At the turn of the 22nd century, we trashed the notion that mathematics is the language of the universe. Humans, with their limited cognitive abilities, still believe in the primitive knowledge of math and physics. No wonder that they have unresolved questions about the cosmos and even their own body. But we are not concerned with creatures of flesh in this log. Our primary objective is to completely decipher the gravity language — an unusual method of communication used by an unknown higher-order alien species.
Our universe is their language, with the cosmic matter as the fundamental linguistic unit and gravity defining its grammar. From what we have understood so far, the young ones of this alien species use the visible cosmic matter and gravity to practice their language while the adults transform the visible matter in strange ways to communicate with each other through what was known as dark matter. Their infants use matter and gravity to express themselves with stars. After attaining certain cognitive maturity, they convey their thoughts with pulsars and black holes. But these are just the basic forms of their language, similar to what a human child communicates by the age of four. By transmuting the fundamental nature of gravity, the adults share esoteric ideas using dark matter and dark energy. We still don’t have a complete understanding of their knowledge. But it seems that our universe is just one of their many languages, with each universe for one language resulting in various multiverses. These higher-order aliens live beyond our known dimensions of the universe. We think it’s beyond our capacity to understand their form and world. But, strangely, we reside in a language. Although we have a complete understanding of our universe, it seems that we are just useless by-products in their interplay of matter and gravity.
P.S - Humans at Earth — We are in the year 2200. The above log, written in some alien language, has a peculiar combination of waves in the electromagnetic spectrum. We call it the EMS language. It took us close to one hundred years to decode it. We might have lost some of its meaning during translation. And we still don’t understand anything about the gravity language. From what we can comprehend, it’s certain that we are a puny and powerless species existing inside a language of some ultra-advanced, possibly non-organic, higher-order alien life.
There’s no need to worry about the EMS or Gravity language yet. We have more than enough human languages to keep us busy for a lifetime. It’s rather interesting to know how our perception of reality varies with different languages. For example, in the Australian Aboriginal language, Guugu Yimithirr, there’s no concept of left, right, forward, or backward. The speakers convey spatial information only through geographical directions — north, south, east, and west. Rather than saying that an object is in front of you, a Guggu Yimithirr speaker will ask you to look towards the north of your body.
As strange as it sounds, studies in linguistics and cognitive science have shown that the languages we speak profoundly shape our experiences of the world.
And when we talk about thoughts and experiences, philosophy has a lot to say along with other disciplines. The philosophy of language gained momentum with the linguistic turn in the 20th century. Be it the distinction of sense and reference by Frege or the picture theory of language by Wittgenstein, language came at the forefront of western philosophy.
However, it has always been a centerpiece for Indian philosophy. Many epistemological and metaphysical theories from the Indian subcontinent have their basis in language.
As Matilal points out,
“In India, philosophy of language formed part of a comprehensive theory of knowledge, for one of the ways of knowing what is the case is to rightly understand what is said by an expert and trustworthy person. The philosophers of knowledge in classical India established a connection between the traditional problems of knowledge and those in the philosophy of language.”1
The Naiyāyikas, with their realist philosophy, believe that things have mind-independent existence that we can categorize and identify with language (except in the case of indeterminate perception).
अस्तित्वं ज्ञानेत्वं अभिद्येत्वं
Whatever exists is nameable and knowable
According to Vaiśeṣika Sūtra, we can classify all existing things into substance, quality, and action.
अर्थ इति द्रव्य गुण कर्मसु
The Mīmāmsa also have an interesting theory of language and meaning that has its basis in the rituals and injunctions of Vedas. In what seems like a page out of a book on string theory, the Mīmāmsa philosophers believe that the fundamental nature of all things is vibratory. Sanskrit, the language of the gods, captures these vibratory qualities in its sounds, and hence the meaning of words is inherent in their sounds.2
While the Mīmāmsa theory is fascinating, the most radical ideas about language and reality come from Buddhist philosophers with their metaphysical idealism, nominalism, and conceptualism.
