Critical theory (Critical Buddhism)

Critical theory is a school of thought that stresses the examination and the critique of society and culture, by applying knowledge from the social sciencesand the humanities. As a term, critical theory has two meanings with different origins and histories: the first originated in sociology and the second originated in literary criticism, whereby it is used and applied as an umbrella term that can describe a theory founded upon critique; thus, the theorist Max Horkheimer described a theory as critical in so far as it seeks "to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them."  

In philosophy, the term critical theory describes the neo-Marxist philosophy of the Frankfurt School, developed in Europe in the 1930s, that engaged the works of intellectuals such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud. Modern critical theory arose from the anti-positivist sociology of Max Weber andGeorg Simmel, the Marxist theories of György Lukács and of Antonio Gramsci, towards that of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt. Critical theory was established as a school of thought primarily by five Frankfurt School theoreticians: Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, and Jürgen Habermas. In Habermas's work, critical theory transcended its theoretic roots in German idealism, and progressed closer toAmerican pragmatism. The concern for a social "base and superstructure" is one of the remaining Marxist philosophic concepts in much contemporary critical theory. 

Whilst critical theorists usually are broadly defined as Marxist intellectuals  their tendency to denounce some Marxist concepts, and to synthesise Marxian analysis with other sociologic and philosophic traditions has been attacked as revisionism, by Classical, Orthodox, and Analytical Marxists, and byMarxist-Leninist philosophers. Martin Jay said that the first generation of critical theory is best understood as not promoting a specific philosophical agenda or a specific ideology, but as "a gadfly of other systems". 

Definitions

The two meanings of critical theory — from different intellectual traditions associated with the meaning of criticism and critique—derive ultimately from the Greek word kritikos meaning judgment or discernment, and in their present forms go back to the 18th century. While they can be considered completely independent intellectual pursuits, increasingly scholars  are interested in the areas of critique where the two overlap. 

To use an epistemological distinction introduced by Jürgen Habermas in Erkenntnis und Interesse [1968] (Knowledge and Human Interests), critical theory in literary studies is ultimately a form of hermeneutics, i.e. knowledge via interpretation to understand the meaning of human texts and symbolic expressions—including the interpretation of texts which are themselves implicitly or explicitly the interpretation of other texts. Critical social theory is, in contrast, a form of self-reflective knowledge involving both understanding and theoretical explanation to reduce entrapment in systems of domination or dependence, obeying the emancipatory interest in expanding the scope of autonomy and reducing the scope of domination.

From this perspective, much literary critical theory, since it is focused on interpretation and explanation rather than on social transformation, would be regarded as positivistic or traditional rather than critical theory in the Kantian or Marxian sense. Critical theory in literature and the humanities in general does not necessarily involve a normative dimension, whereas critical social theory does, either through criticizing society from some general theory of values, norms, or "oughts," or through criticizing it in terms of its own espoused values.

In social theory
Critical theory was first defined by Max Horkheimer of the Frankfurt School of sociology in his 1937 essay Traditional and Critical Theory: Critical theory is a social theory oriented toward critiquing and changing society as a whole, in contrast to traditional theory oriented only to understanding or explaining it. Horkheimer wanted to distinguish critical theory as a radical, emancipatory form of Marxian theory, critiquing both the model of science put forward bylogical positivism and what he and his colleagues saw as the covert positivism and authoritarianism of orthodox Marxism and Communism.

 

Core concepts are:  (1) That critical social theory should be directed at the totality of society in its historical specificity (i.e. how it came to be configured at a specific point in time), and (2) That critical theory should improve understanding of society by integrating all the major social sciences, includinggeography, economics, sociology, history, political science, anthropology, and psychology.

This version of "critical" theory derives from Kant's (18th-century) and Marx's (19th Century) use of the term "critique", as in Kant's Critique of Pure Reasonand Marx's concept that his work Das Kapital (Capital) forms a "critique of political economy." For Kant's transcendental idealism, "critique" means examining and establishing the limits of the validity of a faculty, type, or body of knowledge, especially through accounting for the limitations imposed by the fundamental, irreducible concepts in use in that knowledge system.

