The Anti-abstraction of Dignaaga and Berkeley

·期刊原文
THE ANTI-ABSTRACTIONISM OF DIGNAAGA AND BERKELEY

By Ewing Y. Chinn
Philosophy East and West
Volume 44, Number 1
January 1994
P.55-77
(C) by University of Hawaii Press

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P.55

The Buddhist philosopher and logician Dignaaga (A.D.
480-540) and the eighteenth-century Irish idealist
Berkeley may look like strange philosophical
bedfellows. However, the two have at least this in
common: both were persistent critics of a theory of
language that affirmed the existence of abstract
entities. Berkeley is well known in Western
philosophy for his attack on John Locke's theory of
abstract ideas; and the Dignaaga-Bhart.rhari dispute
over the existence of universals is one of the most
important and interesting episodes in the history of
Eastern thought. But just how far does this common
seam run? Both reject abstract entities, but we must
ask whether there are any significant similarities
in their respective ways of dealing with a central
question in the philosophy of language. This is
the question: how do we account for the fact that
certain kinds of words, namely general names, refer
specifically to particular spatiotemporal objects?
What exactly is the link between language and the
world?(1)

It is well established that Berkeley defended an
anti-abstractionist approach to the problem of
reference, maintaining in opposition to Locke that
words do not require the mediation of any abstract
entities in order to refer to the real existents of
the world (which in Berkeley's case were concrete,
particular ideas). But there has been some confusion
and no clear consensus about Dignaaga's views on
this matter. My aim in this essay is to arrive at a
better understanding and appreciation of Dignaaga's
theory of reference by conducting an experiment, the
experiment of reading Dignaaga through Berkeley. We
will see that Berkeley and Dignaaga make very
compatible philosophical bedfellows indeed, in the
area of the philosophy of language.

This is not to say that there are no significant
differences in their views on language and meaning.
On the contrary, I will argue that while Berkeley's
account of the meaning of general words lacks any
satisfactory explanation of the semantic
justification of our actual use of such words (what
I will call the 'word-world mechanism'), this is not
the case with Dignaaga. Although Dignaaga did not
explicitly provide an account of the 'word-world
mechanism', the essence of his answer is contained
in his controversial notion of apoha (usually
translated as 'exclusion').

Before embarking on our experiment, we must set
the stage with a brief look at the way in which
scholars generally view the Dignaaga-Bhart.rhari
controversy.

It is interesting that both Bhart.rhari and
Dignaaga claimed as a point of departure for their
treatment of the problem of reference a

P.56

famous aphorism of Kaatyaayana, a grammarian of the
second or third century B.C.

[The occasioning basis for the use of a name is]
that quality because of whose presence (bhaava),
a name is applied to a thing. [The addition to
the nominal base of the suffixes] tva or ta/[is
taught], in the signification of this
quality.(2)

We can see that there is something puzzling
about the statement that the quality of an object
that is the basis for giving or applying a certain
name to that object--for example, calling something
`sukla (the white) or paacaka (the cook) --is
signified and conveyed by abstract terms that result
from adding the abstract suffixes tva or tal to
those names. Examples of such terms are `suklatvam
(whiteness) and paacakatvam ('cookness' or the
essence of being a cook) , typical terms for
universals.(3) Is Kaatyaayana conflating universals
with concrete qualities of spatiotemporal objects?

It is entirely unclear what Kaatyaayana took to
be the 'occasioning basis for the use of a name', or
as Radhika Herzberger puts it more precisely:

What [exactly] is the basis on which names are
given to things? Is the basis on which names are
given a quality (guna), or a universal (jaati)?
Is this basis located in words or is it located
in the things which are named? Do names 'exceed
over' (ati + ric or ati + vrt) their bearers?(4)

Bhart.rhari's answer was that a general name
cannot be directly given to a particular set of
objects on the basis of some feature of those
objects. It must refer to those objects indirectly
on the basis of an abstract universal 'located in
the word' and thus conveyed by the word (the
`sabdajaati or 'word-universal'). We shall call this
view the indirect theory of reference, the view that
the meaning of a name (that is, the universal
immediately signified by the name) determines its
reference(s). Semantically speaking, a name has a
referential relationship to spatiotemporal objects
only because the universal it signifies has a
referential relationship to spatiotemporal objects.
For Bha.rtrhari, names do exceed over their bearers.

Dignaaga, on the contrary, claimed that names do
not exceed over their bearers, for, he said,

a name directly applies and is non-distinct
[from its object]. A name does not apply to its
own object, having first presented it with
another object.(5)

and

Even though a word has multifarious properties,
it causes the object to be conveyed by means of
that [quality] alone which does not exceed over
its object; not by means of qualities etc. which
belongs to words.(6)

P.57

To say that the basis for reference is a guna
and not a jaati would seem to entail that Dignaaga
held a direct theory of reference, the view that a
name denotes the appropriate spatiotemporal objects
without the mediation of some abstract universal
that is supposed to constitute the 'meaning' of the
name. He apparently made no distinction between the
meaning of the name and the references of the name,
agreeing with Kaatyaayana that a name does not
exceed over its bearers.

Nevertheless Dignaaga has been represented by a
tradition of commentators--beginning with
Dharmakiirti--as endorsing the indirect theory of
reference, the theory that a name refers to an
object through the 'meaning' of the name. Where he
differs from Bhart.rhari, according to the received
view, is his conception of the meaning of general
names, his advocacy of the much-discussed and
maligned theory of apoha or `exclusion'. It seems
that in order to resist reifying the meaning of
names, to avoid any commitment to the positive
existence of universals, Dignaaga is said to claim,
for example, that 'this is a cow', is not to affirm
the cowhood of the subject, that it exemplifies
cowness, for the sole function of the word 'cow' is
to differentiate the directly perceived object from
other things, from non-cows. As a contemporary
representative of the received view, Masaaki
Hattori, puts it:

[A] word indicates an object merely through the
exclusion of other objects. For example, the
word 'cow' simply means that the object is not a
non-cow. As such, a word cannot denote anything
real, whether it be an individual (vyakti), a
universal (jaati) or any other thing. The
apprehension of an object by means of the
exclusion of other objects is nothing but an
inference.(7)

Well and good (perhaps), but how are we to
understand the notion of a 'non-cow'? If the claim
is that the perceived object is not a goat, and so
forth, then we must have some understanding of what
it is to be a goat and all those other things that
the object is not. If the response reverts back to
'cow', we are in a perpetual circle of
nonunderstanding, and can never explain why we use
that name to refer to this particular object of our
perception.

