New Dimensions in Jaina Logic

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

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New Dimensions in Jaina Logic
2. The existence of mode is made subordinate and ignored in the purely substantial viewpoint (suddha-dravyarthika-naya), and, therefore, the divisions of time into the past, future and present do not exist." The three verbal viewpoints (sabda-nayas), being concerned with 'becoming', accept modes and, therefore, three divisions of time are real according to them. The implication is that the unchanging aspect of the substance is timeless, the instantaneous mode being just momentary is also virtually timeless. It is only the verbal or conceptual mode (vyañjana-paryāya) that depends on the divisions of time, being a sort of prolonged existence. The substance in its three aspects virtually represents three different systems of philosophy, viz. the monistic Vedānta that believes in absolutely unchanging Brahma, the Buddhist fluxism that adumbrates unceasing change and the Nyāya-Vaiseșika that believes in both permanence and change.
3. The substance consists in modes that are successive and non-successive. Such modes exist in the present in the aspects as intended or known by the cogniser, but do not exist in those aspects in the other divisions of time. This differentiation of aspects owing to the condition of time is matched by a similar differentiation on account of other causes and conditions as well. A novel system of sevenfold predication of the conditional dialectic (syādvāda) can be conceived on this variety of causes and conditions, viz. 14
1. The substance is one. 2. It exists in some respect. 3. It has an originating condition. 4. It has also a source of origin. 5. It is also related to something else. 6. It has also a location. 7. It has also a time.
Among the modes that occur in succession it is only the present one that is definite, whereas the modes that are to come are not regulated by any rule regarding their probability and indefinite occurrence. It is not possible to predict definitely that such a mode could necessarily occur in succession of a particular mode. In this connection one should note Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics according to which it is impossible to assert in terms of the ordinary conventions of geometrical position and of motion that a particle (as an electron) is at the same time at a speci