Kant's notion of critique has been associated with the disestablishment of false, unprovable, or dogmatic philosophical, social, and political beliefs, because Kant's critique of reason involved the critique of dogmatic theological and metaphysical ideas and was intertwined with the enhancement of ethical autonomy and the Enlightenment critique of superstition and irrational authority. Ignored by many in "critical realist" circles, however, is that Kant's immediate impetus for writing his "Critique of Pure Reason" was to address problems raised by David Hume's skeptical empiricism which, in attacking metaphysics, employed reason and logic to argue against the knowability of the world and common notions of causation. Kant, by contrast, pushed the employment of a priori metaphysical claims as requisite, for if anything is to be said to be knowable, it would have to be established upon abstractions distinct from perceivable phenomena.

Marx explicitly developed the notion of critique into the critique of ideology and linked it with the practice of social revolution, as in the famous 11th of hisTheses on Feuerbach, "Philosophers have only interpreted the world in certain ways; the point is to change it." 

One of the distinguishing characteristics of critical theory, as Adorno and Horkheimer elaborated in their Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), is a certain ambivalence concerning the ultimate source or foundation of social domination, an ambivalence which gave rise to the “pessimism” of the new critical theory over the possibility of human emancipation and freedom. This ambivalence was rooted, of course, in the historical circumstances in which the work was originally produced, in particular, the rise of National Socialism, state capitalism, and mass culture as entirely new forms of social domination that could not be adequately explained within the terms of traditional Marxist sociology. 

For Adorno and Horkheimer state intervention in the economy had effectively abolished the tension in capitalism between the "relations of production" and "material productive forces of society," a tension which, according to traditional critical theory, constituted the primary contradiction within capitalism. The market (as an "unconscious" mechanism for the distribution of goods) and private property had been replaced by centralized planning and socialized ownership of the means of production. 

Yet, contrary to Marx’s famous prediction in the Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, this shift did not lead to "an era of social revolution," but rather to fascism and totalitarianism. As such, critical theory was left, in Jürgen Habermas’ words, without "anything in reserve to which it might appeal; and when the forces of production enter into a baneful symbiosis with the relations of production that they were supposed to blow wide open, there is no longer any dynamism upon which critique could base its hope."  For Adorno and Horkheimer, this posed the problem of how to account for the apparent persistence of domination in the absence of the very contradiction that, according to traditional critical theory, was the source of domination itself.

In the 1960s, Jürgen Habermas raised the epistemological discussion to a new level in his Knowledge and Human Interests, by identifying critical knowledge as based on principles that differentiated it either from the natural sciences or the humanities, through its orientation to self-reflection and emancipation. Though unsatisfied with Adorno and Horkeimer's thought presented inDialectic of Enlightenment, Habermas shares the view that, in the form of instrumental rationality, the era of modernity marks a move away from the liberation of enlightenment and toward a new form of enslavement. 

His ideas regarding the relationship between modernity and rationalization are in this sense strongly influenced by Max Weber. Habermas dissolved further the elements of critical theory derived from Hegelian German Idealism, though his thought remains broadly Marxist in its epistemological approach. Perhaps his two most influential ideas are the concepts of the public sphere andcommunicative action; the latter arriving partly as a reaction to new post-structural or so-called "post-modern" challenges to the discourse of modernity. Habermas engaged in regular correspondence with Richard Rorty and a strong sense of philosophical pragmatism may be felt in his theory; thought which frequently traverses the boundaries between sociology and philosophy.

Postmodern critical theory

While modernist critical theory (as described above) concerns itself with “forms of authority and injustice that accompanied the evolution of industrial and corporate capitalism as a political-economic system,” postmodern critical theory politicizes social problems “by situating them in historical and cultural contexts, to implicate themselves in the process of collecting and analyzing data, and to relativize their findings” (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002, p. 52). Meaning itself is seen as unstable due to the rapid transformation in social structures and as a result the focus of research is centered on local manifestations rather than broad generalizations.

Postmodern critical research is also characterized by what is called, the crisis of representation, which rejects the idea that a researcher’s work is considered an “objective depiction of a stable other” (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002, p. 53). Instead, in their research and writing, many postmodern scholars have adopted “alternatives that encourage reflection about the ‘politics and poetics’ of their work. In these accounts, the embodied, collaborative, dialogic, and improvisational aspects of qualitative research are clarified” (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002, p. 53).