This peculiar theory of 'negative (or apoha)
universals' must seem to some critics like a
desperate ploy to preserve a kind of phenomenalistic
ontology. If Dignaaga actually held that the only
thing real is the flux of momentary point instances
(for example, sense impressions), he would naturally
regard any attempt to describe this phenomenon in
words as a distortion of the real. Thus we have the
motivation for his attempt to minimize or even
nullify the effects of this distortion by arguing
that concepts are imaginative constructs and
negative in content. The problem is that such a
theory cannot account for reference. Furthermore,
the phenomenalist, 'Humean' view of Dignaaga is, to
say the least, highly controversial.

P.58

David Kalupahana, for one, has argued eloquently
and convincingly in several studies that Dignaaga is
in the line of Buddhist philosophers faithful to the
unique empiricism of the early discourses of the
Buddha, an empiricism "that steers clear of the
extremes of absolutely real and pure experiences on
the one hand, and absolutely unreal mental
constructions on the other hand."(8) Kalupahana thus
places Dignaaga squarely in the Buddhist tradition
that opposes absolutisms of any form, the middle way
of the Buddha, Naagaarjuna, and Vasubandhu.

We will see that the middle standpoint in
Buddhism has the effect of taking away the
(erroneous) terms of the realism-nominalism dispute
concerning universals. So if one were to ask
Dignaaga, "Do universals exist?" he might answer,
"Do not say so!" And if he were then asked, "Is it
the case that universals do not exist?" his answer
would be, "Do not say so!" What this implies is that
disavowing that names signify universals (of either
the positive or negative variety) is not to be
construed as embracing skepticism. Dignaaga, on the
contrary, in refusing to be trapped in a
philosophical myth, will offer us an explanation of
the meaning and function of names that he believes
is consistent with actual practice.

I shall undertake to present an interpretation
of this "Dignaga of the Middle Way" by utilizing
Berkeley, who, as I said, is a fellow
anti-abstractionist. But first, let us examine the
indirect theories of reference of John Locke and
Bhartrhari, and see what is problematic about such
theories.

II

Recall the two questions raised by
Kaatyaayaana's aphorism: (1) Is the basis on which
names are given a quality of the object or a
universal? (2) Do names exceed over their bearers?
We find Bhart.rhari's answer to the first question
in his rendition of Kaatyaayana's aphorism, where
the phrase 'presence of a quality' (gu.nasya bhaava)
is changed to 'essence of a quality (gu.nasya
tattva).

[The occasioning ground for the use of a name
is] that quality because of whose essence
(tattva) a name is applied to a thing.(6) (My
emphasis)

What Bhart.rhari is saying is that although our
using a particular name to refer to an object is
justified by a quality that is possessed by the
object, it is the meaning of the name (that is, the
universal signified by the name) that directs our
attention to the property and thus to the possessor
of that quality. It is in this manner that meaning
determines reference, that the intension of a
general name determines the extension of that name.

Berkeley tells us that John Locke also held a
version of the indirect view of naming:

Tis thought that every name hath, or ought to
have, one only precise and settled
signification, which inclines men to think there
are certain abstract

P.59

determinate ideas, which constitute the true and
only immediate signification of each general
name. And that it is by the mediation of these
abstract ideas, that a general name comes to
signify any particular thing.(10)

The only difference between Locke and
Bhart.rhari with respect to universals, albeit a
major difference, is that Bhartrhari claimed that
universals are 'known a priori', whereas Locke, the
empiricist, claimed that they are derived from
experience, through a process that he calls
abstraction.(11) The process sounds deceptively
simple in the following passages.

Words become general by being made the signs of
general Ideas, and ideas become general by being
separated from the circumstances of Time, and
Place, and any other idea, that may determine
them to this or that particular Existence. By
this way of abstraction they are made capable of
representing more Individuals than one; each of
which, having in it a conformity to that
abstract idea, is (as we call it) of that
sort.(12)

Abstraction is being depicted here by Locke as a
process of isolation, isolating what is there in a
particular experience, whereas Locke explains it
elsewhere as a process of formation. It is
unimportant to the purposes of this essay to
determine what Locke really means or should mean by
`abstraction', but it is important to determine what
he means by a `general idea'. It is unclear whether
what is being isolated (or formed) is a particular
idea of a particular property or a general idea of
an abstract universal. A 'general idea' in the
former case is a particular mental image of a
particular property put to general use. And the name
that signifies that image applies to all those
objects with a property that resembles the image.
'Conformity' means resemblance.(13)

But there are two famous passages that support
the view that Locke took an abstract idea to be the
general idea of a universal:

[T]hey make nothing new, but only leave out of
the complex Idea they had of Peter and lames,
Mary and Jane, that which is peculiar to each,
and retain only what is common to them all.(14)

Does it not require some pains and skill to form
the general idea of a Triangle. (which is yet
none of the most abstract, comprehensive, and
difficult,) for it must be neither Oblique, nor
Rectangle, neither Equilateral, Equicrural, nor
Scalenon; but all and none of these at once. In
effect, it is something imperfect, that cannot
exist; an Idea wherein some parts of several
different and Inconsistent ideas are put
together....(15)

What Locke says about the idea of a triangle in
general applies equally to the idea of a man in
general, for both are surely ideas of an abstract
universal. This is why it must be the case that, as
the passage says, (1) such an idea (of, for example,
the universal man or triangle) cannot be identified
with any particular idea of an instance of the
corre-

P.60

sponding universal, having no natural resemblance to
any of them, but, at the same time, (2) all of its
instances are in conformity with it. What we have is
a classic statement of the relation between
universals and particulars, two ontologically
distinct kinds of objects.

What about the second Kaatyaayana-inspired
question: do names exceed over all their referents?
It would seem that anyone who maintains that a name
refer by virtue of the abstract universal it
signifies must answer yes. But then we have a
serious problem. If there is no resemblance (or any
natural relationship for that matter) between an
abstract universal associated with a name and the
concrete bearers of that name--for this is why a
name exceeds over its references--how do we know
which objects are instances of a universal and which
are not! The indirect theory maintains that an
abstract universal is required to mediate between a
name and the name bearers, but now it appears that
something else is required to mediate between that
abstract universal and the objects we seek to name,
and we have the beginning of an infinite
regress.(16) Following tradition (going back to the
Greeks) , we shall call this objection to the
indirect theory of reference the 'third-man'
argument.

Dignaaga must have been fully aware of this
problem in Bhart.rhari's indirect theory of
reference because he asked of that theory, "[How]
[i]s the relation between a name and its
spatial-temporal bearer teacheable?"(17) "The word
which signifies a universal," he said, "cannot
designate individuals, because of the infiniteness
[of the individuals] and because of the deviation.
Nor [can it designate] a relation [of the universal
with the individual], nor a universal."(18)

Bhart.rhari had an answer to this problem. He
maintained (as the central thesis of his theory)
that if meaning determines reference and if to
understand a name is to know the bearers of that
name, it must be that the content or meaning of the
name coincides with the `complete content' of each
individual bearer of that name. Bhart.rhari refers
to the former, the content of a name, as 'word
universals' (`sabdajaati) inhering in a name and to
the latter as 'thing universals' (arthajaati)
inhering in a bearer of that name. To say that they
coincide is to say that there is just one set of
universals (constituting the meaning of the name and
the 'content' of each bearer of that name) looked at
from two different points of view.

