Indian Logic Part 02

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

Page 25

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INDIAN LOGIC
distinction between what he calls perception and what he calls postperceptual thought. This way we are enabled to see that perceptual cognition, like all cognition, is an active thought-process rather than a process of bare passive inspection as the Naiyāyika would have us believe. Paradoxically, a certain short-coming of the Buddhist's technical terminology goes to create just the opposite impression. For the Buddhist gives the name 'perception' to what is in fact the passive process of bare sensory experience, while on the other hand the Naiyāyika contends that perception essentially consists in a full-fledged identification of the object concerned. But the point is that the Buddhist clearly distinguishes between the bare sensory experience produced by a thing and the identification of this thing on the part of thought ; on the other hand, the Naiyāyika talks as if to identify a thing through perception is just to inspect it in a passive fashion. Thus according to the latter when an eye comes in contact with a jar it sees this jar (as a substance), when it comes in contact with the colour of this jar it sees this colour, in the former case the contact being of the form of 'conjunction', in the latter case it being of the form of 'inherence-ina-thing-conjoined'; as a matter of fact, to notice the colour of a jar is a passive process of bare sensory experience, to identify this jar as a jar is an active thought-process, a distinction made by the Buddhist with tolerable clearness. However, the Buddhist was also involved in another confusion. For he believed that perception (bare sensory experience) and thought being two independent cognitive processes the two cannot have to do with one and the same object, a belief which led to an essentially misconceived search for what might act as an object in one case and what in the other; as a matter of fact, the same thing which produces bare sensory experience is identified by means of the immediately following thought. But the Buddhist's strong point was that his description of perception (= bare sensory experience) was a tolerably clear description of bare sensory experience, his description of thought a tolerably clear description of thought. On the other hand, the Naiyāyika ever failed to appreciate this vital distinction made by the Buddhist so that even when he, in obvious imitation of the Buddhist, began to say that in perception a nirvikalpaka ( = thought-free) stage is followed by a savikalpaka ( = thought-possessed ) stage he was in no position to identify the former stage with bare sensory experience, the latter with thought. As a matter of fact, how the two stages in question are to be distinguished is an enigma of the Nyāya theory of