabhāva). If all things are empty, then arguably Abhidharma reductionism is undermined. That is, if everything is empty of inherent existence, then the project of reducing things to that which exists inherently is doomed. Moreover, as Sidertis has so forcefully argued, the Madhyamaka view of emptiness undermines the Abhidharma distinction between two truths. As he provocatively puts it, for the Mādhyamika, “the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth” (Siderits and Katsura 2013, p. 273). Hence, if all things are empty, all real entities are conventionally real, and all truths are conventionally true. Yet, as discussed in part three of the chapter, this raises the specter of the ‘dismal slough’—a pernicious ontological and epistemic flattening that threatens to undermine the critical and revisionist force Buddhist philosophy. How might a Mādhyamika avoid the dismal slough? One approach, explored in Siderits’ more recent work, is to, as it were, transpose Buddhist reductionism into a Mādhyamika key. Here the strategy is to show that while Buddhist reductionism cannot provide an account of ultimate reality, it still offers the best account of conventional reality. It will be argued that recent work in the philosophy of science gives reasons to doubt this approach. Finally, section four of the chapter will explore an alternative, post-reductionist strategy for avoiding the dismal slough. This alternative is based on three key ideas:
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Notes
- 1.
More specifically, Buddhist Reductionist ideas are developed in the Sarvāstivāda and Sautrāntika Abhidharma schools.
- 2.
‘yatra bhinnena tadbuddhir anyāpohe dhiyā ca tat | ghaṭārthavat saṃvṛtisat paramārthasad anyathā ||’ AK 6.4.
- 3.
Something along these lines is developed in Ganeri (2007) Ch. 6.
- 4.
I include regularity theories of causation among accounts of real causation here.
- 5.
Of course, it is well known that Putnam eventually abandoned the internal realism he defending in the 1980’s.
- 6.
Though it is worth emphasizing again that there is an alternative reading of Madhyamaka as offering a kind of global error-theory (Tillemans 2011).
- 7.
I will leave aside here the complex question of non-discursive, non-conceptual (niṣprapañca) truths.
- 8.
For more on the notion of ontological deflationism in this context see my (2008).
- 9.
Of course, it would be fair for the quietist to reply that the whole point of quietism is to eschew the misguided desire for metaphysically deep explanation. In that case, we may say that there is a trade-off between quietist anti-skepticism and explanatory power.
- 10.
See pp. 175–178 of Sidertis (2011) for a fuller discussion of the role of intrinsic natures in this account.
- 11.
One might, of course, adopt some other form of ontological grounding, such as realization.
- 12.
This claim about the ubiquity of dependent arising does not imply that everything is connected to everything else, but only that each phenomenon is related to at least one other phenomenon. See Sidertis (2011) for further discussion of this point.
- 13.
That my hypothetical post-reductionist Mādhyamika would agree with Garfeld here, does not, of course, entail that Garfield would in turn agree with my overall account.
- 14.
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MacKenzie, M. (2023). A Post-Reductionist Buddhism?. In: Coseru, C. (eds) Reasons and Empty Persons: Mind, Metaphysics, and Morality. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 36. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13995-6_11
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