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Collection: Part 11 · VIDEHA MITHILA MAITHILI DISCUSSION CRITICISM SERIES PART 11
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0:27–0:33single conclusion before he would let it prove that fire causes smoke or that a maker stands
0:33–0:39behind the world tested the mortar first what exactly is a valid piece of knowledge. What
0:39–0:46exactly does it mean for one thing to be invariably tied to another? He would not move an inch until
0:46–0:53the definition itself could survive every attack he could throw at it, including his own. He tells
0:53–0:59us plainly in his own opening verses, who he built this fortress against, the Buddhist
0:59–1:05logicians of his day, who denied an unseen maker of the world as confidently as they denied
1:05–1:11an unseen self. Tonight one of them has come to test the fortress in person. Watch how
1:11–1:16Gangesha answers him, not by shouting loud up but by defining more precisely than a
1:16–1:21new opponent thought possible, and then more than once precisely enough to catch
1:21–1:29his own first attempt in the same net. Exit. Act 1. The Inattentive Scholar.
1:29–1:38Geoletawon E45GES acutor is seated, a lamp burning beside him. The MIMacron MAMacron
1:38–1:45Letawon E43S acaya and the border are both present. Every author who begins a work performs in a
1:45–1:50vocation wishing the work to be completed. I have done the same tonight before I ask anyone
1:50–1:55in this hall to accept a harder claim, let me test the easiest one first to does an invocation
1:55–2:00actually cause anything at all. A fair place to start and I will not let you pass it cheaply.
2:00–2:04If invocation causes completion, the two should rise and fall together present when the work
2:04–2:09is finished absent when it fails. But I can name your scholar in this very tradition,
2:09–2:13Udayana himself, by report, in an inattentive hour, it completed the Kurenevali without
2:13–2:17troubling to perform any invocation worth the name. There is your counter instance.
2:17–2:21the rule breaks in the very house that claims to have invented it.
2:21–2:27Keep that example closed, friend. Because I intend to use it against you before this act is finished.
2:27–2:31Not merely answer it, but let me first grant you the full force of your objection.
2:31–2:36Honestly stated, if a cause and its effect are truly bound, the effect should never
2:36–2:40appear without it, nor the cause without eventually producing it. You the orner's
2:40–2:46work was completed, is invocation. On your account was absent or careless. On the surface,
2:46–2:51You have shown a deviation, and deviation is fatal to any claim to causal law.
2:51–2:52Then you can see the point.
2:52–2:56I can see the appearance of the point, which is a different concession entirely.
2:56–3:01Consider what an invocation is actually said to produce, not the completion itself, directly,
3:01–3:06as though chanting a verse belayed bricks, but the removal of an obstacle that would otherwise
3:06–3:12have interrupted the work. A worldly task, once its obstacles are cleared, completes itself by
3:12–3:17By worldly means skill, materials, sustained effort, now ask of your inattentive scholar
3:17–3:18was his work.
3:18–3:24On that particular day, ever actually obstructed, if no obstacle stood in his path to begin
3:24–3:28with, there was nothing for an invocation to remove, and its absence proves nothing
3:28–3:29at all.
3:29–3:32Aloxmith's absence does not deviate from the rule that Aloxmith's open locks on
3:32–3:35a day when no door happened to be locked.
3:35–3:37A convenient rescue.
3:37–3:41How would you ever know in advance whether an obstacle was lying in wait or not?
3:41–3:46made your causal law intestable it now explains success and failure equally which is another way
3:46–3:51of saying it explains nothing. Not intestable only like most causal claims worth having
3:52–3:57tied to a condition rather than announced as unconditional fire causes smoke only where the
3:57–4:03fuel is wet enough to smolder dry fuel burns clean and no one calls that a deviation in the
4:03–4:08law connecting fire and smoke you are asking me to abandon a rule because it is a condition
4:08–4:13attached when every rule either of us has ever relied on, from the kitchen to this hall,
4:13–4:15carries the same kind of condition.
4:15–4:21Then let me press you from my own side, Gengeshev, since the border, and I do not usually stand
4:21–4:26on the same ground. Grant that invocation removes obstacles rather than manufacturing
4:26–4:33completion directly. Still, how is that removal known, if not by the very Vedic injunction
4:33–4:38that first taught cultivated persons to perform it before an undertaking.
4:38–4:43Strip away scriptural authority, and your causal chain has no first link.
4:43–4:44I will not strip it away.
4:44–4:46I never propose to.
