Principles of philosophy by michael moore part 3 KR IRS 24824
2 Truth is the lynchpin of knowledge
The most commonly recognized divisions of anumāna are two, viz.,
svārthānumāna (the inference for oneself) and
parārthānumāna (the inference for others).
In earlier philosophical literature this division of anumāna was observed
by Diṅnāga, Praśastapāda and Siddhasenadivākara. In the Mīmāṃsā system,
even Śabaraswāmī has not referred to this division of anumāna. Kumārila
Bhaṭṭa also does not seem to have favoured the distinction of anumāna,
though he does say that one who wishes to communicate to others what he
knows through anumāna should first mention the pakṣa, i.e., that which is
to be proved. Sucaritamiśra and Umbeka are definitely opposed to the
division of anumāna into svārthānumāna and parārthānumāna. According to
Sucaritamiśra, this division of anumāna is untenable. Nārāyaṇa, a staunch
follower of Kumārila and also the author of Mānameyodaya, however, mentions
these two forms of anumāna. According to Dharmottara, the inference for
others is of the nature of word, while the inference for oneself is of the
nature of knowledge.
In the Mīmāṃsā system, Śabaraswāmī admits only two other kinds of inference
(anumāna) which he calls pratyakṣatodṛṣṭasambandha and
sāmānyatodṛṣṭasambandha.
Śabara does not define these terms. But he illustrates them in this way:
“When the form of fire is inferred from the form of smoke then the
inference is of the first kind, i.e., pratyakṣatodṛṣṭasambandha. When
seeing that Devadatta’s change of position is preceded by his movement, we
infer the sun’s movement from its change of position in the sky, the
inference is of the second kind, i.e., sāmānyatodṛṣṭasambandha.”
Kumārila calls the former dṛṣṭasvalakṣaṇaviṣaya and the latter
adṛṣṭasvalakṣaṇaviṣaya. Kumārila does not approve this terminology and the
illustrations as given by Śabara. In the first kind of anumāna, there is
the invariable concomitance between objects which are perceptible, e.g.,
smoke and fire. In the latter there is the invariable concomitance between
a perceptible object and an imperceptible object, e.g., the motion of sun
is inferred from its change of position in the sky.
There we do not find any such thing between pratyakṣatodṛṣṭa and
sāmānyatodṛṣṭa. The opposite term of sāmānya is viśeṣa. The sāmānya or
general and viśeṣa or particular are equally perceptible. The relation
between two general things is as much as perceptible as one between two
particular things. Kumārila adopts the term viśeṣatodṛṣṭa in the place of
pratyakṣatodṛṣṭa. Thus, the two kinds of anumāna are viśeṣatodṛṣṭa or
specifically seen and sāmānyatodṛṣṭa or generally seen which are accepted
by Kumārila. The first kind of anumāna is illustrated thus:-
A man perceives a particular fire from dried cow-dung and also its
particulars effect, i.e., the smoke, slightly different in colour and other
aspects from other smokes. Next he goes away from the place and returning
again after some time infers the same particular fire from the same
particular smoke. This anumāna is based on an invariable relation between
two particulars. Therefore, it is called viśeṣatodṛṣṭa anumāna.
It seems more probable that Śabara’s sāmānyatodṛṣṭa anumāna is also based
on analogy. He states, as an example of pratyakṣatodṛṣṭa anumāna, that we
have the cognition of fire following from the smoke. As an example of
sāmānyatodṛṣṭa anumāna we have the case where finding Devadatta’s reaching
another place to be preceded by his movement we remember movement on the
part of the sun also. In the example of pratyakṣatodṛṣṭa, Śabara does not
use the words, i.e., “finding smoke to be accompanied by fire in the
hearth, as he uses in the example of sāmānyatodṛṣṭa.
The second example may be put in logical form as follows:
“Devadatta changes his position and moves.
The sun resembles Devadatta in changing its position.
Therefore, it resembles Devadatta in having movement.”
