Book Title: Facets of Jain Philosophy Religion and Culture
Author(s): Shreechand Rampuriya, Ashwini Kumar, T M Dak, Anil Dutt Mishra
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati
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The Conception of Syādvāda, 321
for other statements also being true, but its so called restatement as 'This pen is nothing but blue denies the possibility of any other statement being true. In this sense there is a contradiction between simple affirmation in the sense of singling out one of the many possible contexts) and exclusive affirmation (in the sense of singling out one context and denial of all other contexts). 'Syāt' would mean, then, simple affirmation or naya (to which 'Syāt' is added to ensure that it does not exclude other possibilites) in contrast to exclusive affirmation or durnaya. Affirmation is the act of singling out one and not the exclusion of other possibilities, likewise negation would be singling out a context other than that of the thing's own substance, time and nature and not the exclusion of other possibilities. In other words, truth and falsity are not to be defined in terms of exclusion of one another
In fact Syādvāda would not be concerned with the question of truth at all; we have seen that a S-statement has to be truth-neutral. It is futile to demand a definition of truth or falsity from Syādvāda. Syadvāda represents a formal programme whereby you can distinguish an exlusive statement from non-exclusive statement and it is a recommendation to use all the statements in non-exclusive sense. The scheme of Saptabhangi is therefore to be taken as a device for converting an exclusive statement into a non-exclusive statement. Ini this operation it takes the advantage of the logic of the word 'Syāt' but it stops at that point. It does not propose to investigate into the logical behaviour of S-statement with regard to their relations and the rules, if any, of derivation and so on. It is evident from reading the Jaina texts that in the treatment of inference they never bring in Syadvāda; they follow the same rules, of course with minor variations, as Nyāya has with regard to inference. In the first place this fact shows that the Syadvāda is not intended to be a system of logic; it takes each individual statement at its face-value. Secondly, theoretically it may also be not possible to construct a system of logic for S-statements. The reason being that by insisting on the possibility and desirability of all kinds of statements being collected together the Jainas have denied themselves any instrument whereby they could evaluate a statement. If all the possible statements have Syāt-value one cannot justifiably prefer one set of statements over another. They cannot, for example, insist that 'X is red; therefore, X is coloured' is a better construction than X is red; therefore, X is fragrant.' These both sets of statements would have Syāt-value in Syādvāda. Therefore within Syādvāda itself
