Speaking of the Ineffable, East and West

Sa？etak There is a phenomenon that often arises when a philosophy argues that there are limits to thought/language, and tries to jus- tify this view by giving reasons as to why there are things about which one cannot think/talk—in the process appearing to give the lie to the claim. I will be concerned with that phenomenon. We will look at some of philosophies that fall into this camp (those of Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Mah ？ay ？ana Buddhism). We will then see that Buddhist philosophy has resources to address this kind of issue not present in Western tradi- tions, namely the catu.sko.ti and its develop- ments. The catu.sko.ti is a principle to the effect that claims can be true, false, both, or neither. Later developments add a fifth pos- sibility: ineffability. Of course, one might be skeptical that such ideas can be made log- ically respectable. I will show how to do so with some simple tools from contemporary non-classical logi