Jaina Psychology

Author(s): Mohanlal Mehta
Publisher: Sohanlal Jain Dharm Pracharak Samiti Amrutsar

Page 60

CONSCIOUSNESS AND COGNITION
43 INDETERMINATE COGNITION AND INDIAN SCHOOLS
OF PSYCHOLOGY The Indian schools of psychology hold slightly different views about the nature of indeterminate cognition from the standpoint of modern psychologists. The opinions of the schools of Indian psychology also differ from each other with respect to the nature and objects of indeterminate knowledge. How far the systems of Indian thought agree to the concepts of modern psychology and to what extent they differ from them; how long they disagree with each other; what is the opinion of the Jaina; all this we shall observe in the course of our discussion of the problem.
The Buddhist holds that indeterminate knowledge does not at all apprehend the qualifications of its object, viz., generality, substantiality, quality, name, and the like, since all these qualifications are the forms of thought which is always determinate. Indeterminate knowledge is always free from all forms and determinations. Its object is the unique momentary thing-in-itself (svalaksana) devoid of all qualifications.1
The Sānkhya maintains that indeterminate cognition is the immediate apprehension of an object free from all associations of name, class, and the like. It is purely presentative in character possessing no element of representation. It is the first act of immediate knowledge that apprehends an object, pure and simple, devoid of the relationship between the qualified object and its qualifications. It is the function of the external senses which give us a non-relational apprehension of an object unqualified by its properties. The external senses cognise an object as merely this and not as 'like this' or 'unlike this'. Discrimination and assimilation, analysis and synthesis ---all these are attributed to the function of mind. 3
Prasastapāda, an exponent of the Vaišeșika school, remarks that just after the contact of an object with a sense-organ there is immediate apprehension of the mere form of the object. Indeterminate cognition is nothing but this apprehension. It perceives an object
1 Tatra kalpanāpodhamabhräntan pratyakşam. Tasya visayah
svalaksanam.
Nyāya-bindu, I, 4; I, 12. | 8 Sẵkhya-sutra-vrtti, I, 89. 3 Sankhya--tattva-kaumudi, 27.