Nyaya Theory of Knowledge

SR No.: 011115
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: S C Chateerjee
Publisher: University of Calcutta
Publication Year: 1939
Total Pages: 440
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 38 MB

Page 125

106
NYAYA THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
may also be said to be due to the absence of efficacious conditions. As such, we need not say that invalidity is due to external conditions. Again, on the Mīmāmsā view, all knowledge being intrinsically valid, the distinction between truth and falsehood becomes insignificant. We should not speak of any knowledge as invalid. It cannot be said that when any knowledge turns out to be false, it altogether ceases to be knowledge or cognition A wrong knowledge is as good a cognition as a true one So, if cognition per se be true, there cannot be any wrong cognition. But that there are wrong cognitions, illusions, and hallucinations is an undeniable fact. So it must be admitted that both validity and invalidity are externally conditioned.'
Similary, no knowledge is by itself known to be valid, i.e. the validity of knowledge is not self-evident Thus the cognition of blue does not cognise its truth or valıdıty at the same time that it cognises the blue colour. It does not eren cognise itself immediately as a cognition of blue, far less as a valid cognition of blue. On the Bhātta view, a cognition is not immediately cognised, but is known mediately by inference If so, the validity of knowledge can not be immediately known by itself. Nor can we say that with every cognition there follows immediately another cognition wbich cognises the validity of the first. With the perception of blue, for example, we do not find another cognition immediately following it and cognising its validity or invalıdıty. There is no introspective evidence for a secondary cognition of validity appearing immediate!y after the primary cognition of an object. Even if there were such, the valıdıty of knowledge will not be self-evident but evidenced by another knowledge. Further, if the invalidity of knowledge be known from its contradiction, we are to say that its validity is known from the absence of contradiction.
1 NM, pp 170-71; BM., 181-86,