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Theory of knowledge,pramāṇa-śāstra, is a rich genre ofSanskrit literature, spanning almost twenty centuries, carried out intexts belonging to distinct schools of philosophy. Debate acrossschool occurs especially on epistemological issues, but no authorwrites on knowledge independently of the sort of metaphysicalcommitment that defines the various classical systems(darśana), realist and idealist, dualist and monist,theist and atheist, and so on. And every one of the dozen or so majorschools from early in its history takes a position on knowledge andjustification, if only, as with the Buddhist skeptic(Prasaṅgika), to attack the theories of others. Thereare nevertheless many common epistemological assumptions or attitudes,the most striking of which is a focus on a belief’s source inquestions of justification. Mainstream classical Indian epistemologyis dominated by theories about pedigree, i.e., views aboutknowledge-generating processes, calledpramāṇa, “knowledge sources.” Theprincipal candidates are perception, inference, and testimony. Otherprocesses seem not truth-conducive or reducible to one or more of thewidely accepted sources such as perception and inference. However,surprising candidates such as non-perception (for knowledge ofabsences) and presumption (defended as distinct frominference) provoke complex arguments especially in the latertexts—from about 1000 when the number of Sanskrit philosophical worksof some of the schools begins to proliferate almost exponentially. Thelater texts present more intricate views and arguments than the earlierfrom which the later authors learned. Classical Indian philosophy is anunbroken tradition of reflection expressed in the pan-Subcontinentintellectual language of Sanskrit. Or, we should say it is comprised ofinterlocking traditions since there are the distinct schools,all nevertheless using Sanskrit and engaging with other schools.Later authors expand and carry forward positions and arguments of theirpredecessors.

Skepticism and the issue of whether knowledge that pentails that you know that you know that p are addressed aswell as the question of the usefulness of knowledge not only for thepurposes of everyday life but also the religious goal ofworld-transcendence, about which most schools take positions.The authority of testimony, among candidate sources, is consideredby some to have special religious importance. Others view yogicperception and/or meditative experience as crucial for religiousknowledge, which is usually distinguished from the everyday knowledge analyzedin the textbooks of epistemology.

• 1. Common Presuppositions of Classical Indian Schools
• 7. Analogy and Other Candidate Sources
• Bibliography

1. Common Presuppositions of Classical Indian Schools

Commonalities in the classical Indian approaches to knowledge andjustification frame the arguments and refined positions of the majorschools. Central is a focus on occurrent knowledge coupled with atheory of “mental dispositions” calledsaṃskāra. Epistemic evaluation ofmemory, and indeed of all standing belief, is seen to depend upon theepistemic status of the occurrent cognition or awareness or awarenessesthat formed the memory, i.e., the mental disposition, in the firstplace. Occurrent knowledge in turn must have a knowledge source,pramāṇa.

1.1 Knowledge and Knowledge Sources

A common failure of translators rendering the technical terms of theIndian epistemological schools into the technical terms, or even not sotechnical, of English and analytic philosophy, is ignorance of thelatter. For example, several words, the most common of which is‘jñāna’, are standardly rendered with theword ‘knowledge’ in English (e.g., Bhatt 1989). However, properSanskrit usage allows “false” jñāna, whereasthere is no false knowledge as the words are used in (analytic)English. There is a deeper lesson here than that translators shouldstudy Western philosophy, the lesson, namely, that although there maybe false jñāna—let us say “cognition”:there are true and false cognition—it is commonly assumed in everydayspeech as well as by the Indian epistemologists (with a few exceptions,notably, the second-century Buddhist Nāgārjuna and certainfollowers including Śrīharṣa, theeleventh-century Advaitin) that cognition is ordinarily by nature trueor veridical. It is error and falsity that are the deviations from thenormal and natural. That is to say, cognition is regarded as knowledgeas a kind of conversational default—and so to translate‘jñāna’ as “knowledge” turns outnot to be so bad after all. When the eighth-century AdvaitinŚaṅkara says that from theperspective of spiritual knowledge (vidyā) theknowledge we recognize in everyday speech turns out to be illusory,mithyā-jñāna,“false knowledge,” this is supposed to be felt as almost acontradiction in terms (Brahma-sūtra Commentary,preamble).

