Academic literature on the topic 'Naiyāyikas'

In this paper I present the distinction between perceptual, reflective, and speculative doubt by engaging with the work of (mostly) early naiyāyikas. I argue that the definition of the causes of doubt offered by Gautama Akṣapāda in the Nyāya-Sūtra, and commented upon by later naiyāyikas leads to a distinction between perceptual and reflective doubt, but not to a notion of speculative doubt. I then move on to critically assess J.N. Mohanty’s comparison of Descartes’s method of doubt with the Nyāya theory of doubt through the lens of Janet Broughton’s work on Descartes’s Method of Doubt.

Abstract In his Nyāyamañjarī, the Nyāya scholar Bhaṭṭa Jayanta expounds on the issue of liberation when commenting on the Nyāyasūtra. In one of its subsections Jayanta discusses a sceptical view about the very possibility of liberation and the view of the Mīmāṁsāka scholar Kumārila. The present author focuses on this section of the Nyāyamañjarī and elucidates the theoretical criteria presupposed there in order to evaluate Jayanta’s attitude towards Kumārila. Jayanta regards Kumārila as one who internally denies liberation while externally admitting its possibility. The present author also sheds light on Jayanta’s view of the means of liberation in comparison to other Naiyāyika positions. Kumārila’s emphasis on the karmic law can be regarded as a trigger for Jayanta to reconsider the previous views of the Naiyāyikas. How to deal with the accumulated karmas while following the karmic law? The present article clarifies the merits of Jayanta’s solution in terms of theory and exegesis.

AbstractThis essay explores a problem for Nyāya epistemologists. It concerns the notion of pramā. Roughly speaking, a pramā is a conscious mental event of knowledge-acquisition, i.e., a conscious experience or thought in undergoing which an agent learns or comes to know something. Call any event of this sort a knowledge-event. The problem is this. On the one hand, many Naiyāyikas accept what I will call the Nyāya Definition of Knowledge, the view that a conscious experience or thought is a knowledge-event just in case it is true and non-recollective. On the other hand, they are also committed to what I shall call Nyāya Infallibilism, the thesis that every knowledge-event is produced by causes that couldn’t have given rise to an error. These two commitments seem to conflict with each other in cases of epistemic luck, i.e., cases where an agent arrives a true judgement accidentally or as a matter of luck. While the Nyāya Definition of Knowledge seems to predict that these judgements are knowledge-events, Nyāya Infallibilism seems to entail that they aren’t. In this essay, I show that Gaṅgeśa Upādhyāya, the 14th century Naiyāyika, solves this problem by adopting what I call epistemic localism, the view that upstream causal factors play no epistemically significant role in the production of knowledge.

L’Élimination des objections ( Vigraha-vyāvartanī ) de Nāgārjuna ( ii e - iii e siècles de notre ère) est un texte fondamental de la philosophie indienne classique. La première partie de ce traité donne la parole à un adepte du Nyāya, école brahmanique adhérant à un réalisme métaphysique fondé sur des considérations d’ordre logique et épistémologique et dont les positions philosophiques sont parfaitement antithétiques aux idées d’abord avancées dans les premiers sūtras mahāyānistes, puis défendues par Nāgārjuna dans son œuvre maîtresse, Les Stances du milieu par excellence ( Mūla-madhyamaka-kārikā ). L’adversaire naiyāyika s’efforce de démontrer, à travers neuf objections, que la « vacuité de toute chose » ( sarvabhāvānāṃ śūnyatā ) représente une position philosophique contradictoire. Dans la deuxième partie, Nāgārjuna s’emploie à « éliminer » les objections de son opposant. En cours de route, il cherche aussi à démontrer que les principes épistémologiques sur lesquels s’appuient les naiyāyikas pour défendre leur position métaphysique sont infondés : la validité des moyens de connaissance censés nous donner un accès épistémique à un monde d’existants réels est, selon Nāgārjuna, impossible à établir. À la fin du traité, Nāgārjuna insiste sur le fait que tout bouddhiste conséquent doit reconnaître la vacuité de toute chose, puisque « rien n’est [logiquement] possible pour celui qui nie la vacuité » (stance 70). Cette traduction française précisément annotée de L’Élimination des objections est la première à être établie à partir de l’original sanskrit.

AbstractOne common interpretation of the orthodox Indian prohibition on desire is that it is a prohibition on phenomenologically salient desires. The Nyāyasūtra and Brahmasiddhi seem to support this view. I argue that this interpretation is mistaken. The Vedāntins draw a distinction between counting some fact as a reason for acting (icchā) and counting one's desire (rāga) as a reason for acting, and prohibit the latter. The Naiyāyikas draw a distinction between desiring to avoid some state of affairs (dveṣa) and believing that some state of affairs is unimportant (vairāgya), and advocate the latter. Both deny that the state to which the English word ‘desire’ refers is a necessary condition of acting.