Often, the term "critical theory" is appropriated when an author (perhaps most notably Michel Foucault) works within sociological terms yet attacks the social or human sciences (thus attempting to remain "outside" those frames of enquiry). Jean Baudrillard has also been described as a critical theorist to the extent that he was an unconventional and critical sociologist; this appropriation is similarly casual, holding little or no relation to the Frankfurt School.

Language and construction

The two points at which there is the greatest overlap or mutual impingement of the two versions of critical theory are in their interrelated foci on language, symbolism, and communication and in their focus on social construction.

Language and communication

From the 1960s and 1970s onward, language, symbolism, text, and meaning came to be seen as the theoretical foundation for the humanities, through the influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein,Ferdinand de Saussure, George Herbert Mead, Noam Chomsky, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida and other thinkers in linguistic and analytic philosophy, structural linguistics, symbolic interactionism, hermeneutics, semiology, linguistically oriented psychoanalysis (Jacques Lacan, Alfred Lorenzer), and deconstruction.

When, in the 1970s and 1980s, Jürgen Habermas redefined critical social theory as a theory of communication, i.e. communicative competence and communicative rationality on the one hand, distorted communication on the other, the two versions of critical theory began to overlap or intertwine to a much greater degree than before.

Construction

Both versions of critical theory have focused on the processes by which human communication, culture, and political consciousness are created. This includes:

• Whether it is through universal pragmatic principles through which mutual understanding is achieved (Habermas).
• The semiotic rules by which objects obtain symbolic meanings (Barthes).
• The psychological processes by which the phenomena of everyday consciousness are generated (psychoanalytic thinkers).
• The episteme that underlies our cognitive formations (Foucault),

There is a common interest in the processes (often of a linguistic or symbolic kind) that give rise to observable phenomena and here there is some mutual influence among the different versions of critical theory. Ultimately this emphasis on production and construction goes back to the revolution wrought by Kant in philosophy, namely his focus in the Critique of Pure Reason on synthesis according to rules as the fundamental activity of the mind that creates the order of our experience.

Dharmakirti

Dharmakirti's Theory of Inference

Dharmakirti (ca. 7th century) was an Indian 'scholar' (pandita) and Buddhist who contributed significantly to the Buddhist development and application of Indian philosophical logic. He was one of the primary theorists of Buddhist atomism, according to which the only items considered to exist are momentary atoms (in the Buddhist sense) and states of consciousness. The following exposition of Dharmakirti's theory of inference was drawn from Prasad (2002). 

Doctrine of Anyapoha

Apoha is negative abhavatmaka in nature. Apohas are different due to the diversity in apohyas (things to be excluded). The word apoha, which is the abridged form of anyapoha, means the 'exclusion of negation of others (ataddvyavrtti)'. For example, the word 'cow' gives its own meaning only by the exclusion of all those things which are other than cow. Dingnaga declares that a word can express its own meaning only by repudiating opposite meanings, just as words like 'krtaka' (i.e. that which has origin) designate their meanings only through the exclusion of their opposite like 'akraka' (i.e. that which does not have origin).

Dingnaga admits that apoha can also possess some characteristics of the realists' universals such as oneness, enternity, complete subsistence in each individual, etc. He apprehends the concept of universal through the negation of its non-self. He explains that if the non-self of a universal is absent in a locus, then its presence in that locus can be inferred. For example, a cow is qualified by the deniability of the non-cow. This concept of Dingnaga's is similar to that Hegel who also believes that the universality of a concept is posited through its negativity.

Apoha is not the object of sense perception (pratyaksa). It is apprehensible only through word or inference. In essence, Dingnaga uses anyyapoha as a substitute for universal. The concept ofapoha depends upon the law of contradiction. The words blue and non-blue negate each other, simply because they are opposite to each other. According to Dingnaga, a similar exclusion of others is due to the non-apprehension of the meaning of a particular word in other words. A particular word excludes the other particular words because its own meaning is not apprehended in the other ones. For example, the word simsapa-tree excludes the word palasa-tree because its own meaning is not available in the latter one.

