New Dimensions in Jaina Logic

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

Page 91

Conditional Dialectics
83
'concomitance in agreement and in difference' has dual reference to an internal condition 'in the developed state of our mind' which would seem to correspond in any given context and also to an external condition based on the repeated observation of the sequence of the two events' which is suggestive of a statistical approach.
Finally, I should draw attention to the realist and pluralist views of Jaina philosophy and the continuing emphasis on the multiform and infinitely diversified aspects of reality which amounts to the acceptance of an 'open' view of the universe with scope for unending change and discovery. For reasons explained above, it seems to me that the ancient Indian Jaina philosophy has certain interesting resemblances to the probabilistic and statistical view of reality in modern times.'*
Dialogue
Question 1. How can syāt mean 'in some respect'? Is it not a verbal form in the potential mood?
Answer. Just as the expression 'asti' in the sentence 'the world is inhabited by the heroes' (astivira vasundharā), is an indeclinable (nipāta), exactly so in the expression 'syādvāda' the word 'syāt' is an indeclinable. It is not used to denote the potential mood. It is possessed of many senses, one of them being 'in some respect'.
Question 2. Both the sentient and the non-sentient are possessed of infinite number of attributes. What, then, is the line of demarcation between them, when it has been virtually asserted that everything has the nature of everything--a proposition which expresses the universal property of a real (both sentient and nonsentient)?
Answer. The attributes are of two kinds-generic and specific. By the specific attributes a substance is defined in its independent and discrete aspect. Sentience is one such specific attribute which belongs to the substance that is sentient and not to what is non-sentient. From the viewpoint of the attribute 'sentience' there is absolute difference between the sentient and the non-sentient. And this is why the sentient and the non-sentient are absolutely different substances. Every substance is possessed of
• P.C. Mahalanobis's article "The Foundations of Statistics", published in Switzerland in Dialectica, Part VIII, No. 2, June 15, 1954.