Abstract In the *Vajracchedikāṭīkā, while commenting on a specific passage of the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā, Kamalaśīla presents a refutation of the Self (ātman). As is well known, the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā is one of the most important sūtras of the Buddhist Mahāyāna tradition and concerns the correct practice for those who proceed in the path of a Bodhisattva. In this article, I shall analyze a portion of Kamalaśīla’s refutation, based on a new critical edition and English translation of the *Vajracchedikāṭīkā. I will show how he takes the opportunity, while commenting on scriptures, to combine logic/epistemology and soteriology. He does this by including philosophical arguments in his explanation of the cultivation of insight, and accordingly within the spiritual path of a Bodhisattva. In the process, I shall also investigate sources containing disputes between Buddhists and Naiyāyikas (as well as Vaiśeṣikas) regarding the Self. These are evidently the background of Kamalaśīla’s refutation. In particular, he defends the so-called Buddhist non-apprehension argument against Uddyotakara’s doctrine of the perceptibility of the Self.

Abstract According to the Navya Naiyāyikas, inference is the knowledge, which is produced out of consideration. But what is to be understood by the term ‘consideration’ or ‘parāmarśa’? According to them, parāmarśa or consideration is the factor through the operation of which the inferential conclusion can be attained. Parāmarśa has been defined as the knowledge of the existence of the hetu or reason in the pakṣa or subject, which reason is characterized by its being concomitant with the sādhya, the knowledge in the form of parāmarśa is actually caused by the knowledge of invariable concomitance of probans (hetu) with the probandum (sādhya) and the knowledge of the existence of the hetu in the subject (pakṣa). It has been said by Viśvanātha that the cognition of the existence of probans or hetu in the subject of inference along with the cognition of the prabans or hetu as pervaded by sādhya is called parāmarśa (pakṣasya vyāpyavṛttitvadhīḥ parāmarśa ucyate). The invariable co-existence in the form ‘where there is smoke, there is fire’ is known as vyāpti or invariable concomitance. Here the invariable coexistence (avyabhicārī sāhacarya) between the probans and probandum (i.e., smoke and fire) is the definition of vyāpti. The term ‘co-existence’ means remaining in the same locus of the probans with the probandum, which is not the counter positive of the absolute negation existing in the locus of the hetu. To Gangeśa, the knowledge of the co-existence of the probans and probandum along with the absence of the knowledge of deviation of the probans is the cause of ascertaining vyāpti. Repeated observations, of course, sometimes act as a promoter (prayojaka) in ascertaining vyāpti by removing the doubt of deviation. The doubt of deviation can be removed sometimes by Tarka or sometimes by the absence of the collocation of causes of doubt, which is called svataḥsiddhaḥ. Gangeśa admits sāmānyalakṣaṇā as a pratyāsatti in ascertaining vyāpti between smoke-in-general and fire-in-general. To him, the super-normal connection through universal (sāmānyalakṣaṇā pratyāsatti) has got a prominent role in ascertaining vyāpti. If somebody challenges about the validity of the syllogistic argument in the form “The mountain is fiery as it possesses smoke” (parvato vahnimān dhūmāt), the philosophers of Nyāya and Navya-nyāya persuasion will justify the same with the help of five constituents (avayava-s). The process is called parāthānumāna (syllogistic argument for making others understand). The constituents of a syllogism are proposition (pratijňā), reason (hetu), example (udāharaṇa), application (upanaya), and conclusion (nigamana).

This chapter traces the development of the concept of ownership in Sanskrit hermeneutical (Mīṃāṃsā) and jurisprudential (Dharmaśāstra) texts from approximately the first millennium CE to approximately the fifteenth century CE. The chapter draws attention to two linked trends in Indian jurisprudential history: (1) the development of a philosophical concept of ownership that occurred in the Sanskrit hermeneutical tradition centuries before the earliest logicians (Naiyāyikas); and (2) the recalibration and redeployment of several arguments concerning this Mīmāṃsā-derived concept by medieval Dharmaśāstra commentators who self-consciously framed their approaches to the jurisprudence of inheritance as further refinements of Vijñāneśvara’s Ṛjumitākṣarā (eleventh to twelfth centuries CE). The core legal and philosophical ideas analyzed are ownership-by-birth (janmasvatva) and ownership as an extra-śāstric (laukika) phenomenon respectively.