Now it is argued by practically everyone (save the anti-epistemologygroup headed by Nāgārjuna) that at least everyday knowledgeis proved by our unhesitating action(niṣkampa-prvṛtti) toget what we want and avoid what we want to avoid. We would not so actif we had doubt, guided as we are by our knowledge. Belief, whichcognition embeds, is tied to action, and action, in turn, blunts theforce of skepticism, it is pointed out in several of the classicalschools. Buddhist Yogācāra as well asMīmāṃsā and (most)Vedānta view knowledge as inherently known to be true. EvenNyāya, a school championing a view of knowledge as unselfconsciousof itself as true, subscribes to the epistemological principle of“Innocent until reasonably challenged” (a slight weakening of the“Innocent until proven guilty,” as pointed out, e.g., by Matilal 1986,314: “Verbal reports … are innocent until proven guilty”).Surprisingly (given the rancor in some exchanges across school), thesixth-century Nyāya philosopher Uddyotakara, who is famous for hisattacks on Yogācāra positions, takes a similarly charitableattitude to be a rule applying to other philosophies: “For it is a rulewith systems (of philosophy) that a position of another that is notexpressly disproved is (to be regarded as) in conformity (with one’sown)” (under Nyāya-sūtra 1.1.4:125).

Knowledge is cognition that has been produced in the right way.Cognitions are moments of consciousness, not species of belief, but wemay say that cognitions form beliefs in forming dispositions and thatveridical cognitions form true beliefs. A knowledge episode—to speakin the Indian manner—is a cognition generated in the right fashion.Whether this be because it is (as say the realists,Mīmāṃsā, Nyāya,Vaiśeṣika) that it has the rightorigins in fact, or whether it is because it guides successful actionin helping us get our desires satisfied (as say Yogācāraidealists and pragmatists), knowledge is cognition that arises in theright way. There are different theories of truth, but everyone seesknowledge as not only revealing the truth but arising from it.Knowledge episodes form non-occurrent knowledge (it is assumed, we maysay), and so an examination of what is crucial to the arising of aknowledge episode is crucial to the evaluations of epistemology.Knowledge cannot arise by accident. A lucky guess, though true orveridical, would not count as knowledge because it would not beengenerated in the right fashion, would not have the right pedigree oretiology. The central notion throughout classical Indian epistemologyis the “knowledge source,” pramāṇa,which is a process of veridical-cognition generation.

Now the word ‘pramāṇa’(“knowledge source”) and the result‘pramā’ (“knowledge”; this is atechnical usage that matches, practically perfectly, the analyticusages of ‘knowledge’ in English) along with the wordsused for individual knowledge sources, for perception and so on, arecommonly used such that the truth of the resultant cognition isimplied. This runs counter to English usage, along with broadphilosophic supposition, which is different with the words‘perception’ and company. For no knowledge source evergenerates a false belief. Yogācāra Buddhists—whosubscribe to the metaphysical view known as momentariness, which is apresentism (only things existing right now are real)—claim thatthere is no difference between source and result, process of knowledgeand effect, pramāṇa andpramā. Thus there can be no wedge driven between causeand effect such that there could possibly be true belief by accident. TheVedic schools (Mīmāṃsā,Vedānta, Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika,Sāṃkhya, Yoga) do distinguish knowledge fromtrue belief but also see the concepts of truth and knowledge-producing process aswedded in that, as indicated, no genuine knowledge source ever producesa false belief. Only pseudo-sources do. That is to say, nonon-veridical cognition is knowledge-source-generated. A knowledgesource is then not merely a reliable doxastic practice. Being merelyreliable does not fit the bill. The concept of a knowledge source has atruth logic, like ‘knowledge’ in English; it is factive. Maybe weshould say perception*, inference*, testimony* to render the classicalIndian ideas. False testimony, for example, does not count as aknowledge-generator; the Sanskrit word for testimony is used only forwhat would be termed in English “epistemically successful testimony,”i.e., with a hearer having knowledge in virtue of a speaker telling thetruth. A non-veridical perception is not really a perception at all buta “pseudo-perception”(pratyakṣa-ābhāsa),“apparent perception,” a perception imitator. You don’t reallysee an illusory snake; you only think you see one.

