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98
NYAYA THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
4.
Criticism of the Sāṁkhya view of intrinsic validity
and invalidity
According to the Sāmkhya, truth and falsity are inherent in knowledge. A knowledge is both made true or false and known to be true or false by the conditions of the knowledge itself. Validity and invalidity cannot be produced in any knowledge ab extra, but must belong to it ab initio. The one is as much intrinsic or internally conditioned as the other. Hence knowledge must have validity or invalidity on its own account and, as such, these must be self-evident. This view follows from the Sāṁkhya theory of immanent causality (satkāryavāda). According to this, causation is only manifestation of the effect that potentially pre-exists in the cause. A cause can produce only that effect which is inherent in the causal complex. Otherwise, any cause will produce any effect, even the unreal and the fictitious. Hence the validity or invalıdıty of cognitions as causally determined effects must be regarded as somebow inherent in the cognitions. This means that valıdıty and invalidity are inherent in knowledge. Thus the validity and invalidity of knowledge are self-evident.'
The Samkhya view has been criticised by the Nyāya and the Mimāṁsā. The latter points out that the theory of causality, on which the Sāmkbya view of the validity and invalidity of knowledge rests, is itself untenable. Causation or effectuation has no meaning if wbat is caused 18 pre-existent and so need not really be caused or produced. Causation must be a process of real effectuation, i.e. it must be the production of the new or the previously non-existent effect. Further, it 18 a contradiction to say that both validity and invalidity belong to the same thing, namely, knowledge. How can such contradictory characters belong to the same
1 BD. & 8C., p. 20, NM., p. 160.
