Is there room for Free Will in Indian Philosophy?

Where shall we look for Indian discussions on free will? Free will seems to have to do with action. Although one might not need to act, in order to have free will, the capacity to act if one wishes to is the core of free will. Hence, one might be inclined to look for discussions on Free Will in the context of a system's theory of action. Another interesting semantic field would be that of God, since He is one who is surely assumed to be omnipotent and is often declared to be free. And free will seems to me to be a presupposal for free omnipotency.

I just happened to read a passage defining agent-hood (kartṛtva):

Agency is the fact of having a direct knowledge of the material causes, of having desire to do and of being endowed with an [actual] action
(upādānagocarāparokṣajñānacikīrṣākṛtimattvaṃ kartṛtvam)

The text is Annambhaṭṭa's dīpikā on his Tarkasaṅgraha (on proposition 17). The context is that of the inference about the existence of a Lord, namely "A sprout is made by a doer, because it is a product, like a pot", so that the agency here described might be only the God's one. If this were not the case, one would have the following three requisites of agency in general:

1. 1. direct knowledge of the material causes (i.e., applied and unmediated knowledge)
2. 2. desire to do
3. 3. actual doing

As for 3., I would define free-will as just the capacity to do what one wishes, independent of whether one actually does it or not. But the stress on the actual action might be just a nicety of Annambhaṭṭa.
The cognitive element seems a more significant difference. The material causes are later defined as samavāyikārana (like clay in case of a pot). Direct knowledge is a typical requisite of God, since He does not need to depend on the complex epistemological system we are bound to, and can just know everything directly. If the definition does not only apply to Him, then it means that agency requires this sort of direct knowledge to the things you'll need in order to act. Does it refer only to practical actions, such as doing a pot, where you must have a direct knowledge of the clay? Or can it apply also to general concepts? And what would a "material cause" be, in such cases?

When do children become persons?

Ontologically, there may or may not exist a substance 'self' (be it the ātman or the brain). But when does one become aware of oneself as a subject? Prābhākara authors maintain that this only happens when an injunction (e.g., "the one who is desirous of heaven should sacrifice") addresses one, so that s/he can recognise herself/himself as the enjoined one and recognise in herself/himself what is said about him/her in the injunction.

But how can an injunction be uttered if it does not yet address any subject? A Vedic injunction does not concern a specific person, since it lacks any temporal dimension and hence any possible link with specific individuals. Rather, the injunction constitutes one as a subject insofar as it makes one aware of him- or herself as being so and so (in the Prābhākara account: as being desirous).
Prābhākara thinkers are mainly concerned with Vedic injunctions, but one could add that, in a similar way, a child acquires gradually awareness of him- or herself as a person, through the injunctions of his/her parents. Injunctions to children start to be uttered well-before they can be conceived of as subjects (and, consequently, as able to understand the order enjoined to them). By hearing them, the child him- or herself as the enjoined one, and, hence as one which can be enjoined, a person.
A young child starts becoming aware of things around him or her and, hence, implicitly, of the fact that s/he is experiencing them. It is only through other people's injunctions, however, that s/he becomes aware of that experiencer as being himself/herself. This awareness of himself/herself, in summary, embeds the cognitive capacity within an intersubjectively shared personhood.


On this topic, see also:
Does a phenomenological approach lead us to a self-as-consciousness?
Is the ātman 'me'?
(and many other posts with label "subject")

Aether and sound

I am still struggling with the theory of sound of the Vaiśeṣikas. As common also in pre-18th c. Europe, Vaiśeṣikas imagined aether as the substrate of sound. More in detail, aether has for Vaiśeṣikas the only function of being the substrate of sound. This is probably due to the fact that sound travels through air, liquids and solids alike –it was hence easy to be tempted to assume a special medium, ubiquitous and accountable for the spreadth of sound.
But, what aspect of aether is sound? Vaiśeṣikas answered defining sound as a "quality of aether". Their theories seemed preposterous to me until I started identifying various historical steps:

1. An ancient theory where sound as a quality would be originated because of contact or separation of substances in a certain portion of aether and move from there to the hearing organ (hinted at in the reconstructed *Tarkasiddhi (TS).
2. A less ancient theory where sound as a quality would be originated because of contact or separation of substances in a certain portion of aether and create another sound, which creates another sound, until the succession reaches the hearing organ (discussed in *TS).
3. A later theory which incorporates the Phonetic account and the role of air. Here, the sound originated because of the air, probably because of the contact of the air modified by the articulatory organs with the aether.

Can readers help me with that? And, more in general, why did Vaiśeṣikas accept claims which appear contradictory, such as that there are parts in the partless aether, that a contact with a portion of aether is conceivable, that contact causes a quality of aether?

Limiting and assisting conditions in syllogisms

The following is a case where, in my experience, no translation can be clearer than a mathematical tab. Try to read the explanation without looking at the image and/or to look at the image without reading the explanation and tell me which one is easier to grasp for you.

An Indian syllogism is based on the invariable concomitance (vyāpti, more about it here) of two elements. Due to the visible presence of one, one can hence infer the presence of the other, though it is at the moment invisible. The invariable concomitance is mono-directional and can only be applied from one element to the other. For instance, from smoke one can infer fire, whereas from fire one cannot infer smoke. This is because the set "fire" is wider than the set "smoke" (see image). And why is it the case that smoke and fire are not co-extended? Because of a limiting condition (upādhi, also called "assisting condition"). In order to be smokey, a fire needs such a limiting condition, which is hence always present when there is no smoke, but not always present when there is fire. In the case of fire, the limiting condition is that the fuel has to be partially wet. If it is absolutely dry, there is fire without smoke.

