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General Conception of Knowledge 189 tion and general condition of the person who makes the report.
To illustrate : If my neighbour and I are both looking at some common physical object, such as chair or a mountain, and if my neighbour presses his eyeball and reports the resulting movements in the object, which to me continues to appear motionless, then I see myself forced to believe that the object which he experiences, some how depends upon his action, and there it differs from the object which I experience, and which I assume to be independently real. In short, when my neighbour's experience of such things as chairs and tables differs from my own, by varying with his position and behaviour I explain the discrepancy by assuming that the objects of his experience exist only in his mind and not in the space that surrounds us. Thus, there comes to be formed the notion of a realm of 'mere ideas' or 'states' of consciousness dependent upon the knower and separate from the real objects to which they more or less accurately correspond. These secondary or subjective objects are at first conceived as residing only in the minds of others. We continue to think of ourselves as apprehending the external world directly and truly, even after we discover that our neighbours can apprehend it only indirectly in the form of subjective effects or images which it produces in them. This naively egotistic attitude, however, cannot long endure. The same reasons that made us believe that our neighbours perceived internal reflections or copies of things rather thao things themselves will be advanced by them as proof that we, too, are cut off from a direct consciousness of anything other than our own mental states.
The Jaina does not draw any line between the true and false cognitions as far as their objectivity is concerned. The data of false cognition is as objective as that of the true. The only difference between them, as has been stated before, lies in their relative appearance. In true cognition a thing appears in the same relations as it persists. In false cognition it appears in a perverted form. The reality or pervertedness of an
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| SR No. | 006738 |
| Book Title | Jaina Epistemology |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Indra Chandra Shastri |
| Publisher | Parshwanath Vidyapith |
| Publication Year | 1990 |
| Total Pages | 516 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 21 MB |