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NYAYA AND JAINA EPISTEMOLOGY
'it is not blue' means it is either green or red or....etc"." Ryle argued in favour of the view that negative propositions are significant. He perhaps agrees with the view held by plato that negation expresses otherness or difference. The proposition, e. g. "This is not red" means "This is different from or other than red". The negative proposition can also be analysed into a disjunctive affirmation like "This green or blue or yellow....etc'. Ryle thinks that both of these types of analysis of negative propositions are descriptions not directly of 'the particulars but of the character of the particulars'. Yet they are objective or informative.
Dialectics of Double Negation
Dhirendra Sharma has in his book "The Negative dialectics' brought out the point that it is not that denial is always expressed only in a negative proposition and affirmation in affirmative proposition. Russell' has also argued that both affirmative and negative judgements have the same status logically. Even an affirmative judgement may be denial of a negative judgement. A negative judgement can be expressed without using the sign 'non' or 'not' while by repeating these signs we can equally express an affirmative judgement. This is the principle of double negation.
This logical function of double negation is not emphasised by early Nyāya philosophers, though Neo-Nyāya logicians seem to have recognized it and maintain that negation is determined by its counter positive whereas in the case of double negation, negation is delimited by its own characters. Negation has, thus, formal significance. It does not render it superfluous. This kind of dialictical negation is the basis of our discriminatory behaviour. Though affirmation and negation are mutually exclusive, pure affirmation or pure