It is obvious that, if universals exist,
spatiotemporal individuals must be regarded as
exemplifications or instantiations of universals.
But Bhart.rhari seems to be saying more than that
when he claims that universals constitute the
complete content of an individual. This claim seems
to imply that there is nothing more to the makeup of
a spatiotemporal individual than a certain set of
'thing-universals'. An individual does not have a
feature that we would call its 'particularity' or
its 'individual essence', its haecceity.

P.61

This conjecture is borne out by Bhart.rhari's
treatment of the notion of an individual. "An
individual," he says, is simply "that which is given
as principal (pradhaana), as in 'this is that'
['that' being a name]."(19) This logical-linguistic
definition of an individual as the subject of a
proposition relativises that notion, for, as he
says, "when a quality [that is, a universal] is
being distinguished, it becomes principal," and "it
is held that everything which is meant is an
individual (dravya)."(20) Thus the only universal
that cannot be conceived of as an individual is the
highest universal standing at the apex of the
hierarchy of universals, the all-encompassing
Brahman, the being of all beings.

It must be the case, then, that the
spatiotemporal individual, the object of sensory
experience, is conceived by Bhart.rhari as the
fictional subject (a mental construct) of the sum
total of universals that qualifies `it', the 'thing
universals'. That same set of universals inheres in
the name given to that fictional subject as 'word
universals'. Thus, it is possible for Bhart.rhari to
claim that to understand a name is to know the
bearers of that name for, as Herzberger puts it,
"the individual object 'qualified by all its
qualifiers' is simultaneously given on a single
utterance of a word."(21)

But there is more to the story. In Bhart.rhari's
theory, the object named is given or determined by
the content of the name that Herzberger says is both
analytic and antonymic. A name is defined, she says,
by "the analytic content of a word [which is]
represented by the set of expressions whose meaning
is included in the word, and the antonymic content
[which is] represented by the set of expressions
whose meaning is excluded from the word."(22) So,
for example, a rose is defined (in part) as a
flower, vegetation, a substance that is not an
orchid, pansy, weed, and so forth. The meaning or
content of a name, in other words, is a cluster of
particular universals related by the relationships
of inclusion or inherence and exclusion (apoha). In
fact, the full meaning of any name is the entire
world of universals as conceived by Bhart.rhari. It
turns out that no particular universal, with the
exception of Brahman, has a being of its own, but is
defined by the relationships of inclusion and
exclusion to other particular universals, and
ultimately by its inclusion in Brahman.

In the last analysis, the crucial implication of
Bhart.rhari's theory of universals is that the only
meaning that a universal (and its name) has is
Brahman.(23) All universals signify Brahman, but the
only thing we can say about Brahman is what it is
not; and this is equivalent to what Dignaaga said
(surely about Bhart.rhari and not himself), that "in
accordance with its own relations [to universals],
the word conveys the object, through exclusion
(apoha)." It would seem that Hattori had the wrong
target in mind when he criticized (mistakenly)
Dignaaga rather than Bhart.rhari for maintaining
that "....a word indicates an object merely through
the exclusion of other objects.... [T]he word 'cow'
simply means that the

P.62

object is not a non-cow." The problem with such a
theory, Hattori rightly says, is that "a word cannot
denote anything real, whether it be an individual, a
universal, or any other thing" (see note 7).

If Dignaaga held some kind of direct theory of
reference in opposition to Bhart.rhari's indirect
theory, what kind of theory is it and how does it
work? We have seen that the indirect theories of
Locke and Bhart.rhari, which postulate the existence
of abstract entities as the mediator for reference,
don't work. It remains to be seen whether Dignaaga's
conception of names can explain how a name succeeds
in referring to the proper bearers of that name for
all those competent users of the language. A close
look at how Berkeley tried to explain the relation
between names and name bearers without postulating
abstract ideas will provide the avenue to answering
both questions. I will argue that the prevailing
interpretation of Berkeley's theory of the semantic
relation between a general name and its referents is
mistaken, and present what I contend is his actual
position.

Let us begin with an important and somewhat
puzzling passage from the Principles of Human
Knowledge:

The ideas imprinted on the senses by the Author
of Nature are called real things: and those
excited in the imagination being less regular,
vivid and constant, are more properly termed
ideas, images of things, which they copy and
represent.(24)

Berkeley is first of all talking about a widely
accepted distinction in the theory of ideas of that
period---especially prominent in Hume's
philosophy--between the vivid ideas given to the
senses (the objects of sense perception) and the
less vivid, but more lasting 'copies' that are
somehow 'excited' in the mental faculty known as the
imagination by the occurrence of sensory ideas. The
fact that Berkeley called the original sensory ideas
'real things' is certainly no surprise. The point of
the passage however is his recommendation that we
call only the mental objects of the imagination
'ideas'. The reason is clearly that an 'idea' in his
time is a mental representation, in the sense of a
particular copy or image, of some object or other;
and the only thing that actually qualifies as such
(Berkeley thought) is an idea of the imagination, it
being a copy of sensory ideas. A fleeting sensory
idea, on the other hand, cannot be a copy of other
sensory ideas, and there is nothing else for it to
represent. It is important to remember that an idea
of the imagination for Berkeley is always a
particular and not a general idea (as in the idea of
a triangle in general), for sensory ideas are
concrete particulars and an image or copy of such
ideas must itself be a particular entity.

It is also very important to note that Berkeley
uses the word 'represent' in two senses. the natural
sense of being a copy orimage of that

P.63

which is represented and the conventional sense, we
shall say, of being made a sign of (or made to stand
for) something. In the conventional sense, anything
is capable of representing anything. The former
sense is what Berkeley means by a 'mental
representation', but whenever Berkeley says that 'X
is made to represent Y', he is using the term
'represent' in the latter sense of X being made to
be a sign of Y.

For the sake of clarity, I will hereafter use
the terms 'represent' and `representation'
exclusively to mean 'to be a copy or image of,' in
contrast to the conventional relation of
signification. 'Signify', 'to be a sign of', and 'to
stand for' are all ways of talking about
signification. We shall use 'refer' and 'reference'
as philosophical terms for the undefinable semantic
relationship between a linguistic name and things in
the world. It is a neutral term, so one might
maintain either the position that X refers to Y
because X represents Y or the position that X refers
to Y by virtue of being a sign of Y.

