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THE CONCEPT OF TRUTH AND VALIDITY
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and the modern Nyāya philosophers on this view. The older Nyāya philosophers take a more common sense view of the validity of knowledge insisting that it must be established by external conditions. As it is pointed out “But that the truth of some cases of knowledge is self-evident is admitted by some Naiyāyikās..... Later Naiyāyikās, however, do not insist that every knowledge must be tested and proved before we can accept its validity. According to them, the validity of knowledge need not be proved if there is not the slightest doubt about it. Its validity is practically self-evident so long as it is not contradicted...... To say that a knowledge is evidently valid it is not necessary to prove its infallibility or to exclude all other possibilities contrary to it”. Among such cases of knowledge having self-evident validity Nyāya philosophers include inference and comparison. However, in Nyāya the intrinsic character of truth differs from the sense in which philosophers of Mīmāṁsā and Vedānta schools understand it. It is intrinsic so long as it is not contradicted but it is liable to error according to Nyāya. It seems that Nyāya concept of intrinsic validity is less paradoxical. This Nyāya view also seems to resemble Jaina position according to which validity of knowledge is both intrinsic as well as extrinsic.
The Nyāya Theory of Paratahprāmānya
Nyāya is the principal advocate of the theory of extrinsic validity as well as invalidity of knowledge.
Nyāya advances quality theory of knowledge. The Nyāya concept of knowledge is that knowledge is an attribute of self. It is a 'guņa' of a self which is not capable of modification. It is not an activity but a product. It is a product arising out if a collocation of causal conditions. It