Lexicon

• Apoha:
• Argument: vada, rtsod pa
• Characteristic: laksana, mtshan nid
• Condition: pratyaya, rkyen
• Demonstrandum: sadhya, bsgrub par bya ba
• Demonstrator: sadhaka, grub byed
• Dialectician: tartika, rtog ge ba
• Dialectics: tarka, rtog ge
• Direct perception: pratyaksa, mnon sum
• Event: dharma, chos
• Event-associate: dharmin, chos can
• Exemplification: drstanta, dpe
• Inference: anumana, rjes su dpag pa
• Interference: vyavakirana, hdres pa
• Invariable concomitance: avinabhava, med na mi hbyun ba
• Judgment: prajnanana, shes-rab
• Justification: hetu, gtan-tshigs
• Means of cognition: pramana, tshad pa
• Means of evidence: linga, rtags
• Pervading/pervasion/logical pervasion: vyapti, khyab pa

Dharmakīrti (ca. 7th century), was an Indian scholar and one of the Buddhist founders of Indian philosophical logic. He was one of the primary theorists of Buddhist atomism, according to which the only items considered to exist are momentary states of consciousness.

History

Born around the turn of the 7th century, Dharmakirti was a South Indian Brahmin and became a teacher at the famed Nalanda University, as well as a poet. He built on and reinterpreted the work of Dignaga, the pioneer of Buddhist Logic, and was very influential among Brahman logicians as well as Buddhists. His theories became normative in Tibet and are studied to this day as a part of the basic monastic curriculum.

Collins colourfully contextualized Dharmakirti and his experience of disaffection and collegiate misunderstanding at Nalanda:-

Dharmakirti's synthesis is the apex of Buddhist philosophy, at the moment when it was institutionally fading. Nalanda was still bustling, buoyed by cosmopolitan incursions of Brahmans and lay students, but the weeds were growing around the deserted stupas not just in the south but in northern India as well. Dharmakirti is the last flaming of the torch before it blows out, the owl of Minerva taking wing at dusk: the creativity of synthesis as a fading institutional base goes on the defensive. Dharmakirti himself was a lay Buddhist, not a devout monk, and his personal tone sounds like secular ambition rather than a quest for salvation. The closing stanza of his great work laments the dearth of capable intellectuals to follow his philosophy: "My work will find no one in this world who would easily grasp its deep sayings. It will be absorbed and perish in my own person, just as a river in the ocean." A Tibetan historian says that when he finished the work, his pupils showed no appreciation, and his enemies "tied up the leaves [of the palm-leaf manuscript] to the tail of a dog and let him run through the streets where the leaves became scattered" (Stcherbatsky, 1962: 1:35-36). In fact, Dharmakirti did end up dominating the leading philosophers of the last generations of Indian Buddhism. But his pessimism was prescient. Leaving Nalanda, he retired to his home in the south, where he founded a monastery. The next successful Brahman student from the south was to be Shankara, and when he came north, it would be to plunder the carcass of a dying [Indian] Buddhism

Philosophy

Dharmakirti presents most of his ideas in the guise of commentary on Dignaga's works, even if his theories go beyond what was presented by his predecessor. Some of his ideas, like his proof for the authority of the Buddha's words, are innovations, for Dignaga considered language just as fallible as inference.

There has long been disagreement among Indian and Tibetan doxographers as to how to categorize Dharmakirti's thought. The Gelug school asserts that he expressed Yogachara views, most non-Gelug Tibetan commentators assert that he expressed Sautrantika views and, according to one Tibetan source, a number of renowned later Indian Madhyamikas asserted that he expressedMadhyamaka views. 

Stcherbatsky relates Dharmakirti to his own understanding of Kant. He compares Dharmakirti’s ‘point-instant’ to Kant’s thing in itself.

“

The fundamental difference between the Kantian Thing-in-Itself and Dharmakirti’s ‘Own essence’ consists in the clear identification of the latter with a single point instant of reality which corresponds to a moment of sensation”.

”

Mindstream: the play of beginninglessness and temporality, a continuum

Dharmakīrti (fl. 7th century) wrote a treatise on the nature of the mindstream in his Substantiation of Other Mindstreams (Saṃtãnãntarasiddhi).  Ratnakīrti (fl. c7-8th century), a disciple of Dharmakīrti, wrote a work that further developed and refined the themes therein, entitled: 'Refutation of Other mindstreams' (Saṃtãnãntaradusana). He did not refute the tenets of theSaṃtãnãntarasiddhi but further developed the topic from an empirical one, that is, where there are manifold minds cognized by one's experience of others' mental processes attributed through the perceived actions of other sentient beings to an absolutist view, where there is only "one mindstream" (ekacitta). Ratnakīrti's argument is that the valid cognition (pramāna) of another's mindstream is an inference (anumāna), not a direct perception (pratyakṣa). Moreover, Ratnakīrti introduced the two truths doctrine as key to the nature of the discussion as inference is trafficking with illusiory universals (samanya), the proof of the mindstreams of others, whilst empirically valid in relative truth (saṃvṛtisatya), does not hold ultimate metaphysical certainty in absolute truth (paramārthasatya).

