Facets of Jain Philosophy Religion and Culture

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

Page 319

302 Anekāntavāda and Syädvāda
although the Jaina thinkers do not expressly deal with formal possibility in the context of the descriptively significant statements, might they not be dealing with relative possibility ? This alternative too is ruled out. For the question of relative possibility arises only where we talking about a thing either with reference to another thing or a prior state of itself. The descriptive statements in terms of possibility that Jainas envisage in the context of Syādvāda are too relative statements and are, by the very nature of the case, supposed to be about a particular thing alone independently of the reference to another thing or its prior state. Hence the case of relative possibility, too, is ruled out.
Out of the two kinds of possibilities Aristotle talks of the Jain philosophers are not talking about what Hintikka calls 'possibility proper' or logical possibility. They are rather considering possibility of the kind of contingency. Such contingency they further understand in both of its senses : either the one that is short of necessity or the one that is descriptive of an indeterminate.
The kind of statements that bring out possibility in the sense of contingency that Jaina philosophers envisage are also those in which contingency is understood in the sense of two features of a thing going together or their compatibility, a notion weaker than that of consistency of two dharmas or gunas or paryāyas. Further, it is important to remember that possibilties that are under consideration in the frame of Syadvāda are those that come to the foreground with respect to emergence, or degeneration or change of a thing. This is why, perhaps, eternal sentences are considered to be out of question and occasion sentence are emphasized upon.
The entire programme that Jaina logic envisages to put forward in terms of its doctrine of Syädvāda needs to be considered in a still wider perspective. In contrast to the view of the modern logicians, the Jaina logicians seem to hold that although a given sentence may express the same proposition on different occasions, yet in spite of the fact it is the same proposition, its truth-value changes with time. The propositions that are considered relevant in the context of Syādvāda are descriptive propositions. As sameness of a thing does not preclude it from
going change and taking on different features similarly although it is the same proposition that is expressed on different occasions, this in itself should not prohibit it from taking different truth values. That things change, in spite of retaining their identity, is a fac. Thus things assume different features in course of time. Correspondingly, on the plane of proposititions, Jaina logic seems to hold, that although