4:46–4:51Revelation tells us the general rule, ordinary observation of cultivated persons, generation
4:51–4:57after generation, performing this act before this kind of task, confirms that the rule
4:57–4:58is no idle poetry.
4:58–5:04the two agree, as I do hear a cause may be trusted precisely as we trust any cause established
5:04–5:10by steady, repeated, unexplained by coincidence, correlation, the very method, border, that
5:10–5:15you yourself use every time you infer fire from smoke without demanding to see the fire
5:15–5:16directly.
5:16–5:17You have kept your promise, Akaria.
5:17–5:20You did use my own example against me in the end.
5:20–5:23And I will keep making that same promise all evening.
5:23–5:26I never asked you to accept an unseen cause on faith.
5:26–5:32I ask only that you extend to my unseen causes the same courtesy of inference you already extend,
5:32–5:34without a second thought, to your own.
5:34–5:36Act 2.
5:36–5:38The Shell that was never silver.
5:38–5:43A servant places a shell on the low table beside the jar.
5:43–5:48G a letter 1e45ge'-esecute a gestures toward it.
5:48–5:53Before we build anything further, we must agree what we mean by true cognition in
5:53–5:57the first place, not what is true, but what makes a cognition true, as opposed to merely
5:57–5:58occurring.
5:58–6:03Here is my first attempt at cognition is valid, when it presents a property exactly
6:03–6:05where the property actually exists.
6:05–6:07I see silver, and silver is there, valid.
6:07–6:11I see silver in this shell, and silver is not there, invalid.
6:11–6:15That sounds almost too simple to need saying Akara.
6:15–6:18Everything simple in this science has already survived an ambush, or it would not be
6:18–6:20standing here simple in front of you.
6:20–6:24Watch the Amish now take the confused cognition.
6:24–6:27Common enough I dust the shell is silver.
6:27–6:29Test my definition against it.
6:29–6:33Honestly the shell component of the cognition, the bare this, is placed correctly since the
6:33–6:35shell truly is there.
6:35–6:38The silver component is placed wrongly since no silver is there.
6:38–6:43One cognition, one sentence, and yet my own definition is simultaneously valid in
6:43–6:46one half and invalid in the other.
6:46–6:49Is that not simply a contradiction in your definition?
6:49–6:50It would be.
6:50–6:55The cognition were forced to be valid or invalid as one indivisible lump, but a cognition of
6:55–6:57this shell silver is not one indivisible cling.
6:57–7:00It has two clings used by a single glance.
7:00–7:05One about this, one about silverness, and each half may be tested against the world
7:05–7:09separately, exactly as a sentence with two clauses may have one clause true and the
7:09–7:13other false without breaking the law of non-contradiction.
7:13–7:15My definition survives.
7:15–7:19Once we are honest about what a compound cognition actually contains.
7:19–7:23Next then the test one step further and see whether it survives me.
7:23–7:27A tree stands before us conjunction with a bird sits at its crown, an absence of the
7:27–7:29same conjunction sits at its root.
7:29–7:34By your definition is the cognition this tree is conjunction valid or invalid?
7:34–7:38You have set the trap cleverly and I will walk into it on purpose because the way
7:38–7:44out is instructive, conjunction, and its absence do not occupy the whole tree indiscriminately.
7:44–7:49One occupies the crown, the other the route, and a cognition properly delimited by
7:49–7:54by which part is being spoken of as neither vague nor self-contradicting, the tree. At
7:54–8:00its crown, S-conjunctioned is true, the tree. At its route, laxative is equally true, only
8:00–8:05a cognition that refused to specify a part would deserve your accusation, and no careful
8:05–8:09speaker leaves a cognition so undressed. You are adding conditions to your definition
8:09–8:14faster than I can raise objections to it. At what point does a definition patch this
8:14–8:17many times stop being a definition and become a confession that the first attempt
8:17–8:18failed.
8:18–8:22When a physician adjusts a splint twice before the bone sets straight, we do not say the
8:22–8:23splint failed.
8:23–8:27We say the physician was honest about the first attempt and skilled enough to correct
8:27–8:30a before trusting a patient's full weight to it.
8:30–8:34I would rather hand you a definition with three patches, each of which has survived
8:34–8:39your best blow, than a single elegant sentence that shatters the moment you lean on it.
8:39–8:42Test it once more, if you have another blow in you.
8:42–8:44One more, then, and it is the sharpest I have.
8:44–8:48A pot freshly made was black before firing and is red after.