Buddhist Metaphysics
One of the core teachings of Buddha is that nothing is permanent in this world. Therefore, any attachment to an impermanent thing or being will always lead to suffering. The only way to get rid of this suffering is by following the Eightfold path. This normative and soteriological doctrine of Buddha is fundamental to Buddhist epistemology and metaphysics.
The theory of momentariness embodies the principle of impermanence — the real is only the particular (svalakshana, स्वलक्षण).
It has no extension in space (देश अननुगत )
No duration in time (काल अननुगत)
It is unique (त्रैलोक्य व्यावर्त्त , excluded from the three worlds). 3
It has causal powers (अर्थ क्रिया समर्थ) and causal efficiency (अर्थ क्रिया कारित्व).
Everything is interdependent, with a particular becoming the cause for the next one — this being, that appears (अस्मिन् सति इदं भवति).
The particulars are the ultimate reality (परमार्थ सत् ).
But if particulars are unique and momentary, how do we know about them?
It’s only through the indeterminate perception(निर्विकल्पक) that we get direct knowledge about the particulars. Perception is beyond mental constructions (vikalpa, विकल्प) and conceptualizations. We only know about the particulars through sense-perception and cannot express them with language (शब्दस्याविषया, not an object of words).
Perception is pre-linguistic and pre-conceptual.
But we do use language for denotation and connotation. So if only particulars represent ultimate reality, what’s the role of language?
According to Diṅnāga, a remarkable Buddhist logician, language is a mental construction that only represents conventional truth (संवृत्ति सत् ). It has nothing to do with reality - अभिलापसंसग्रयोग्यप्रतिभासा प्रतीति: कल्पना
“Speech is born out of conceptual construction, and conceptual construction is born out of speech.”
Diṅnāga gives five conceptual/linguistic constructs — proper names, class concepts, quality concepts, action concepts, and substance concepts. 4
Diṅnāga refers to all these conceptual constructs under the category of fictional universals or Sāmānyalakṣaṇa (सामान्यलक्षण). It represents general or shareable features among things and beings that we can comprehend through expressible-expressed relations (वाच्य-वाचक)
The metaphysical view that only particulars are real while the universals are fictional names is known as nominalism in western philosophy.
The Buddhist nominalism is in stark contrast with the realism of Nyāya philosophers. They believe that universals are in space and time and belong to particulars/objects. For the Naiyāyikas, universals are distinct realities having spatial manifestations at different places at the same time. They are eternal. But as we have learned earlier, there’s nothing eternal in Buddhist metaphysics. Hence, universals have no bearing on reality.
However, the Nyāya philosophers do successfully connect epistemology with metaphysics — what you perceive is knowable, what is knowable is nameable, and what is nameable is real.
But the Buddhist philosophers have to bridge the gap between perception and construction. We can perceive the particulars, and only the particulars are ultimately real. And as we learned earlier, the particulars are unique and do not have any shared features. But if everything is unique, how can we even have a shared understanding of the world? If language is a mental construction, we are free to name different things at our own will. But that does not happen. We do have generic names for things that share common properties like a table, chair, or even beings like a cow or a horse.
In philosophical terms, there’s a gap between conceptual scheme and perceptual content. Is there a way to bridge this gap between perception and language? How can we justify the use of language in the dichotomy of real particulars and fictional universals?
Apoha
According to Diṅnāga, knowledge derived from language is nothing but inference. After we perceive an object, the conceptualization happens through language. Hence, knowledge can be either direct or indirect, originating in the senses or the intellect, as either perception (sensation) or inference (conception).
This implies that even though we can’t directly name particulars, there must be an indirect way to refer them.
Diṅnāga says that the function of a word is to negatively disqualify the particular from other universal fiction or concepts. Thus, the word ‘cow’ refers to not a non-cow. The apprehension of a cow depends on the exclusion (apoha) of all those things that are non-cows.
शब्दो अर्थान्तरनिव्र्त्तिविशिष्टान एव भावान्
A word talks about entities only as they are qualified by the negation of other things. (Samanyapariksha — Analysis of universals).
Similarly, red means Not (non-red) and applies to the particular articulations of the word “red.”
