Indian Logic Part 01

Author(s): Nagin J Shah
Publisher: Sanskrit Sanskriti Granthmala

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INDIAN LOGIC
related to the probandum by way of invariable concomitance': acts as 'operation,' a statement which is purely technical. [ In this corpection an anomalous situation sometimes arose when an author would speak as if 'operation' is 'instrument'. Such an. author would define an instrument not as 'the cause which exhibits an operation but as "the cause which immediately brings forth. the effect' Thus on this understanding, in the case of perceptual cognition the instrument' is sense-object-contact (not the sense-organ), in the case of inferential cognition it is 'cognition that the probans belongs to the locus and stands related to the probandum by way of invariable concomitance' (not cognition of probans'). This way of looking at things was the result of clea forgetting the historical origins of the concept of 'instrument'; what was remembered was that an instrument is the chief cause, what was not remembered was that an instrument is something set in operation on a raw material.] .
In the history of Nyāya school Jayanta is famous for his outright rejection of this whole approach towards the problem of, defining 'pramāņa'. He conceded that 'pramāna' means not valid cognition as such but cause of valid cognition. But he refused to distinguish between a chief cause and the subsidiary causes and maintained that the total causal aggregate, inclusive of factors. physical as well as mental-which produces valid cognition is to be called 'pramāna'; (by the way he also defined valid cognition as 'that apprehension of an object, which is free from error and free from doubt'but this is an element in his definition of pramāna to which no colleague of his — as a matter of fact, no logician – would take exception.a)
Jayanta considers three objections that might possibly be urged against his definition. Thus one might argue that since pramāna means instrument of valid cognition while an instrument has to be chief cause the total causal aggregate of valid cognition cannot be called pramāņa because there is nothing subsidiary in relation to which this aggregate acts as chief; again, one might argue that since pramāna means instrument of valid cognition while an