8:48–8:52This pot is black was once true and is now false, the very same sentence about the very
8:52–8:57same pot changing its truth with nothing in your definition to explain why.
8:57–9:02Because my definition was never a claim about sentences floating free of time, it was from
9:02–9:03the start.
9:03–9:08A claim about a property residing in a substrate at a given time, exactly as it
9:08–9:09resides in a given part.
9:09–9:15The pot before firing was black remains true forever, unchanged by the kiln.
9:15–9:20This pot now is black was always a different clean, tied to a different moment, and it
9:20–9:25is no defect in a rule that it answers a time index question with a time indexed answer.
9:25–9:26The kiln did not break my definition.
9:26–9:31It only proved that whoever forgets to specify, when was never speaking carefully enough
9:31–9:33to test it in the first place.
9:33–9:36I began to see why this book took a lifetime to write.
9:36–9:40We took a lifetime because every sentence in it is already set across from an opponent
9:40–9:46exactly as sharp as the one sitting across from me tonight that is not a complaint friend
9:46–9:51that is the only kind of sentence worth building anything further upon.
9:51–9:55Act 3 The bond between smoke and fire.
9:55–10:00The lamp beside G1E45G E-Esec is trimmed.
10:00–10:03Smoke curls faintly from its wick.
10:03–10:08are ready now for the engine of every inference either of us will ever make the bond called
10:08–10:14viati the invariable tie between a mark such as smoke and what it proves such as fire without a
10:14–10:20precise account of that tie smoke therefore fire is a habit not a proof here is a first attempt
10:20–10:25to the tie holes when the mark never appears with a thing to be proven as absent simple and I
10:25–10:30think already broken consider a purely affirmative claim with no counter instance available anywhere
10:30–10:36to test. This is nameable because it is noble. Everything noble happens also to be nameable.
10:36–10:41There exists no case anywhere of noble but the nameable in which you're never occurs where absent
10:41–10:46could even be checked. Your definition asks me to search a field that has no far corner to search.
10:46–10:52You have found a genuine depth and I will not paper over it. I abandon the first attempt outright
10:52–10:56here in front of this hall exactly as readily as I abandoned my first definition of valid
10:56–11:02cognition and actidote. Let me try again the tie holds when the mark's own locus is never distinct
11:02–11:07from the locus of what it proves. No better, restate it in terms of smoke and fire occurring in
11:07–11:13different places and the same gap reappears wherever no such different place can even be imagined
11:13–11:19to test it against. Correct again and here is a third attempt, Anna fourth. Each closing
11:19–11:24adore the last one left open until we reach the one I am prepared to defend against every
11:24–11:27Every blow you have already landed, and every one you have not yet thought to try the tithe
11:27–11:33is co-location itself, the mark residing together with what it proves in such a way
11:33–11:37that the mark's own presence is never found in a place determined, however, indirectly
11:37–11:41by the true and complete absence of what it proves.
11:41–11:42Test the mount now.
11:42–11:43Smoke rises from it.
11:43–11:44Fire.
11:44–11:47Somewhere on it is co-located with that very smoke.
11:47–11:52Nowhere is there an absence of firing general standing in the same place as the particular
11:52–11:53smoke.
11:53–11:58holds, stated with no gap left for corner case to hide in.
11:58–12:01You have built four definitions to survive one example.
12:01–12:03Forgive me if I am not yet dozzled.
12:03–12:05Bedazzled by the method, not to count.
12:05–12:09Notice what I did not do at any point in these four attempts, I did not simply assert my
12:09–12:12conclusion and dare you to disprove it.
12:12–12:18I built the weakest version of my own claim first, on purpose, and let you, or twice,
12:18–12:21let myself break it before a stronger version was proposed.
12:21–12:26A wall tested four times by its own mason, and left standing is worth more than a wall
12:26–12:27no one has yet thought to push.
12:27–12:32But, Acarya, how do we ever come to know such a tie in the first place once it is properly
12:32–12:33defined?
12:33–12:35I have seen smoke and fire together in a kitchen.
12:35–12:38I have not seen every fire in the world."
12:38–12:43By repeated observation, joined to the failure of any single case, however hard-sought,
12:43–12:48to break the pattern, and, where repetition alone leaves a shadow of doubt, by further
12:48–12:52support your boost, friend himself half-rants without noticing if smoke could truly arise
12:52–12:58apart from fire, then smokes very dependence on fire. The fact that smoldering fuel, and
12:58–13:04only smoldering fuel, sends up that particular gray column would be an unexplained coincidence
13:04–13:10repeating itself in every kitchen, on every mountain, in every age, with no exception
13:10–13:15ever once observed by anyone, a coincidence that never fails is no longer usefully
13:15–13:19called a coincidence. It has earned a harder name a war.
