Nāgārjuna and causality
Will commented on my previous post about Nāgārjuna, and I responded something along the lines of, “Garfield is an analytic philosopher, so he’s not interested in soteriology, I’d guess.” My guess was wrong–and this article, “Nāgārjuna’s Theory of Causality: Implications Sacred and Profane” demonstrates why. A summary follows.
This article appeared in Philosophy East and West October 2001 (Volume 51). It grabbed my interest because Garfield takes Nāgārjuna’s view of causality and applies it to questions in modern philosophy of science as well as the Tibetan tradition of commentaries which believe rebirth is necessary for bodhicitta.
Causal Powers and Conventionalist Regularism
Taking it a step at a time, however, we first need to understand what Nāgārjuna says about causality. In the Mulamadhyamakakarika, he argues against the reification of causality. In other words, when you investigate why event B follows event A, you uncover many different explanations, at different levels. You will never reach a rock bottom “Cause” which, like some kind of a mysterious force, binds the workings of the universe together.
Garfield note that this isn’t unique to Nāgārjuna–Wittgenstein and Hume similarly reject the idea of causal powers. They cannot be observed and if we do posit a causal power, we enter into a regress–what causes causal powers to be effective?
Nāgārjuna’s position is conventionalist regularism–explanations are convention, not at the level of “ultimate” truth. This doesn’t mean we can’t explain correlations and regular patterns. It means that there is no unifying explanation.
Scientific Explanations without Cause
If we don’t have causal powers, then how can we have scientific explanation? Actually, Garfield argues, the idea of causal power makes scientific explanation problematic, rather than successful.
One of the issues in philosophy of science is the question of reduction. My action of typing these words can be explained by psychology (background beliefs, motivation, etc.) as well as neurology (brain states and neurons) and physics (the particles that make up neurons). The central problem for philosphers is how these multiple explanations work together.
Should we reduce my action to a physical explanation? We cannot have several explanations all causing the same action–that’s overdetermination. So the quest continues for the explanation that has the causal power, along with the method to reduce the other explanations to that vocabulary.
Nāgārjuna has us reject this holy grail of causality in favor of “let[ting] a thousand entities bloom.” The result is not, he says, accepting any and every explanation that comes our way (think the Flying Spaghetti Monster), but applying the same standards we presently do: that theories be coherent, successful predictors, etc. What we assert, however, is not that these theories will provide us an “ultimate” explanation, but rather that they are conventional–limited in context, but pragmatically useful.
Bodhicitta and Rebirth
Having dispatched with the application of Nāgārjuna’s causality to the profane, Garfield continues to the sacred. Briefly (because there’s quite a bit of exegesis involved which you’ll want to go to the article for) here’s what is at stake:
The dGe lugs school of Tibetan Buddhism attempts to reconcile Nāgārjuna and Dharmakirti’s writings (Garfield calls this Farabi’s fallacy–where a philosopher considers two scholars “smart guys” and tries to reconcile them, like Farbi did for Aristotle and Plato). Unfortunately, Dharmakirti subtly reifies causal powers as being an ultimate explanation. He does so in service of the idea of bodhicitta, that one ought to aspire to become a buddha in order to liberate all sentient beings.
The argument goes like this:
1. To become a bodhisattva, one must have great compassion.
2. Great compassion is hard to archive.
3. Through many rebirths, one can accumulate a compassionate view.
4. Bodhicitta requires a great level of compassion even to develop as an aspiration.
5. Thus to achieve bodhicitta one must believe in rebirth.
Garfield argues that this argument assumes, subtly, that personal rebirth occurs by means of a “single mental continuum independent of the body.” This continuum, supposedly, is required to bring together a causal chain by which the aspiring bodhisattva-to-be accumulates compassion. There is another explanation, though, which does not require reification of the self. The “transpersonal model of attainment” which Garfield sets forward, posits that just as Kant was able to write a great work by leaning upon the wisdom of past philosophers, so too, bodhisattvas can attain enlightenment by the resources of those who went before them.
Putting it all together
The conclusion of Garfield’s work is heterodox (as he admits) to Mahayana Buddhism. Rebirth is a leftover relic from Hinduism, which ought to be discarded and which interferes with an otherwise coherent solution to metaphysical problems. Further, when applied to the tangled mess of analytic solutions to problems in the philosophy of science (as well as mind and action), Nāgārjuna’s philosophy helps us escape the illusion which brings about the problems in the first place.
It’s a deep fix–it requires a continual scraping away at metaphysical assumptions which clog up our view of the world. It is both frightening (because it smacks of nihilism) and difficult (because it is counterintuitive in all that we do, whether philosophy or daily life). But, Garfield concludes, it is the best way to affirm “the empirical world and the possibility of meaningful life.” Otherwise, we are left with no hope for Explanation, if we keep chasing after Causes.