Because of his emphasis on ideas of the
imagination alone being mental representations, it
is very tempting to attribute to Berkeley the view
that a general name is capable of referring to
sensory ideas (the only real things there are)
because of the mediation of a mental representation
of those ideas. It is in fact commonly held that
Berkeley thought that a name is the outward sign for
an inward idea, the idea being the meaning of the
name. According to this view, the choice of the name
is a conventional matter, but what that name refers
to is not. Reference, then, is based on
representation. A name refers to precisely those
objects represented by the idea signified by the
name.

If this is right, the only difference between
Locke and Berkeley is that reference for the former
is mediated by an abstract general idea and for the
latter by a concrete particular idea of the
imagination. Both would then agree on a crucial
point--that reference is indirect, that the meaning
of a name, the idea that it signifies, determines
the references of the name. Two passages from the
introduction to The Principles of Human Knowledge
are often cited to support this interpretation of
Berkeley:

But it seems that a word becomes general by
being made the sign, not of an abstract general
idea but, of several particular ideas, any one
of which it indifferently suggests to the mind.

By observing how ideas become general, we may
the better judge how words are made so. And here
it is to be noted that I do not deny absolutely
there are general ideas, but only that there are
any abstract general ideas... an idea, which
considered in itself is particular, becomes
general by being made to represent or stand for
all other particular ideas of the same sort. To
make this plain by an example, suppose a
geometrician is demonstrating the method, of
cutting a line in two equal parts. He draws, for
instance, a black line of an inch in length,
this which is itself a particular line is
nevertheless with regard to its signification
general, since as it is there used, it
represents all

P.64

particular lines whatsoever; so that what is
demonstrated of it, is demonstrated of all
lines, or in other words, of a line in general.
And as that particular line becomes general, by
being made a sign, so the name line which taken
absolutely is particular, by being a sign is
made general. And as the former owes its
generality, not to its being the sign of an
abstract or general line, but of all particular
right lines that may possibly exist, so the
latter must be thought to derive its generality
from the same cause, namely the various
particular lines which it indifferently
denotes.'(25)

The first passage doesn't clearly support the
'indirect' interpretation of Berkeley, for it
doesn't say that a word becomes a general name by
being made to signify one particular idea of the
imagination--it says that a word is made the sign of
several ideas. Is it possible that Berkeley
inadvertently left out the words 'any one of' before
the word 'several'? With the insertion of 'any one
of' in that place, we can read Berkeley as saying
that a general name is not made to signify literally
the same particular idea (the same image, say, of a
dog) for every user of that name, due to the
variation in people's experience, but one of several
similar ideas for each user. The different ideas
thus signified are close enough to be considered the
same idea (that is, they are tokens of the same
type).

The second, much-quoted passage seems to confirm
this liberal reading of the first passage. In it
Berkeley seems to be arguing that while there is no
such thing as an abstract general idea, there is
such a thing as a 'general idea'. A general idea he
explains as follows: "an idea, which considered in
itself is particular, becomes general, by being made
to represent or stand for all other particular ideas
of the same sort" (my emphasis). He points out that
this is comparable to the fact that a
geometrical proof of a truth for a particular
one-inch-long black line counts as a proof of the
same truth for all lines in general (presumably of
any length or color) because it is an accepted
practice in geometry to take that one particular
line to stand for (that is, to signify) all lines.

Notice, however, that Berkeley goes on to say
that it is also a fact that (in common linguistic
practice) we make the particular name 'line' the
sign of "the various Particular lines which it
indifferently denotes." But if this is the way we
come to have general names, what is the need for a
general idea? If he believed that names refer to
things indirectly, somewhere along the line he would
have said that a name is made the sign of things by
virtue of being made the sign of a general idea. But
nowhere in his writings do we find anything close to
such a statement. On the contrary, we find Berkeley
in the first draft of the introduction to Principles
denying such a view and pointing out the false
assumption that motivates that view.

That which seems to me principally to have drove
men into the conceit of general ideas, is the
opinion, that every name has, or ought to have,
one only

P.65

precise and settl'd signification. Which
inclines them to think there are certain
abstract, determinate, general ideas that make
the true and only immediate signification of
each general name. And that it is by the
mediation of these abstract ideas, that a
general name comes to signify any particular
thing.(26)

Why, Berkeley asks, must we assume that a
general name must have "one precise and settl'd
signification," one distinct meaning, that
determines its referents?

I contend that with the exception of the
beginning of the second of our quoted passages
(where Berkeley explains what he means by a `general
idea'), both passages indicate that Berkeley held
the view that signification alone determines and in
fact constitutes reference. Berkeley maintains that
a name is given directly by convention to the
bearers of that name without the mediation of any
special idea of the imagination. In short, he holds
the theory that names are nothing more than signs of
the object named.

The context of the first passage bears out my
reading, for it is immediately preceded by
Berkeley's posing the question "Since all things
that exist are only particulars, how come we by
general terms," and then giving Locke's answer: "His
answer is,'Words become general by being made the
signs of general ideas.'" We must then read
Berkeley's response as contending that, on the
contrary, the significance of a name in a language
lies solely in the fact that it is a conventional
sign for a set of particular ideas. General ideas
are nowhere to be found. So a name, then, depending
on the context, is used to refer directly to an
occurrent sensory idea (as in declaring "that's a
dog") or to signify the recollection of an idea of
the imagination (as in saying "I found a dog
yesterday").

The one question that remains far which I have
no satisfactory answer is why Berkeley in the
beginning of the second passage (and other places)
talks about an idea used to signify ideas 'of the
same sort' (meaning `resemble'), as if such 'general
ideas' exist. I can only conjecture that Berkeley is
merely claiming that a general idea is a logical
possibility-that we could, if we had reason to, make
some particular idea the sign of other similar
ideas. After all, what he said was "I do not deny
absolutely there are general ideas." He did not say
that there are general ideas.(27)

IV

It seemed perfectly obvious to certain
philosophers like Locke and Bhart.rhari that an
operative name in a language must be associated with
something called the 'meaning of the name' that is
known by anyone competent to use that name. How else
did they think we could explain our ability to apply
a name consistently to the same objects? Berkeley
and Dignaaga rejected this opinion, this root
assumption. That is, they criticized and rejected
the belief that a word becomes a meaningful name by

P.66

virtue of being made the sign of some one thing that
determines the proper use of that name, the belief
that the 'meaning' of a name is some kind of
abstract entity.

So Dignaaga says, in concert with Berkeley, that
"... a name directly applies and is non-distinct
[from its own referent]. A name does not apply to
its own object [referent], having first presented it
with another object." He and Berkeley are
propounding an anti-abstractionist view of the
meaning of general names. Because philosophers have
gotten into the habit of talking about the meaning
of a designating term as something other than its
referent, it would be more appropriate to represent
this view as contending that a functional general
name in a language has no 'meaning', but it is a
meaningful name by virtue of that fact that it
signifies the same kinds of objects for all
competent users of that name.