1.2 The Touchstone of Everyday Speech

Everyday patterns of speech(vyavahāra) are taken as a startingpoint for theorizing in epistemology as in other areas of philosophy.So, for example, perception and inference—more exotic candidatesources, too—are defended as veritable knowledge-generators by theobservation that people commonly regard them in that way. People cite abelief’s pedigree in questions of justification. Note that even inEnglish we do commonly recognize perception and some of the others ascertificational. Thus this seems to be a common human practice, notrestricted to classical Indian civilization, for sometimes we say, forinstance, “S is indeed over there, since I see him,” and “You couldn’treally have perceived S because condition Y does not hold” (“You can’tsee anyone from this distance”). Habits of speech are reinforced bysuccess in action, classical theorists recognize in accepting thepresumptive authority of common opinion. But “a knowledge source” maybe thought of as a technical term, one that entails factivity, as wehave seen, as a matter of definition. Similarly with justification(prāmāṇya), the having ofwhich, if veritable (or objective), as opposed to the apparent(ābhāsa), means that the justifiedcognition is true.

1.3 Knowledge and World-Transcendence

There is much controversy over the religious goal of life among theseveral schools, both among schools accepting Vedic culture (liberationvs. heaven, individual dissolution into the Absolute Brahman, blissfulyogic “isolation,” kaivalya, enjoyment of God’s presence) andamong outsider schools (Buddhistnirvāṇa or becoming abodhi-sattva or a Jaina arhat as well asCārvāka’s entire rejection of soteriology). But from adistance, we can see common conceptions linking at least many of theIndian views. One is to draw a distinction between everyday andspiritual knowledge and to theorize about their relationship. Aprominent position is that thinking about the world is an obstacle tospiritual enlightenment. Another is that proper understanding of theworld helps one disengage and to know oneself as separate from materialthings, and so is an aid to transcendence. The most distinctive form ofskepticism in classical Indian thought is that so-called worldlyknowledge is not knowledge at all but is a perversion or deformation ofconsciousness. Who seems a philosophical skeptic is really a sainthelping us achieve our truly greatest good of world-transcendence byhelping us see paradoxes and other failures of theory.

2. Skepticism

With an eye to the alleged power of inference to prove theexistence of God or personal survival, the Cārvākamaterialist school recognizes perception as a knowledge source but notinference nor any other candidate. Inference depends upongeneralizations which outstrip perceptual evidence, everything F as aG. No one can know that, Cārvāka claims. Testimony is also nogood since it presupposes that a speaker would tell the truth andthus is subject to the same criticism of lack of evidence. And so onthrough the other candidates (Mādhava,Sarva-darśana-saṃgraha). Thestandard response is pragmatic. We could not act as we do if we couldnot rely on inference (etc.) albeit inference does depend ongeneralization that (often, not invariably) outstrips experience. Theskeptic himself relies on such generalizations when he opens his mouthto voice his skepticism, by using words with repeatable meanings(Gaṅgeśa, inferencechapter, Tattva-cintā-maṇi).

The Cārvāka argument identifying the problem of inductionis turned by both Buddhist and Nyāya philosophers into an argumentfor fallibilism about inference. What we take to be the result of agenuine inference may turn out to hinge on a fallacy, ahetv-ābhāsa, an apparent but misleading “reason” orsign (see the section below on inference). But to accept that sometimeswe reason in ways that mimic but fail to instantiate right forms is notto be a skeptic. Indeed, the very concept of a fallacy(hetv-ābhāsa) presupposes that of the veritablereason or sign (hetu), a veritable prover making us have newknowledge.

