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The Jaina Philosophy of Non-Absolutism
the plausibility will not bear scrutiny. 'Knowability' is a definite concept and it can have a meaning only if it negates its opposite. If a thing is called knowable by virtue of its being cognised by an accredited instrument of cognition, then of course fictions are not knowable. So the opposite of 'knowable' will not be wanting. If, however, 'knowable' be taken to stand for 'thinkable,' then also such expressions as "square circle" are available as the examples of 'unthinkable.' The question can be decided by a dilemma. Is the expression 'unknowable' unmeaning? It cannot be entirely meaningless, as nobody would then care to assert it or feel called upon to rebut it. So the opposite of 'knowable' is not absent. Further if we descend from the realm of abstract speculation to the field of concrete reals, we shall have to acknowledge that the proposition, 'The jar is knowable' affirms the predicate in a determinate sense. The jar is knowable as a jar and not as a pen. Here the 'pen' will stand as its opposite. So all concepts, in so far as they have meaning, will have their opposites. The Naiyayika's advocacy of purely positive attributes thus cannot create a difficulty for the Jaina standpoint. The fact can be made further clear from the consideration that the Naiyayika would not have an occasion to make such assertions as that there are purely positive attributes, if there was no possibility of dispute. The Naiyayika may succeed in exposing the inconsistency in the position of the opponent who would deny it. But the very necessity of logical defence shows that 'unknowable' may be logically untenable, but psychologically possible. As regards 'expressibility' the Jaina does not think it to be without its opposite. This has been made clear in our treatment of the concept of inexpressibility in Chapter V. We have seen that the law that the predicable attribute has its negative concomitant holds good also in the case of so-called purely positive attributes. We must consider the cases of fictions, e.g., sky-flower, a barren woman's son, squarecircle, phoenix, centaur and the like. Nobody would commit the absurdity of supposing that they are existent in any reference. These absolutely unreal fictions are logically predicable, but they have no positive concomitant, which they should have if the law of the mutual implication of opposites were universally true. But the Jaina would not take these fictions as purely
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