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OTHER SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE
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tion of objects by senses wbich are not ordinarily competent to perceive them, and the last to explain the supernormal cognition of objects, which cannot be brought about by any sense.
Inference is a type of syllogistic reasoning in which we pass from the apprehension of some mark or sign as related to an object, to something else, by virtue of a relation of invariable concomitance between the two. It is an argument in which some thinker asserts that a certain proposition is true because certain other propositions, which imply it, are asserted to be true. Thus inference is a combined deductiveinductive process which ensures both the validity of the reasoning employed and the truth of the conclusion reached. An inference must have as its constituents three terms and at least three propositions. There are three conditions of valid inference, namely, vyāptı or a universal relation between the middle and the major term, pakşatā or the assertion of the minor term, and lingaparāmarsa or a synthetic view of the middle term as related to the major, on the one hand, and the minor, on the other. Vyāpti is the logical ground on which the validity of inference depends. It is an inductive gener alısation based ultimately on the direct perception of the universal in the particular. Pakşatā is the psychological ground which conditions the possibility of interence and is defined by the modern Naiyayıkas as the absence of the condition in which there is certainty but no will to infer. Lingaparāmarśa as the correlation of the major, middle and minor terms is useful for demonstrating the truth of the conclusion. These three steps, together with the initial statement of the object of inference and the final conclusion, give us the five-membered form of the syllogism. Since inference is a combined deductive-inductive reasoning in the form of a categorical syllogism, we have not a classification of inferences into deductive and inductive, immediate and mediate, syllogistic
| SR No. | 011115 |
| Book Title | Nyaya Theory of Knowledge |
| 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 |