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 224

ORDINARY PERCEPTION AND ITS OBJECTS
205
in an introspective way. Otherwise they are not themselves objects, but only constituents of the process by which objects are coynised.''! So too, Laird says: “Certainly, our cognitive processes are, in their usual exercise, processes with which (not at which) we look ; and none of them, perbapa, can look at itself. It does not follow, however, that another (introspective) look cannot be directed towards this process of looking, ..."? This means that one cognition is known by another by way of introspection. But for the Naiyāyikas, introspection involves a peculiar difficulty. It supposes the simultaneous presence of two cognitions, wbich is not adınitted by the Naiyāyıkas. Hence we are to say that the cognition, which is cognised by another cognition, is past in relation to the second cognition which is present. This implies that introspection is really memory or retrospection of what is past. But there cannot be any memory without a previous perception corresponding to it, Hence we are committed to the view that every cognition somehow cognises itself. It may not have an explicit awareness of itself, but only an implicit or vague feeling of its presence. As Stout bas elsewhere said : “ The stream of consciousness feels its own current." 3 Hence the way in wbich cognition or knowledge (or for the matter of that, the mind) knows itself is quite different from that in wbich it knows an object external to itself. This has been very well recognised by Alexander in his distinction between an enjoying and a contemplating consciousness. He says that 'in any experience the mind enjoys itself and contemplates its object, that the mind is not a contemplated object to itself, and that introspection is not contemplation.'' Hence
1 Manual of Psychology, p 184
Contemporary British Philosophy, First Series, p. 227. 3 Analytic Psychology, Vol 1, p. 160 4 Space, Time and Derty, Vol 1, pp 12-17