Studies in Indian Philosophy

SR No.: 001580
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Dalsukh Malvania, Nagin J Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad
Publication Year: 1981
Total Pages: 352
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Philosophy, Epistemology, & Religion
File Size: 21 MB

Page 135

Studies in Indian Philosophy
major difficulties with such a correspondence theory; first, to justify it one must either posit possible points of view (ad infinitum), quite independent of either legs of the correspondence such that this independent point of view can give conclusive evidence that the alleged correspondence is in fact a true one; an alternative theory is that one opts to remain content with repeated successive (parampara) confirmations of the postulated concomitance such that one's confidence in the high degree of probability of the alleged vyapti constitutes a pragmatic claim of certainty free from "reasonable" doubt, and so on. Thus the tarka justification of NCE offers just the later, that is, it offers pragmatic "certainty". In addition, the pragmatic NCE justification does so within the public repeatable domain and offers a reasonable hope of public evaluation and empirical confirmation and possible falsification. 3. The function of the Jaina concept of Tarka
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To use the old Nyaya chestnut of "smoke and fire," I shall illustrate the function of tarka. Controversies are generated when an opponent (prativadin) in the vivada (debate whether oral or in prose) disputes the various premises or evidential support for a thesis or conclusion. 11 Debate about the evidence generates a metalogical discussion concerning the legitimacy and strength of specific evidence of the vyapti in question. In the desired use of the Indian pararthānumāna (inference schema), 12 the crucial area of dispute centers on the alleged concomitance (vyapti) of two specific properties, which is a necessary, not a sufficient condition of using and justifying the disputed inference schema. Tarka is the careful gathering and shifting of supporting evidence and the counter evidence for a specific vyāyti claim; this shifting involves appeals to both specific evidence, and, implicitly, the use of a general theory concerning the means of evaluating disputed vyāpti-claims, a meta-argument about the vyapti claim in the disputed (object language) inference schema. Such an activity presupposes (1) a general (nonspecific) tarka theory, (2) which again presupposes the use of concomitance (vyapti), (3) the