New Dimensions in Jaina Logic

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

Page 135

Inference 127
sion, figure or shape, motion, rest and number are original or primary qualities in that they are realities belonging to the substance, being cognizable by more than one sense-organ. When there is contact between the senses and the primary qualities, there arises a cognition in the soul.* Hume has divided human knowledge into two categories, viz. (1) knowledge of the relations of the ideas, and (2) knowledge of the matters of fact.
The knowledge derived from Mathematics and the Science of Logic owes its origin to the mutual relationship between cognitions and so it is possible to formulate universal and unconditional principles in Mathematics and Logic. 'Two plus two make four' is only a concept which has nothing to do with the real world. Locke and Hume were protagonists of idealism. According to the neorealists the cognition of number is not due to ideas but is based on perception (pratyakṣa). The postulation 'two plus two make four' does not depend on any time or space for its validity but it is true independently of space and time. The truth implied in such postulation is absolute, being reflected directly on the experience of the knower and not through any other idea or concept. The postulations in Logic and Mathematics, according to the realists, are independent of the knower and are capable of leading to the discovery of scientific principles and not to their artificial construction. This lends support to the thinking that a scientist is engaged in realistic data when he works by means of formulae, equations, application and analysis and experiment in the laboratory.
The Jaina approach is quite different from that of idealism and realism with regard to number. According to them a number is not a mere concept. It is a mode of the real. It is known neither by pure concept or idea nor by pure perception, but it is known by the joint function of conception and perception, called recognition (pratyabhijña). Such recognition is responsible for all kinds of cognitions based on relationship, comparison or relativism. Recognition results from the combination of perception and memory and so all relativistic knowledge is due to it. A straight line is called smaller only with reference to a bigger line. A single line by itself is neither small nor big. The small-big-relationship can obtain only between two things, being a bilateral relation. Memory of a past cognition and perception of the present datum work jointly in order to be able to know the two relative states of being, small or big. Two lines drawn
* Great Books of the Western World, Vol. 35, page 134.