A Pilgrimage of Absence: 4 - Nabdawip-qualified-by-the-absence-of-Nyāya

Perhaps the most direct way to interpret absences, in particular cognition A, is to interpret it as an expression of a negative fact about the world. This attempt is bolstered by the historical contributions of Gaṅgeśa¹ and Kumārila². Cognition A merely is an expression of the negative fact (namely that there is an absence of Nyāya in Nabadwip) as grasped by perception or perhaps some other method. My experience of the city has, as a part, the counterpositive of the absence, i.e., I experience the city as absent of Nyāya. No reduction to cognition of loci is possible because the cognition includes the counterpositive.

Here, an elementary argument that is not often made is the appeal to the immediacy of the cognition of absence. Arguing that absence experience involves an inference or a middleman cognition of bare loci complicates the description of the actual experience to the point where it does not match the phenomenology of the experience. Absences are experienced immediately. A careful introspection reveals what happens when I actually experience absence. Consider that I have been called into my professor’s room to discuss my grades at two in the afternoon. I walk into the room, already speaking, barely getting out the phrase “Good afternoon!” before I am surprised by the absence of my professor in the room. I experience the room as absent of my professor. Evidently, I do not experience the bare locus, for I would be incapable of rattling off details about the locus, say, the exact direction the chair was facing or certain other details about the locus that would be paramount in a cognition of the locus itself. Nor is there a cognitive gap, an inferential step. My professor’s absence is arguably the only thing cognized. Perhaps that is why we have a sense when someone is absent or present. It has nothing to do with inference from cognitions about silence (never mind that those themselves are experiences of absence); it has everything to do with desolation and desertedness. My experience is suffused with the counterpositive.

Gaṅgeśa provides a different reason to preclude any extra cognitions necessary for cognition of absence. There is no character common to these cognitions of absence, which connects the extra cognition to our descriptions of absence. The size example is irrelevant because we cognize the object as of a certain length but not as long or short. This only happens in a further cognition. Imagine a cognition of an apple that resembles a pear. In that cognition, the apple’s resemblance to the pear is not cognized. The latter is further cognized when both the apple and the pear are cognized together. Thus, the cognition of the former does not require cognition of the pear. Hence, Gaṅgeśa turns the Prabhākara argument on its head. Cognition of an absence of a counterpositive is not dependent on a cognition of the counterpositive.

This reading depends on an important observation. Gaṅgeśa notes that when we speak of an absence, we use negation to negate an entity, not to identify the locus of absence as an absence. Grammatically, we speak as if there are absences. This room has no one in it. Notice the fact that we do not identify the room with the absence of people but locate the absence in the room.

Absences must not be thought of as dependent on cognitions. If they were, perceptual error or other errors of cognition would be equally valid contenders for absences. The common character of an absence must thus not be a cognition of any sort. We may instead try to find it by trying to understand the grammatical structure of negation. Perhaps absences are classes of objects that correspond to certain grammatical formations. The classes of negation which are the classic four kinds of absences clearly correspond to easily discernable grammatical structures. Here is a first satisfactory stopping point: absences have a special character in metaphysical and logical discussions which is best dealt with by circumscribing a novel kind of entity called ‘absence’.

Yet, one must clarify two further things here: (i) are these grammatical structures of a singular nature? (is the sense of absence in cognition A the same as that of all other negations) and (ii) are these all the kinds of negation?. The final thing I intend to bring out in this reflection of my experience is a negative answer to these two questions.

The first is historically tied to Raghunātha³. Raghunātha contends that relational absences and mutual absences have differing characters. The former have, as their adjuncts and subjuncts, various kinds of nouns with case endings. The latter, instead, always requires two nominatives. Regardless of their particular case presentations, they must be homogenous with their positive counterparts. Raghunātha’s example is interestingly one of activity, ‘Caitra is cooking’. In the Nyāya spirit, we explain the statement as, “Caitra is qualified by an effort conducive to cooking”. To insert a negation here is to transform it into “Caitra is qualified by an absence of an effort conducive to cooking”. Both these statements treat the negation homogenously. We may be interested in a Davidsonian spirit to instead read the sentence as “A particular event of cooking is that which is qualified by Caitra’s agency”. In this case, we read the negation as “A particular absence of an event of cooking is that which is qualified by Caitra’s agency”. Here, too, we paraphrase the sentence as homogenous. There is the possibility of negating only Caitra’s agency. This harkens back to the difference between implicative and non-implicative negations. When we speak of the mutual absence of Borges and his doppelgänger in The Other, both are in the nominative cases. The contention is that paying attention to the linguistic cases provides us with two differing kinds of absences. The source of these distinct aspects of negation is due to the peculiar nature of identity. Identity is a non-occurrence exacting relation, and hence, negations of it are mutual absences.

