Indian Logic Part 01

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

Page 53

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INDIAN LOGIC
podha or nirvikalpaka (both meaning devoid of thought), Under the impetus of this Buddhist idea the Nyāya and Mimāṁsā authors too began to posit a sub-type of perception called nirvikalpaka pratyaksa but in their logic this remained a virtually -foreign concept precisely because they had inothing corresponding to the full-fledged Buddhist thesis on kalpanā; (as a matter of fact, these authors found this Buddhist thesis to be so absurd that they felt no need for formulating a rival 'thesis of their own). The Buddhist thesis doubtless had its shortcomings but it was rooted in the recognition of a vital logical distinction. For cognition essentially consists in determining the nature of its object and this precisely was how the Buddhist defined thought; but there arose the question as to what is perception. Paradoxically, the vague realization that perception is not a cognitive process led the Buddhist to maintain that perception is a cognitive process - par excellence. Thus on his showing perception results when a physical object acts on a 'sense-organ and produces sensory experience; but instead of admitting that perception as thus understood is a physiological rather than cognitive (= mental) process he declared it to be a distict type of cognitive process in addition to thought. And then various attempts were made to distinguish perception from thought; for example, sometimes it was emphasized that the former grasps its object fully, the latter partly; sometimes that the former grasps a particular, the latter a classcharacter; sometimes that the former grasps a particular that is something real, the latter a class-character that is something unreal. All these attempts were more or less misguided but it is they that loom large in the Buddhist's controversy with his rivals on this question, so much so that the fact that he had hit upon the vital logical distinction that obtains between the physiological process called sensory experience on the one hand and the mental process called thought (= cognition) on the other virtually got lost sight of. Jayanta's present polemic against the Buddhist is no exception to the rule. This polemic is preceded by a fairly detailed presentation of the Buddhist's case and here except towards the end the whole emphasis is on the idea that perception and