According to this Wikipedia article, “Epistemology is the philosophical study of knowledge. Also called the theory of knowledge, it examines what knowledge is and what types of knowledge there are. It further investigates the sources of knowledge, like perception, inference, and testimony, to determine how knowledge is created. Another topic is the extent and limits of knowledge, confronting questions about what people can and cannot know. Other central concepts include belief, truth, justification, evidence, and reason. Epistemology is one of the main branches of philosophy besides fields like ethics, logic, and metaphysics.”
However, the exploration of Buddhist epistemology is not about philosophical debate on the theory of knowledge. Exploring Buddhist epistemology is about exploring the uniqueness of Buddhist epistemology, which involves two means of knowledge to understand the two realities in the world we live in. The current philosophical theory of knowledge covers only one way to understand our world.
The uniqueness of Buddhism is that Buddha is the only person who claimed to have understood the Ultimate Reality of the cosmos. Buddha was able to make that claim because of his unique epistemology. The uniqueness of Buddha’s epistemology is that Buddha teaches two means of knowledge to understand the same empirical data our sensory bases perceive. In other words, there are two realities we can know from the same information our eyes see, ears hear, nose smell, tongue taste, or body touches. Of the two, Buddha teaches which one is the Ultimate. However, if you do not believe in the Ultimate Reality, Buddha tells you that you can embark on your own journey to realize it. It is not easy, but the potential is there. Many have tried since Buddha, but only a few have succeeded. One of them is a contemporary American. Born as Stephen Gray in California, he is now known as Adyashanti. You can find his enlightenment experience here.
We start with a fascinating discussion between Dr. Menachem Fisch, an internationally prominent historian and philosopher of science, and the host of Closer to Truth, Dr. Robert L Kuhn. Their contemporary language helps us understand Buddha’s teachings from thousands of years ago.
“How do we know what we know?” is the question Dr. Robert L. Kuhn asked his guest to start the conversation.
Dr. Fisch started by stating that, according to latter-day philosophy, “we do not know by our eyes or by our ears, but by means of the words we speak.”
Instead, Dr. Fisch suggested that “we are stimulated by the world,” and while “the world impacts on us in a causal manner through all our sensors, but the content imparted on those stimuli is the reading-in of the mind. It’s imparted by the mind.”
Dr. Fisch continued, “How we know is by means of their conceptualization.” “Sitting in the command room of our minds with the inner-eyes and looking out, … we don’t look out the windows of our eyes; everything happens within the head,… so sitting back on that armchair in the command console, and seeing on the screen the world that we experience, all that data has already been fashioned and conceptualized by our minds in ways that we do not govern.” “This is sensing.”
“Knowing,“ Dr. Fisch continued, “is to render explicit those conceptualizations. In other words, to take stock explicitly, um, that’s a horse, ah, I am talking to an interviewer, and so on and so forth.“ “What we can know, not what we can feel, is the function of the language of conceptual schemes, the concepts by which we conceptualize.“
Additionally, Dr. Fisch suggested, “if you look into the dictionary, words are explained by other words. The conceptual scheme, the vocabulary at our disposal, by which we experience and by which we know, is inferentially connected.“ “In other words, if this point is north of that, then that point is south of that. That is about the meaning of the words. This isn’t an empirical fact. This is about how these concepts relate to each other. The limits of what we can know, the limits of our world, is the limits of our language!”
“The intriguing thing about bringing language into epistemology is that you can only know something new by using old words. If you invent a new term, it’s just a tag, not a concept.“ “Like every person in this studio, you are unique. But the only way I can account for your uniqueness is by means of a set of concepts by which you are likened to others.“
“We know by means of using a concept.“ Using a concept is to liken what we see to something else. So, concepts are little metaphors, a little class names.“
Dr. Kuhn immediately recognized the immensity of Dr. Fisch’s words as he questioned, “What prevents you from cascading into skepticism where we can’t know anything? Everything is related to something else. I have no foundation between what I believe and what the world really is. So, how do I know anything?”
In response, Dr. Fisch rhetorically asked Dr. Kuhn, “Define know.“ However, he answered his own question as he continued, “What you are saying now is that we should be skeptical about knowing for sure, about how things stand in themselves, not how things are experienced by us.“
Indeed, as Dr. Fisch suggests, there are two ways of knowing: knowing “how things stand in themselves“ and knowing “how things are experienced by us.”
“How things are experienced by us,“ Dr. Fisch expounded, “is already language informed, or concept informed.” “We know pretty much about the self we experience, the world we experience, the world we find ourselves living in.” “We got it right. We got it right according to our standards, no other standards.”
“Do we know things stand in themselves?”
“God knows,“ was the reply.
In Dr. Fisch’s opinion, with seemingly only inferentially connected vocabulary at our disposal, humans are cursed only to know “how things are experienced by us.“ However, as Dr. Fisch also makes plain, the problem with inferentially connected words is that they only function to “render explicit“ concepts that are “fashioned and conceptualized in our minds in ways that we do not govern.“
It is no wonder why Dr. Kuhn wondered, “So, how do I know anything?“
Indeed, how do we know anything if everything we know was created in our minds in the first place?
According to Dr. Fisch, the best inferentially connected vocabulary can do is to allow humanity to “get it right according to our standards, no other standards.“. While inferentially connected words enable humans to “know pretty much about the self we experience, the world we experience, the world we find ourselves living in,“ they cannot help humans understand “know things stand in themselves.“ Furthermore, Dr. Fisch suggests that the ability to understanding “how things stand in themselves“ must be left to God.
Of course, Buddha offers to differ. In Buddhism, there are no Gods in the Western religious sense. Additionally, Buddha teaches that knowing “how things stand in themselves“ does not require supreme beings either. Instead, it requires the direct perception of empirical data.
What is empirical data? By definition, empirical data is data that is experienced, or, as Dr. Fisch puts it, “what we can feel.“ This is what our eyes, ears, noses, tongues, and body parts do. When they perceive whatever their corresponding organs are designed to perceive from the outside world, they experience or feel what they perceive. This is the first step of sensing, when “the world impacts on us in a causal manner through all our sensors.“ These empirical data from the outside world inform “how things stand in themselves“ in nature.
However, humans do not get to know “how things stand in themselves“ because, as Dr. Fisch says, these empirical data immediately become “reading in of the mind“ and get conceptualized “in ways we do not govern.“
Indeed, conceptualization happens in humans “in ways we do not govern.“ In his doctrine known as the Three Delicate Marks, Buddha teaches that “reading in of the mind“ and conceptualization “in ways we do not govern“ start with the epiphenomena, the smallest particle in the universe and the first foundational block of the universe. In other words, humans inherit them from the epiphenomena.
The uniqueness of direct perception is that it prevents “reading in of the mind“ and conceptualization “in ways we do not govern.“ By preventing these two steps, direct perception allows the understanding of undistorted empirical data of nature when “the world impacts on us in a causal manner through all our sensors.“ When empirical data of the world are not distorted, they inform “how things stand in themselves“ of nature. “How things stand in themselves“ of nature was what Buddha directly perceived when meditating under the Bodhi Tree until his enlightenment.
After his enlightenment, Buddha started to teach. What Buddha taught was what he directly perceived. In other words, Buddhism is Buddha’s teaching on “how things stand in themselves.” The Ultimate Reality is one of these natural phenomena. Others include epiphenomena, particle physics of nature, where the universe expands, a conscious quantum realm, etc.
In the next post, we will discuss the Kalama Sutta. In the Kalama Sutta, Buddha offers his opinion on the usefulness of inferentially connected words in pursuing an unchanging Truth. We will discuss direct perception after that.
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