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 184

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PERCEPTION
substance is to say that it is a substance without attributes, which, however, 18 a contradiction. . Further, if the soul be an independent entity of the realistic type we cannot explain its relation to consciousness or mind or body. The soul-substance is not in its own essence related to anything else. Hence it can only be externally related to other things through the medium of a third thing. In perception it is said to be related to the object through the medium of the senses. But how are we to explain its relation to the mind or other senses? That must be by some other medium. Again, that medium must require another and so on indefinitely. So we are to give up the idea of the self as a neutral substance externally related to consciousness. In truth, the self is a self-conscious reality. We may call it a substance in the sense of an existing' continuant, but that continuant is psychical and not physical. It is not a metaphysical surface on which consciousness is accidentally reflected. Rather consciousness or intelligence is the intrinsic character of its existence, the core of its being. It is not indeed the passing thought, which James proposes to call the self. The Naiyāyıka is right in insisting that fleeting ideas or cognitions cannot take the place of the permanent self. So also an unconscious substance cannot be the conscious self. We should say that the self is the intelligent reality or being which is the ground of all thougbt and experience. It is the eternal self-manifesting real which witnesses, but is not involved in, the flow of events.