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 34

NATURE AND FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE
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(jñānakriya) refers to an object. For Kant also knowledge involves the synthetic activity of the understanding. Spencer 1 tells us that consciousness arises when the tendencies towards action counteract one another and are therefore thrown back on themselves so as to become conscious of their existence, and knowledge appears as an incident in the adaptation of the organism to the environment. For Bergson also consciousness is a ceaseless creative activity. The voluntarists identify knowing with willing when they hold that cognition is the will when it is thwarted by difficulties and so looks for (.e thinks) means to overcome them. With the pragmatists knowledge is a belief determined by the will. For neo-idealists like Croce and Gentile 2 knowing is the form of theoretical activity and in thinking we create the thought we think about. Alexander, who is a realist, seems to treat knowledge as a mental act when he says that every experience may be analysed into two distinct elements and their relation to one another, namely, the act of mind or awareness and the object of which it is aware, and that the one is an-ing and the other an-ed' The Behaviourists go to the other extreme and identify knowing with the activity of the body. They hold that consciousness implicit behaviour, thinking is sub-vocal speaking, and knowledge is a particular kind of behaviour in animals, or such response to the stimulus as has the characteristics of appropriateness and accuracy.
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We may dismiss the behaviouristic contention that knowledge is a particular kind of bodily behaviour. That there is any behaviour, explict or implicit, can be known only if there is a knowing subject. Behaviour cannot explain knowledge, but presupposes knowledge in order to be
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1 Principles of Psychology, Vol I, Pt IV
2 Cf CEM Joad, Introduction to Modern Philosophy, Ch 3
3 Space, Time and Deity, Vol. I, pp 11-12, Vol II, p 86
4 Cf. Watson, Behaviour, Russell, Analysis of Mind, pp 255 ff.