Facets of Jain Philosophy Religion and Culture

Author(s): Shreechand Rampuriya, Ashwini Kumar, T M Dak, Anil Dutt Mishra
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati

Page 177

160 Anekāntavāda and Syādvāda
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which an assertion refers; or as Mr Bosanquet has neatly put it-betweent the time of predication and the time in predication” 23 Thus taking as example the proposition 'The mango is green,' we must say on the one hand that if the proposition is true at any time, it is true at all times; but on the other we must not say that if the predicate 'being green' is true of a given subject at one time, it will be true at all times. The time of predication, i.e., the time at which the judgment is made, is, relatively to the content of the judgment, a mere accident. The time in predication is the relation of the predicated characteristic to the subject. 'Green, in the above example, is true of 'mango' at only a particular moment or duration of time of the latter's existence, and thus the time here is an essential constituent of the subject of the judgment. With the change of this temporal context of the subject, the truth of the predicate may change. But this change has no effect on the time of judgment and hence also on its truth. The problem however concerns the nature of propositions in general and not the Laws of Thought in particular. We understand the laws as laws of truth or falsity of predicates only, and not, as some modern logicians have done in order to avoid the difficulties, as laws of the truth or falsity of propositions.
The Law of Identity is also formulated as 'whatever is, is', which may ontologically be interpreted to lay stress on the static character of things. But nothing. as shown. is static according to the Jaina philosopher, and so the formula is not acceptable to him.24 The Vedantist would have no objection against this interpretation of the law, because he believes in reality as static.
The Law of Contradiction is symbolically expressed as 'A is not both A and not-A', and may be ragarded as only the complement of the Law of Identity. It supplies something without which the Law of Identity is not logically complete or distinctly intelligible. If A is A, A cannot be not-A. In other words, 'nothing can both be and not be.
The Jaina philosopher has shown being and non-being as simultaneously true of a real and hence we cannot agree to the above interpretation of the law. Absolute being and absolute non-being are certainly exclusive of each other. But this is not the case with concrete being which alone is real according to the Jaina philosopher. Concrete
23. Johnson : Logic, Part I, p. 235. Also Bosanquet : Logic (2nd Edition), Vol. I, p. 203. 24. See JPN, pp. 8 Seq.