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THE JAINA THEORY OF SENSE PERCEPTION
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partake of the same essential nature.36 Thus, in the Jaina thought, four stages of matijñāna, as mentioned above, have been described. 37 Avagraha refers to the first simple and primitive stage of experience. This may be said to be merely the stage of sensation. Next comes ihā. In this stage there is a mental element, and it refers to the integrative factors of the mind. In the third stage, we get a clear and decisive cognition of the object. This is avāya. It implies the presence of the inferential element in perception. Dhāraṇā is retention of what is already experienced in the perceptual cognition. In fact, it is not actually a stage of perceptual experience although it is included in perceptual experience.
Psychologists point out that perception is not a simple process nor is it merely the sense-datum. It consists in the organization and interpretation of sensations. It is 'knowledge about' and not merely 'knowledge of acquaintance', as William James said. Perception involves certain psychological factors like association, discrimination, integration, assimilation and recognition. Perception also involves inference. We perceive a table, and when we perceive the object as a table we recognize it and we get a defined picture of the object. As Angell said, perception is a synthetic process, and the combination of the new and the old is an essential part of the synthesis. This process of combining was often called, by early psychologists, 'apperception'. This problem will be referred to later. Structural psychologists like Wundt and Titchner analysed perception into sensations. They said that perceptions combine and fuse together a number of sensory elements as in the process of forming H,0. It is not merely a sum of sensations. It gives a new psychological product, a creative synthesis, like the mental chemistry of J. S. Mill. Later, the Gestalt psychologists gave a new turn to the psychology of perception. They hold that every perceptual experience is an unanalysed whole; it has a quality of its own. Thus, we find that perceptual experience is not a simple unit although it is a whole and unanalysed experience. In the Pramāṇamīmāmsā there is a statement that different stages of perceptual experience are essentially of the same nature. The Jaina philosophers were concerned with giving a logical and epistemological analysis of the perceptual experience. Therefore, they were more interested in giving the conditions and the stages of knowledge. However, their discussion of the problem has given a psychological picture of perception in terms of logical analysis. It is difficult to find the acumen of present-day psychological analysis in the writings of the ancient philosophers. Moreover, we may remember that their knowledge and equipment of psychology were very meagre. They had no experimental basis. Their analysis was more on the basis of logic,
36 Pramanmēmāṁsā, I. 1, 20 and commentary. 37 Dravyasamgraha, Edited by Ghosal, p. 12.
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