Dependence and emptiness › What fourfold arguments can establish

The Kārikā repeatedly uses groups of four alternatives, often discussed under the name catuṣkoṭi, or fourfold analysis. The opening investigation of production considers self, other, both, and neither. Other passages use different fourfold formulations. Their role has to be established from the particular argument.

It is misleading to turn this into a universal recipe that negates every proposition and its negation. That would suggest that "the cup is cracked" and "the cup is not cracked" are automatically rejected together, however the cup behaves. Nothing in the defense of conventional teaching requires that result. A fourfold analysis directed at an independent nature is not automatically an instruction for settling every ordinary question.

The logical difficulty remains worth taking seriously. If a critic believes that the proposed alternatives exhaust the possibilities, rejecting them all demands an explanation. One response is to examine the assumption that makes the alternatives seem exhaustive in that form. If each option presupposes an independent subject or independent production, the argument can reject that shared presupposition without making a new assertion about an independently existing thing.

Whether that response succeeds depends on the argument being examined. Calling an analysis therapeutic does not exempt it from criticism. A reader should still ask whether the rejected assumption was present and whether the consequences attributed to it follow. Reconstructing the reasoning is how we decide whether a difficult passage supplies an argument.