Dharmakirti held the mindstream to be beginningless yet also described the mindstream as a temporal sequence, and that as there are no true beginnings, there are no true endings, hence, the "beginningless time" motif that is frequently used to describe the concept of mindstream, as Dunne relates:

Buddhist philosophers often speak of beginninglessness. It is claimed that the minds of living beings, for example, have no beginning, and that our current [U]niverse is only one in a beginningless cycle of expansion and decay. Some Buddhist thinkers would claim that even the most mundane task can have no true beginning. That is, if a beginning occurs, there must be some moment, some "now", in which it occurs. For the present to exist, however, there must be a past and a future, for what would "now" mean if there were no time other than now? And of course, if there is a past, then how could now be a beginning? Now should instead be the end of the past. Each beginning in short, must itself have a beginning.

Buddhist Logic

Buddhist Logic, the categorical nomenclature modern Western discourse has extended to Buddhadharma traditions of 'Hetuvidya' (Sanskrit) and 'Pramanavada' (Sanskrit), which arose circa 500CE, is a particular development, application and lineage of continuity of 'Indian Logic', from which it seceded. Indian logic, and Buddhist Logic—in main heralded by Dignāga  (c 480-540 CE)—are both primarily studies of 'inference'-patterns, where ‘inference’ is a gloss of anumāna (Sanskrit).

Sadhukhan, et al. (1994: p. 7) frames the centrality of 'syllogism' to Buddhist Logic and foregrounds its indivisibility as an investigative, authenticating and proofing tool instituted to establish the valid cognitive insights of the Buddhadharma:

Buddhist logic obviously contains the forms and nature of syllogism, the essence of judgement, etc. for which it deserves the name of logic. But that logic is not only logic it also establishes the doctrines of the Buddhists. Thus the philosophical tenets were the fulcrum and the logic developed as tools to establish those. 

Following the work of Tucci (1929) and the critique of Anacker (2005, rev.ed.) upon the collation of Frauwallner (1957),  it is now understood that Vasubandhu's Vāda-vidhi ("A Method for Argumentation") refined the five argument logic of the Nyāya-sūtra to a three argument form and not his pupil Dignāga.  In addition to pruning the two redundant arguments from the syllogism, Vasubandhu tendered a further qualification: he posited that a sound relationship, a 'logical pervasion' (vyāpti) needs to be defined between the first and second arguments, a relationship between the 'Demonstrandum' (pratijna) and the 'Justification' (hetu) that is assumed in the Nyāya-sūtra and other literature of the Nyāya school. This logical pervasion is required to fashion sound arguments. Vasubandhu's Vāda-vidhi was reconstructed by Frauwallner from embedded quotations harvested from the works of Dignāga, amongst others. Dignāga as the oft-cited wellspring of the logical triune in the Buddhadharma is now invalidated. 

Qualifications of what is signified by the lexical signifier 'Logic' in the Dharmic context

Logic (_{Dharmic traditions)}   Logic (_{Classical logic)}

‘Indian Logic’ should not be understood as logic in the sense of ‘Aristotelian syllogism’ (Greek or Classical Logic) or ‘modern predicate calculus’ (modern Western Logic), but as anumāna-theory, a system in its own right. ‘Indian Logic’ was influenced by the study of grammar, whereas Greek or Classical Logic which principally informed modern Western Logic was influenced by the study of mathematics. 

Nomenclature, orthography and etymology

 'Buddhist logic  

'Hetuvidya' (Sanskrit)

'Pramanavada' (Sanskrit)

'Anumana' (Sanskrit)

Etymology: anu ("subsequent") + manas ("perception, mind") is identified as a ‘source of knowledge’, a pramāṇa. Though not the founders of 'Indian logic', the Nyaya school first codified and established a 'system of logic'. The Nyāya recognized four 'sources of knowledge' (pramana): perception, inference, comparison and testimony.

