New Dimensions in Jaina Logic

SR No.: 007010
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Mahaprajna Acharya, Nathmal Tatia
Publisher: Today and Tommorrow Printers and Publishers
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 206
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 10 MB

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New Dimensions in Jaina Logic
Rohini and Kritikā are also similarly related, their relationship being apparently based on the fact of their rising in a certain temporal order. The Jaina logicians thus preferred to draw a line of demarcation between such cases of succession and the clear cases of causality as between fire and smoke. They could also go a step farther and find a remote causality behind the phenomenon of day and night and the rise of the asterisms after fixed intervals. They have obviously to wait for the advancement of the science of astronomy and knowledge of the cosmos for linking the apparent cases of mere succession with causality discovered between them with the advancement of our scientific knowledge. The full credit of establishing the faculty of thought functioning quite independently of the sensuous experience and the experience dependent thereon, goes to the Jaina logicians, who thus solved the problem of determining universal concomitance on a firmer basis. Dialogue.
Question 1. Absence of contradiction is the criterion of the valid organ of knowledge (pramāņa). A cognition that is liable to contradiction is not a valid organ. If so, what is the point in regarding the üpta (reliable person) as uncontradicted or nondeceptive?
Answer. It is undeniable that absence of contradiction is the criterion of the validity of a cognition, but a cognition ipso facto belongs to a person. Where there is no other source determining the validity of a cognition, we refer to the person to whom that cognition belongs. When we are sure of the reliability of a person, we are left with no doubt about the reliability of his cognition too. in such cases, the cognition of the object is called āgamu (scripture). In other words if the person, from whose words our knowledge of the object is derived, is reliable and dependable as the unquestionable revealer of the object, his words would be accepted as valid. If the words of such person stand contradicted by other valid organs of knowledge, they would not be valid. The speaker should be possessed of a valid cognition and his words would be in conformity with his cognition. The criterion of reliability (āptatva), therefore, consists in valid cognition and valid expression of the contents of that cognition.
Non-contradiction is the criterion of the validity of an organ of knowledge, as we have already said, but when we have accepted the words of a person as authoritative, we have entirely to depend