13:19–13:23Act 4 An agent behind the clay.
13:23–13:27G the lateral knee for 5G, E the executor lifts the
13:27–13:31jar from the table and sets it before the assembly.
13:31–13:35Every argument this evening has been sharpening a single tool. Now I put the tool
13:35–13:39to its hardest use. Earth and the other elements of this world are
13:39–13:43effects produced, arisen, not eternal exactly as this
13:43–13:47is in effect, nothing produced lacks a producer. Therefore Earth and the other elements of a
13:47–13:53major precisely is this drawer has a potter. Before I attack the arguments body I will attack
13:53–13:57its skeleton and I promise you this is not evasion it is the same discipline you demanded of me
13:57–14:02all evening. What precisely is the subject of this inference? You cannot simply say Earth
14:02–14:07and the other elements because no single word denotes each of them individually and no single
14:07–14:12recurring feature unites them into one collective subject either. Name your subject precisely
14:12–14:16in your own idiom, or the inference has nowhere to stand before it has even begun.
14:38–14:40Too narrow and dangerously so.
14:40–14:46So, on that phrasing, a sprout produced certainly yet by no embodied craftsman either falls
14:46–14:49inside your subject as readily as Earth does.
14:49–14:52Prove your conclusion for the sprout instead quietly, and you have proven something, but
14:52–14:54you have not proven the maker of worlds.
14:54–14:58You have only smuggled a small, unremarkable case into the same door and called it the
14:58–14:59same victory.
14:59–15:04A precise objection, and I will not answer it by softening the subject further, which
15:04–15:06is the tempting mistake.
15:06–15:09I will answer it by refusing to let the sprout stand in for Earth at all.
15:09–15:14sprout was never the disputed topic between us tonight. Earth was, in inference, proves
15:14–15:20its conclusion only for the subject actually named and its outset. And if I quietly substitute
15:20–15:25a sprout partway through, I would have committed the very fault I spent an act ago accusing
15:25–15:30you of hiding inside a definition, changing the ground beneath an argument once it grew
15:30–15:36inconvenient. The subject remains bareth, water, fire, air, taken. As the genuinely
15:36–15:39disputed effects they are, the sprout may wait its own evening.
15:39–15:43Then narrow it correctly yourself since you reject my narrowing.
15:43–15:48Say plainly, agency here means being produced by someone possessing direct knowledge of the
15:48–15:50material cause desired to act an effort.
15:50–15:53The very three things a potter has standing before his wheel.
15:53–15:58I very nearly said exactly that a moment ago, and I am glad you forced me to test
15:58–16:00it before I leaned on it.
16:00–16:05Because it collapses under its own weight, you and I'd both already possessed knowledge,
16:05–16:10desire, an effort concerning countless material causes every single day, and yet Earth as a
16:10–16:14whole is plainly not produced by either of us on the strength of that ordinary knowledge
16:14–16:18and desire alone. If agency meant nothing more than the bare presence of those three
16:18–16:23faculties in some person or other, the property would already be satisfied a thousand
16:23–16:27times over by ordinary living beings. In my inference, it would prove nothing it
16:27–16:29did not already have to assume.
16:29–16:33Then you have refuted your own proof faster than I could have managed it myself tonight.
16:33–16:38I have refuted my own careless proof, which is a different achievement than refuting the
16:38–16:42proof itself, and it is exactly the achievement this entire evening has been training the
16:42–16:48Hall to recognize as progress, rather than defeat what the argument actually requires
16:48–16:52as narrower still an agent whose knowledge, desire, and effort were not merely present
16:52–16:57alongside the production of her as mine happened to be present alongside the things
16:57–17:02I never caused, but are the effective cause of it, standing in the same causal relation
17:02–17:07to Earth that the Potter's knowledge, desire, and effort stand to this chore, and not merely
17:07–17:11keeping the same company as Earth's production the way an idol bystander keeps company with
17:11–17:13a fire he did not light.
17:13–17:17And can that narrower agency be found among us, a chorea, some embodied person, however
17:17–17:20hidden, who might satisfy it after all?