It may be now concluded that Śabara divided anumāna into deductive and
analogical, and that Kumārila did not accept any anumāna which is not
deductive.
According to Prabhākara, anumāna is of two kinds. He explains Śabara’s
division of anumāna into pratyakṣatodṛṣṭa and sāmānyatodṛṣṭa differently.
He calls these two kinds of anumāna, viz., dṛṣṭasvalakṣaṇa and
adṛṣṭasvalakṣaṇa. In Prabhākara’s view, this twofold division is based on
a twofold division of the object of anumāna. According to Prabhākara, the
probandum is sometimes one whose specific individuality is perceptible and
sometimes one whose specific individuality which means svalakṣaṇa is
imperceptible. But here the question arises as to how the relation of that,
whose specific individuality cannot be observed with vyāpti, can be
established. Prabhākara maintains that in such cases the vyāpti is
generally seen, not specifically. As for example, the specific
individuality of fire is perceptible whereas that of action or movement and
potency (śakti) is imperceptible.
Prabhākara states that movement cannot be perceived and that what we
actually perceive when a thing is in motion is the conjunction and
disjunction of the thing with some other thing. For example, ‘the ground.’
Again potency is inferred in the following way:
We know that fire burns things. But sometimes under the influence of some
herb it does not burn things. The visible form of fire cannot be the cause
of burning. Because, though it is present when it burns things, it is not
absent when it does not burn things. That is why, it is inferred that the
cause of burning must be some invisible property of fire, which is present
when fire burns things. This invisible property is called potency or śakti.
Potency is known through presumption. Therefore, there being no
imperceptible thing to be known through anumāna called adṛṣṭasvalakṣaṇa,
the twofold division of anumāna suggested by Prabhākara falls to the ground.
Truly speaking, anumāna always accrues from an observed relationship, which
cannot be possible unless both the terms of the relationship are
perceptible.
Quite noticeably, fallacy, a widely discussed topic in Indian epistemology,
is left totally untouched by the Advaitins. Instead of fallacy the
Advaitins have favoured an alternative concept of ‘unreality of the
universe’ which is other than Brahman, Brahman being the absolute existence
(pāramārthikam sattvam). This concept of unreality implies that the
absolute non-existence should be so qualified as to convey the additional
idea and the counterpositiveness relating to which is marked by
absoluteness. Another important topic which is generally discussed by the
Indian thinkers is pakṣatā. In the system of Vedānta, pakṣatā is known as
the condition of being the object of some dispute. The Advaita view of
pakṣatā is regarded as superior than the Nyāya view of pakṣatā. In fine, it
can be said that a detailed and systematic approach to anumāna can be
gathered by making a comprehensive study of the Vedic schools of Indian
philosophy. Efforts have been made to trace the comparative merits of the
respective schools in enunciation of their individual interpretations as
regards the definitions of anumāna, its kinds, vyāpti and pakṣadharmatā,
liṅga, and fallacy (hetvābhāsa). ADVAITHAM ALONE RAISES ABOVE- THE
DEBATABLE; LOGIC TO TRUTH HENCE FALLACY IS Its OUTSIDE AMBIT. Advaitham has
only one; anything uttered as A must have the opposite B; or more than that
also sicce once A and B arise, any more number and theory could arise. In
that cage as stated in B G , brahmam the one only appears as so many.
Anything other than the satyam Brahmam, is duality. AS TRUTH IS BRAHMAM,
there cannot be truth more than one in one line of thinking. So MOORE using
tyhe words: TRUTH IS THE LYNCHPIN OF KNOWLEDGE WOULD DENOTE THAT THERE ARE
TRUTH AND KNOWLDGE DUALITY. But truth is the knowledge is the
consciousness. Henc enothing can be Lynched.
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3 something is true if it matches up to the facts of reality.
