ABSTRACT

There are many different views that go by the name of antirealism. They all share a common rejection of what I have called realism. And all are quite controversial. But beyond that there may be little that unites them. Our present task is to understand better Buddhist antirealism, which I have so far presented as just the view that nothing has intrinsic nature (the doctrine of emptiness).a In this chapter I propose to begin that task by investigating some of the epistemological consequences of emptiness. Doing so should help us differentiate Buddhist antirealism from other forms of antirealism. It has recently become common to complain that antirealists somehow conflate epistemological considerations with matters that properly belong to metaphysics and to semantics. Examining the epistemological consequences of emptiness should help us see to what extent Buddhist antirealism might be guilty of such confusions. And this in turn should help us begin to see what might be distinctive about a formulation of antirealism that begins with the doctrine of emptiness.