Apoha

[Subcontrary]

My mom and I are working on reading chapter 16 of the Tattvasangraha, on the apoha theory of denotation. It is a very complicated topic, and I have read the chapter twice. Basically the author and commentator argue that the usage of a word denotes, in addition I believe to the positive meaning, also an exclusion of other things by implication. The example used throughout is "cow," the usage of which implies that all non-cows are excluded. Much of the chapter is devoted to explaining the criticisms directed at Apoha by Kumarila and Udyotakara (who it appears rely on the concept of the Universal in their theory of denotation), then answering the critiques.

I am not confident that I understand the theory of Apoha very well. Does anyone know more about it, and how its being understood can facilitate liberation?

[Aemilius]

You can, for example, understand it is as a further development from yogachara. In Yogacara we find the Three natures or three svabhavas: parikalpita, imaginary nature; paratantra, conditionally arisen nature; parinishpanna, truly established nature.
Apoha comes into picture through the concepts of general and particular; apoha is a buddhist nominalist way of defining the general cow, i.e. a particular cow vs the concept of a cow in general. "A cow is what is not a non-cow", goes the Apoha explanation.
The particular cow corresponds to the yogacara paratantra or conditioned nature. And general cow corresponds to the imaginary nature or parikalpita. The understanding of the three natures is regarded an important method for the arising of wisdom, in Mahayana Buddhism.
This correspondence with Yogacara was taught by the Indian Buddhist panditas, I read it in the book Apoha: Buddhist Nominalism and Human Cognition; Mark Siderits, Tom Tillemans, Arindam Chakrabarti, Columbia University Press, 2011.

[Mitra-Sauwelios]

The bottom line of apoha is that there is no "cow-in-itself" or "cowness" behind the phenomenon we call "a cow", but that our grammar causes us to believe that there is: after all, grammar works with subjects and predicates and the like, and "the subject" in that sense is just another way of saying "the self". There is no Platonic Idea or Form of a cow, and there is not even an individual cow in itself. Every cow, like every other being, is just a dependently arisen phenomenon, a mesh in an immense dynamic net (as in "Indra's net"), and each mesh is itself also a net consisting of countless meshes (it's dependent upon parts). If you want to approach this fact from a linguistic angle, you may want to look into the third of the three dependencies, dependent designation.

[Subcontrary]

I read it in the book Apoha: Buddhist Nominalism and Human Cognition; Mark Siderits, Tom Tillemans, Arindam Chakrabarti, Columbia University Press, 2011.

This isn't the first time you've recommended that book, Aemilius! I really ought to read it. The problem of linguistic illusions is an important one and the doctrine of Apoha seems like a useful tool to see through errors that are caused merely by language.