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The Nyaya Conception of Universals
with the other necessary, conditions. Now the full set of conditions for the production of perceptual judgment consists of a sense-organ and indeterminate perception, which facilitates the recognition of identity of the present datum with the previously felt data. The non-appearance of the perceptual judgment immediately after sense-object contact is thus not a real difficulty.
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Let us now consider the second problem. The Buddhist holds that verbal knowledge is entirely out of touch with reality. Verbal knowledge deals with concepts which are unfounded since they refer to universals which are unreal. But concepts have been shown to be based upon reals. The denial of validity of all verbal knowledge on the contrary would make the use of language absolutely unjustifiable. The Buddhist cannot endorse this consequence as forced by a logical necessity. In fact, all his philosophical speculations are recorded in language and if language be incompetent to convey truth, all his efforts will go in vain. When the Buddhist asserts that 'reality' cannot be the subject of affirmation or negation, he claims that his assertion is true. But the truth of the assertion can be accepted only if the subject of the proposition, viz., 'reality', be a fact. But this would mean that at any rate there is one proposition which directly refers to reality. If this assertion also be false, the Buddhist would fail to establish his position absolutely and irretrievably.
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