17:20–17:24Test it honestly and see where it leads, an embodied agent's effort presupposes
17:24–17:29a body, a body, on every account either of us accepts.
17:29–17:33Is itself among the produced things requiring exactly this kind of maker?
17:33–17:38To explain earth by appeal to some earlier embodied agent is to borrow against a death
17:38–17:40that was never paid.
17:40–17:43Every candidate you offer me from within the world of bodies turns out to owe its own
17:43–17:47existence to the very kind of cause we are trying to locate.
17:47–17:51The chain cannot terminate in an embodied maker without either running back forever,
17:51–17:56unexplained, or stopping at last at a knower, a willer, and an actor whose effort does
17:56–18:01not itself depend on a body already owed to some further maker. That is the whole of
18:01–18:06what I mean by God, and no more not a larger man, but the one linked in the chain of makers
18:06–18:09who does not himself require prior maker to be there at all.
18:09–18:13You have spent an entire evening refusing to let either of us take a shortcut, not through
18:13–18:17my objections, and twice tonight, not through your own first answers either.
18:17–18:21I do not yet call myself persuaded, but I no longer believe as I did when I sat
18:21–18:26down that this conclusion was reached by skipping a single step available to skip.
18:26–18:29What is the only outcome I have ever asked this hall for?
18:29–18:33I did not come here tonight to win an argument by speaking last.
18:33–18:37I came to build one sentence at a time, in front of witnesses sharp enough to catch me
18:37–18:40if any single stone in the wall was set carelessly.
18:40–18:45If the wall stands, it will not be because I raised my voice at the end.
18:45–18:50It will be because nothing in it was left untested by the time the lamp burned down.
18:50–18:51Epilogue.
18:51–18:55Suttered horror returns as the lamp is lowered.
18:55–19:01what this evening was not. It was not louder than the debates that came before it in other
19:01–19:07halls, on other nights, over other books. Gangesha Upadileya's whole method was the opposite
19:07–19:14of volume, state the claim as weekly and precisely as Omistil allows, invite the sharpest blow
19:14–19:20available, and if the blow lands, thank the opponent and rebuild rather than bluster past
19:20–19:26the wound. He called his book a wishful-filling jewel and told us plainly in its own first
19:26–19:31lines whose darkness he meant it to clear, the powerful doubt of the Buddhist logicians
19:31–19:38of his age, who granted no unseen cause behind anything, neither an invocation's power
19:38–19:44nor a world's maker. He did not answer that doubt by refusing to feel its weight.
19:44–19:51He answered it by insisting four times over in one evening alone, that his own first answer
19:51–19:55had not yet earned the right to stand unchallenged.
19:55–20:00Whether that is the same thing as being right, this hall leaves, as it always does, to the
20:00–20:03one who carries the question out the door.
20:03–20:04Exhumed Ones

Plain text

अछि। अछि। अछि। अछि। अछि। अछि। अछि। अछि। अछि। अछि। अछि। अछि। अछि। अछि। अछि। अछि। अछि। अछि। अछि। अछि। अछि। अछि। अछि। अछि। single conclusion before he would let it prove that fire causes smoke or that a maker stands behind the world tested the mortar first what exactly is a valid piece of knowledge. What exactly does it mean for one thing to be invariably tied to another? He would not move an inch until the definition itself could survive every attack he could throw at it, including his own. He tells us plainly in his own opening verses, who he built this fortress against, the Buddhist logicians of his day, who denied an unseen maker of the world as confidently as they denied an unseen self. Tonight one of them has come to test the fortress in person. Watch how Gangesha answers him, not by shouting loud up but by defining more precisely than a new opponent thought possible, and then more than once precisely enough to catch his own first attempt in the same net. Exit. Act 1. The Inattentive Scholar. Geoletawon E45GES acutor is seated, a lamp burning beside him. The MIMacron MAMacron Letawon E43S acaya and the border are both present. Every author who begins a work performs in a vocation wishing the work to be completed. I have done the same tonight before I ask anyone in this hall to accept a harder claim, let me test the easiest one first to does an invocation actually cause anything at all. A fair place to start and I will not let you pass it cheaply. If invocation causes completion, the two should rise and fall together present when the work is finished absent when it fails. But I can name your scholar in this very tradition, Udayana himself, by report, in an inattentive hour, it completed the Kurenevali without troubling to perform any invocation worth the name. There is your counter instance. the rule breaks in the very house that claims to have invented it. Keep that example closed, friend. Because I intend to use it against you before this act is finished. Not merely answer it, but let me first grant you the full force of your objection. Honestly stated, if a cause and its effect are truly bound, the effect should never appear without it, nor the cause without eventually producing it. You the orner's work was completed, is invocation. On your account was absent or careless. On the surface, You have shown a deviation, and deviation is fatal to any claim to causal law. Then you can see the point. I can see the appearance of the point, which is a different concession entirely. Consider what an invocation is actually said to produce, not the completion itself, directly, as