Some Remarks On The Naya Mmethod

Author(s): Piotr Balcerowicz
Publisher: Piotr Balcerowicz

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PIOTR BALCEROWICZ
(kevala). The latter assumption led to such paradoxical contentions that ultimately truth consists of all false statements taken together:
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[Let there be] prosperity to Jina's words that are made of an amassment of false views, that are conducive to immortality, that are venerable, and lead to the salvific happiness.""
This relativity of every predication and the impossibility of uttering an unconditionally valid statement about the reality could theoretically lead to two more-beside scepticism-different approaches. On the one hand, it could be a reason good enough to dispense with the soundness of the discursive thinking altogether and, in this way, it would embrace the negative approach of Nagarjuna and be reflected in the structure of the tetralemma (catus-koji). The dependent character of every notion and conceptual representation, the ineffable and complex structuring of reality (prapanca), as it is reflected in the rational and dichotomic mind, inescapably involves real contradictions (virodha) and antinomies (prasanga). On the other hand, the result could as well be an all-inclusive, positive approach. Two contradictory conclusions derived from one and the same thesis do not have to falsify the initial thesis, e.g., 'things arise from a cause' and 'things do not arise from a cause' do not have to unconditionally negate the discourse about causality; 'there is motion' and 'there is no motion'; 'there is time,' 'there is a part and the whole,' etc. Such two seemingly contradictory conclusions should make us only perceptive of the fact that they may-and indeed do-pertain to different contexts. This would be the Jaina approach. Despite this, the Jaina theory of anekanta-väda has frequently, and undeservedly, been blamed to disregard the law of the excluded middle" or the law of non-contradiction in stronger or weaker sense". However,
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Siddhasena Diväkara's concluding verse of STP 3.69: baddam miccha-damsaṇa-samaha-maiyassa amaya-sarassa jina-vayanassa bhagavao samvigga-suhahigammassa li
The criticism concerns especially the conjunction of the first two figures (svär descriptions) of the sapta-bhangi that refer to the predicated object: (1) syad asti: 'from a certain viewpoint, x exists, and (2) syad nåsti: 'from a certain viewpoint, x does not exist.'
15 Notably, the violation of the law of contradiction is said, mistakenly as it were, to he involved in either or both the third and fourth figures of the sapta-bhangi: (3) syad asty eva syan nasty eva: 'from a certain viewpoint, x exists and, from a certain viewpoint, x does not exist' (wherein two predicated features are claimed to be taken subsequently), and (4) sydd avaktavyam: 'from a certain viewpoint, x is inexpressible,' (two contrary features are believed to be predicated of a thing in question jointly and simultaneously). Comp. PANDEY (1984: 163): "[O]nly that logic is indicated by svadvada which challenges the law
SOME REMARKS ON THE NAYA METHOD
one and the same sentence (p), when negated conditionally (ie, with the particle syat-from a certain point of view'), yields not a contrary statement (p) in the sense that when combined with the initial statement p is an application of the law of the excluded middle (pv-p), but refers to a different context, viz., its point of reference of two conjuncts is different."
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of contradiction and gives some truth value to contradictory statements"; BHARUCHAKAMAT (1984: 183); MATILAL (1991: 10-11 [13-151) or GANERI (2002: 9): 'When talking about the "law of non-contradiction" in a deductive system, we must distinguish between two quite different theses: (a) the thesis that "-(p & -p)" is a theorem in the system, and (b) the thesis that it is not the case that both "p" and "-p" are theorems. The Jainas are committed to the first of these theses, but reject the second. This is the sense in which it is correct to say that the Jainas reject the "law of non-contradiction".
16 GOKHALE (1991: [77]) was right to point out that in case of anekanta-vada 'both p and not-p are true in some respect. But of course the respect in which p is true is different from the one in which not-p is true. In this way the role of the term syat in syatstatements is to dissolve the apparent contradiction between statements by pointing out that the truth of apparently contradictory statements is relative to the respective standpoints. The seeming inconsistency between, or contradictoriness of two sentences, e.g. 'it (some object) exists' and 'it (some object) does not exist that are symbolised as p and p-is due to the fact that what we have is an incomplete statement. To cite an example attested by textual sources (e.g. JTBh 1.22 § 63):
-'with respect to substance (S), a given pot x exists as being made of clay' (Aix) and 'with respect to substance (S), a given pot x does not exist as something made of water' (-2x),
-'with respect to place (P), a given pot x exists in the city of Pataliputra (Bx) and 'with respect to place (P), a given pot x does not exist in the city of Kanyakybja (-2x).
-'with respect to time (T), a given pot x exists in the autumn' (Cx) and "with
respect to time (T), a given pot x does not exist in the spring' (-C2x), -'with respect to condition (C), a given pot x exists as something black' (Dx) and "with respect to condition (C), a given pot x does not exist as something red' (-D2x).
Accordingly, the first two conditional statements, as well as their conjunction should be analysed as a range of indexed predicates:
(1) Ax, Bx, Cix, Dix,..., and
(2) -A2x, B2x, C'x, -D2x,...
Ilere A, B, C, D,... are predicates indexed with the set of parameters of substance (dravya) S. place (kşetra) = P, time (kala) = T, and condition (bhava) = C.
In this way, we neither have the case of two inconsistent statements (the adjunction of) p and p that are both theorems of the system, nor their conjunction pɅp, but