A different kind of skepticism is broader in scope, not restricted toinference or other candidate sources. It appears both in Buddhism andAdvaita Vedānta, but let us rehearse only the Buddhist version. Bydiscerning absurdities that arise in viewing anything as having anindependent existence, one realizes, as Nāgārjuna says, thateverything is niḥsvabhāva, “without areality of its own.” Applying this to oneself, one comes to see thetruth of the Buddha’s teaching of anātman, “no-self,”which is viewed as a decisive step toward the summum bonum ofenlightenment and perfection(prajñā-pāramitā). Inparticular, Nāgārjuna identifies a problem of a justificationregress in the pramāṇa program(Vigraha-vyavārtinī, v. 33), which assumesthat process and result can be separated, along with various conundraor paradoxes concerning relations (such as the so-called Bradleyproblem). The Nyāya-sūtra argues that theNāgārjunian type of skepticism is self-defeating (4.2.26–36),but many of the problems identified by the Buddhist (and hisintellectual inheritors such asŚrīharṣa) occupy thereflections of philosophers for centuries, Buddhist as well asNyāya and Mīmāṃsā among Vedic schools in particular.

3. Knowing That You Know

One of the philosophic problems that Nāgārjuna raised forepistemology has to do with an alleged regress of justification on theassumption that a pramāṇa isrequired in order to know and that to identify the source of a bit ofknowledge is to certify the proposition embedded. Nāgārjunaclaims that this is absurd in that it would require an infinite seriesof pramāṇa, of identification of amore fundamental pramāṇa for everypramāṇa relied on.

Mīmāṃsā and Vedāntaphilosophers argue that such a threat of regress shows that knowledgeis self-certifying, svataḥprāmāṇya. Vedāntins connectthe Upanishadic teaching of a truest or deepest self(ātman) as having “self-illumining awareness”(sva-prakāśa) with aMīmāṃsā epistemological theoryof self-certification: at least in the case of spiritual knowledge(vidyā) awareness is self-aware. From this it followsthat only awareness is right concerning all questions about awareness,since only awareness itself has, so to say, access to itself. Awarenessitself is the only consideration relevant to any question aboutawareness itself, its existence or its nature.

Mīmāṃsā defends Vedic truthby claiming that knowledge of it wears its certification on its sleevelike everyday knowledge where the initial credibility of an occurrentcognition seems practically absolute. According to PrābhākaraMīmāṃsā (from the late seventhcentury), no cognition that in itself purports to be veridical isindeed non-veridical; no cognition is absolutely wrong but at worst aconfusion. The same causal nexus that produces a veridical cognitionproduces knowledge of its veridicality. According toBhāṭṭaMīmāṃsā (deriving fromKumārila, Prabhākara’s teacher), veridicality is knownthrough the process of inference whereby a cognition itself would beknown as having occurred. A cognition, which is an act, produces afeature in the object it cognizes, a “cognizedness,” and then fromapprehension of this feature both the original cognition and itsveridicality are known. Certification is thus intrinsic to acognition’s being known, that is, with cognitions that are veridical.With respect to knowledge of non-veridicality, extrinsic certificationis necessary.

Nyāya takes an extrinsicality view of certification(parataḥprāmāṇya)—it denies thatKp entails KKp; to know that you know requiresapperceptive certification—and so seems vulnerable to the regresscharge. The solution involves the notion of “apperception”(anuvyavasāya), which is a second-level cognition thathas another cognition as its object withoutitself being self-aware. Certification, psychologically considered,involves apperception, a seeing that a challenged, target cognition isfalse or true.

Vātsyāyana (fourth century, whoseNyāya-sūtra commentary is the oldest extant)expressly rebuts the regress charge (we do sometimes certify our claimswithout having to certify the certifiers) underNyāya-sūtra 2.1.20 (448–49, translationmine):

If comprehension of perception or another (knowledge source) landed usin infinite regress, then everyday action and discourse would not goon through comprehension of self-consciously known objects and theirknown causes. (However) everyday action and discourse do proceed forsomeone comprehending self-consciously known objects and their knowncauses: when (self-consciously) I grasp by perception an object or Igrasp one by inference or I grasp one by analogy or I grasp one bytradition or testimony (the four knowledge sources according toNyāya), the (apperceptive) cognition that occurs goes like this:“My knowledge is perceptual” or “My knowledge isinferential” or “My knowledge is from analogy” or“My knowledge is testimonial.”