though chanting a verse belayed bricks, but the removal of an obstacle that would otherwise have interrupted the work. A worldly task, once its obstacles are cleared, completes itself by By worldly means skill, materials, sustained effort, now ask of your inattentive scholar was his work. On that particular day, ever actually obstructed, if no obstacle stood in his path to begin with, there was nothing for an invocation to remove, and its absence proves nothing at all. Aloxmith's absence does not deviate from the rule that Aloxmith's open locks on a day when no door happened to be locked. A convenient rescue. How would you ever know in advance whether an obstacle was lying in wait or not? made your causal law intestable it now explains success and failure equally which is another way of saying it explains nothing. Not intestable only like most causal claims worth having tied to a condition rather than announced as unconditional fire causes smoke only where the fuel is wet enough to smolder dry fuel burns clean and no one calls that a deviation in the law connecting fire and smoke you are asking me to abandon a rule because it is a condition attached when every rule either of us has ever relied on, from the kitchen to this hall, carries the same kind of condition. Then let me press you from my own side, Gengeshev, since the border, and I do not usually stand on the same ground. Grant that invocation removes obstacles rather than manufacturing completion directly. Still, how is that removal known, if not by the very Vedic injunction that first taught cultivated persons to perform it before an undertaking. Strip away scriptural authority, and your causal chain has no first link. I will not strip it away. I never propose to. Revelation tells us the general rule, ordinary observation of cultivated persons, generation after generation, performing this act before this kind of task, confirms that the rule is no idle poetry. the two agree, as I do hear a cause may be trusted precisely as we trust any cause established by steady, repeated, unexplained by coincidence, correlation, the very method, border, that you yourself use every time you infer fire from smoke without demanding to see the fire directly. You have kept your promise, Akaria. You did use my own example against me in the end. And I will keep making that same promise all evening. I never asked you to accept an unseen cause on faith. I ask only that you extend to my unseen causes the same courtesy of inference you already extend, without a second thought, to your own. Act 2. The Shell that was never silver. A servant places a shell on the low table beside the jar. G a letter 1e45ge'-esecute a gestures toward it. Before we build anything further, we must agree what we mean by true cognition in the first place, not what is true, but what makes a cognition true, as opposed to merely occurring. Here is my first attempt at cognition is valid, when it presents a property exactly where the property actually exists. I see silver, and silver is there, valid. I see silver in this shell, and silver is not there, invalid. That sounds almost too simple to need saying Akara. Everything simple in this science has already survived an ambush, or it would not be standing here simple in front of you. Watch the Amish now take the confused cognition. Common enough I dust the shell is silver. Test my definition against it. Honestly the shell component of the cognition, the bare this, is placed correctly since the shell truly is there. The silver component is placed wrongly since no silver is there. One cognition, one sentence, and yet my own definition is simultaneously valid in one half and invalid in the other. Is that not simply a contradiction in your definition? It would be. The cognition were forced to be valid or invalid as one indivisible lump, but a cognition of this shell silver is not one indivisible cling. It has two clings used by a single glance. One about this, one about silverness, and each half may be tested against the world separately, exactly as a sentence with two clauses may have one clause true and the other false without breaking the law of non-contradiction. My definition survives. Once we are honest about what a compound cognition actually contains. Next then the test one step further and see whether it survives me. A tree stands before us conjunction with a bird sits at its crown, an absence of the same conjunction sits at its root. By your definition is the cognition this tree is conjunction valid or invalid? You have set the trap cleverly and I will walk into it on purpose because the way out is instructive, conjunction, and its absence do not occupy the whole tree indiscriminately. One occupies the crown, the other the route, and a cognition properly delimited by by which part is being spoken of as neither vague nor self-contradicting, the tree. At its crown, S-conjunctioned is true, the tree. At its route, laxative is equally true, only a cognition that refused to specify a part would deserve your accusation, and no careful speaker leaves a cognition so undressed. You are adding conditions to your definition faster than I can raise objections to it. At what point does a definition patch this many times stop being a definition and become a confession that the first attempt failed. When a physician adjusts a splint twice before the bone sets straight, we do not say the splint failed. We say the physician was honest about the first attempt and skilled enough to correct a before trusting a patient's full weight to it. I would rather hand you a definition with three patches, each of which has survived your best blow, than a single elegant sentence that shatters the moment