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NYAYA THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
of meaning as well." 1 Perception is not, as the Buddbists think, an un meaning sensation of an indeterminate real called svalakşaņa. It has a definite meaning and refers to a determinate object as that is revealed through sensations. It is only because the Buddhists arbitrarily deny the meaning element in perception that they are forced to exclude the complex cognitions of a jar, tree, etc. (samuştujñāna), from the range of perception. As a matter of fact, these are as good perceptions as any other. If, however, we allow with the Buddhists that perception is a matter of pure sensation, we do not understand how It can at all be conceived or logically defined A pure sensation is an unreal abstraction and not a psychological fact. We cannot point to any of our actual experiences as a case of pure sensation without any element of ideation in it. Such an experience, even if it were real, can hardly be described, far less defined The Buddhist definition of perception is self-contradictory (vyāhata) in so far as it tries to define and determine what is undefinable and indeterminate. Just as what is perfectly unknowable cannot even be known as unknowable, so we cannot consistently determine a perfectly indeterminate experience as perception ?
3. The Jaina, Prābhākara and Vedānta definitions of
perception
It is customary to define perception in terms of sensefunctioning. The ordinary idea is that perception as a
1 Essays in Critical Realism, p 91 9 NV & NVT ,1 1 4; NM, pp 92-93, 97-100, SD., pp 38-39
The notion of an eneffable gengum, like the Buddhist's svalakgana, has also been repudiated of late by some eminent Western thinkers like Whitehead, Heidegger, Rickert, Bosanguet, Deway Whitehead speaks of it as the rensationalist fallacy and Heidegger 88 the illusory notion of mere givennegs, untioged with the "concern" which be holds to be constitutive of experience throughout See Charles Hartshorne's article on " The Intelligibility of Sensations " in The Monist, July, 1994, pp. 161-85.