Although there need be nothing more to a name,
semantically speaking, than the fact that it
signifies certain objects, there must be more to the
explanation of how a name can have a 'right or
meaningful use'. The crucial question for the direct
theory of reference is this: if, as the theory
implies, a name is initially arbitrarily assigned to
certain objects and there is nothing more to the
name than the fact that it denotes these objects,
how is it that there is general agreement on future
uses of this name, and how do we convey the use of
the name to others? We are asking the question that
Dignaaga asked of Bhart.rhari: "[How] is the
relation between a name and its spatial-temporal
bearer[s] teacheable?" We are asking, "How does the
theory work?"

Berkeley alludes to the fact that there is more
to the story of how a word is made a sign of certain
objects, in the following curious passage about the
dog, Melampus:

Suppose I have the idea of some one particular
dog to which I give the name Melampus and then
frame this proposition Melampus is an animal,
where 'tis evident the name Melampus denotes one
particular idea.... [But the word "animal" does
not] indeed in that proposition stand for any
idea at all. All that I intend to signify
thereby being only this, that the particular
thing I call Melampus has a right to be called
by the name animal.(28)

It seems clear what Berkeley is saying: although
the word 'animal' does not stand for any idea
(abstract or concrete), calling Melampus a 'dog'
signifies (and presupposes) that there is something
about Melampus that justifies referring to it by
that name. Unfortunately, as George Pitcher points
out in his book on Berkeley, nowhere in all of
Berkeley's works do we find even a hint of the
nature of that justification. Nowhere does he
attempt to explain what Pitcher calls the word-world
link.

Pitcher gives a different interpretation of this
passage, based on the presence of the word
'proposition' in the passage and on his opinion that
"[Berkeley] sees no need for anything, idea or
non-idea, to serve as a

P.67

connecting link between general terms and their
referents: general terms, according to him, simply
denote their referents directly."(29) Pitcher
maintains that in that key last sentence of the
passage Berkeley could not be alluding to some
justification for applying the name 'animal' to
Melampus, notwithstanding what he said. On the
contrary, Pitcher claims, Berkeley was merely making
explicit the thought (that is, the proposition)
expressed by calling Melampus an animal: that
Melampus has a right to be called by the name
'animal'. In other words, to say that Melampus is an
animal is to say that Melampus has the right to be
called 'animal'. pitcher labels this kind of
proposition a verbal proposition:

[T]he thought corresponding to the sentence
"Melampus is an animal" cannot...consist of an
idea of Melampus combined with a (nonverbal)
idea of animal in-general, since the latter idea
does not exist. So it must consist of a single
(nonverbal) idea of Melampus plus the thought,
expressed in words, "[This] is an animal" or
perhaps "[This] has a right to be called by the
name 'animal'."(30)

In fact, according to Pitcher, Berkeley believed
that "... all purely general truths [that is,
propositions] can only be verbal...," because of
Berkeley's 'particularism' (the view that the only
things that exist are particular entities, that is,
particular concrete ideas). By a 'verbal thought',
Pitcher means that "all, or part, of the thoughts
will have to be in words"--and not just, as he said
in the quote above, expressed in words.(31) The
verbal constituent of the proposition expressed by
the sentence "Melampus is an animal," is the word
'animal'.

This is an astonishing explanation. Not only
does it attribute to Berkeley an extreme
conventionalist view of language that is unworkable,
it saddles Berkeley with the dubious notion of a
'verbal proposition', for which Pitcher gives no
textual support.

Pitcher was probably misled by Berkeley's
assertion that he "frame this proposition Melampus
is an animal." He said he did so, however, after
giving the name 'animal' to Melampus. But any
proposition that Berkeley may have in mind must
either precede or be simultaneous with the utterance
of the sentence 'Melampus is an animal'.
Furthermore, Pitcher should have been cognizant of
the fact that the term 'proposition' did not have
the meaning then that it has now. It meant
essentially the same thing as what we now refer to
as a 'statement'. I maintain that it is far more
reasonable to read 'frame this proposition' as
another way of saying 'think or utter this
statement'. We should thus read the passage
straightforwardly as I originally suggested: stating
that Melampus is an animal presupposes that the
speaker has some unspoken justification for making
such a statement. But if the justification cannot be
based on the 'meaning' of the name 'animal', some
abstract entity signified by the word, where do we
go for the answer? I believe that Dignaaga had an
answer to that question, a question that Berkeley
fails to address.

P.68

The only place where we could go, Dignaaga
advises, is to the things themselves, for

Even though a word has multifarious properties,
it causes the object to be conveyed by means of
that [quality] alone which does not exceed over
its object; not by means of qualities etc. which
belong to words. (See note 6)

That is to say, the reference of a name is
conveyed by the name because of the fact that the
name focuses our attention on a particular feature
of the object named. It is not conveyed by the fact
that it is related in some way to something else
that the name is supposed to signify.

Consider, for example, the difference between
proper names and general names. A proper name is a
mere label or 'pointer', Dignaaga would say, so it
conveys nothing about the referent. Every strictly
proper name operates like the indefinite pronoun
'this'. Not so with the various kinds of general
names. Dignaaga says:

In the case of proper names, a thing (artha)
qualified (vi`sistat) by a name is designated as
"Dittha." In the case of genus-words, a thing
qualified by a genus is designated as "the cow."
In the case of quality words, a thing qualified
by a quality is designated as "the white." In
the case of action words, a thing qualified by
an action is designated as "the cook." In the
case of substance words, a thing qualified by a
substance is designated as "the staff-bearer,"
"the horn-bearer."(32)

The ability of a general name to convey a
referent to anyone acquainted with the name must
surely presuppose the existence of what we will call
the word-world mechanism (WWM). A WWM was originally
instilled in those present at the time of the
introduction of a general name and passed on, along
with the name, to all new users of the name.

The mechanism that Dignaaga had in mind, I
contend, is basically a set of shared or sharable
general beliefs derived from the perception of the
initial referent(s) of the name, on the occasion of
the adoption of the name. To illustrate the basic
point: suppose I see a white bird and decide to call
it a 'swan' on the basis of its color. Although this
means that I call it a swan in order to contrast
this bird with birds of different colors (that I
have presumably encountered), it doesn't necessarily
mean that I take being white to be part of the
meaning of the name 'swan'. Adopting the name merely
instills in me the belief that there is a kind of
white bird that I want to call 'swans', or the
belief that all swans are white. To believe that all
swans are white is to believe in an empirical fact
about things that I choose to call 'swans'. It is
not to believe that it is necessarily true that
swans are white or that whiteness is a definitive,
essential property of being a swan. It is a short
step from that latter kind of claim to the claim
that 'whiteness' is part of the meaning of the name
'swan'.