you lean on it. Test it once more, if you have another blow in you. One more, then, and it is the sharpest I have. A pot freshly made was black before firing and is red after. This pot is black was once true and is now false, the very same sentence about the very same pot changing its truth with nothing in your definition to explain why. Because my definition was never a claim about sentences floating free of time, it was from the start. A claim about a property residing in a substrate at a given time, exactly as it resides in a given part. The pot before firing was black remains true forever, unchanged by the kiln. This pot now is black was always a different clean, tied to a different moment, and it is no defect in a rule that it answers a time index question with a time indexed answer. The kiln did not break my definition. It only proved that whoever forgets to specify, when was never speaking carefully enough to test it in the first place. I began to see why this book took a lifetime to write. We took a lifetime because every sentence in it is already set across from an opponent exactly as sharp as the one sitting across from me tonight that is not a complaint friend that is the only kind of sentence worth building anything further upon. Act 3 The bond between smoke and fire. The lamp beside G1E45G E-Esec is trimmed. Smoke curls faintly from its wick. are ready now for the engine of every inference either of us will ever make the bond called viati the invariable tie between a mark such as smoke and what it proves such as fire without a precise account of that tie smoke therefore fire is a habit not a proof here is a first attempt to the tie holes when the mark never appears with a thing to be proven as absent simple and I think already broken consider a purely affirmative claim with no counter instance available anywhere to test. This is nameable because it is noble. Everything noble happens also to be nameable. There exists no case anywhere of noble but the nameable in which you're never occurs where absent could even be checked. Your definition asks me to search a field that has no far corner to search. You have found a genuine depth and I will not paper over it. I abandon the first attempt outright here in front of this hall exactly as readily as I abandoned my first definition of valid cognition and actidote. Let me try again the tie holds when the mark's own locus is never distinct from the locus of what it proves. No better, restate it in terms of smoke and fire occurring in different places and the same gap reappears wherever no such different place can even be imagined to test it against. Correct again and here is a third attempt, Anna fourth. Each closing adore the last one left open until we reach the one I am prepared to defend against every Every blow you have already landed, and every one you have not yet thought to try the tithe is co-location itself, the mark residing together with what it proves in such a way that the mark's own presence is never found in a place determined, however, indirectly by the true and complete absence of what it proves. Test the mount now. Smoke rises from it. Fire. Somewhere on it is co-located with that very smoke. Nowhere is there an absence of firing general standing in the same place as the particular smoke. holds, stated with no gap left for corner case to hide in. You have built four definitions to survive one example. Forgive me if I am not yet dozzled. Bedazzled by the method, not to count. Notice what I did not do at any point in these four attempts, I did not simply assert my conclusion and dare you to disprove it. I built the weakest version of my own claim first, on purpose, and let you, or twice, let myself break it before a stronger version was proposed. A wall tested four times by its own mason, and left standing is worth more than a wall no one has yet thought to push. But, Acarya, how do we ever come to know such a tie in the first place once it is properly defined? I have seen smoke and fire together in a kitchen. I have not seen every fire in the world." By repeated observation, joined to the failure of any single case, however hard-sought, to break the pattern, and, where repetition alone leaves a shadow of doubt, by further support your boost, friend himself half-rants without noticing if smoke could truly arise apart from fire, then smokes very dependence on fire. The fact that smoldering fuel, and only smoldering fuel, sends up that particular gray column would be an unexplained coincidence repeating itself in every kitchen, on every mountain, in every age, with no exception ever once observed by anyone, a coincidence that never fails is no longer usefully called a coincidence. It has earned a harder name a war. Act 4 An agent behind the clay. G the lateral knee for 5G, E the executor lifts the jar from the table and sets it before the assembly. Every argument this evening has been sharpening a single tool. Now I put the tool to its hardest use. Earth and the other elements of this world are effects produced, arisen, not eternal exactly as this is in effect, nothing produced lacks a producer. Therefore Earth and the other elements of a major precisely is this drawer has a potter. Before I attack the arguments body I will attack its skeleton and I promise you this is not evasion it is the same discipline you demanded of me all evening. What precisely is the subject of this inference? You cannot simply say Earth and the other elements because no single word denotes each of them individually and no single recurring feature unites them into one collective subject either. Name your subject precisely in your own idiom, or the inference has nowhere to stand before