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Means of Valid Cognition Other Than Verbal Testimony
time they began to distingiush this 'everyday' perception from a 'nebulous' perception which was supposed to constitute the inevitable starting point of all 'everyday' perception. The understanding was that the nebulous' perception became more and more specified as more and more thought was given to the matter at hand-this specified perception being our everyday' perception. It is perhaps not possible to be certain about the exact circumstances that were responsible for the emergence of this concept of a twofold perception, but certain trends of thought appearing within the Buddhist camp seems to have had a big hand in it. The surmise is strengthened by the fact that it was the Buddhist logicians who identified all perception with indeterminate preception as also by the fact that the terminology employed by them in this connection left its imprint on the final situation as it crystallized. For kalpana was the Buddhist logicians' word for thought-element and they defined perception as the type of cog. nition devoid of all kalpanā; on the other hand, the Nyāya-Vaiseșika and Mimāņsā logicians, when they came to distinguish between the 'rebulous' perception and everyday' perception, gave to the former the name "nirvikalpaka prat yakşa (= indeterminate perception)' and to the latter the name 'savikalpaka prat yakşa ( = determinate perception)' (vikalpa too being a word employed by the Buddhist logicians as a synonym for kalpana). Be that as it may, the Buddhist logicians.came out with the view that reality in its ultimate form and in its entirety is revealed in perception - necessarily indeterminate-while post-perceptual thought either recalls it partly or just falsifics it. This is the prima facie view Kumārila considers in details in the course of his account of determinate perception which is pretty elaborate. On the other hand, his account of indeterminate perception is very brief and the prima facie view considered in this connection is a different one---though it too legards indeterminate perception as a revealer of reality and post-perceptual thought as a falsifier of it. According to this latter view, the ultimate reality is of the form of a unitary entity devoid of all difference whatever-- -this ultimate reality appearing whenever anything, be it a cow or a horse, is made an object of inderminate perception and differences of all sorts, say that between a cow and a horse, appearing whenever things are made an object of post--perceptual thought (vv. 11416). Kumārila objects to this view on the ground that even in indeterminate per ception one object appears as different from another (v. 117). By way of elaborating he says that an object is invairably possessed of a generic feature and a specific feature and is noticed as such even in indeterminate perception (the wording of a crucial step in the argument is obscure) (v. 118). But Kumärila has earlier said (in v. 113) -- and he repeats the idea soon afterwards (in v. 119) --- that what is revealed in indeterminate perception is neither the generic feature of an object'nor its specific feature but this object as such. Kumārila's wavering is unmistakable and the solution of his difficulty lies in recognizing that what he calls indeterminate perception is in fact not any cognitive act but the physiological act taking place in the wake of sense--object contact; this physiological act is possessed of a generic feature and a specific feature' but is not itself of the from of a cognition of a getteric
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