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VALIDITY - EXTRINSIC OR INTRINSIC
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dicts it. But owing to that it will not be proper to entertain doubt about the validity of any and every cognition."42 Jayanta retorts: "That means that the cognition of the validity of a cognition is not something automatic but something dependent on the cognition of an absence of contradiction. Certainly, if a cognition is cognized to be valid as soon as it is born, then we should never be deceived in our practice undertaken on the basis of this cognition. But since we are actually often thus deceived, it means that a cognition is not cognized to be valid as soon as it is born, while we undertake practice on the basis of a cognition while doubt yet persists about its validity."43 This is the most crucial consideration and should refute the Kumārilite's argument that all cognition is cognized to be valid because all cognition can possibly impel one to undertake practical activity. But he pleads : “One does not experience doubt when one cognizes nacre as silver and undertakes activity on the basis of this cognition, it being impossible to undertake activity on the basis of a cognition that is recognized to be doubtful. Why then unnecessarily posit doubt in a case where no doubt is actually experienced ?"** Thus for the Kumārilite a cognition is valid simply in case no doubt happens to be entertained about its validity. So Jayanta proceeds to explain : "True, a doubt generally involves a consideration of two possibilities, which is not the case when nacre is cognized as silver. But since subsequent practice proves this cognition to be invalid, the presumption is necessary that this practice was undertaken when there was yet doubt about the validity of this cognition. Certainly if this cognition
when it was born was valid and was cognized to be valid then the • subsequent deception in practice would have been impossible; on the
other hand, if it was then cognized to be invalid then no practice would have been possible at all.”45 Jayanta's point is that in case a cognition is netiher cognized as valid nor cognized as invalid the meaning is that it is cognized as doubtful; (while making this point Jayanta refers to the Kumārilite's own contention that a cognition at the time when it is born is cognized neither as valid nor as invalid, a contention partly a product of inadvertance). Jayanta concedes that the doubt concerned is not experienced consciously but he insists that, objectively speaking, not to be sure about the validity of a cognition is to be doubtful about its validity; on his showing, the ground for this doubt is the circumstance that a cognition, whether valid or otherwise, is of the form of apprehension of an object while at the
