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K. C. BHATTACHARYYA
629
Falsity and Subjectivity
"The False and the Subjective" (1932), the last and most important of these four logical treatises, asserts the thesis that consciousness of the false and consciousness of the subjective imply each other. Whatever is false is reflected on, and whatever we reflect on is false. According to Professor T. R. V. Murti of Banaras Hindu University (who has been called the one among Bhattacharyya's students who best understood him), this is the basic principle of Bhattacharyya's philosophy,"
The first half of this thesis, that consciousness of the false is thereby consciousness of the subjective, is the less difficult to understand. It is a more explicit development of the doctrine of "Correction of Error as a Logical Process" that correction of error is disbelief in what we are conscious of having believed. Consciousness of the false. is consciousness of a content speakable" only as the content of a belief which in turn is speakable only as "that the content of which is false" (II 195). Falsity is not mere objective non-existence, and disbelief. is not mere lack of belief. Disbelief is a positive mode of consciousness, the correction or rejection of what was believed. The false is what is rejected or disbelieved, and can be expressed only as what was believed. What was believed is neither the judgment "This is A" (for the copula expresses only a confused unity of the fact believed and the believing act) nor the proposition "This being A" (for the copula expresses a relation between the terms, whereas the belief was in the concrete this as related to A) but the content "This as A" (the concrete fact this as characterized by A). But the content of the corresponding disbelief cannot be expressed in this form; we cannot say that "This as A" was believed, for the word this would mean content of a present belief. The content of disbelief can be expressed only as "what was believed," the what being unspecifiable in objective terms. The prior belief cannot be specified by its content, for the content is specified only by reference to it. The previous belief can be spoken of only in reference to the disbelief, can be specified only as that the content of which is false or disbelieved. Disbelief, consciousness of prior belief, is a form of non-cognitive consciousness (consciousness of something which cannot be spoken of without reference to the
33 He also considers it the basic principle of the Madhyamika Buddhist philosophy of Nagarjuna (The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, London, 1955, p. 209).
34 "Speakable," capable of being expressed at all-a category more inclusive than "intelligible."