P.69

The illustration above is, of course, a gross
ovsersimplification, not only because a single
belief is usually not sufficient to convey the
referents of a general name, but more important
because there must be a context or background that
determines that it is that belief that is instilled
and not some other belief. We might say that the WWM
associated with name consists of background beliefs
about birds and other related matters along with
beliefs in the foreground concerning those qualities
of the objects that are called 'swans'. To say that
a word is a meaningful name, then, is to say that
there we have the ability to use that word
referentially and this ability is explained by the
user's possession of a WWM associated with the name.

A name, of course, can be passed on, for, as
Dignaaga said, "In the case of a visible object, we
may teach its name."(33) For example, we can show a
particular swan to someone and point out the
features that justify our calling it by that name.
The same WWM is thus instilled in that person,
assuming, of course, that he shares our background
beliefs. Thereafter, anyone possessing the WWM for a
name is competent to identify the referents of that
name by virtue of certain properties that they
possess.

There is a temptation at this point to claim
that what I call the `WWM for a name' is nothing
more than a sneaky way of introducing the definition
of a name (despite the disclaimer that properties
singled out by the WWM are not essential properties
of the objects named). It may be argued that the
so-called WWM for a name constitutes the belief
that, there exists a kind of object (a natural kind)
that necessarily possesses certain properties. To
possess that belief about the referents of a name is
tantamount to having a concept of what it is to be
the reference of that name. But this is a total
misunderstanding of Dignaaga. To see that this is a
misunderstanding, we must recognize and appreciate
two important features of Dignaaga's thought; the
first pertains to the notion of a belief and the
second involves the doctrine of apoha.

Let us begin with how Dignaaga views the process
of perception. According to David Kalupahana,

Dignaaga reiterates his idea that perception is
devoid of metaphysical conceptual constructions.
This is clarified by making the distinction, for
example, between cognizing 'blue' (niilam
vijaanaati) and cognizing something 'as blue
(nila.m iti vijaanaati). The former represents
the awareness of a colored object (arthe
'rtha-samj~nii) and the latter an object
possessing the color (arthe dharmasamj~nii). The
former is perception (pratyaksa) that involves
the conception of color; the latter is
metaphysical construction that assumes the color
to be a characteristic or property (lak.sa.na)
of a really existing object.(34)

Dignaaga is opposed to any views that take
perception to involve the existence of abstract
entities called by any name, universals, ideas, or

P.70

concepts. He maintains that these terms refer to a
metaphysical conceptual construction, a
philosophical fiction. Kalupahana alludes to
Dignaaga's rejection of the obviously erroneous view
that in perception we are, for example, cognizing
the abstract universal property 'blue'. But there is
nothing confronting the perceiver except the
particular thing itself, the thing that is blue.

Dignaaga does not deny that, in order to
perceive an object as blue (Or as a blue object), we
have to have a conception of an object being blue.
But this is not to be confused with a second view
that Dignaaga rejects, the view that our perception
of a blue object is a product of the imposition of a
concept of 'blueness' on a sensory object, the
Kantian view of perception. To have a conception of
an object being blue is not to be in possession of
an abstract entity. On the contrary, according to
Dignaaga, it is to have the disposition to relate
what we now perceive to certain previous perceptions
and cognitions via memory. It is a bit misleading of
Kalupahana to refer to this cognitive disposition as
a metaphysical conceptual construction. It is not a
construction at all, let alone a metaphysical
construction. It is a natural tendency of the mind
to associate similar or 'identical' elements of
different experiences. This disposition or tendency
is precisely what I take Dignaaga to mean by a
belief (even though Dignaaga may not have used that
very word) . Generally speaking, a belief is
essentially a disposition to act (cognitively) in a
particular way under certain circumstances.

The same kind of WWM is at work in both seeing
and naming. Our ability to see and call something a
swan, for example, is not based on the possession of
the concept of 'swan', but on the possession of a
set of beliefs related to previous experiences that
allows us at once to see it as a swan and to call it
a swan. The crucial point is that the WWM associated
with a name is essentially a complex disposition to
relate elements of a present experience to the same
(but not literally the same) or similar elements of
previous experiences. A belief is thus first and
foremost a dispositional property of all agents said
to possess that belief, and, as it is with any
disposition, it is not something of which we are
totally conscious. But of course it could be brought
to full consciousness, if someone were to ask, "Why
do you call this a swan?"

We may say that Dignaaga had a nonmentalistic,
pragmatic view of belief. We might add that knowing
in contrast to just believing is, in his view, just
to have a firmly held belief or a well-entrenched
disposition. The significant implication of this
approach to belief and knowledge is that to believe,
for example, that swans are white does not entail
that we have anything like a mental concept of
'whiteness' or 'swanness'.

Nevertheless, it might still be argued that the
set of general beliefs that function as the WWM for
a name must be recognized as having the special
status of being definitive of the referents of the
name, among all

P.71

the general beliefs we have about these objects. If,
for example, the white color of a swan is one of the
qualities on which we base our calling something a
swan, encountering a bird which lacks just this
quality of whiteness, among all the other qualities
that we believe to be characteristic of swans, would
tend to cause us not to call it a swan. This would
not be the case--we would still call that bird a
swan--if the belief that all swans are white was not
in the WWM of the name 'swan'. We would instead
qualify or reject the belief that all swans are
white.

The mainstream tradition of Western philosophy
has, until recent times, maintained the position
that there are two intrinsically different kinds of
general beliefs or statements. On the one hand there
are statements that, if true, are necessary truths,
statements that are thus immune to refutation by
empirical facts. The special status of the beliefs
in a WWM would fall into this category. The other
kind of general truths are empirical
generalizations, referred to as contingent truths
because they are subject to refutation by the
possible discovery of some new empirical fact. The
obvious implication of this two-truths theory is
that there are two ways of knowing, for if the
former cannot be refuted by the experience of new
facts, it surely cannot be known entirely by
empirical means. Dignaaga, however, would give an
entirely different analysis of the special status of
the beliefs in a WWM, for consider what he has said
about the means to truth:

Two means to truth have been declared [namely,
perception and inference]. There are some who
believe that knowledge derived from language is
yet another means to truth. In that respect, we
hold: Knowledge derived from words is not a
separate means to truth from inference; for the
name signifies its own object (svartha) by
excluding what is other, in the same way as (the
Reason) 'being an artifact' [establishes what is
to be proved]. A word, which is applied to an
object, illumines that aspect [of it] with which
it is invariably connected, by excluding other
objects, even as (the Reason) 'being an
artifact' [signifies the property 'being
impermanent']. Therefore, language [as a means
to truth] is not separate from inference. (My
emphasis)(35)

