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STUDIES IN JAINISM
Starting from Aristotle many philosophers and logicians have concentrated their attention on elaborate explanation of such modal predicates as necessity, possibility, impossibility etc. Of late logicians like von Wright have also been maintaining that modes are principally of four kinds: Alethic modes or modes of truth, Existential modes or modes of being, Epistemic modes or modes of knowing and Deontic modes or modes of obligation. The entire discussion is very important. But we need hardly to concentrate on it here. For Syādvāda in particular and Jaina Logic and Philosophy in general do not talk about every modal predicate but rather about one modal predicate viz. possibility. Even if we decide to focus our attention only on one mode viz. possibility, we shall not have to, as it will turn out later, take into account all kinds of possibilities. We shall, therefore primarily concentrate only on the the mode of possibility.
If we pool together the various kinds of possibilities that have been considered during the entire span of the development of the consideration of modal notions in western philosophical thought, they seem to fall readily under six main heads: (i) Absolute possibility which is of two kinds: (a) conceptual or apriori and (b) pomological, physical or real, (ii) Relative possibility which again is of two kinds: (a) conceptual and (b) nomological, (iii) Epistemic possibility, (iv) Possibility understood as ability, capacity, disposition or what Aristotle called potentiality, (v) Technical or etiological possibility and (vi) Possibility as minimal probability.
We shall presume the general sense in which these modal notions are understood in modern philosophical thought to be clear. We should bring out, nevertheless, some important considerations about them. For, some of these considerations are important from the point of the consideration we shall bring forward later on with reference to possibility or possibilities that
syät brings to the foreground. First, the notion of possibility as minimal probability is not employed in technical language; but in everyday language we are familiar with it. Yet in our present context we need hardly to bother about it. Secondly, not only absolute nomological possibility can be subsumed under absolute
