New Dimensions in Jaina Logic

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

Page 93

Conditional Dialectics
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cannot explain why that is so. Philosophy does not create a real. It only explains it. And exactly this is the aim and purpose of conditional dialectic. The Jaina philosopher admits five special qualities on the basis of experience which are responsible for the postulation of five substances
Quality 1. Motion
2. Rest
Substance Dharmāstikāya (the substance which is the medium of motion) Adharmastikāya (the substance which is the medium of rest) Akāśāstikāya - Space (the substance which is the medium of accommodation). Matter
3. Accommodation
4. Colour, smell, taste
and touch 5. Consciousness
Soul.
(We have not translated the word 'astikaya' in the above renderings. The above substances are called 'astikāya' because they have extension and are conceived as consisting of space-points, countable, countless or infinite.)
All the qualities other than the above five are generic attributes. The distinction between them is explained by means of conditional dialectic (syādvāda).
Question 4. It has been said that the sevenfold predication can be applicable with respect to each and every attribute of a substance. If so, is the non-absolutism (relativism) itself available to the system of sevenfold predication? If the reply is in the affirmative, the predication of negation that is, the second among the seven propositions) would be a kind of absolutism. And in this way non-absolutism (relativism) would not be a universally applicable doctrine.
Answer. Acārya Samantabhadra has explained nonabsolutism (relativism) from the non-absolutistic standpoint itself. When the system of conditional dialectic is applied for the knowledge and exposition of an object in its entirety, nonabsolutism (relativism) is proper and genuine. And when only a particular attribute is cognised and explained, the services of a particular naya (viewpoint) is requisitioned and that is a sort of