And motivation to seek righteousness (dharma), wealth,pleasure, or liberation proceeds through these comprehensions (whereasif there is doubt, no such goal-directed activity would occur), aslikewise motivation to reject their opposites. Everyday discourse andaction would cease (to be possible for such a subject) if what isalleged were indeed to hold (justificational regress).

Nyāya’s strategy is then (1) to charge the objector with making a“pragmatic contradiction,” (2) to take veridicality as cognitivedefault, and (3) to certify cognitions by source identification as wellas by inference from the success or failure of the activity that theyprovoke and guide. We assume without checking that our cognition isveridical, but sometimes we need to check. Note that the practicalpursuits that Vātsyāyana mentions as guided by second-order,reflective knowledge are: “righteousness (dharma), wealth,pleasure, [and] liberation.”

4. Perception

All the classical schools that advance epistemologies acceptperception as a knowledge source although there is much disagreementabout its nature, objects, and limitations. Are the objects ofperception internal to consciousness or external? Are they restrictedto individuals, e.g., a particular cow, or are universals, e.g.,cowhood, also perceived? How about relations? Absences or negativefacts (Devadatta’s not being at home)? Parts or wholes? Both? A self,awareness itself? There are issues about perceptual media such as lightand ether, ākāśa, the purported mediumof sound, and about what is perceptible yogically (God, theīśvara, the ātman orself, puruṣa). What are the environmentalconditions that govern perception, and how do these connect with thedifferent sensory modalities? Are there internal conditions onperception (such as attention or focus, viewed by some as a voluntaryact)? Is a recognition, e.g., “This is that Devadatta I saw yesterday,”perceptual? And does it prove the endurance of things over timeincluding the perceiving subject? Do we perceive only fleetingqualities (dharma), as Buddhists tend to say, or qualifiers asqualifying qualificanda (a lotus as qualified by being-blue), as sayrealist Nyāya andMīmāṃsā? Does all perceptioninvolve a sensory connection with an object that is responsible forproviding its content or intentionality(nirākāra-vāda, Nyāya), or is the contentof perception internal to itself (sākāra-vāda,Yogācāra)? How do we differentiate veritable perception,which is defined as veridical, and pseudo-perception (illusion), whichis non-veridical? How is illusion to be explained? These are some ofthe outstanding issues and questions that occupy the schools in allperiods of their literatures.

Yogācāra subjectivism views perception as“concept-free,” whereas the holist grammarianBhartṛhari of the third century finds it all to be clothed inlanguage. Mīmāṃsā and Nyāya realistsemphasize the “concept-laden” nature of at least the typeof perception that is epistemically foundational for observationstatements containing basic sensory predicates. To be sure,Mīmāṃsā and later Nyāya also admitconcept-free perception. Kumārila Bhaṭṭa mentions thecognition of an infant as an example(Śloka-vārttika commentary on the perceptionsūtra of the Mīmāṃsā-sūtra,verse 112, p. 94; see also Matilal 1986, 321–322). Phenomenologicallyhumans would seem to have much in common with infants and animalsconsidering this type of perception. But according to the greatMīmāṃsaka, perception does not so much divide intotypes as form a process with the concept-free as the firststage. Awareness of the object is only quasi-propositional in thefirst moment, and at the second has its content filled out to becomethe means whereby an individual is ascertained to have a certaincharacter, to be a certain kind of substance or to possess a universalor an action, etc. (verse 120, p. 96). The object perceived, the lotus(or whatever), is known in the first stage as an individual whole,both in its individuality and as having a character. But thecharacter, the thing’s being blue as opposed to red, and its beinghere right now, are not known without the mediation of concepts whichare supplied internally. Seeing is ultimately “seeing as”and is “shot through with words,” to use the expression ofBhartṛhari (Vākyapadīya, ch. 1, verses123–124, p. 199; see also Matilal 1986, 342). However, the mind orself does not, according to the realists, have any innate ideas(unlike then Yogācāra, which postulates a collective“storehouseconsciousness,” ālaya-vijñāna).Concepts are the records of previous experiences.

