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Absolute Negativism and Absolute Particularism
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perceptual judgment (adhyavasāya), and how, again, the perceptual cognition can generate the judgment in question. A judgment, it is urged, deals with concepts, and concepts having a generic reference are unrelated to the objective datum, which is a particular, discrete and different from everything else. But the question cannot be evaded as to how an indeterminate perceptual cognition can be responsible for conceptual thought (savikalpaka). The Buddhist maintains that a real is inexpressible because a word can express only a concept and not an individual and the criterion of conceptual thought is the association of verbal expressions. As the individuals are alone real, no real can be expressed by a word. The conceptual thought which arises in the trail of perception is, thus, a construction of the intellect. But why and how should the perceptual cognition give rise to conceptual thought associated with verbal expressions ? If perception, though bereft of verbal expression, can give rise to conceptual thought of which verbal expression is the very essential factor, it passes our understanding why should a real again fail to produce such a conceptual thought. If lack of verbal expression as an element in the real be the reason for assertion of its failure, the same reason is also present in perceptual cognition, which being a real itself cannot have a verbal expression as an element, and so should not generate a conceptual thought. It is propounded that cause and effect are homogeneous, and so the effect should be like the cause. If the law of homogeneity be accepted, perceptual cognition cannot produce a conceptual thought, as they differ in fundamental respects, the former being cognisant of an individual and the latter of a universal. It has been maintained by the Buddhist that sense-object contact cannot give rise to a conceptual thought, which is possible on the cognisance of the individual and its relation to a universal. Certainly all this complicated process cannot be supposed to be accomplished by unreflective perception. But if a priori considerations can determine what is possible and what is not possible for perception to apprehend, we cannot understand how can any subsequent cognition generated by perception should transcend the limitation of perception. The universal, if not apprehended in perception. will remain uncognized by any cognition which is generated by
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