________________
F
OTHER SOURCES OF EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE
It may
In this sense,
However, remembering may take different forms. express itself through the activity of recall or recognition. we may think of recall and recognition as separate and valid forms of memory rather than conditions or factors involved in memory. Smrti and pratyabhijñā would then be the two valid cognitions. However, such an analysis would be more epistemological than psychological.
Inference (Anumāna)
We now come to another source of knowledge (pramāņa), which is inference (anumāna). The Jainas have mentioned uhā, inductive reasoning, and sabda, scriptural authority, as separate pramāņas. But these two are not relevant to our discussion, because they have a more logical than psychological significance. Inference, or anumāna, is generally recognized by all the Indian systems except the Carvāka as a pramāṇa. Inference and reasoning are expressions of thinking as an activity of the human mind. Modern psychologists have begun to take greater interest in the study of the psychology of thinking. Physiological and psychological analysis of the mechanism of thinking have been carried out by psychologists, especially the Behaviourists and the Gestalt psychologists. William James recognizes that thinking of some sort always goes on. But, as Vinacke points out, the fact of thinking presents two sets of phenomena, (i) the psychological process and (ii) the neural process.39 The early philosophers in the West gave prominence to thinking as a special and differentiating quality of man. Man was called homo sapiens. Aristotle said that man is a rational animal. The highest form of mental life is reasoning, which utilizes material from sense and imagination, but goes beyond them into the realm of pure ideas. Aristotle worked out a logical system of reasoning which is called traditional logic.* Early Greek philosophers gave theories about reasoning as about other mental states, from logical systematization based on introspection rather than from empirical evidence in the modern sense.40 A similar attitude was present in early Indian thought. The Indian philosophers were concerned with building a logical structure of reasoning and incidentally with the epistemic conditions of reasoning, rather than the psychological analysis of reasoning. The theory of knowledge and the analysis of the epistemic conditions of reasoning had for them a pragmatic value. For the Jainas, as for many other Indian philosophers, the ultimate aim was mokṣa. The realization of mokṣa is possible by right knowledge as also by right intuition and right conduct.
39 Vinacke (L. E.): The Psychology of Thinking, Ch. V, p. 57.
40 Ibid.
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Jain Education International
Recentiv Luckasiewier in his book Aristotle's Syllogistic has pointed out that Aristotle's logic cannot be identified with traditional logic.
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