When faced with skeptical interlocutors, Gaṅgeśa and Descartes took distinct paths in disproving their opposition. While Descartes rejects sense perception alone on the basis that the senses may be misled, Gaṅgeśa’s system not only acknowledges it as a proper source of knowledge but defends it even in cases where perceptions may be later discovered to be false. At first glance, their epistemic ideologies seem to exist in conflict with each other due to their respective degrees of belief in the validity of sense perception in the acquisition of knowledge. However, their views align somewhat in their agreement on the necessity of a mechanism by which knowledge is certified to be true, in how both of their ideologies necessitate further cognitive action to determine whether a perception is an instance of true knowledge, and in their reliance on God for certifying knowledge.
What is Knowledge?
Gaṅgeśa identifies the four sources of true knowledge to be perception, inference, comparison, and testimony in the Tattva-cintā-maṇi. His Navya Nyāya belief system presumes that awarenesses and experiences are true knowledge, but can be on occasion false or not produced by a genuine source of knowledge. And though presentations through any of the sources are naturally and automatically taken to be true, he believes that one must certify whether a cognition is knowledge through inferential source identification, either from the indicative signs of genuine sources or recognizing the signs of pseudo-sources. (Phillips, 2020)
In the Meditations, Descartes sets out to address the problem of having false beliefs, hoping to find a way to ensure he only has true beliefs and that scientific inquiry leads only to the truth as well (Descartes & Cress, 1993). Descartes’s strategy for defeating his skeptic concerns began by doubting the truth of everything- even the fundamental process of reasoning itself. He recognizes that his senses and reasoning may be deceiving him now since they have led him astray before, or that his mental states may be the result of an evil demon deceiving him. Thereby, he doubts all beliefs from his senses and his faculty of reasoning, since those beliefs could be false. Descartes’s skepticism arises from a place of uncertainty; what we believe might be false, so our beliefs can’t be knowledge. Descartes believed that only the methodical application of reason alone could determine knowledge and that this could be done independently of the senses. If any piece of knowledge could be true under such skepticism, then it must be truly indubitable and a certain foundation for further knowledge.
In contrast with Descartes’ high standard for knowledge, the Nyāya doctrine purports that knowledge itself and other mental phenomena are real and knowable intersubjectively and readily accepts the idea of fallibilism (Phillips, 2020). In response to skepticism about the veracity of inference when there is potential for future counter-knowledge, Gaṅgeśa contends that it may be true that repeated observation is insufficient to guarantee knowledge. However, even though the possibility of a counterexample to one’s knowledge cannot be eliminated, Gaṅgeśa maintains that absolute freedom from doubt is not required for knowledge. This completely flies in the face of Descartes’s skepticism, but Gaṅgeśa’s refutation of skeptical concerns is essentially based on a deep valuation of pragmatism. For him, considerations reinforce our natural tendency to take the deliverances of the sources to be true. When there is doubt, people do not exhibit regular patterns of behavior. And when there is a regular pattern, doubt does not occur. In general, humans regularly make judgments and act based on what they perceive, so Gaṅgeśa believes that meaningful doubt can be done away with until counter-knowledge is presented.
How is Knowledge Certified?
Descartes’ conception of knowledge does not admit any potential falsity, so after attempting to undermine all of our beliefs, Descartes identifies that the very act of thought proves his existence, because one cannot possibly think without existing (Descartes & Cress, 1993). Descartes then proposes that the Cogito argument is undeniably true because it is clear and distinct. For him, clarity of a belief means that we can never think without believing it to be true, and distinctness means that the mind has an unclouded vision of what is most essential about it. These qualities become the standard against which all other beliefs can be evaluated. For Descartes, God’s existence verifies the clarity-and-distinctness rule, and from that, he argues that a truthful, good God would not allow us to be deceived when we understand objects clearly and distinctly, and so God would not allow us to routinely have false beliefs. According to Descartes, his reasoning establishes that, what he originally doubted, he knows, with certainty. He thereby defeats the skeptical concerns that he considered earlier (Hatfield, 2014).
Similar to Descartes’ foundation of knowledge, the Nyāya tradition maintains that obeying the Vedic commands, essentially God’s grace, is essential for obtaining true knowledge (Candradhara, 2016), however, it is less overtly present in the Gaṅgeśa’s process for certification of knowledge. Rather, God acts as an unstated assumption to justify his claims (Phillips, 2020). Certification for Gaṅgeśa comes by way of inference and determining that an awareness-generating process is a factively conceived perception. There are also different signs whereby one knows that an instance of inferential knowledge is both true and produced in the right way. These signs act similarly to Descartes’ ideas of clarity and distinctness, since the merits/ flaws of any piece of knowledge point towards the existence or non-existence of contradictions when further inference based on said knowledge occurs. However, in cases of awarenesses that are later proven false, Gaṅgeśa asserts that it is not actually the work of the knowledge sources, but imitations of them. The knowledge sources themselves are inerrant and are always able to be certified unless they are faced with some knowledge defeater that reveals a previously believed source of knowledge to be a pseudo-source. Conceptually, this is similar to Descartes’ argument that when our ideas are false it is because of our capacity as finite substances, as it blames our misidentification of a source of knowledge. Gaṅgeśa says there may also be times when we encounter a situation in which our cognitions are blocked. For example, if you are aware that you are on some sort of hallucinogenic drug and think your refrigerator is trying to talk to you. You know your refrigerator is actually probably not trying to talk to you because that would be strange, so your perception is defeated. In such cases, our awarenesses are never triggered because we already have knowledge that would block certain false awarenesses, and thereby save the presumption of awarenesses as knowledge.
Closing Ideological Differences:
In comparing Gaṅgeśa and Descartes’ responses to skepticism, we find two vastly different methods of bringing about certainty. Descartes’ approach was to start from a place of complete skepticism and ascertain true knowledge through a priori reasoning. For Descartes, knowledge requires complete certainty. Gaṅgeśa takes a different approach to affirming the reality of our sense experiences. The standard for valid knowledge for him is that sense perceptions are regarded as true unless they are proven to be false, and perception will remain a valid means of knowledge since we can later certify or reject them based on inference. Additionally, both philosophers rely on the concept of God as a means of certifying one’s knowledge: Descartes uses God to justify ideas with his clarity and distinctness and Nyāyaikas use the Vedas as an underpinning guide that helps a person perform their duties. Ultimately, the greatest discrepancy between their views resides in the fact that Gaṅgeśa accepts that knowledge can be fallible, while Descartes does not. Gaṅgeśa’s utility of knowledge for humans is for practical applications; the world and truths about it exist as something we interpret and use to go about life, nothing over and above that. Descartes believed that human knowledge should be essentially tied to truth, and while we may err as finite beings, for him, this doesn’t overtake the existence of truth in the world.
References
Descartes René, & Cress, D. A. (1993). Meditations on first philosophy: In which the existence of god and the distinction of the soul from the body are demonstrated. Hackett Publishing Company.
Hatfield, G. (2014, January 16). René Descartes. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved November 16, 2022, from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/
Phillips, S. (2020, June 18). Gaṅgeśa. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved November 16, 2022, from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/gangesa/#HowKnowKnow
Candradhara, S (2016). A critical survey of Indian philosophy. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited.