Omniscience in Indian thought---some preliminary thoughts

Dear readers, I have not been contributing much in the last months, since I focused almost exclusively on South Asian philosophy, which is not the main interest of most of you. Nonetheless, I thought of offering you a glance of a topic I worked on. I would be very grateful to read comments, criticisms and even just American-European parallel and constrasting views. Thus, comments are more than welcome! Please let me also know what just sounds crazy (so that I can see what I have not been able to convey ---Sanskrit authors are not crazier than other human beings).

"Omniscience'' (sārvajñya) assumes many different meanings in the various Indian philosophies. The understanding possibly most common in European and Anglo-American thought, which sees omniscience as including the knowledge of any possible thing in the past, present and future, is neither the only, nor the most common interpretation of omniscience.

Why is the topic of omniscience relevant in Indian philosophy? Because of at least two concurring reasons. On the one hand, for schools like Buddhism and Jainism, it is a question of religious authority. Ascribing omniscience to the founders of the school was a way to ground the validity of their teachings. Slightly similar is the situation of theistic schools ascribing omniscience to God, as a way to ground His ability to organise the world in the best possible way. On the other hand, for other schools the idea of omniscience was initially connected with the the ṛṣis and with the result of yogic or other ascetic practices. As for the former case, ṛṣis are believed by most schools to have directly seen the Vedas in a mythical past and are therefore endowed with a superhuman ability to see also sounds. In the latter case, omniscience is conceptually not different from aṇimā 'the faculty to become as small as an atom' and other special powers of yogins (see Pātañjala Yogaśāstra, book 3).

Range of application of the omni- in omniscience
Jaina authors tend to construe omniscience as the knowledge of all possible things, and stress the innate potentiality of omniscience as being open to everybody, but God (given that they don't believe in an absolute ultimate God). Omniscience is for them the actual and simultaneous knowledge of all states of affairs.

Different Buddhist authors held widely different opinions about the topic of omniscience and were in general more interested in the ethical impact of one's knowledge. The Theravāda commentator Buddhaghosa (who lived in Śrī Laṅka in the 5th c. and wrote or systematised commentaries on the Buddhist Pāli canon) describes the Buddha's omniscience not as the simultaneous knowledge of all things at the same time, but as his possibility to know without any obstacle whatever he fixed his attention to. In other words, the Buddha would know everything about person X as soon as he tried, but he would not know at the same time anything about all possible people and states of affairs. In this sense, the Buddha's omniscience has to do with capacity, not with actualisation. Buddhaghosa could in this way avoid paradoxes such as way would an omniscient Buddha try to beg for food at houses where no one is home (as it happens in some Suttas of the Pāli Buddhist Canon).

Later Buddhist authors such as Dharmakīrti would suggest that the Buddha does not know any possible thing, including irrelevant things. He rather knows whatever is relevant (in Sanskrit terms, he is upayuktasarvajñā 'knowing all that is useful [for liberation]', not sarvasarvajña 'knowing every single thing'). In this sense, the omni- in omniscience (in Sanskrit: the sarva- in sarvajña) is understood in a selective way, just like the omni- in omnivore, which does not mean that one eats books or musical tunes. The Buddha knows all that is relevant for one's salvation, that is, pre-eminently, the four noble truths. He does not need to know trivial things, such as the number of insects on a given termite-hill (so Dharmakīrti, PV 2.30--31). In this way, Buddhist authors could harmonise omniscience with their anti-realism, since the Buddha did not need, in order to be omniscient, to know also ultimately unreal entities, such as composite wholes (see McClintock2000).

Somewhat similarly, Advaita Vedānta authors stressed the identity of omniscience with complete knowledge of what is relevant, namely the only reality which is not illusory, the brahman. In this sense, omniscience has a very limited range of application, and yet covers whatever is not illusory. There are no left-overs which are ultimately real and yet not known.

A further problem connected with the scope of omniscience regards the question of whether an omniscient being also knows all erroneous beliefs. At first sight it might seem that if she does not, she is not completely omniscient and that if she does, she shares also erroneous beliefs, which seems paradoxical. A possible way out consists in claiming that she knows all erroneous beliefs but she attributes them to us. In other words, she knows that I do not know about the place and year of birth of Kumārila, but still correctly knows where and when he was born. Is this solution satisfactorily? Possibly, although this kind of omniscience would lack the first person grasp on how it feels to not know that X or to hold a false belief.

A last problem regards specifically God's omniscience: Does God also knows what it is to be in pain? If He does not, He seems to be not omniscient. If He does, He is no longer untouched by sufferance (duḥkha), as claimed in Nyāya and Yoga. In other words, a God like the one of South Asian rational theology (see below) cannot be said to have experience of duḥkha. His knowledge would nonetheless not be incomplete because duḥkha would be conceived as just a negative entity (the absence of pleasure), which does not need to be separately known. God would be omniscient insofar as He knows all states of affairs, without needing to know also their corresponding absences. By contrast, God as conceived in theistic Vedānta (see below the lines on Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta) can even be said to have experience of duḥkha, insofar as He is the inner controller of each conscious being and shares therefore their experience from within.

Can human beings achieve omniscience?
Most schools accepting omniscience deem that human beings could achieve it, although only with much effort. For instance, the Yogasūtra 3.16--55 discusses the ability of yogins to see the past and the future, to know other people's minds and to see objects which are unaccessible to sight, because they are too small or too distant etc. These elements are found again in the Padārthadharmasaṅgraha (the first commentary on the Vaiśeṣikasūtra, see Isaacson 1993) and are presupposed by the Nyāya and the Pratyabhijñā discussions.

In this sense, omniscience is usually considered the result of yogipratyakṣa `intellectual intuition', the immediate grasp of whatever content without any conceptual intermediation. Yogipratyakṣa needs to be direct, since inference and the other instruments of knowledge are known to ultimately depend on perceptual data and perception cannot grasp neither past nor future things (nor any other thing which is remote in space or because of other hindering conditions, such as other people's minds), so that any cognition ranging beyond perceptual data (and, a fortiori, omniscience) needs to be based on a direct and independent access to such things.

It is not by chance that yogipratyakṣa literally means `the perception of the yogin', since it was often first mentioned in connection with the special powers which yogins alone are said to be able to acquire. However, the condition of a yogin is, unlike that of a ṛṣi, not beyond human reach. Yogins are considered to be a possible development among special but not abnormal human beings.

But why should omniscience be possible at all? Various authors, possibly starting with Yogasūtra 1.25 develop various arguments, the most well-known of which are: 1. Knowledge is known to be liable to increase. Therefore, it must reach its outmost degree at a certain point, like everything that increases. 2. Knowledge is increased by exercise, like any other faculty and this increase is limitless and can reach omniscience. The stock example for this possibility are gemmologists, who can directly perceive features of a gem normal people would not be able to see, due to their repeated practice. 3. Our common experience attests of such cases, for instance when a person senses that something will happen to a person dear to her heart.

God's omniscience
Nyāya authors accept the existence of a God, usually referred to as Īśvara, who can be proved to exist, and develop on this basis a rational theology which accepts His omniscience and omnipotence. They explain that Īśvara `Lord' needs to be omniscient in order to deploy His functions, which include the re-arrangement of the world after each periodic destruction and the re-assignment of their karman to each living being. Accordingly, God's omniscience needs to be understood in a robust sense as the knowledge of all present, past and future states of affairs and as completely actualised (against some Buddhist conceptions discussed above). This, however, entails some problem, insofar as the Lord's knowledge needs to be at any time complete and is in this sense atemporal. But this seems to mean that (a) there is no space for human free will and (b) the Lord knows the world outside of time. He knows, in other words, all states of affairs simultaneously and independent of time. This mirror-like omniscience has been criticised by authors of the Buddhist epistemological school (see Moriyama 2014 and forthcoming).

Śaiva authors, especially of the Pratyabhijñā school, accept both omniscience of yogins and of the Lord/Īśvara. The first one is often referred to in discussions aiming at establishing the omnipresent nature of the Lord as the supreme subject. In fact, how could memory be possible, if there were not a single subjectivity connecting events from a subjective point of view? And how could knowledge be possible, if there were not a fundamental similarity of nature between knower and known things, which does betrays its partaking to the nature of the absolute subject? The Nyāya account of a plurality of subjectivity is rejected insofar as it clashes with cases like the yogins' ability to access other minds. The yogin, explain Pratyabhijñā authors, knows other minds from within, as the subject of their thoughts, and does not take other minds as an object to be known, since this knowledge would not be a real knowledge of the other mind, which is intrinsically subjective and cannot be reduced to an object. This ability of the yogin depends on the fact that he has recognised his identity with the Lord and can therefore access any mind.
The Lord, as the single all-pervading subject, is in fact de facto omniscient and liberation consists in recognising one's identity with Him.

Vedāntic authors conceive of God as brahman, and therefore as the only absolute reality. In this sense, the brahman is not an additional entity in the world, and the latter only exists because of Him (Dvaita Vedānta), in Him (Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta) or does not exist ultimately (Advaita Vedānta). Knowledge is considered in Vedāntic school to be a substance. Advaita Vedāntins resolve the duality which would emerge out of the assumption of brahman and knowledge by stating that brahman consists of cit `consciousness'. This is, as already hinted at above, unintentional, since any content would include duality.

Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta authors conceive of God as brahman and at the same time as a personal God. He is therefore the material cause of the world, which is conceived by Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedāntins to exist only as a specification of Him. Like in the case of Advaita Vedānta, knowledge is conceived as a substance. Unlike in Advaita, knowledge is intentional, and has as its content the whole world. The reality of the world is thus guaranteed by its being a specification of the brahman and by its being a content of His knowledge. At the same time, the brahman is conceived of as a personal God, which means that the two above mentioned ways of relating to the world are not mutually exclusive (as it happens to be the case in Spinoza's pantheism). Rather, knowledge is connected to Him as His characteristic. It is not just one characteristic among many, nor is it connected to the Lord as a quality to its substrate. By contrast, Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta authors describe the relation between God and His knowledge as one of indissolubility. The two cannot be experienced the one without the other and, although knowledge is ultimately a substance, it behaves as a characteristic of Him (it is therefore called dharmabhūtajñāna 'cognition [behaving] like a characteristic').

Against omniscience
Basing on the same elements, the authors of the Mīmāṃsā elements altogether deny the possibility of omniscience. They explain that omniscience contradicts our experience, where knowledge always increases but never reaches on outmost limit. Against the argument of repeated exercise, they observe that exercise does not need to be able to reach whatever result. For instance, no matter how much one exercises, one will never be able to jump until the moon. Nor will one's smell be able to perceive sounds, even after an intense training. Thus, there are intrinsic boundaries to each faculty, including one's intellect, which cannot directly grasp things, without the mediation of perception, inference and the other instruments of knowledge.
Moreover, no one could judge the omniscience of someone else. Thus, claim the Mīmāṃsā authors, the accounts about the Buddha's omniscience cannot be trustworthy, since no one but an omniscient can vouch for someone else's omniscience. For the same reasons, Mīmāṃsā authors also refute the special powers of ṛṣis and refute the idea of such a mythical past in which they would have seen the Vedas.

Why do Mīmāṃsakas insist so much on the impossibility of omniscience? From an internal and argumentative perspective, because of their commitment to common experience, which should not be contradicted without a valid reason. From an external and socio-philosophical perspective, because their defence of the Veda depends on its uniqueness as instrument of knowledge for knowing dharma `duty'. It is clear that no other human instrument of knowledge could compete with the Veda, since all human instruments of knowledge can only grasp what there is and not what ought to be. However, if there were an omniscient human or divine being, then they could reasonably compete with the Veda and possibly even falsify it.

The Buddhist arguments against omniscience (see Moriyama 2014 and Moriyama forthcoming) are different, insofar as they object only against the Lord's omniscience, but accept the Buddha's one. The difference lies in the fact that the Buddha became omniscient, whereas the Lord is allegedly permanently omniscient. Hence, only in the case of the Lord's omniscience one encounter paradoxes such as the ones seen above and regarding the incompatibility of temporality and omniscience.

Comments

[Marcus Arvan]

Hi Elisa: So nice to see a new post by you! I'm a bit embarrassed to admit this, but I'd never given much thought to the notion of omniscience--and it never really occurred to me that there might be such substantially different ways to understand it! So thanks so much for sharing this - it really gave me a lot to think about.

