New Dimensions in Jaina Logic

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

Page 109

Organs of Knowledge
101
mind in such cases is only an auxiliary condition and not the initiator of the process. In the case of mental cognitions the process starts with the mind itself as the initiator. The objects perceived by the senses are comprehended by the mind through devices of association of ideas (sumkalana), investigation (inīmāmsā) and discursive thought (vilarka), thus effecting a construction of new ideas based on novel laws of thought. All these mental activities are not initiated by the senses which are more or less passive conditions of intuition. Such activities belong to the sphere of the mind. The author of the Nandi Cürni has shown that the mind cognizes sound, colour, etc. in dream following the process of determinate cognition, speculation etc. In the waking state also, in the absence of sensuous function, the mind alone cogitates through the same stages of determinate cognition (avagraha), speculation (iha) etc. 26
The succession of determinate cognition and speculation etc. is an invariable feature of sensuous and mental perceptions. But this process is so quick that the stages are not usually discernible. The successive stages are recognised in the case of hitherto unknown novel objects. But in the case of the cognition of the accustomed objects these stages are not so evident in spite of their necessary occurrence in them.
An intuition is not determinate and hence in logic it is not included in the category of valid organs of knowledge. The question then arises as to how determinate cognition (avagraha) and speculation (ihā) are recognised as valid organs of knowledge? Such a question can be answered in two ways. Firstly, as determinate cognition (avagraha), speculation (ihā) and perceptual judgment (avāya) are the three stages of the process of cognition and the last stage (viz. the perceptual judgment) is avowedly a valid organ of knowledge, there should be no inconsistency if the other two (viz. the determinate cognition and speculation) were considered as valid organs of knowledge. Secondly, there is an experience of the object in determinate cognition (avagraha) and the function of investigation is discharged through agreement and difference (anvayavyatireka) in the case of speculation (iha), while both these activities (of determinate cognition and speculation) are confirmed at the stage of perceptual judgment. In this way at every stage of the process of perceptual cognition a novel mode is revealed and if there is no discrepancy at any stage, there should not be any difficulty in recognising the whole process as a valid organ of knowledge.