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Anekanta: Both Yes and No
15
I shall now emphasize the significant difference between the philosophical motivations of the Jainas and those modern logicians who develop multiple-valued logics or the para-consistent logics. First, the logicians assign truth to the members of a certain set of propositions, falsity to another set and the third value, paradoxicality, to the problem set, i.e. the set of propositions that reveal the various versions of the liar paradox and other paradoxes. The Jainas on the other hand believe that each proposition, at least each metaphysical proposition, has the value "Inexpressible" (in addition to having other values, true, false etc.). That is, there is some interpretation or some point of view, under which the given proposition would be undecidable so far as its truth or falsity is concerned, and hence could be evaluated as “Inexpressible". Likewise the same proposition, under another interpretation, could be evaluated 'true', and under still another interpretation, 'false'.
Second, my reference to the non-bivalence logic or para-consistent logic, in connection with Jainism, should not be over-emphasized. I have already noted that Jaina logicians did not develop, unlike the modern logicians, truth matrices for Negation, Conjunction etc. It would be difficult, if not totally impossible, to find intuitive interpretations of such matrices, if one were to develop them in any case. The only point which I wanted to emphasize here, is to show that the Jaina notion of the 'Inexpressible', or notion of anekānta in the broader perspective, is not an unintelligible or an irrational concept. Although the usual law of non-contradiction, which is by itself a very nebulous and vague concept, is flouted, the Jainas do not land us into the realm of illogic or irrationability.
Last but not the least, the Jainas, in fact, set the limit to our usual understanding of the law of non-contradiction. There are so many determinants and indexicals for the successful application of any predicate that the proper and strict formulation of the ways by which this can be contradicted (or the contradictory predicate can be applied to the same subject) will always outrun the linguistic devices at our disposal. The point may be stated in another way. The notion of human rationality is not fully exhausted by our comprehension of, and the insistence upon, the law of non-contradiction. Rational understanding
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