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AN ANALYSIS OF 'SYĀT' IN SYĀDVĀDA
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Thus correspondence is the crux of the problem and changing things is the reinforcing situation. Both these taken together seem to thrust on them acceptance of the change in truth-value of a proposition. This is what Jaina logicians seem to advocate. It is perhaps this which they intend to convey when they say that truth-value of no descriptive proposition is fixed in so far as things change.
The contention that truth-value of a proposition changes, however, raises two important issues : (a) what is the basis to draw a line of demarcation between sentences and propositions ? and (b) if it is maintained, and it is so maintained by Jaina Logicians, that a thing has number of potentialities, then how to account for change in the truth-value of a proposition? For, whereas insistence on number of potentialities would demand assumption of number of propositions descriptive of them, a change in the truth-value would demand that number of propositions available at our disposal is a limited one. Perhaps a distinction is sought to be made between propositions descriptive of potentialities and those descriptive of actualities, the former being treated as genuinely descriptive of the nature of a thing. Obviously the number of the statements of the latter kind is limited. If this phenomenon is connected with changing things then change in truth-value seems to be a plausible alternative. But still, why not frame a new proposition? Inspite of the fact that Jaina logicians admit temporality within the fold of their logic what would be their reaction to this problem is very difficult to say. But we need not bother further about this issue here.
One thing, nevertheless, is very clear. The doctrine of the change of truth-value neither amounts to the doctrine of relativity, nor scepticism nor again to the notion of historical relativity. For the position of an historical relativist is different from that of the one who holds possibility of change in truth-value of a proposition. What historical relativist is out to maintain is that we do not have any absolute truths simply because we do not have any absolute criterion of truth. The one, on the contrary, who argues in terms of changing truth is not at all bothered about change in criterion of truth. That is, he is not saying that truth-value changes because our criterion of truth changes. What he focusses his attention on is change in object about which we are making