It is not taking unwarranted liberties, I
believe, to compare Dignaaga's statement that
"knowledge derived from words is not a separate
means to truth from inference" with Quine's famous
rejection of the dogma that there is a distinction
between analytic and synthetic truth. Remember
Quine's (and the logical empiricist's) definition of
an analytic statement: "A statement is analytic when
it is true by virtue of meanings and independently
of fact."(36) The analytic-synthetic distinction and
the notion of analyticity was, in Quine's time, the
most current theory or program to defend and justify
the two-truths theory. It tried to explain in one
stroke what made a statement necessarily true and
how we came to know that it was true. Therefore the
real target of Quine's attack on the

P.72

analytic-synthetic distinction is the theory of two
distinct kinds of truths. Dignaaga would
wholeheartedly endorse Quine's conclusion that

for all its a priori reasonableness, a boundary
between analytic and synthetic statements simply
has not been drawn. That there is such a
distinction to be drawn at all is an unempirical
dogma of empiricists, a metaphysical article of
faith.(37)

Dignaaga and Quine are undogmatic empiricists
with respect to their conviction that there is only
one kind of truth, contingent truth, and one basic
means to truth (perception and inference being its
two facets). It should have been obvious from the
beginning, for if 'true' fundamentally means 'true
of the world', then what we find in the world
dictates what is true and what is false, and nothing
accepted as true is immune from future refutation.

Dignaaga must then accept the fact that the
beliefs in a WWM of a name are just as subject to
refutation as any other belief, and the WWM for a
name is subject to revision. Nevertheless, he could
also maintain, I contend, that this is an extremely
remote prospect, because such beliefs concern a set
of properties that is, in a sense, definitive of the
referents of a name. That set is not 'definitive' in
the absolute and metaphysical sense of being
essentially and exclusively true of all past,
present, and future references of the name. It is
definitive in the relative and epistemological sense
of being found to be invariably and exclusively true
of all past and present referents of the name, and
thus presumed to be true of all future referents.
(Note that none of the member properties of a set
need to be definitive in order for the set to be
definitive.) Definitive properties are the means by
which 'an object is conveyed by a name' as the
reference of that name.

But we cannot claim of a given object that it is
an N on the basis of a set of characteristics just
from the observation that all previous Ns (things
that we call 'N') possessed those characteristics. A
second observation is necessary: the observation
that no other objects (things that are not
references of the name) have all those
characteristics. In short and in general, to apply
the name 'N' to an object is tantamount to claiming
that 'this is N', and that claim must be the
conclusion of a kind of inference unique to Indian
logic.

In Dignaaga's theory of inference, it is
possible to conclude that the subject of the claim
(the pak.sa) has the 'inferable' or 'provable'
characteristic-in this case, that this object is
N--if and only if we have knowledge of a second
characteristic of the subject called the 'li^nga'
('inferential sign') or 'hetu' ('indicator reason').
This second characteristic for N is the definitive
set of properties of all Ns. The soundness of the
inference is dependent on the trairuupya, the
'triple character' of the li^nga or hetu, which is:

P.73

(I) It must be seen to belong to the pak^sa.
(II) It must belong to all previous objects that
we call N.
(III) It must not belong to any previous object
that we do not call N.

Our disposition to call something a swan then
must be based on an inference like the following:

(1) This is a swan (the proposed name for the
pak^sa).
(2) This has P (the first characteristic of the
hetu).
(3) All (previous) things that have P are swans
(the second characteristic of the hetu).
(4) All (previous) things that are not swans do
not have P (the third characteristic of
the hetu).
(5) This is a swan (the conclusion that the
proposal to name the object a swan is correct).

Dignaaga's statement that "the name signifies
its own object by excluding what is other," taken
out of context, can be used to support the
interpretation that Dignaaga held what I called the
theory of 'negative' or apoha universals.(38) But in
my view, Dignaaga did not have a theory of meaning
based on the notion of exclusion, for a name does
not have a meaning at all. It is merely a sign for
certain objects.

What Dignaaga actually said (the full context)
clearly shows that he is not talking about the
meaning of the name at all. What I quoted above was
preceded by "Knowledge derived from words is not a
separate means to truth from inference," and the
complete statement was: "for the name signifies its
own object by excluding what is other, in the same
way as (the Reason) 'being an artifact' [establishes
what is to be proved.]" The remainder of the passage
explains, as I have illustrated in the example
above, that apoha, exclusion, is simply part of the
process of inference by which we come to know the
references of a name:

A word, which is applied to an object, illumines
that aspect [of it] with which it is invariably
connected, by excluding other objects, even as
(the Reason) 'being an artifact' [signifies the
property 'being impermanent']. Therefore,
language [as a means to truth] is not separate
from inference.

Dignaaga claimed that in actual fact (and
contrary to the speculation of overly rationalistic
philosophers) that which does the work in conveying
the referents of a name is a set of properties of
the referents and not some abstract universal that
"exceeds over the referents." He explains how this
is done with a theory of conception and inference
characteristic of a philosophy that is both
empiricist and pragmatic.

NOTES

1 - Individual or proper names will be completely
ignored in this essay, since the debate in the
Indian tradition is solely over the question of

P.74

what determines the reference of a general name.
I should add that philosophers in this tradition
generally treat any word that is applied to an
object (descriptively, we might say) as a name.
So a predicate like 'yellow' is just as much a
name as the substantive noun 'cow'.

2 - Quoted in Dignaaga's Pramaa.nasamuccaya. The
translation is from Radhika Herzberger,
Bhart.rhari and the Buddhists: An Essay in the
Development of Fifth and Sixth Century Indian
thought (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing, 1986),
p. 30. I will use Herzberger's translations in
this book for all of my quotes from Dignaaga and
Bhart.rhari. I will also cite in these notes the
original sources of the quotes, using the
following abbreviations:

PS Dignaaga, Pramaa.nasamuccaya
VP Bhart.rhari, Vaakyapadiiya
JS Bhart.rhari, Jaatisamudde`se

3 - The examples are from Herzberger, Bhart.rhari,
p. 24.

4 - lbid., pp. xvii-xviii.

5 - PS 5.36; trans. Herzberger, p. 117.

6 - PS 5.12-13; trans. Herberzger, p. 111.

7 - Masaaki Hattori, Dignaaga, On Perception: Being
the Pratyaksapariccheda of Dignaaga's
Pramaa.nasamuccaya (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1968), p. 12.

8 - David Kalupahana, "Essay Review of Radhika
Herzberger's Bhart.rhari and the Buddhists,"
History and Philosophy of Logic 9 (1988): 228.
Kalupahana mentions the history of
misinterpretation of Dignaaga in this review,
but for a more thorough discussion, see the
chapter, "Dignaaga's Epistemology and Logic," in
his most recent book, A History of Buddhist
Philosophy (Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 1992).

9 - JS 7, trans. Herzberger, p. 31.

