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CONCLUSION
This study commenced with a search for a balanced view of reality in which the elements of identity and difference would find their due place. The search led us to the formulation of a scheme involving five possible approaches to the problem. The first four approaches were examined and found wanting. Mere identity was recognised to be as inadequate as mere difference as an explanation of the total experience of reality. Nor did the other two possibilities, viz., identity-in-difference in which identity subordinates difference and identity-in-difference in which difference subordinates identity, prove to be any more satisfactory. Only a co-ordinate view of identity-in-difference, it was discovered, could serve as a satisfactory basis for the totality of our ontological experience. Confirmation for this view was sought from the schools of Kumārila, Kant and Whitehead.
Next, certain flaws or fallacies (doșas) alleged to vitiate the Jaina view—the most important being that of contradiction--was examined and refuted from the Jaina viewpoint. The analysis revealed that some critics who claimed to discern these fallacies were labouring under a misapprehension as to the nature and importance of the idea of significant or determinate negation which forms the pivot of the Jaina viewpoint. Others, it was pointed out, confused the externalistic view of identity and difference (designated
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