Mereological Anti-Realism in Sinitic Madhyamaka Buddhism

Do composites made up of multiple parts have an identity which is distinct from that of their parts in relation? Or, are composites nothing more than assemblages of parts? Take, for instance, a small red rubber ball. If, as a composite made up of bits of rubber that have been dyed red and shaped into a sphere, the ball has properties which are distinct from those of these parts, then these properties cannot include being red, being spherical, nor being elastic. The Aristotelian doctrine, deeply formative to the historical development of Western philosophy, maintaining the independence of substances as bearers of properties with identities that are distinct from those of their properties, faces the thorny problem of how to account for the existence of bare substrata – i.e., intangible substances lacking any distinguishing properties. Any theory postulating composites as forms of substance whose existence cannot be reduced to that of their parts in relation, must wrestle with the problem of how to individuate composite substances, when their identity is considered to be separate and distinct from the properties exhibited by the collection of their parts.

The question of whether composites are distinct from, or identical with, their parts in relation, is not only a transhistorical philosophical problem continuously debated throughout the history of Western philosophy, but also a perennial topic of dispute between Buddhists and their Brāhmaṇical interlocutors in the classical South Asian context. Since the inception of the Buddhist tradition in ancient South Asia, Buddhist thinkers have formulated their doctrines in constant opposition to the exponents of Brāhmaṇical traditions, their primary religious competitors and most prominent critics. Carrying on the venerable Buddhist tradition of anti-Brāhmaṇical polemics originating in classical South Asia, Jizang’s engagement with the long-simmering Buddho-Brāhmaṇical debate swirling around the existence of composites as distinct from, or identical with, their parts is fundamentally motivated by his doctrinal commitments to core Mahāyāna Buddhist tenets. Jizang’s foray into the broader Buddho-Brāhmaṇical debate concerning the intrinsic reality/unreality of composites is particularly distinctive in that it pits the mereological anti-realist doctrine found within the Madhyamaka tradition of Mahāyāna Buddhism, against a realist Brāhmaṇical opponent.

Even for scholars not particularly well-versed in the Buddhist philosophical traditions, Jizang’s anti-realist arguments against the intrinsic reality of composites have relevance in that they offer a coherent account of the nature and existence of composites, without recourse to bare substrata as the underlying bearers of properties whose being involves no properties. This account is broadly anti-substantialist in character in that it rejects the notion of an empirically inaccessible property-possessor and claims that composites are clusters of empirically evident properties supporting various causal capabilities. Jizang, like modern mereological anti-realists, maintains that the idea of composites as substrata in which properties reside is incoherent. Jizang argues that composites are constructed by the mind which bundles together various properties and labels their collection as a single thing. The properties that are clustered together are ultimately not “parts” of any overarching and singular thing.

Jizang’s argumentation for the mereological anti-realist position deeply ensconced in Madhyamaka Buddhism takes pains to repudiate both Abhidharma mereological reductionism, and the substantialist view espoused by the theorists of the Brāhmaṇical Vaiśeṣika tradition, who originated a philosophically rigorous account of composites as complex forms of “substance” (dravya; tuoluobiao陀羅驃) with independent identities distinct from the properties of their parts in relation. Drawing from the representation of their metaphysical doctrines found in the treatises of Nāgārjuna and Āryaveda, itself based upon these Mādhyamika luminaries’ appropriation of the ancient Vaiśeṣikasūtra and its early commentaries, Jizang’s anti-Brāhmaṇical polemics target the Vaiśeṣika mereological realist doctrine maintaining the real existence of composite substances (avayavidravya). The Vaiśeṣika mereological realists conceive of composite substances as bearing an intrinsic nature (svabhāva, svarūpa) distinct and independent of their most fundamental parts which take the form of ontological simples (such as atoms). The Vaiśeṣika realist doctrine postulates that the distinctness of composite substances, both from their constituent parts, and from other composites, is part and parcel of the intrinsic nature which makes them intrinsically real entities. 

The characterization of composite substances as possessing intrinsic nature becomes a focal point of Jizang’s critique of Vaiśeṣika mereological realism. Jizang will contend that the Vaiśeṣika theorists erroneously attribute an ultimately real nature to composites which borrow their nature from their constituent parts. Absent any essential and intrinsic nature, the existence of composites reduces down to that of their parts in relation. Jizang’s arguments against the Vaiśeṣika interlocutor endeavor to refute the premise that composites possess intrinsic nature in order to dismantle the mereological realist doctrinal claim that composites are distinct from mere aggregates of parts. 

The systematic inquiry into the nature and existence of wholes developed by Jizang does not rely on the Ābhidharmika realist doctrinal premise of fundamentally real parts upon which composites are mentally constructed. For Jizang, both composites and the parts which constitute them are mere “conceptual fictions” (prajñapti; jiaming假名) whose “conventional existence” (saṃvṛtisat; shisu you世俗有) depends upon the interests and cognitive limitations of the human beings who find them to be useful in navigating the world. Thus, Jizang can account for the causal efficacy of both wholes and parts without attributing to them an ultimately real nature that is the way it is, no matter what. In short, Jizang’s arguments that neither wholes nor parts are ultimately real establish for his tradition of Sinitic Madhyamaka Buddhism the mereological anti-realist doctrine that both wholes and parts are simply convenient labels that do not designate anything with intrinsic reality in and of itself. While he denies that they possess intrinsic nature that is independent of the process of conceptual construction, Jizang avoids metaphysical nihilism by affirming that both composites and their constituent parts are conventionally real in that they can fulfill causal functions in the world.