New Dimensions in Jaina Logic

Author(s): Mahaprajna Acharya, Nathmal Tatia
Publisher: Today and Tommorrow Printers and Publishers

Page 105

Organs of Knowledge
97
Dharmakirti, viz. direct intuition of the object and conceptual thought (kalpanā). In direct intuition a bare perception of the object arises in such intuition. It is mere perception without any kind of conceptual construction. On the other hand, a cognition, as influenced by the past memories and impressions, presents conceptions by means of language through necessary additions and alterations of the past experiences. The mind employs five kinds of permanent devices inherited through the eternal predispositions, viz. name, class, substance, attribute and function, to interpret the object. All the intuited data are poured into these devices and are shaped into diverse concepts, thus becoming the source of conceptual thinking. The concepts are a sort of mental construction, but because of their being super-impositons, through exclusion of others, on the desired' objects, they are indirectly invested with practical efficiency in regard to the external object. Concepts are twofold, viz. (i) based on reals and (ii) purely imaginary without any sort of reference to the object. In other words, there are concepts with objective reference and also concepts which are purely subjective and imaginary. The objective, concepts fall in the category of valid organs of knowledge, called inference (anumāna). In this way the duality of the valid organs of knowledge follows from the duality of the cognitive process, viz. direct intuition and objective thought. In brief, the direct intuition is perceptual (pratyaksu) whereas the objective concept is concerned with the inferential form of knowledge. All the objective cognitions thus are included in these two classes of valid organs of knowledge.??
The Buddhist logician distinguishes two kinds of epistemological objects, viz. the discrete particular (svalakşaņa, thing in itself) and the general concept (or a universal) as the exclusion of all things other than the thing in itself (anyāpoha). The discrete parti. cular is the object of inference (anumāna).
The above two dualities of the organ of knowledge based on the duality of the epistemological object, endorsed by the Jaina and Buddhist logicians, have a point of departure as regards their nature. This point of departure is on account of two distinct ontological conceptions of the Jaina and Buddhist schools. In the Jaina tradition the object is a combination of the universal and the particular rolled into one, the two being real characters of the object. The indeterminate cognition that is, formless experience or