As this Wikipedia article states, “Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits 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.”
Buddha’s cosmos has two realities: the visible and the invisible. Visible reality refers to the phenomenal universe in which humans live, while invisible reality refers to the mentality that underlies the visible universe. Consequently, Buddha teaches two means of knowledge to understand the two realities. Inference is for understanding the visible phenomenal universe, while direct perception is for understanding the invisible mental world.
However, in the current scope of epistemology, only inference is available to humans to understand the visible world. Direct perception is absent in the current scope of epistemology, except outside of Buddhism. However, Buddha teaches that the ability to perceive the mental nature of reality directly is within all humans. Therefore, our exploration of Buddhist epistemology is about expanding the scope of epistemology rather than discussing topics within its current scope.
In this post, we discuss inference, one of Buddha’s two means of knowledge. Means of knowledge is known in Romanized Sanskrit as Pramana (Chinese=量).
Inference (Romanized Sanskrit=anumana; Chinese=比量), according to The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, “allows us to glean knowledge concerning objects that are not directly evident to the senses.”
Anumana is closely associated with another concept known as agamadharma (Chinese=教法), which, according to The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, is “in Sanskrit, “scriptural dharma.” In contrast to adhigamadharma, it refers to the mere conceptual understanding of Buddha’s teachings through studying Buddhist sutras.”
In our discussion of inference, we start with a fascinating dialogue 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 senses, 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.”
“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,” not “how things stand in themselves.“
Of course, that is not Buddha’s opinion. As mentioned above, Buddha expands the current scope of epistemology by adding direct perception as the second means of knowledge. However, our focus in this post is to discuss inference. Direct perception will be addressed in a future post.
Dr. Fische preceded his discussion of inference by talking about how humans know what they know by saying that “we do not know by our eyes or by our ears, but by means of the words we speak.” So, if what humans see, hear, smell, taste, and touch do not let them know the world, what do they do?
Indeed, instead of letting humans know the world, human sensing is used to interact with the world. Furthermore, sensing is a process consisting of several steps. As Dr. Fisch describes, sensing begins with “the world impacts on us in a causal manner through all our senses” and continues until “seeing on the screen the world that we experience.” In between is a step Dr. Fisch describes as conceptualization in the mind “in ways we do not govern.” Conceptualization in the mind “in ways we do not govern” means that the “contents imparted on” human senses are distorted in the mind without anyone knowing or control.
In other words, the visible world humans experience has nothing to do with the invisible contents that impact their senses. These invisible contents are what Dr. Fisch calls “empirical fact.” Instead of understanding the empirical facts of nature, conceptualization distorts them. The conceptualized empirical facts are then seen as “the we world experience.” In other words, while what impacts human senses is the invisible empirical facts, they become the visible world conceptualized in our minds. Furthermore, all that happens without anyone knowing because it occurs “in ways we do not govern.”
Since the world is created in the mind, Buddha deems everything in it illusional, as he said in the Diamond Sutra:
“All conditioned phenomena are like the illusions of dreams and shadows of bubbles (Chinese=一切有為法; 如夢幻泡影),
like dew and lightning, this is how to have insight into all conditioned phenomena (Chinese=如露亦如電, 應作如是觀.”)
To know the already-conceptualized illusional word, humans created a word-based vocabulary. However, words are inferentially connected. As Dr. Fisch said, words are inferentially connected because “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!”
So, now we can better understand why Buddha teaches that inference” allows us to glean knowledge concerning objects that are not directly evident to the senses.” “Objects that are not directly evident to the senses” refer to “the world we experience” because what is directly evident to the senses is the invisible empirical facts of nature that impact the senses. Obviously, inference refers to the inferentially connected word-based knowledge, which indeed allows humans to glean knowledge concerning “the world we experience,” as Dr. Fisch described.
At the same time, we can also understand why agamadharma (Chinese=教法) “refers to the mere conceptual understanding of Buddha’s teachings through studying Buddhist sutras.” Not only is the world conceptualized, but Buddha’s teachings in Buddhist sutras are also about how concepts relate to each other, not about “how things stand in themselves.”
One can also understand why Dr. Kuhn said, “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?”
Indeed, inference cannot inform “what the world really is” or “how things stand in themselves,” as Dr. Fisch described. However, what inference cannot, direct perception can. Direct perception can inform “what the world really is” or “how things stand in themselves” because it helps understand empirical facts of nature without distortion.
In the next post, we will discuss the Kalama Sutta, in which Buddha expresses his opinion on the uselessness of inferentially connected words in the search for an unchanging Truth. We will discuss direct perception after that.
(If you like this post, please like it on our Facebook page and share. Thank you.)
