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

Page 89

Conditional Dialectics
81
fied point and moving with a specified velocity, for the more accurately either factor can be measured, the less accurately the other can be asserted.
4. The doctrine of conditional dialectic (syädvāda) is applicable not only for the explanation of spatial, temporal and quantitative relative modes, but it can be validly applied for ascertaining the intrinsic modes of the substance. Permanence and impermanence are the intrinsic modes which appear as contraries in the gross world. These are not contrary in essence and, therefore, their contrariety can be solved by relativity.
5. In the context of the doctrine of conditional dialectic (syàdvada) a study of the relativity of the modern science is very valuable.
Some expert statisticians have studied this sevenfold predication of the doctrine of conditional dialectic in the light of the principles of statistics. We quote here an excerpt from an article of Prof. P.C. Mahalanobis.
'I should now like to make some brief observations of my own on the connection between Indian-Jaina views and the foundations of statistical theory. I have already pointed out that the fourth category of syādvăda, namely avaktavya or the 'indeterminate' is a synthesis of three earlier categories of (1) assertion (‘it is'), (2) negation ('it is not'), and (3) assertion and negation in succession. The fourth category of syādvāda, therefore, seems to me to be in essence the qualitative (but not quantitative) aspect of the modern concept of probability. Used in a purely qualitative sense, the fourth category of predication in Jaina logic corresponds precisely to the meaning of probability which covers the possibility of (a) something existing, (b) something not-existing, and (c) sometimes existing and sometimes not existing. The difference between Jaina 'avaktavya' and 'probability' lies in the fact that the latter (that is, the concept of probability) has definite quantitative implications, namely, the recognition of numerical frequencies of occurrence of (1) 'it is', or (2) “it is not', and hence in the recognition of relative numerical frequencies of the first two categories of 'it is' and 'it is not' in a synthetic form. It is the explicit recognition of (and emphasis on) the concept of numerical frequency ratios which distinguishes modern statistical theory from the Jaina theory of syādvāda. At the same time it of interest to note tha: 1500 or 2500 years ago