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JAINA THEORY OF COMPREHENSION
REASONING :
We have so far discussed how materials of sensory cognition are picked up in the forms of sensation, speculation, and perception. We have also seen how these materials are preserved and recalled in various forms of memory. Now, we propose to take up reasoning that helps us in arriving at certain conclusions in our experience. Reasoning elaborates and expands the materials collected and conserved by the above-mentioned processes. It is an immense extension of the bounds of our experience. It enable us to rise above the particular and grasp the universal. It helps us in getting a glimpse of the remote past, unseen present, and distant future. It is through reasosning that we discover mutual relations of different facts and form different concepts. It is the power of reasoning upon which our inferential judgments are based.
Reasoning may be defined as the mental process of passing from some given judgments to a new one. For instance, we observe smoke and fire together in our experience. This observation is not confined to one or two cases only. We observe the same on so many occasions and reach the final conclusion that smoke is necessarily related to fire. On the basis of this, we infer the existence of fire form the sight of smoke. Our inferential judgment develops through the process of reasoning somewhat in the following way: 'I saw smoke and fire together so many times, and I never saw smoke withour fire, although I sometimes saw fire without smoke; because here is smoke, therefore, here