{Philosophy written by Moore)
[KR: suppose there is fire and smoke; there is col wave and smocking
around; both are upto the facts; so according to philosophy of duality of
Moore both are true. However, hen fre caused object is burnt out there will
not be a smoke; and similarly, when the SUN rises, fog will dissipate; Now
where are the truths.? Hence statement of Moore is only a fallacy in
duality]
KR: ŚB 1.1.1
ॐ नमो भगवते वासुदेवाय
जन्माद्यस्य यतोऽन्वयादितरतश्चार्थेष्वभिज्ञ: स्वराट्
तेने ब्रह्म हृदा य आदिकवये मुह्यन्ति यत्सूरय: ।
तेजोवारिमृदां यथा विनिमयो यत्र त्रिसर्गोऽमृषा
धाम्ना स्वेन सदा निरस्तकुहकं सत्यं परं धीमहि ॥ १ ॥
oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya
janmādy asya yato ’nvayād itarataś cārtheṣv abhijñaḥ svarāṭ
tene brahma hṛdā ya ādi-kavaye muhyanti yat sūrayaḥ
tejo-vāri-mṛdāṁ yathā vinimayo yatra tri-sargo ’mṛṣā
dhāmnā svena sadā nirasta-kuhakaṁ satyaṁ paraṁ dhīmahi
satyam — truth; param — absolute; dhīmahi — I do meditate upon.
O my Lord, Śrī Kṛṣṇa, son of Vasudeva, O all-pervading Personality of
Godhead, I offer my respectful obeisances unto You. I meditate upon Lord
Śrī Kṛṣṇa because He is the Absolute Truth and the primeval cause of all
causes of the creation, sustenance and destruction of the manifested
universes. He is directly and indirectly conscious of all manifestations,
and He is independent because there is no other cause beyond Him. It is He
only who first imparted the Vedic knowledge unto the heart of Brahmājī, the
original living being. By Him even the great sages and demigods are placed
into illusion, as one is bewildered by the illusory representations of
water seen in fire, or land seen on water. Only because of Him do the
material universes, temporarily manifested by the reactions of the three
modes of nature, appear factual, although they are unreal. I therefore
meditate upon Him, Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa, who is eternally existent in the
transcendental abode, which is forever free from the illusory
representations of the material world. I meditate upon Him, for He is the
Absolute Truth.
Indeed, Advaita (Nondualist) Vedānta develops a theory of three truths: the
true (cognition, or consciousness, of Brahman), the indeterminable
(cognition that is true of the world but not of Brahman, for example, a
veridical cognition of water), and the false (not true of the world, for
example, a dream or mirage). A school of direct realists, Nyāya (Logic),
argues that the intentionality of even a nonveridical cognition hits a
feature of the world, albeit misplaced. When one misperceives
mother-of-pearl as silver, the silver-hood of which one is aware exists
elsewhere. Had one not experienced it previously, one would not misperceive
in this way ("It's silver"). The mother-of-pearl misperceived as silver is
real, and so, too, the silver-ness wrongly indicated.
Realist camps explain illusion in different ways. Prābhākara Mīmāṃsakas
deny that the intentionality of cognitions ever in itself misfires. The
problem lies in confusing a perceiving and a remembering occurring at the
same time. Nyāya philosophers hold that a nonveridical cognition presents
something in some way that it is not, analyzing the error, "That is
silver," as perceptual. That is, according to them silver-hood is projected
into the sensory flow by a dispositional misfiring, the thing being in fact
shell. They say that the view that there are two cognitions occurring
simultaneously, a perceiving and a remembering (along with a failure to
notice the difference), is wrong for several reasons. A single cognition
stream defines a person's mental life. The nonveridical cognition of shell
presents the thing perceptually as silver such that one says of the thing
in front, "That is a piece of silver," and reaches out to pick it up. The
thing perceived as silver motivates one's effort and action (including
speech).
