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ideal but an actual fact. They do not accept the subjective view that a proposition expresses a relation between two ideas, or the idealistic view that it is the reference of an ideal content to reality. As radical realists they are in favour of the objective view that the proposition expresses a real relation between two facts or reals. This naive view of the Naiyayikas has been ably supported by Mr. Gotshalk ' who opposes the idealistic view and shows that the subject of an ordinary judgment is not Reality itself but merely and simply that limited situation within Reality engaging attention,' i.e. a finite and limited reality. So also what is predicated of the subject is some real fact, a thing or quality, etc., and not a mere piece of meaning or an ideal content referred by a judgment to an existent reality.
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NYAYA THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
The above view of the Naiyayikas that all propositions express the subject-predicate relation between a substantive and an adjective has been opposed by the Mīmāmsakas, the Vedāntins and other logicians. According to the grammarians and the Prabhakaras, 2 every significant proposition means an action. If a proposition is to give us any new knowledge, it must not relate to matters of fact (siddhapadartha), for these may be known by means of perception and inference. On the other hand, the kriya or the verb is the central unit of a sentence or proposition. The subject and the predicate have meaning only as they are related to the verb by the nominative and objective cases. Hence the import of a proposition lies, not in the subject-predicate relation between two terms, but in the action denoted by its verb. Every proposition expresses a command and is, therefore, an imperative proposition. According to the Advaita Vedantins, " all pro
1 Vide Mind, Jan, 193
2 Vide Varanaprameyasamgraha, pp 257-56
3 Vide VP, Ch. I.
