Book Title: Reals on the Jaina Metaphysics
Author(s): Harisatya Bhattacharya
Publisher: Shatnidas Khetsy Charitable Trust Mumbai

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Page 246
________________ Matter 231 of its parts and the doctrine of associationism. However much we may differ from the theories of the Nativist schools, we must admit that our sense-organs have a crude apprehension of Extensity, a sensation of what James calls “Roominess,"_when face to face with their objects. This "naive apprehension of wholeness," we may say, is a capacity in most of the sense-organs generally, in the organ of vision in particular. Of course, the detached and detailed perceptions and experiences of the parts of a thing are essential to the building up of the percept of the dimensional thing,--as urged by the Genetic school; but with the Nativist school, we must admit that at the very first flash of the perceptual process, we have a naive apprehension of Extensity, a sensation of Wholeness. This apprehension of wholeness is present in visual perception. The Jaina doctrine of Yogyatā in the visual sense-organ clearly implies that the visual perception far from being essentially a system of associated ideas consists in actual sensations of Extensity and of Extensions. The theory of the Nyāya school according to which the sense-organ of sight is Prāpyakāri does not mean that the visual perception of an extended object is a system of associated and revived tactual ideas; it means that our visions of extended things are as good percepts as our tactile experience regarding them. Of course, the Nyāya and the Jaina schools differ among themselves with regard to the mode in which the organ of vision causes the visual percepts; but both of them are oppposed to extreme associationism and refuse to reduce visual perceptions of extended objects to associated ideas of tactile experiences. REDUCTION OF ALL SENSATIONS TO TACTILE SENSATIONS : NYAYA VIEW Another matter of interest is suggested by the Indian theories of sense-organs. Some psychologists of the modern evolutionist school maintain that the sense and the sensuous knowledge are evolved as adaptive reactions from within the living animal organism, when objects from outside come in Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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