Appendix Two

Some General Features of the Indian Theories of Knowledge

The Indian epistemologies are through and through causal theories. The pramāṇas are defined, as we have seen, as what cause the true cognitions. The distinction, common in Western thought, between the causal question and the question of justification, was not made by the Indian theories. True cognition is said to be not only what corresponds to its object, but also is produced in the right way. This would be a way of avoiding the so-called Gettier paradoxes.
The methods that the theorist generally applies, both while defending her own position and critiquing her opponent are: (i) appeal to ordinary linguistic usage (lokavyavahāra); (ii) consider the evidence of experience, ordinary as well as not-so-ordinary; (iii) and, finally, consider the evidence of one’s own introspection into one’s cognitive life. Thus, while analyzing a cognition, the Navya-Nyaya appears to be analyzing the linguistic expression of the cognition, while all the while we are asked to check the validity of the analysis by looking at the introspective data. So we can say that the Indian epistemologist gives a theory of cognition, not merely of linguistic expression of cognitions, nor of what the Western logicians call “propositions.” This is particularly striking in the case of Indian theories of inferential cognition.
Cognition is also looked upon by the Indian theorist as leading to conative activity. A cognitive theory—as, for example, in the case of theories of false cognition—is tested by its ability to account for appropriate conative response.
Connected with (2) above is the fact that all Indian theories of meaning (of words and sentences) are referential—with the sole exception of the Buddhist theory of apoha. A word means what it designates. A sentence means a complex state of affairs. Consequently, the meaningfulness of empty terms such as “sky flower” and of false sentences remained problematic. The former was accounted for by the Nyāya in a manner reminiscent of Russell’s theory of descriptions. The latter proved recalcitrant to the theory of śabda as a means of knowing, discussed earlier in chapter 2.
Perhaps the emphasis laid on śabda as a pramāṇa (i.e., on knowledge that is generated by words alone), is a distinctive feature of the Indian epistemological theories. The idea also serves them well to give an account of our moral knowledge (i.e., of knowledge of what one ought and ought not to do).
Logic, as theory of inference, is a part of theory of knowledge. The Indian logician’s interest is in inference as a mode of knowing. As noted before, logic remains a logic of cognition. Consequently it remains in the vicinity of a psychology of inference. Yet the ruinous consequences of “psychologism” are avoided by showing how, in the absence of specific faults (doṣas), the psychological process leads to logically valid conclusions. If logic is psychologized, one may say, so is psychology logicized. The psychological process of inference and the logically valid structure coincide—at least insofar as first-order logic is concerned. Besides, one should note that inasmuch as the logic is concerned with cognitions and uses the language of properties and “limitors” (in place of quantification), it is intensional. But insofar as it presupposes a purely referential theory of meaning, it is extensional.
With regard to the empirical world, a primacy of perception holds good. All other pramāṇas presuppose perception. Although śabda—specifically extraordinary (alaukika) śabda—tells us about moral injunctions and prohibitions, śabda no less depends upon perception. The utterances of the speaker must be heard. (Alternately, texts must be read.) But the scope of perception as a pramāṇa is much wider than in the Western theories. One perceives not only sensory qualities such as colors, but also substances that possess those qualities. One also perceives the universals of which they—the qualities and the substances—are instances. One also perceives the internal states such as pleasure and pain. If Western epistemology, up until recent times, remained under the pressure of a large distinction between “reason” and “experience,” the Indian thinker had no such distinction before her. Her question is: Is the object under consideration known exclusively by any of the pramāṇas or by all of them together? Only the Buddhist argued for a one-to-one correlation between the pramāṇas and objects or for what is known as pramāṇavyavasthā. Thus, for example, according to the Buddhist, the object of perception and the object of inference cannot be the same. The former is a bare particular (sva-lakṣaṇa), the latter a universal object (sāmānya-lakṣaṇa). All the other schools held that different pramāṇas could possibly know the same object, a position known as pramāṇa samplava or “mixture of pramāṇas.” What is perceived, could have been inferred, and may be the subject of verbal instruction as well.
It is also necessary to note that epistemology, as theory of pramāṇa, is not entirely independent of metaphysics, as theory of prameya. This is so because pramāṇas as well as the cognitions they produce are themselves also prameyas, for example entities that can be known. This mutual dependence of the two parts of philosophy is discussed at the end of this book, and may have radical consequences for philosophy as a whole.
Like the opposition between reason and experience (as alleged sources of knowledge), certain other distinctions connected with it are absent in Indian theories of knowledge. These are that between the a priori and the a posteriori, between analytic and synthetic judgments, and also between necessary and contingent truths. To reflect on why they are absent, where, if at all, they tend to emerge and in what form, and what could be the consequences of these “lacks,” would take us beyond the confines of this book. It needs, however, to be emphasized that the talk of “lacks” here must not be construed as defects, but rather as pointing to another possibility, from which we may learn the lesson that none of these distinctions is essential for philosophy.
Finally, it must be noted that there is the prospect of a kind of knowledge that transcends the subject-object (and so the pramāṇa-prameya) distinction, and so is as much knowing as being, which looms large before both the theorist of knowledge and the metaphysician, and for which they have to make room. To this possibility—and to its possible actuality—we have turned in the concluding part of this book. But it is important that we do not obliterate the distinction between what we are doing now and that far-off prospect on the horizon and that we do not abandon this immediate task at hand for that sublime end.