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Reals in the Jaina Metaphysics
JAINA AGREEMENT WITH THE BUDDHIST VIEW ON VISION
The Jaina philosophers, however, agree with the Buddhists on this point. Their contention is that Tejas, the functioning of which consists in the phenomena of light and radiance cannot be said to cause our visual sensations; for, we have visual sensations not only of light and radiant things, but of darkness as well. They point out that we never see any Tejas or light shooting from our eyes and coming in contact with the object of vision. Accordingly, the sense-organ of sight cannot be said to be Prāpyakāri. How then does our organ of sight cause our visual sensations ? The Jaina's contend that our eyes have a power inherent in them, whereby they are able to apprehend the object without coming in actual contact with them. This power in our visual organ, they call Yogyatā.
THEORY OF THE GENETIC SCHOOL REGARDING VISION
This difference in the modes of operation of the tactual and the visual sense-organs may suggest a point which is of considerable interest in modern psychology. We say, we have the tactual sensation of, say, a square block of wood; we say also, we have the visual sensation of the same block. In our tactual sensation, our sense-organ actually comes in contact with the object, so that we have perceptions of its length, breadth and depth. The Berkeleyan school of psychologists pointed out that our visual sensations do not really give us the apprehensions of the respective dimensions of the thing. When we say that we have the visual perception of the square block of wood, our perception is not really based on the visual sensations of its dimensions but is really a group of ideas based on tactile sensations and revived at the time, giving us a seeming perception of the thing being of three dimensions. This doctrine of the Genetic school regarding the unreality of visual perceptions with respect to dimensional things, is based on associationism, which in its extreme form, is certainly unacceptable. James and Ward, for instance, point out that our perception of an extended object is not fully explained by mere experiences
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