Nyaya Theory of Knowledge

Author(s): S C Chateerjee
Publisher: University of Calcutta

Page 33

NYAYA THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
doubt, dream, illusion and the like. In this sense the buddhi of the Nyāya corresponds to cognition which, placed by the side of feeling and will, gives us the tripartite division of mental phenomena in the traditional school of Western psychology. It stands, as Alexander also has said, “ for all kinds of apprehension of objects, whether sensation, or thought, or memory, or imagination, or any other.” 1
So far the Nyāya view of knowledge seems to be just and comprehensive. But, then, a more fundamental problem is raised. It is the ontological problem of the status of knowledge as a fact of reality. Is knowledge a quality, or a relation, or an activity ?
First, we have the act theory that knowledge is an activity. It is not difficult to see what induced some philosophers to accept this view of knowledge. There can be no knowledge unless the mind responds to the influences of the surrounding world At any moment of inattention or absent-mindedness we do not perceive sounds or know things other than those in which we are engrossed, although the sounds or things may be acting on our senses. If there is to be knowledge, the mind must react to the actions of other things on it. Knowledge is not a reflection of objects on the mind which receives them passively like a mirror or reflector It is a process in which the mind actively reaches out to objects and illuminates them. Hence knowledge must be a kind of activity, rather it is a mental activity.
The act theory of knowledge has been accepted by various schools of philosophy. In Indian philosophy, the Bauddha and the Mīmāmsā systems uphold it For the former, to exist is to act and go to change. Knowledge as an existent fact consists in the act of showing and leading to an object. According to the Mīmāmsaka, the act of knowing
1 Cf Space, Time and Deity Vol 11, p 82