Jaina Theory of Multiple Facets of Reality and Truth

SR No.: 001746
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Nagin J Shah
Publisher: B L Institute of Indology
Publication Year: 2000
Total Pages: 168
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Philosophy, & Nyay
File Size: 12 MB

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Jaina Theory of Multiple Facets of Reality and Truth be. For it remains open to us to discover some hidden, unsuspected determinants that would force us to withdraw our assent to it.
IV
A more serious criticism of Jainism is that if the senses are changed, and if the indexicals are differently interpreted, we get a new and different proposition entirely, and hence the result would not be affirmation and denial jointly of the same proposition. If this is conceded then the main doctrine of Jainism is lost. It is not truly an anekānta, which requires the mixing of the opposite values. This critique, serious as it is, can also be answered. This will lead us to a discussion of saptabhangi.
The philosophical motivation of the Jainas is to emphasize not only the different facets of reality, not only the different senses in which a proposition can be true or false, not only the different determinants which make a proposition true or false, but also the contradictory and opposite sides of the same reality, the dual (contradictory) evaluation of the same proposition, and the challenge that it offers to the doctrine of bi-valence realism.
Let us talk in terms of truth predicates. The standard theory is bivalence, i.e., two possible valuations of a given proposition, true or false. The first step taken by the Jainas in this context is to argue that there may be cases where joint application of these two predicates, true and false, would be possible. That is, given certain conditions, a proposition may be either (1) true or (2) false or (3) both true and false. If there are conditions under which it is true and there are other conditions under which it is false, then we can take both sets of these conditions together and say that given these, it is both. This does not mean, however, the rejection of the law of contradiction. If anything, this requires only non-compliance with another law of the bivalence logic, that of the excluded middle (the excluded third). It requires that between the values, true and false, there is no third alternative. The law of non-contradiction requires that a proposition and its contradictory be not true together. This keeps the possibility of their being false together open. Only the law of excluded middle can