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INDIAN PHILOSOPHY
“cognition as such”). This is the ultimate view of reality as Dharmakīrti sees it, and he tells us that if he nevertheless continues to speak of things existing independent of cognition (and pieces of cognition noticing these things), it is because he has deliberately turned a blind eye towards this untimate view?. Elsewhere too he declares that the view according to which there exist no objects independent of cognition is the learned man's view (the implication being that the view according to which there exist objects independent of cognition is the common man's view). And yet the fact remains that Dharmakīrti's almost entire treatment of logical problems - which practically constitute his one subject matter - works on the supposition that there exist objects independent of cognition (it is only in the case of a few minor problems that room has been made for alternative theses that do away with this supposition). With a view to demonstrating the validity of this basic assessment of Dharmakīrti's performance, a summary review of his treatment of logical problems is undertaken in what follows.
Svalaksana is Dharmakirti's word for a thing as a unique-particular — that is, as a particular object existing at a particular place at a particular point of time. And it is Dharmakirti's view that svalaksanas alone constitute real reality'. In most contexts of logical discussion, svalaksanas are supposed to be physical, but actually to say that a svalakṣaṇa is necessarily physical would mean endorsing materialism, a doctrine refuted at length in the very first chapter of the Pramāņavārttika. So, a svalaksaņa can be either a physical object existing at a particular place at a particular point of time or a mental state occurring at a particular place or at a particular point of time. A mental statelo can be of the form of a cognition, a feeling, a conation or the like; but in a broad sense each is said to be of the form of cognition (jñānarūpa) because each is cognised itself (sva-samvidita) just like a piece of cognition strictly so called. The mental states belonging to one particular individual form a series where an immediately preceding member acts as chief-cause (upādāna-kārana) in relation to the immediately succeeding one, all members being strictly momentary in duration. A physical object too is of the form of a series of strictly momentary states where the relation of chief-causeship obtains in a similar fashion". The one common feature of all physical svalaksanas - a feature in the absence of which a thing will be no physical svalaksana - is the capacity to act on sense-organs and thus produce sensory experience in the cogniser concerned. By way of contrast a thing could