Antecedents and secession

'Nyāya' (Skt. "recursion", with the semantic amplification of 'syllogism, inference') is the name given to one of the six 'orthodox' (astika) schools of Sanatana Dharma, which may be understood as "the school of logic." The Nyaya is founded in the Nyaya Sutras, attributed to Gotama (2nd century CE). Buddhist logic inherited much of the architecture of Nyaya's methodology, but where the Nyaya recognised a set of four pramanas—perception, inference, comparison and testimony—the logic of Buddhadharma only recognized two: perception and inference.

Syllogism

A syllogism is a form of inference. Ames (1993: p. 210), holds that Bhāvaviveka (c.500-c.578) appears to be the first Buddhist logician to employ the 'formal syllogism' (Wylie: sbyor ba'i tshig; Sanskrit: prayoga-vākya) of Indian Logic in expounding the Mādhyamaka, which he employed to considerable effect in his commentary to Nagarjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā entitled thePrajñāpradīpa.  Though due to the work of Anacker (2005, rev.ed.) and those upon whom his work is founded, we know that the first Buddhist to refine the syllogism to its three-line form is Vasubhandu. 

Dharmic logic in Western discourse & literature review

Vidyabhusana (1921), Randle (1930) and Stcherbatsky (1930)

Lineage

Dr S.C. Vidyabhusana, Mahapandit Rahul Sankrityayan, Dr M. K. Ganguli, A. Vostrikov, Prof. Giuseppe Tucci, B. Baradiin, V. Vassiliev (1818—1900), E. E. Obermiller (1901–1935), Prof. Gerhard Oberhammer, Prof. E. Franwallner, F. Th. Stcherbatsky, E. Steikellner.

Robinson (1957: p. 295) holds that, building upon the methodology of Schayer [1933], Nakamura (1954) 

...presents the case for the superiority of modern scientific, notational logic as an instrument for investigating Indian logic. Notational statement avoids the pitfalls and awkwardness of linguistic statement and rhetorical logic. It does not necessitate conversion of Indian forms into the standard forms of traditional Western logic, but clarifies the traditional Indian structure without requiring reformulation. To Nakamura's points I may add that modern logic asks a greater range of questions and hence sharpens the observation of the investigator.

Pramana sets as determining traditions of Dharma
Decisive in distinguishing Buddhadharma from what is generally understood as Sanatana Dharma is the issue of epistemological justification. All schools of Indian logic recognize various sets of 'valid justifications for knowledge' or pramana. The Buddhadharma recognizes a pramana set that is smaller than the other Dharmic Traditions. Most pramanavada of Dharmic Traditions accept 'perception' (Sanskrit: pratyakṣa) and 'inference' (Sanskrit: anumāna), for example, but for some schools of Sanatana Dharma and Buddhadharma the 'received textual tradition' (Sanskrit: āgamāḥ) is an epistemological category equal to perception and inference (although this is not necessarily true for some other schools). The Buddhadharma accepts 'received textual tradition' or āgamāḥ, including Buddhavacana, only if it accords with pratyakṣa and anumāna. Historically, Shakyamuni Buddha was qualifying the unquestionable authority of the Vedas on grounds ofahimsa as according to the Vedic Tradition of Sanatana Dharma, the Vedas are apauruṣeya "not of human agency,"  are supposed to have been directly revealed, and thus are called śruti("what is heard").  Vedic injunctions required sacrifices, Śrauta (an etymon of the English 'slaughter'), particularly 'animal sacrifices' (Pashu-Yajna, Ashvamedha) and which the compassionate Shakyamuni Buddha countered.

Thus, in the Sanatana Dharma traditions, if a claim was made that could not be substantiated by appeal to the textual canon, it would be considered as ridiculous as a claim that the sky was green and, conversely, a claim which could not be substantiated via conventional means might still be justified through textual reference, differentiating this from the epistemology of hard science. Some schools of Buddhadharma, on the other hand, rejected an inflexible reverence of accepted doctrine. As the Buddhavacana Kalama Sutta III.65 states:

Do not accept anything by mere tradition ... Do not accept anything just because it accords with your scriptures ... Do not accept anything merely because it agrees with your pre-conceived notions ... But when you know for yourselves – these things are moral, these things are blameless, these things are praised by the wise, these things, when performed and undertaken, conduce to well-being and happiness – then do you live acting accordingly. 