The Mīmāṃsaka⁴ also points to the use of negation in non-indicative contexts, especially the imperative and optative moods. The doors of the ṭol prohibit my entrance. The closure of the doors, the solidity and height of the wall, and the metal bars in the windows all read to me as prohibitions, as a potent opposition to my desire to enter. Sentences in the imperative, when negated, are usually expressed as some kind of prohibition (or perhaps an omissible). An intuitive reading of an imperative sentence, “You may enter the ṭol”, is as a permissible action. The negation says that going inside is impermissible. However, we must ask whether the negation is to be read as attached to the imperative verb or to the second verb, i.e., is it “You may-not enter the ṭol” or “You may not-enter-the-ṭol”. Clearly, in this intutitive example, it is the former. Now consider the phrase, “You must submit your homework”. Say you negate this. Perhaps you have a casual professor who is alright with students who slack off, or perhaps the professor is acutely against peering through your homework. It is usually the former, a negation of the obligatory nature of the action. The normal reading of the negation of “Thou shalt not kill”, is of the latter, an obligation of a negative action. In the Nyāya paraphrase: “You are the locus of a commanded absence of killing” vs “You are the locus of an absence of a commanded killing”. I believe if Raghunātha’s grammatical argument is to be taken seriously, these two absences are of different kinds. Indeed, Raghunātha prefers the former for the right reading. The imperative is also a locus of a divergence of absences. This shows how weak the homonymic reading of negation is. Even if we read all imperatives as indicatives, we still require more negations.

Būnō Rāmnāth’s ṭol was the most elaborate ṭol that I visited. It was the one with the most credible connection to the history of logic in Nabadwip. Apparently, there is a procession in Nabadwip yearly to this place in honour of Sanskrit learning. The ṭol itself is now appropriated by the state government of West Bengal, which established a Government Sanskrit college in its location. Specifically, it is under the control of Banga Bibudha Janani Sabha, which seems to be an organisation interested in reviving Sanskritic studies in Nabadwip. Yet, my interaction with any of these organisations or their members was merely through the text written on top of the doorway and the boards placed elsewhere around the ṭol. The building pointed at the continuing material presence of the historical school of logic in Nabadwip in particular and ‘Gaudadesa’ in general. It is of great happiness to logicians that, intellectually, the Navya-Nyāya school is enjoying a renewed presence in English-language philosophy. The practice of logic spoken broadly has never faltered in Bengal, with a plethora of contemporary logicians (see the tremendous work of Mihir K Chakraborty⁵, especially the collaborative anthology with Sundar Sarukkai for details on contemporary logicians in Bengal). It was a pleasant surprise to see existing traces of the historical schools.

Post-Script 🔗

Going back to the everyday usage of language and ordinary experience, rather than an abstract structural description, we use the negative to express much more than non-identity or relational absence: disbelief (No! No way that is the case! as expressing an implausible belief or a surprise at a fact) or regret (Noooo! at a precious vase falling) or loneliness in the face of silence (the negative of what would have been a vocative). Absences, however, are merely one of the many forms of negation. At the very least, we need a sentential negation in addition to absences to explain even merely the heteronymic usage of negation in indicative sentences. Once we begin to expand our horizons beyond statements to commands, demands, requests, addressals, refusals, and the variety of mental life, it is only likely that we will end up with many negations. Nabadwip was the object of my desire, construed as a place of absence. After all, liberation itself is construed as an absence. We might as well admit that we can desire absences. Whether these absences are of the same kind as those expressed in the declarative is a question for another day. Nevertheless, my experience of Nabadwip began with a desire for an absence that was later fulfilled in a series of experiences of absences. Multifarious absences confronted me that day, and I carry them with me as I reflect on their intensity and peculiarity.