Indian Logic Part 02

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

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INDIAN LOGIC
Vyākhyātrs are treading the slippery path that should ultimately lead to wordmonism.74 Certainly, the word-monist begins by saying that an object is never cognized except in the company of the word concerned and he ends by saying that there exists no object besides the word concerned, just as the idealist begins by saying that an object is never cognized except in the company of the cognition concerned and ends by saying that there exists no object besides the cognition concerned.
The case of Vyākhyātrs is next defended by Pravaras. Thus they argue that nirvikalpaka cognition cannot at all differ from postnirvikalpaka cognition unless the two have two different types of things for their respective objects.75 This is a famous. Buddhist argument and is thoroughly misconceived. For the fact of the matter is that the same thing which produces sensory experience is identified by post-experiential thought; and since it is the identification of a thing on the part of post-experiential thought that is properly, called cognition, it is a misleading question as to what type of things are cognized by sensory experiece and what type by post-experiential thought. But since both the Buddhist and Pravaras are of the view that sensory experience is one type of cognition and post-experiential thought another type of it, it was natural for them to enquire as to how the two types of cognition deal with their respective objects. Even so, it was not inevitable that they should come out with the view that one type of things are exclusively an object of sensory experience, another type of things 'exclusively an object of post-experiential thought. But as a matter of fact both did come out with a view like that, a view opposed by the orthodox Naiyāyikas like our Acāryas who too would somehow distinguish between nirvikalpaka cognition and post-nirvikalpaka cognition. The Buddhists contended that a unique particular is cognized by sensory experience, a class character by postexperiential thought ; Pravaras contended that an object as such is cognized by the former, an object-as-denoted-and-accompanied-bythe-word-concerned by the latter. Both were mistaken in an essentially similar fashion but the two argued their case in their own ways. So our Pravaras here argue that when two cognitions differ from one another they must have two different things for their object ; e.g. a man becomes staff-holding man as a result of getting associated with a staff.76 The point is buttressed by speaking of entities like space, time, samavāya-relation whose very existence is controversial?? but