Bhagavana Mahavira and his Relevance in Modern Times

Author(s): Narendra Bhanavat, Prem Suman Jain, V P Bhatt
Publisher: Akhil Bharat Varshiya Sadhumargi Jain Sangh

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Mahavira and His Relevance
says, "All the aspects of a thing are real whereas the thing is a merely logical construction".3 Thus on Russell's view also a 'thing' cannot be identified with a single aspect of it though it is real from a particular point of view at a particular moment.
In speaking of the construction of the physical object out of sense-data Russell does not mean simply a group of sense-data actually perceived. For if it is so, then the object exists only when perceived and goes out of existence when perceived by no one which is absurd. There is nothing on this view to explain the gaps between observations. In order to avoid absurdity and to account for the persistance of the physical object, Russell has postulated the existence of 'possible' sense-data to which he gives the name 'Sensibilia'. 'Sensibilia' are the unsensed sense-data. They are the a pearances of the object from places which are not occupied by human minds. Of course, we cannot reasonably speak of any appearance at all at a place which is not inhabited by a perceiving mind but continuity suggests that there must be some appearance at that place. All these appearances have their basis in the objective reality of the object and are not subjective creations of the human mind.
An object is thus, on Russell's view, the totality of its aspects which include not only the perceived aspects (sense-data) but also the unperceived ones ('sensibilia'). A person can see only one aspect of it at a time from a particular point of view (which is, no doubt, real) and thus he gets only a partial knowledge of it.
Though the external world is real, a person perceives it from a point of view peculiar to himself. We might say, using the common-sense language, that two people see the same thing when they do not find any difference in the two appearances of a thing but according to the law of perspective two people can never see the same thing simultaneously. There is always some difference in the appearance of a thing because of the difference in the point of view. The world thus perceived by each person at a moment is peculiar to himself. To such a world seen by each person Russell calls a 'private world'. 'Private worlds' are confined only to the perceiving minds but there are (in Russell's supposition) infinite number of worlds which are unperceived (as the law of continuity suggests). Thus only some views of the world are perceived and there are many views which are unperceived. The system consisting of all views of