it has even begun. Too narrow and dangerously so. So, on that phrasing, a sprout produced certainly yet by no embodied craftsman either falls inside your subject as readily as Earth does. Prove your conclusion for the sprout instead quietly, and you have proven something, but you have not proven the maker of worlds. You have only smuggled a small, unremarkable case into the same door and called it the same victory. A precise objection, and I will not answer it by softening the subject further, which is the tempting mistake. I will answer it by refusing to let the sprout stand in for Earth at all. sprout was never the disputed topic between us tonight. Earth was, in inference, proves its conclusion only for the subject actually named and its outset. And if I quietly substitute a sprout partway through, I would have committed the very fault I spent an act ago accusing you of hiding inside a definition, changing the ground beneath an argument once it grew inconvenient. The subject remains bareth, water, fire, air, taken. As the genuinely disputed effects they are, the sprout may wait its own evening. Then narrow it correctly yourself since you reject my narrowing. Say plainly, agency here means being produced by someone possessing direct knowledge of the material cause desired to act an effort. The very three things a potter has standing before his wheel. I very nearly said exactly that a moment ago, and I am glad you forced me to test it before I leaned on it. Because it collapses under its own weight, you and I'd both already possessed knowledge, desire, an effort concerning countless material causes every single day, and yet Earth as a whole is plainly not produced by either of us on the strength of that ordinary knowledge and desire alone. If agency meant nothing more than the bare presence of those three faculties in some person or other, the property would already be satisfied a thousand times over by ordinary living beings. In my inference, it would prove nothing it did not already have to assume. Then you have refuted your own proof faster than I could have managed it myself tonight. I have refuted my own careless proof, which is a different achievement than refuting the proof itself, and it is exactly the achievement this entire evening has been training the Hall to recognize as progress, rather than defeat what the argument actually requires as narrower still an agent whose knowledge, desire, and effort were not merely present alongside the production of her as mine happened to be present alongside the things I never caused, but are the effective cause of it, standing in the same causal relation to Earth that the Potter's knowledge, desire, and effort stand to this chore, and not merely keeping the same company as Earth's production the way an idol bystander keeps company with a fire he did not light. And can that narrower agency be found among us, a chorea, some embodied person, however hidden, who might satisfy it after all? Test it honestly and see where it leads, an embodied agent's effort presupposes a body, a body, on every account either of us accepts. Is itself among the produced things requiring exactly this kind of maker? To explain earth by appeal to some earlier embodied agent is to borrow against a death that was never paid. Every candidate you offer me from within the world of bodies turns out to owe its own existence to the very kind of cause we are trying to locate. The chain cannot terminate in an embodied maker without either running back forever, unexplained, or stopping at last at a knower, a willer, and an actor whose effort does not itself depend on a body already owed to some further maker. That is the whole of what I mean by God, and no more not a larger man, but the one linked in the chain of makers who does not himself require prior maker to be there at all. You have spent an entire evening refusing to let either of us take a shortcut, not through my objections, and twice tonight, not through your own first answers either. I do not yet call myself persuaded, but I no longer believe as I did when I sat down that this conclusion was reached by skipping a single step available to skip. What is the only outcome I have ever asked this hall for? I did not come here tonight to win an argument by speaking last. I came to build one sentence at a time, in front of witnesses sharp enough to catch me if any single stone in the wall was set carelessly. If the wall stands, it will not be because I raised my voice at the end. It will be because nothing in it was left untested by the time the lamp burned down. Epilogue. Suttered horror returns as the lamp is lowered. what this evening was not. It was not louder than the debates that came before it in other halls, on other nights, over other books. Gangesha Upadileya's whole method was the opposite of volume, state the claim as weekly and precisely as Omistil allows, invite the sharpest blow available, and if the blow lands, thank the opponent and rebuild rather than bluster past the wound. He called his book a wishful-filling jewel and told us plainly in its own first lines whose darkness he meant it to clear, the powerful doubt of the Buddhist logicians of his age, who granted no unseen cause behind anything, neither an invocation's power nor a world's maker. He did not answer that doubt by refusing to feel its weight. He answered it by insisting four times over in one evening alone, that his own first answer had not yet earned the right to stand unchallenged. Whether that is the same thing as being right, this hall leaves, as it always does, to the one who carries the question out the door. Exhumed Ones

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