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Jaina View of Life
Psychologists point out that perception is not a simple process nor is it merely the sense-datum. It consists in the organization and interpretation of sensations. It is knowledge about, and merely knowledge of acquaintance', as William James said. Perception involves certain psychological factors like association, discrimination, integration, assimilation and recognition. Perception also involves inference. We perceive a table, and when we perceive the object as a table, we recognize it and we get a defined picture of the object. As Angell said, perception is a synthetic process, and the combination of the new and the old is an essential part of the synthesis. This process of combining was often called, by early psychologists, 'apperception'. This problem will be referred to later. Structural psychologists like Wundt and Titchner analysed perception into sensations. They said that perceptions combine and fuse together a number of sensory elements as in the process of forming H,O. It is not merely a sum of sensations. It gives a new psychological product, a creative synthesis, like the mental chemistry of J. S. Mill. Later, the Gestalt psychologists gave a new turn to the psychology of perception. They hold that every perceptual experience is an unanalysed whole; it has a quality of its own. The Jainas were concerned with giving a logical and epistemological analysis of the perceptual experince. Therefore, they were more interested in giving the conditions and the stages of knowledge. Their analysis was more on the basis of logic, of common sense and on insight; and yet, the stages of perception mentioned by the Jaina philosophers very much correspond to the analysis of perception given by the traditional psychology and the structuralist school.
Avagraha-Sensation : Avagraha is the first stage of sense experience. It may be said to be analogous to sensation. It is the level of sensation in which perceptual experience can be analysed. Umāsvāti defines avagraha as implicit awareness of the object of sense. He says that grahaņa (grasping), ālocana (holding), and avadharaņā (prehending), are synonyms of
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