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 180

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PERCEPTION
161
contact between itself and objects like pleasure, pain, etc. The medium must be something else which should be called sense and not the mind. In truth, however, no interpal or 'inner sense' 18 necessary for the perception of pleasure, pain and other psychical processes These are held by the Naiyāyıkas to be attributes of the self. As such, they are parts of the conscious life of the self and are, by their very nature, conscious or perceived facts The Vedānta is right in holding that the mind (antahkarana) perceives itself and its functions without the help of any internal sense. It agrees with modern psychology in holding that mind is just the totalrty of conscious states and processes. It is involved in some difficulty by making conscious phenomena qualities of a material substratum. How can the antahkarana, which is inert and material in itself, become a conscious and an intelligent mind? ' By the self's relation to or reflection in it,' says the Advaita Vedāntist The self (ātman), which is neither mind nor matter, is the ground of both mental and material phenomena The Advaita Vedāntist would thus agree with the new realists who hold that mind and matter are not two opposed substances but different arrangements of the same neutral stuff. Or, as Russell has said “Matter is not so material and mind not so mental as is generally supposed' ? If so, mind and matter need not be two contradictory terms or irreconcılable opposites, but may become related to each other. Hence mental functions may belong to an apparently material substratum like the antahkarana.
4. The self and its function in perception By the self (ātmā) we are to understand the individual soul (jīvātmā) in connection with perception. The self, in
1 Analy818 of Mind, p 88.
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