Prābhākara Mīmāṃsakas nevertheless join with Nyāya in seeing cognitive
objects both as out there in the world and as structured: Property-bearers,
which are enduring entities, are qualified by properties, some of which
change (e.g., color) and some of which are essential to the thing qualified
(e.g., cow-hood or being earthen). Cognition is similarly structured on the
Nyāya theory, presenting qualificandum as qualifier. Thus, when there is a
match between how an object is presented cognitionwise with the thing as it
is in the world, the cognition is true. (More or less Moore is OK) A
cognition is veridical just in case it proves workable in helping one get
what one wants and avoid what one wants to avoid. Realists agree that
cognition is in this way useful and that sometimes one knows that a
cognition is true by inferring its truth from the success of the action it
guided. But realists see the nature of truth as correspondence. Direct
perception has unique particulars as object, not the general concepts
contemplated by the mind. Concepts are mental constructions, and what one
says depends on mental projections on things that are ungeneralizable as
things in themselves, as self-characterized particulars (svalakṣaṇa).
Veridicality is the ultimate touchstone, and disputants, given their
differences
on the nature of truth, rather surprisingly agree on fallacies and other
concrete patterns of epistemic deficiency. Fallacies include nongenuine
provers (hetvābhāsa ), that is, evidence that seems to indicate a probandum
in question but fails to secure the truth.
Vātsyāyana (c. 400) points out in his Nyāyasūtra commentary (4.2.34) that
the concept of the apparent whatever (as an apparent person that is really
a post misperceived in the distance) presupposes the concept of the genuine
variety (formed from previous experiences of persons). The apparently F
could not be recognized without knowledge of things that are F genuinely.
Thus, the concept of the illusory is parasitic on that of the veridical. If
all cognitions were false, the cognition of the falsity would also be
false. This is nonsense. Falsity requires an appreciation of truth. Thus,
there is no reason to think that all objects and knowledge sources could be
pretenders.
Despite such metaphysical argument, it is in epistemology where the
distinction is most exploited. What is a genuine knowledge source (pramāṇa
) as distinct from the imitator or pseudo (ābhāsa, thus pramāṇābhāsa )?
People are subject to cognitive error of several types including logical
error (anumānābhāsa ), of which the hetvābhāsas (apparent [but false]
reasons or provers) are the most discussed. Illusion is apparent (but
false) perception (pratyakṣābhāsa ). Understanding a false statement and
being misled by the testimony of the deluded or of a deceiver, which is a
form of śābdābhāsa (apparent [but false] testimony), will be treated
separately later on. In general, if a cognition that appears to be, for
example, perceptual from a first-person point of view is nonveridical
(however defined), it is no result of perception as a genuine knowledge
source, but of a cousin process, a close cousin, perhaps, indistinguishable
from the real McCoy by the cognizer at the time. Much effort, under
different flags, goes into trying to specify the features of cognitive
processes that are marks of the one or the other, the genuine
truth-generator or the imitator. The issues are complex, as can be guessed
simply from the fact that at least thirty distinct definitions of truth and
falsity are examined by late classical philosophers.
Taking the objecthood of that cognition to be the target of inquiry (a
homonym misunderstood as well as a lie could constitute the deviant
source), the Nyāya philosopher analyzes it in much the same manner as with
apparent perception. The way (prakāra ) that an object, a qualificandum, is
being cognized would indicate a qualifier that exists elsewhere than in the
thing. The standard realist story about how qualifiers, which are
real-world realities, form dispositions (saṃskāra ), which are
inappropriately aroused, is available here as with other forms of cognitive
error. The peculiarity of testimonial pseudoknowledge concerns the
speaker's statement being a causal factor in the generation of the hearer's
nonveridical testimonial cognition. Nevertheless, it is the result—how the
hearer understands the statement—that is targeted in the standard account
of apparent (but false) testimony.
Nyāya philosophers and others say that certification requires apperception,
a second-order awareness, and certification by inferential means. The
nature of the justificational inferences becomes central. Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsakas
propose that while every cognition wears veridicality on its face—at least
one assumes veridicality as a default—decertification is possible.
