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THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSAL
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by the facts or experience.
Nyāya rightly recognises the objective reality of universals but extreme position taken by them that universals are separate entities is untenable. The theory of universals is the foundation of Nyāya epistemology. Underlying realism of Nyāya is the principle that the universal is positive and objectively real, the denial of which would affect its realistic position rendering the world unreal. But ontologically, it is rightly said, "the acceptance of universals as separate entities violates the principle of parsimony embodied in ‘Occam's razor.?
Jainas seem to be right when they say that similarities on which our use of general words rests are the constituents of the external world but it does not mean that they are entities over and above particulars which manifest them. Again Jainas say universals are real only as features or characteristic of individual objects but this does not mean that they are figments of imagination.
"The difference between Nyāya on the one hand and Jainism on the other is that according to the former, the universal notion has its objective counterpart in the class-essence in the individuals, which is different from them and is one, eternal and ubiquitous while according to the latter, the universal notion has its objective counterpart in the common character of many individuals which is not one, but many, existing in many individuals—not eternal but temporary, being produced and destroyed along with the individual in which it exists and not all-perveding but confined only to the individual in which it exists”. 3
What Jaina realists want to emphasize is the fact that we have perceptions of both universal and particulars