Thanks to this limiting condition, the smoke can be a reliable probans (sādhana, the instrument through which something can be established) to establish the presence of fire (sādhya, the element to be known) in a certain locus, e.g., on a smokey mountain.

On pots and fallacies

An anyathāsiddha cause is, in Nyāya, a cause wrongly established. The Nyāyakośa (sub voce) explains that it is a kind of cause where one mistakes something previously existent for the cause. As an example, Annambhaṭṭa's Tarkasaṅgraha mentions the ass which has carried the clay and the final pot (ghaṭa). Therefore, to say that the pot exists because of the ass would be a case of anyathāsiddha. It is true that the ass existed before the pot, but it is not true that it is its cause (which should be essential to the result).
The Nyāyakośa mentions, among others, the instance of the stick (daṇḍa) and the pot. Is anyone aware of the usage of sticks while producing clay pots? Perhaps as part of the potter's wheel?

Language and thought: the case of duty

In yesterday's post, I discussed Michel Angot's claim that Sanskrit thinkers lacked the notion of "having", of "ought" and so on. In an interesting comment, Michael Reidy referred to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (in short: language influences the way one thinks).
In fact, Angot seems to claim the opposite. According to him (if I am understanding him correctly), language is not inseparably connected with thought but, if thought were refined enough, it would eventually influence language. Therefore (I am using one of Angot's examples): the absence of the verb "to sacrifice" does not mean (vs. Sapir-Whorf) that one cannot have the concept of sacrifice. But, if one has it, one will sooner or later "create" a suitable verb (for instance, bending the meaning of "to verse" until it can mean "to sacrifice").
Since Sanskrit thinkers did not create a verb "ought", this means, according to Angot, that they lacked the corresponding concept. Now, this claim seems to imply several fallacies:

1. 1. Why should the concept of "ought" be expressed by a separate verb? It is the case in French and in many other languages, but it is not the case in Latin, Greek and many others. Could we seriously claim that Western Christian writers using Latin as their medium lacked the concept of "ought" just because they expressed it with a gerundive?
2. 2. For instance, Kant (who surely cannot be suspected not to have had the concept of an interior "ought") wrote in German and in Latin. A reader of his Latin works (including the letters he sent throughout his life) might maintain that since he did not create a separate verb in Latin, he lacked the concept.
3. 3. More fundamentally, how do we know that the Sanskrit thinkers using gerundives did not mean to use it in order to express what M. Angot calls a devoir (duty)? If Angot accepts a shift of meaning in the usage of hū- and yaj-, why not in optative mode and suffixes? One could reply that we do see that yaj- means "to sacrifice" and we do see that mayā kartavyam does not mean "I must do". But is it really the case? Is not our interpretation of such optative suffixes too dependent on our general understanding of how Indian authors conceived duty?
4. 4. Angot seems to imply that the Western world has always known the concept of an interior duty, a duty which is not ordered from without, but rather felt as one's own. Is this really the case? One is inclined to think at Kant's Sollen and to Augustin's veritas habitat in interiore hominis. Yet, Augustin's veritas is elsewehere equated to Christ himself. And Kant's categoric imperative is not utterly dependent on each individual, since it is the same for the whole human kind. It is a low and not a norm. Is it, hence, really so different than the impersonal law telling one to do X or to refrain from doing Y (call it God or dharma)?

Does the verb "to have" designate an external state of affairs?

Reading often books related to South-Asian culture (especially: history, texts, philosophy), I am usually confronted with the annoying fact that they hardly have a methodological introduction, that the goal they want to attain is often unspelt, that their presuppositions are ambiguous, etc.
In short: their authors often implicitly assume to be following no particular method, and that there is hence no need to debate it –which is a very dangerous stance, because one always follows one method or the other and believing not to follow one just means that one is following one as if it were the only possible one, i.e., blindly.

Hence, Michel Angot's long introduction to his translation of the Nyāyabhāṣya (discussed in some previous posts) is refreshing and intriguing at the same time. I dissent with several of Angot's claims, but the fact of promoting debate is, in my opinion, a further advantage of Angot's Introduction.

I am puzzled, for instance, by Angot's statements about the absence of the concept of "possess" (avoir) and "ought" (devoir) not just in Sanskrit language, but also in Sanskrit thought (pp.38-44), since the accurateness of Angot's reflection concerning Sanskrit is accompanied by no reflections at all about the French usage of these words. Angot seems to use French almost in the same way he reproaches Indians to have used Sanskrit, that is, as if it were the "natural language", the one in comparison to which any other might be judged. Hence, since there is a verb "to have" in French and not in Sanskrit, Angot discusses the "absence" of the corresponding meaning in Sanskrit (p. 43, my emphasis). He does not discuss its presence in French, nor does he seem to admit the possibility that the same content might be expressed through two different phraseologies. I might be wrong, but I cannot see any conceptual difference between the Latin way of expressing possess (mihi est …), the Hindī one (mere pās … hai) and the French one (j'ai …). And even if there were one (for instance, if the French phraseology would stress one's agency within a possess-relation), French would be part of the question and not a judge aloof of it. One might argue that French thinkers misconstrue the relation of possess as if it implied an agent, although it is quite different from the description of an action. Structural linguists do in fact distinguish between the "I" in "I cook" (agent), the "I" in "I hear" (experiencer) and the "I" in "I have" (theme or patient).

However, it is noteworthy that Angot himself at another point of his long introduction criticises the idea that the language determines the thought (p.48) and adds the very important caveat that one is never sure that the categories we now attribute to a language are the same shared by ancient authors thinking in that same language (p. 48, fn.120).