Vaishali Institute Research Bulletin 1

Author(s): Nathmal Tatia
Publisher: Research Institute of Prakrit Jainology & Ahimsa Mujjaffarpur

Page 78

SYLLOGISTIC INFERENCE
67 api (also) as well as iva (like) should be added after pratyakşena (perception) and anumānena (inference), though not stated in the original verse, to make the meaning complete and consistent. The contention of the Buddhist is that the content of perception is an indeterminate simple fact, is not communicable by words, and so perception cannot be placed on the same level with inference as equally competent to communicate its contents to other persons. But indeterminate perception has been criticized by the Jaina as an unintelligible invention of theBuddhist logician. According to the former, perception also envisages a determinate fact, i.e. one consisting of an individual and a universal rolled into one. This is also the content of verbal knowledge and as such it is communicable. The vehicle of communication in both cases is language. The inference is expressed as a syllogistic argument for another's conviction in the following way: 'There is fire ahead, because smoke is seen to arise from the place'. This statement of one's personal inference serves to produce the same inference in the person addressed. Similarly when a person communicates a fact envisaged by his own perception by pointing out with his finger : 'See the king is going in procession'. This verbal communication attendent with a physical gesture produces the same perceptual cognition in the other person addressed by him. So both of them serve as the means of communication of personal knowledge and there is no reason to single out inference as the only competent means of such communication. The Buddhist's objection that concepts are subjective and as such cannot be associated with the content of perception which is necessarily a self-characterized individual has been disposed of as an abstraction. But one may contend that the perceptual cognition of the other man is due to the operat his organ of sight. So the contention that the perceptual cognition of one man can be communicated to others is only a case of over-simplification due to oversight. Were the other man devoid of eye-sight, the communication of the perceptual cognition would not be possible simply because the perceptual cognition would not arise in him. But this contention is not fair. The difficulty may be alleged as regards inference if the addressed person has not the previous knowledge of necessary concomitance between smoke and fire. And even if the person addressed is aware of the necessary concomitance he will infer fire on the perception of smoke pointed out by the arguer, only on the strength of the necessary concomitance recollected by him. Here the argument on the part of the interlocuter may be regarded as not the condition of the inference of the other man. One may say that the statement of the competent probans is the condition of the other man's inferential knnwledge, and so the inference of A is the condition of