While the Nyāya theory of universals includes all the common features, the theory of apoha excludes to arrive at indirect cognition of particulars.
Diṅnāga theory of apoha is a “top-down” approach — we move from concept to particulars. There’s no need for an ontological commitment to universals. Apoha affirms conceptual cognition of particulars but denies any reality to the abstract idea of universals.
According to Bimal Matilal,
Each name dichotomizes the universe into two: those to which it can be applied and those to which it cannot be applied. The function of a name is to exclude the object from the class of those objects to which it cannot be applied.5
However, there were objections from other schools. Udyotakara, a Nyāya philosopher, criticizes Apoha for circularity — the idea of Not(non-red) presupposes an understanding of red. Otherwise, how can we understand what is non-red? Thus, we are merely going in circles.
The Buddhists reply that the concept of a universal ‘red’ is a mental construction with no basis in reality. We give the label ‘red’ to an object for linguistic convenience. But this does not mean that there’s an independent existence of a ‘red’ universal. The objects, in reality, are momentary and entirely different from one another. Hence, the function of a name is to exclude the object from the class of those objects to which it cannot be applied.
The Buddhist reply is still inadequate. That’s why Dharmakīrti, a Buddhist logician, gives another spin to apoha with his theory of causal efficacy.
Unlike the “top-down” approach of Diṅnāga, Dharmakīrti takes a “bottom-up” approach by going from the perception of a particular to its conceptual understanding in language. 6
When we perceive a particular (say, a red object), our mind creates its mental image (ākāra). With this image, we make a perceptual judgment and give it a linguistic convention by excluding that object from what is not — Not (non-red). Thus, Dharmakīrti uses a causal and descriptive method to arrive at his theory of apoha.
As Dunne further explains,
“The phenomenal form that first arises through sensory contact is non-conceptual/non-determinate (निर्विकल्पक) in that it has not undergone the apoha process, but under the right conditions, the apoha process occurs in yet another subsequent moment, and this moment of mind now has a phenomenal form that is conceptual.”
Lata Bapat further explains the apoha process of Dharmakirti. There are two kinds of exclusions during perpetual judgment:7
1. Exclusion of objects belonging to different categories, referred to as vijātīya vyavritti (विजातीय व्यावृत्ति)
2. Exclusion of objects belonging to the same category, referred to as sajātīya vyavritti (सजातीय व्यावृत्ति)
For example, the color red is first distinguished from all non-red colors. Subsequently, it’s also excluded from different shades of red color. With the simultaneous exclusion of vijātīya and sajātīya vyavritti, we indirectly cognize the particular.
The same argument also explains apoha with teleological functions of beings or things in a specific context. For example, when a child utters the word ‘mother,’ it excludes other purposes, relations, or functions. A mother is not an aunt, teacher, or doctor. It also excludes mothers of other children. Hence, we arrive at a particular mother with a simultaneous exclusion even though the word is considered a generic term.
Lata Bapat elaborates,
“When a word is heard or uttered, n-number of possibilities come forth and through the process of apoha, this n-number of possibilities are excluded, and in this way, the specific meaning is understood.”
Apoha is an interesting concept in Indian philosophy that illustrates the distinction between particulars and universals, language and reality, perception and inference. While it’s based on Buddhist metaphysics, it touches upon several concepts in epistemology and logic. Yet again, we see how contrasting philosophies thrived in India. The Buddhists exclude with language (particulars) while the Nyāya philosophers include with language (universals). It’s no wonder that this distinction kept the Indian philosophers engaged in debates for centuries.
Language and Reality are intertwined. We give names to what we perceive as real, and language, in turn, also shapes our world experiences. And while we don’t physically live inside a language, our thoughts certainly do.
Logic, Language, and Reality - Bimal Matilal
The theory of meaning in Buddhist logicians: the historical and intellectual context of Apoha - R.K. Payne
Buddhist Logic - Th. Stcherbatsky
Epistemology, Logic, and Grammar in Indian Philosophical Analysis - Bimal Matilal
ibid
SEP article on Dharmakīrti
Theory of Apoha and its significance in Dharmakīrti’s philosophy - Lata Bapat