Nyaya And Jaina Epistemology

Author(s): Kokila H Shah
Publisher: Sharadaben Chimanbhai Educational Research Centre

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NYAYA AND JAINA EPISTEMOLOGY
premise to conclusion possible. Mere knowledge of middle term cannot lead to conclusion.
As regards the conditions of valid inference there is agreement in general between Indian and Western logicians that there should be relation of implication between premises and conclusion. Realists like Russell believe in this logical condition but he does not recognize the psychological condition which involves knowledge on the part of thinker. But some of the Western logicians like Johnson and Stebbing have recognised both the logical and psychological aspects of inference and accordingly, they maintain that both epistemic and constitutive conditions condition the validity of inference. But the epistemic condition of valid inference which points to the criterion of novelty is not accepted by all Indian Nyāya logicians. However, they agree with the view that for inference there must not only be a true premise and a relation of implication between proposition but these must be known by a thinker who draws the conclusion. According to Indian logicians inference is conditioned “not by mere fact but by knowledge of something as athing and that of its invariable relation to something else although the reality of these things and their relation is independent of our
minds."14
Inference is, thus, a demonstrative process which does not prove that there is some fact but that some fact follows from some other facts. It is a passage from datum to conclusion.
Classification of Inference in Nyāya
Nyāya philosophers have given three different