New Dimensions in Jaina Logic

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

Page 35

Jaina Logic of Philosophical Period
27
alone, according to him, is absolutely non-perceptual, while the sensory and mental perceptions are instances of empirical perceptions (samvyavahärika pratyaksa).20
Inference stands for the knowledge of the probandum (sadhya) through the probans (sadhana). The cognition of fire on the cognition of smoke is not a case of direct perception through the senses. This is the reason why the inference is absolutely a case of non-perceptual cognition. The cognition of the object through clairvoyance, mind reading and omniscience is direct and absolutely perceptual, because no other mediatory knowledge is required for their occurrence. The perception of touch etc. though the sense is direct sensory perception. They are perceptual with reference to the senses, while with reference to the soul they are indeed non-perceptual. The senses in themselves are insentient (acetana). They are not capable of cognising the objects. They act only as the media of cognition. It is out of these considerations that it is more appropriate to describe the sensory cognitions as perceptual only in the popular sense of term, while from the ultimate viewpoint the sensory cognition is a case of non-perceptual experience.
The above discussion may be symbolically expressed as follows:
Knower-Knowable = metempirical perception (paramārthika
praiyakșa). Knower--Sense-Knowable = empirical perception (samvya
vahärika pratyaksa). (In this cognition the knowable is indirect to the
knower and direct to the sense-organ). Knower—Mind--Smoke-Fire = pure non-perceptual cogni
tion. (Here there are two intervening factors between the knower and the knowable. These two factors are the activity of the mind, the knowledge of smoke together with its universal concomitance (vyāpti) with fire).
The recognition of the sensory cognition as a kind of empirical perception (sāmvyavaharika pratyaksa) worked as a go-between element, that is, a connecting link between the indigenous and alien traditions about perceptual cognitions. This was a happy solution of the problem. In the period of logical development this distinction between empirical and metempirical perceptual cognition