Nyaya Theory of Knowledge

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

Page 92

VALID KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD 73 nition. It seems to us that the Naiyāyikas are substantially right in their contention that the knowledge of what is alalready known is possible. All knowledge, except acquaintance, admits of degrees of determinateness.' Our knowledge of objects may pass from an indeterminate cognition of their bare existence to a definite recognition of their nature, character and past history. The more we know of the characteristics of an object, the more determinate is our knowledge of that object. What is known to have certain characteristics may be further known to have other important characteristics. It is in this way that our knowledge of an object develops and becomes more precise and comprehensive. It is true that the other characteristics were not previously know and so impart to the later knowledge a character of novelty. This however does not show that the object itself becomes new whenever we discern new characteristics in it. Rather we are to say that we know the same object which, in a way, we already know. In fact, our response to an absolutely new object is more like a shock of surprise than knowledge in the proper sense.
The Prābhākara view of pramā as immediate experience (anubhūti) is not really refuted by the Nyāya. Its criticism of this view generally sounds like the ignoratio elenchi. What it does is not to attack anubhūti as a character of true knowledge, but to show its inconsistency with the Prābhākara account of memory. In fact, the Präbhākara's anubhūti and the Naiyāyika's unubhava are cognate concepts. Their use of these concepts to exclude memory from pramā or valıd knowledge appears, as we shall see, to be equally unsound. Anubhūtı or anubhava, as a character of pramā does not necessarily imply that memory is not pramā or valid knowledge.
1 Cf L 8 Stebbing, Modern Introduction to Logic, p. 24.
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