This verse is however taken out of context. In the Kalama Sutta the Buddha was talking to non-Buddhists and those were not already Buddhist disciples. Dhammapala's commentary on theNettipakarana says "for there is no other criterion beyond a text." 

Hetuvidya

Hetu = conditionality, causation (hetu and pratyaya), contending with Buddhist agency...karma

Vidya = (Sanskrit: Vidya; Tibetan: Rigpa), Avidya

Pramanavada

Pramana vada

Early Buddhism and the rise of Nagarjuna

Early Buddhist philosophers and exegetes of one particular early school (as opposed to Mahayana), the Sarvastivadins, created a pluralist metaphysical and phenomenological system, in which all experiences of people, things and events can be broken down into smaller and smaller perceptual or perceptual-ontological units called dharmas. Other schools incorporated some parts of this theory and criticized others. The Sautrantikas, another early school, and the Theravadins, the only surviving early Buddhist school, criticized the realist standpoint of the Sarvastivadins.

The Mahayanist Nagarjuna, one of the most influential Buddhist thinkers, promoted classical Buddhist emphasis on phenomena and attacked Sarvastivada realism and Sautrantika nominalism in his magnum opus The Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way. 

Robinson (1957: p. 293) makes an opinion that builds upon the foundation of Stcherbatsky (1927):

The Madhyamaka denies the validity of logic, i.e., of discursive conceptual thought, to establish ultimate truth. On the charge that in doing so he himself resorts to some logic, he replies that the logic of common life is sufficient for showing that all systems contradict one another and that our fundamental conceptions do not resist scrutiny. 

Catuskoti

Catuskoti (Sanskrit), had antecedents in the Vedas and is also evident in a mutually iterating form known by the Greek term 'Tetralemma', where 'tetra' holds the semantic field of "four" and 'lemma' holds the semantic field "auxiliary proposition".

Indian Transmission lineages to Tibet and concomitant translations

Tom Tillemans (1998: p. 1), in discussing the Tibetan translation and assimilation of the Buddhadharma logico-epistemological traditions embodied by the legacy of Dignāga (c 480-540 CE) andDharmakīrti (ca. 7th century), identifies two currents and transmission streams:

• first current, principally geographical located at Sangpu Neutok and grounded in the works of Ngok Lodzawa Loden Shayrap (1059–1109) and Chapa Chögyi Sengge (1109–69) and their disciples. Chapa’s Tshad ma’i bsdus pa (English: 'Summaries of Epistemology and Logic') became the groundwork for the ‘Collected Topics’ (Tibetan: Düra; Wylie: bsdus grwa) literature, which in large part furnished Gelugpa-based logical architecture and epistemology. 
• second current of Sakya Pandita (1182–1251) who wrote the Tshad-ma rigs-gter (English: "Treasury of Logic on Valid Cognition"),  who vehemently redressed the logical architecture of the Gangpu Neutok positions. 

Sangpu Neutok (Wylie: gSang-phu Ne'u-thog)

Dudjom (1904–87) and others (1991: p. 577) hold that at the time of Longchenpa (1308–1364/1369) who studied there, Sangpu Neutok (Wylie: gSang-phu Ne'u-thog)—a seminary founded in 1073  by the translator (Tib. lotsawa) Ngok Lekpei Sherap (1059–1109)—was "the great academy for the study of logic in Tibet." 

Gelugpa

The Vajrayana tradition of the Tibetan Buddhist Gelugpa—with their penchant for dialectic and courtyard debate—instituted, developed and perpetuated the systems of Indian Logic and Buddhist Logic that they had inherited, significantly contributing to and extending the traditions of Hetuvidya and Pramanavada within the logico-epistemological traditions of the Buddhadharma. Particularly, post-Candrakirti (600–c. 650), the Gelugpa refined the Catuskoti and Shunyata into the Prasangika.

Vasubandhu: Avinābhāva

Vasubandhu (fl. 4th c.)

Doctrine of Trairūpya

Dignaga's (c 480-540 CE) 'Three Modes' (Sanskrit: Trairūpya; Wylie: tshul-gsum)

Critical Buddhism

Critical Buddhism is a trend in Japanese Buddhist scholarship, associated primarily with the works of Hakamaya Noriaki and Matsumoto Shirō. According to Lin Chen-kuo, Hakamaya's view is that "Critical Buddhism sees methodical, rational critique as belonging to the very foundations of Buddhism itself, while 'Topical Buddhism' emphasizes the priority of rhetoric over logical thinking, of ontology over epistemology." Hakamaya himself defines it as the position "that 'Buddhism is criticism' or that 'only that which is critical is Buddhism.'" He contrasts it with what he callsTopical Buddhism, in comparison to the concepts of critical philosophy and topical philosophy.