Vedāntins tend to insist that there is a self that is essentially
self-aware and the precondition of all cognition and experience. They view
the other-certificationalists (parataḥprāmāṇyavādin ) as confused about
self-knowledge, though they may get the story right about knowledge of the
external world, at least provisionally right, until the dawning of
spiritual knowledge (vidyā ).
In Nyāya certification is said to proceed in three ways. First, a knowledge
source can be identified by intrinsic features and in relation to a
cognition in question as its result. Second, a cognition's veridicality can
be certified with respect to its fruit, success of effort and action—a way
that is also tied to causal relations and that is accepted by practically
all disputants. The third procedure involves typifying. As mentioned, a
cognition belongs to a type in virtue of its objecthood, its indicating,
for instance, "a is F." Such objecthood can be shared with other
cognitions, belonging to other people and to the cognizing subject at other
times. So once a cognition as specified by its objecthood has been
certified, a later cognition known to be a token of that type would also be
certified.
Self-certificationists say that certification rides piggyback on
apperception or whatever the way it is that a particular cognition is
itself cognized. It appears that in this way ethical prescriptions of
scripture can be upheld. They require no external justification. Certain
Buddhists admit a form of certificational inference that looks like a kind
of a priori knowledge, whereas Nyāya philosophers view all inference as
depending crucially on prior perceptions.
The realist admission of a fallibilism that has few exceptions leaves the
door wide open for the Advaitin nonrealist. Late Advaita Vedānta develops
its two- or three-truth theory in sophisticated polemics where the Advaitin
takes a minimalist position about the Upanishadic truth that Brahman is
everything. World description may be left to the realists (science). The
way that Brahman is the world is not statable (cognizable) in language that
conflicts with statements (cognitions) about everyday things. Realism holds
only provisionally. {succeptible to doubt only; Moore statement thus failed
4 The pragmatist view of truth defines truth as that which adequately
answers a
question posed by human enquiry.
प्रयोगस्थं तदेवर्तं सत्यमित्यभिधीयते ।
तदपि त्वदधीनत्वाद् वदिष्याम्येव साम्प्रतम् ॥ ४७ ॥ TAITRIYA UPANISHAD
prayogasthaṃ tadevartaṃ satyamityabhidhīyate |
tadapi tvadadhīnatvād vadiṣyāmyeva sāmpratam || 47 ||
1.47: The same (ṛta [ṛtam]), when executed in action, is called satyam
[satyam]. Since that, too, is under your control, I shall declare you to be
that (satyam).
Verse 2.407 Book 2 - Brahmavallī
व्यावहारिकमेवात्र सत्यं स्यादधिकारतः ।
पारमार्थिकसत्यस्य वाक्यान्ते समुदीरणात् ॥ ४०७ ॥
vyāvahārikamevātra satyaṃ syādadhikārataḥ |
pāramārthikasatyasya vākyānte samudīraṇāt || 407 ||
The word satyam (which occurs at the beginning of the sentence) means
empirical truth because of the context and also because of the fact that
the absolute truth is spoken of at the end of the sentence.
This verse explains the meaning of the text satyaṃ cānṛtaṃ ca
satyamabhavat. The word satyam occurs twice in this text. In deciding the
meaning of the word satyam which occurs first in the text, we have to take
into consideration the context in which it occurs. Since it occurs in the
context of the explanation of the gross and subtle forms, it must refer
only to the empirical truth, i.e., relative truth as found in the empirical
world. Further, it occurs in close proximity to the word anṛta which means
the false, the unreal. There is also another reason to be considered here.
In the same sentence the word satyam occurs once again at the end. The
śruti text says that satyam became the true and the false. And this satyam,
it is obvious, refers to Brahman, the absolutely real, the absolute truth
(paramārtha-satyam). Hence the word satyam which occurs first in the
sentence refers to the relative truth in the empirical world.
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