10 - George Berkeley, The Principles of Human
Knowledge, in vol. 2 of The Works of George
Berkeley, Bishop of Clyne, 9 vols., ed. A. A.
Luce and T. E, Jessop (London, 1948-1957). The
page references will be to the Luce and Jessop
edition.

11 - I grant that the epistemological distinction
between the a priori and the a posteriori is
conspicuous for its absence in Indian pramaa.na
theories, so the claim that universals are
known a priori to Bhart.rhari may seem highly
dubious, to say the least. However, we find the
notion of intuition or pratibhaa in Indian
philosophy, and isn't this recognized as an a
priori way of knowing? As Bimal Matilal points
out, "For [Bhart.rhari], intuition is different
from perception and inference

P.75

and is a means by which we understand the
undifferentiated meaning of a sentence as a
whole.... [I]t comes from within [and]... can
arise in all sentient beings, for its root
cause is the Word-principle which is an
integral part of sentience and hence present
(potentially) in all such beings.... This is
how they learn a language" (Matilal,
perception: An Essay on Classical Indian
Theories of Konwledge [Oxford: Clarendon Press,
19861, p. 33). Although it is beyond the scope
of this essay to take up this highly
controversial issue, I am inclined, like
Matilal, to read Bhart.rhari as treating
intuitive knowledge as nonempirical and a
priori.

12 - John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975),
III.ii.6.

13 - John Mackie, in his Problems from Locke
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), maintained
that Berkeley badly misunderstood Locke on this
key point. Mackie claimed that what Locke meant
by a 'general idea' was an idea which is, "like
everything else,'particular in its existence',
is 'general' in its signification" (Mackie, p.
110). Locke did indeed say, as Mackle pointed
out, that the general nature of words and ideas
is "nothing but the capacity they are put into,
by the understanding, of signifying or
representing many particulars.... [T]he
signification they have is nothing but a
relation that, by the mind of man, is added to
them" (III.iii.11) . If Mackie is right,
Berkeley is attacking a straw man.

It is beyond the purposes of this essay to
determine who is right about what Locke
meant by a 'general idea'---Berkeley or
Mackie--for we are solely interested in
'Berkeley's Locke', in the view against
which Berkeley sets his own position.
Notice, however, that the concept of
abstraction suggested in this passage--what
I call isolation and what John Mackle calls
selective attention--is only presented with
examples of simple ideas, ideas that pertain
to a single quality of an object. The most
prominent example is the following: "Thus
the same colour being observed today in
chalk or snow, which the mind yesterday
received from milk, it considers that
appearance alone, makes it a representative
of all of that kind; and having given it the
name whiteness, it by that sound signifies
the same quality wheresoever to be imagined
or met with; and thus universals, whether
ideas or terms, are made" (II.xi.9).

It is with complex ideas signified by nouns
that we seem to encounter abstract general
ideas. For example, Locke said, "Of the
complex Ideas, signified by the names Man,
and Horse, leaving out but those particulars
wherein they differ, and retaining only
those wherein they agree, and of those,
making a new distinct complex Idea, and
giving the name Animal to it..."
(III.ii.15).

14 - Locke, Essay, III.iii.7.

P.76

15 - Ibid., IV,vii.9.

16 - Berkeley's famous criticism of Locke that the
very idea of an abstract idea is incoherent can
be seen as just the reverse of the third-man
argument, the reverse of the problem of
determining which particulars are instances of
a universal. Locke claimed that while the
abstract idea of a triangle resembles none of
the triangles in actual existence, it must be
instantiated by all of them. Berkeley thought
that this is absurd, for "It is...a received
axiom that an impossibility cannot be
conceived. For what created intelligence will
pretend to conceive, which God cannot cause to
be! Now it is on all hands agreed, that nothing
abstract or general can be made really to
exist, whence it should seem to follow, that it
cannot have as much as an ideal existence in
the understanding" (from the first draft of the
introduction to the Principles, vol. 10 in
Works, pp. 134-135).

17 - Herzberger, Bhart.rhari, p. 26.

18 - PS 5.2; trans. Herzberger, pp. 146 ff.

19 - VP 1.64, p 122.5; trans. Herzberger, p. 23.

20 - JS 13; trans. Herzberger, p. 37.

21 - Herzberger, p. 45.

22 - Ibid., p. 18.

23 - Consider what Bhart.rhari said: "Divided into
cows and so forth through distinctions present
in those things which are its relata, [this]
Being is called the [Supreme] Universal; and
all words are fixed in this Universal" (JS 33;
trans. Herzberger, p. 35). Dignaaga's statement
(quoted in this paragraph) that "the word
conveys the object through exclusion" is from
PS 5.2; trans. Herzberger, p. 111.

24 - Berkeley, Principles, 33, p. 54.

25 - Ibid., Introduction, 11 and 12, pp. 30-32.

26 - Berkeley, First Draft, 18, pp. 134-135.

27 - Also recall the passage in which Berkeley
claimed that "a word becomes general by being
made the sign... of several particular ideas,
any one of which it indifferently suggests to
the mind." It is possible that Berkeley was
equivocal about the notion of meaning On the
one hand, to know the meaning of a name is
simply to know that it signifies certain
objects. But on the other hand, the name also
causes a particular idea (of a reference of the
name) to arise in the mind. Such an idea might
be thought of as an example of the references
of the name, and this is what Berkeley meant by
a general idea. In short, it may be that
Berkeley thought of a word as both a
conventional sign and a natural sign.

P.77

28 - Berkeley, first Draft, p. 136.

29 - George Pitcher, Berkeley (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1977), p. 90.

30 - Ibid., p. 86.

31 - Ibid.

32 - PS 1.3; trans. Herzberger, Bhart.rhari, p. 120.

33 - PS 2.4; trans. by Richard Hayes, in "Dignaaga's
Views on Reasoning (Svaarthaanumaana)," Journal
of Indian Philosophy 8, no. 3 (1980): 252.

34 - Kalupahana, A History of Buddhist Philosophy,
p. 197.

35 - PS 5.1; trans. Herzberger, Bhart.rhari, p. 145.

36 - W. V. Quine, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism, in From
a Logical Point of View (Harper & Row, 1961),
p. 21.

37 - Ibid., p. 37. Hilary Putnam, in "'Two Dogmas'
Revisited, " in Realism and Reason:
Philosophical Papers, vol. 3 (Cambridge
University Press, 1983), argues convincingly
that, contrary to the traditional (and
superficial) understanding of "Two Dogmas of
Empiricism," the real significance of the essay
was its attack on the metaphysical and
epistemological distinction between a
priori/necessary and a posteriori /contingent
truths, and not simply the analytic-synthetic
distinction. Putnam points out that this would
account for the historical importance and
influence of the essay.

38 - I discussed this interpretation in part one.