Kōshin   is a folk faith in Japan with Chinese Taoist origins, influenced by Shintō, Buddhism and other local beliefs. A typical event related to the faith is called Kōshin-kō   held on the Kōshin days that occur every 60 days in accordance with the sexagenary cycles calendar, when people gather and meet, staying up all night in order to prevent from the Sanshi   worms inspect themselves.

It is not clearly certain when such custom arrived or came into fashion in Japan, although it is believed that by some time in the 9th century it had been already practiced at least by aristocrats.^[1] In the Muromachi period, Buddhist monks started to write about the Kōshin, which led to wider popularity of the faith among public. Numerous monuments or pillars called Kōshin-tō  (or also Kōshin-zuka  were erected all over the country and the faith remained very popular through the Edo period. When the Meiji Government issued the Shinto and Buddhism Separation Order in 1872, folk beliefs were turned down as superstitious, Kōshin belief too losing popularity as a result.

Today, the Kōshin belief still survives, although it is far less popular and receives smaller recognition than once it did, due to the absence of any central organization to help promote such faith because of its folkloric nature. While many Kōshin-tō were moved, for example, to inside Buddhist temples or even to private houses to be protected, there are many remaining along historical roads as well. There are also well maintained Kōshin-dō   , built in respect for the Kōshin, sometimes attached to Buddhist temples, or otherwise in stand-alone.

Deities and customs

It is believed that Kōshin belief had arrived in Japan at the latest by the Heian period, and was adopted only by the aristocracy in the beginning. The most ancient custom is that of staying awake one special night every sixty days. It is called Kōshin-Machi  ( Kōshin Waiting). During the early years this custom became a kind of overnight festivity or party.

The main Kōshin belief that survived from an original complex faith, is the concept that three worms, called Sanshi,   live in everyone's body. The Sanshi keep track of the good deeds and particularly the bad deeds of the person they inhabit. On the night called Kōshin-Machi (which happens each 60 days), while the person sleeps, the sanshis leave the body and go to Ten-Tei  , the Heavenly god, to report about the deeds of that person. Ten-Tei will then decide to punish bad people making them ill, shortening their time alive and in extreme cases putting an end to their lives. Believers of Kōshin will try to live a life without bad deeds, but those who have reason to fear will try to stay awake during Kōshin nights, as the only way to prevent the Sanshi from leaving the body and reporting to Ten-Tei.

In the Edo period, Kōshin-Machi became more popular in other levels of society and with commoners, and the festivities took more the character of a belief. It was at that time that deities started to appear within the faith. One was Shōmen-Kongō, a fearsome blue faced deity with many arms.

Shōmen-Kongō became Kōshin-san when people expected this demon to make the Sanshis themselves ill and prevent them going to Ten-Tei. Shōmen-Kongō is not really a god but a demon who can send illnesses.

Three monkeys covering eyes, mouth and ears with their hands are the best known symbols of Kōshin faith. They are Mizaru (not see), Iwazaru (not say) and Kikazaru (not hear). It is not very clear why the three monkeys became part of Kōshin belief, but is assumed that it is because like the monkeys, the Sanshis and Ten-Tei are not to see, hear, or tell the bad deeds of a person.

Statues of Shōmen-Kongō with the three monkeys have existed in temples and shrines since the Edo era. Sometimes carved stones called Kōshin-tō were placed around a dwelling for protection. Such stones can present diverse forms, from having only Chinese characters (kanji) to including a depiction of Shōmen- Kongō with one, two or three monkeys.

Other custom of the Kōshin belief are the use of paper scrolls also showing Kōshin-san and the monkeys which are displayed on Kōshin-machi, the Kōshin night. Those who keep this tradition invite neighbours, friends and relatives and sit in front of a provisory altar which has a bowl of rice, soup, seasonal fruit, flowers, candles and incense sticks. They also hang scrolls with pictures of Shōmen-Kongō. Everyone will try to stay awake through the whole night.