I guess I'll start with one question on a topic you discuss in this case that I'm more familiar with: free will. You write:

"They explain that Īśvara `Lord' needs to be omniscient in order to deploy His functions, which include the re-arrangement of the world after each periodic destruction and the re-assignment of their karman to each living being. Accordingly, God's omniscience needs to be understood in a robust sense as the knowledge of all present, past and future states of affairs and as completely actualised (against some Buddhist conceptions discussed above). This, however, entails some problem, insofar as the Lord's knowledge needs to be at any time complete and is in this sense atemporal. But this seems to mean that (a) there is no space for human free will and (b) the Lord knows the world outside of time."

I guess I'm curious why, in this tradition, the Lord needs to know all states of affairs--past, present, and future--to properly express His functions. Why not think that the Lord in some sense sees that it is good to leave the future *open* to creatures with free will, such that the future is not decided in advance (and such that full omniscience would be limited to the past and present, as well as the parts of the future not affected by free will)? Is the problem supposed to be the that, in that case, God would not be able to predict how free choice would be used--and so God could not have grounds for deciding that free will would be *good* on balance (viz. God's omnibenevolent nature)?

[Elisa Freschi]

Thanks for engaging, Marcus. (By the way, it is all but normal that you did not think a lot about omniscience if you never worked on philosophy of religion, given that in European and Angloamerican philosophy this is usually the only field in which it plays a role).

As for your question, it has to do with one's conception of God (about which you might want to check this post: http://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2016/11/analytical-philosophy-of-religion-with-indian-categories.html). Basically, if you think of God as a perfect being, then you are very much likely to add that He is unchanging over time (because how could He have been perfect at time t1 and at time t2 if at time t1 He lacked something, namely the characteristic He acquired at time t2?). But if He is unchanging over time, He cannot acquire new knowledge, He must be omniscient ab initio, which means that He must have known forever all possible states of affairs, which should therefore be all simultaneously present in His mind. This, in turn, leads to problems relative to knowledge and temporality.

Hope this is clear enough!

[Marcus Arvan]

Interesting. I sort of see why one might think a perfect God must be unchanging--but I'm not quite convinced.

For let's suppose that a perfect God (qua omnibenevolence) has sufficient reason to give human beings free will. Then let's suppose that genuine free will requires an "open future", such that it is literally indeterminate what choice I will make before I make it. This seems to me fully compatible with God's other supposed perfections (omnipotence, omniscience, etc.), since in that case there would be nothing for God to *know* about my future choices until they have been made. In which case, if God's perfection is defined in terms of the 3 O's (omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence), it would seem to be coherent to suppose that a perfect God is changing (having complete knowledge of every fact there is to know--facts which are constantly changing/coming into existence).

I've also always been a bit puzzled by the idea of an "unchanging" God for other reasons (principally, my concern being that it seems to me to cohere poorly with the notion--embedded in many traditions--of God as a kind of living agent, one who judges human beings, commands them, etc.).

However, I'm not particularly well-versed in philosophy of religion, so I'm sure there's a lot I'm missing!

[Elisa Freschi]

Thanks, Marcus. The problem is that you are operating with two distinct notions of God, one of a God as person (who can choose a suboptimal state of affairs, like not being completely omniscient) in order to benefit people He loves (let us call this the Hebrew option) and the other of God as perfect being (like in Aristotle, let us call this the Greek one). The latter is the consistent output of ontological and metaphysical arguments (like Aristotle's ones, but think also of Spinoza or Leibniz), but cannot choose to be different than what He is.
Many comparable debates took case in Islamic philosophy between the God of philosophers and the God of Islam.

I see from your note about a ''God as a kind of living agent, one who judges human beings, commands them, etc.'' that you (in this comment, I am not arguing about your overall beliefs!) might be inclined to privilege the ''Hebrew'' over the ''Greek'' God, but this leaves you with the very difficult problem of how to justify His existence, for metaphysical claims only lead to some sort of ''Greek'' God. Nor could it be otherwise, since the only thing you can prove inferentially (e.g., by inferring a cause out of its effect) is a rational and not-varying cause, not a whimsical one who might have done x or y.

Last, let me add that the conflation of the two notions of God is widely found in many Christian thinkers, who indeed needed to find place for two different traditions (the ''Hebrew" and the "Greek" one).