Yogācāra holds that all predication, including thesensory, depends on ideas of unreal generality. All predicationinvolves repeatable general terms. Thus the realists’ “propositionalcontent” is suspicious just because this is not raw perception whichalone is capable of presenting the truly real, thesva-lakṣaṇa, “thatwhich is its own mark,” the unique or particular. Classical Indianrealists hold that perception is none the worse for being concept-ladenin that concepts are features of the world as impressed upon the mindor self. Perception founds true beliefs, and the repeatable predicatesand concepts (cowhood) perceptually acquired and re-presented andemployed in verbalizations pick out constituents of real objects,things that do re-occur (there are lots of cows in the world). For lateNyāya philosophers, concept-laden perception comes so to dwarf inimportance the indeterminate, concept-free variety that the latterbecomes problematic. Perception in its epistemological role isconcept-laden. Otherwise, it could not be certificational. Perceptionas a knowledge source is a doxastic, belief-generating process. Beliefs(or anyhow perceptual cognitions and their verbalizations) aredependent on concepts (to believe or say that there is a pot on thefloor, one must possess the concepts of “pot” and “floor”).

The Yogācāra Buddhists’ best argument for theirsubjectivism—which one suspects derives more fundamentally from acommitment to the possibility of a universalnirvāṇa experience, although this isnot said—is perceptual illusion. Illusion proves that a perception’sobject is not a feature of the world but is contributed somehow fromthe side of the subject. A rope can be perceived as a snake, with nodifference, from the perspective of the perceiver, between the illusionand a veridical snake perception. Similarly, dreams are the“perceptions” of a dreamer but do not touch reality. (Our world is adream, say Buddhists, and we should try to become buddha,“Awakened.”)

One way to resist the pull of the illusion argument belongs toPrābhākara Mīmāṃsāwhich insists that not only is perception invariably veridical but alsocognition in general, jñāna. Nyāyaphilosophers hold in contrast that illusion is a false cognition. Richdebate occurs over Nyāya’s “misplacement” view of illusion and aPrābhākara “no-illusion” or “omission” theory (illusion is afailure to cognize of a certain sort, an absence of cognition, forexample, an absence of cognition of the difference between aremembering of silver and a perceiving of mother-of-pearl when holdingin hand a piece of shell S exclaims, “Silver!”). Here Nyāya agreeswith the subjectivists: sometimes a person S apparently perceivesa to be F—has an apparently perceptual cognition embeddingFa—when a is not in fact F, while S cannot discernfrom her own first-person perspective that the cognition isnon-veridical. Nevertheless, the predication content, according toNyāya as also Mīmāṃsā,the presentation or indication of F-hood, originates in things’ reallybeing F, through previous veridical experience of F-hood.

Here we touch the heart of classical Indian realism. Snakehood isavailable to become illusory predication content through previousveridical experience of snakes. It gets fused into a current perceptionby means of a foul-up in the normal causal process through the arousingof a snakehood memory-disposition(saṃskāra) formed by previousexperience. The content or intentionality(viṣayatā, “objecthood”) of anillusion is to be explained causally as generated by real features ofreal things just as is genuine perception though they are distinctcognitive types. Illusion involves the projection into current(determinate) cognition (which would be pseudo-perception) ofpredication content preserved in memory. Sometimes the fusion of anelement preserved in memory is cross-sensory, tasting sourness, forinstance, when perceiving a lemon by sight or smelling a piece ofsandalwood which is seen at too far a distance for actual olfactorystimulation. These are cases of veridical perception with an obviousadmixture or tinge of memory. Illusion, according to Nyāya, is tobe analyzed similarly, but unlike veridical cases of projectionillusion involves taking something to be what it is not, a seeing orperceiving it through a “misplaced” qualifier. This means thatconcept-laden perception is necessarily combinational—a position takenby Gautama himself, the “sūtra-maker,” and much elaboratedby Vātsyāyana and the other commentators in text apparentlyaimed at an early form of Buddhist subjectivism(Nyāya-sūtra 4.2.26–36). The upshot of thesesūtras is that, first, the concept of illusion isparasitic on that of veridical experience (not all coins can becounterfeit), and, second, that illusion shows a combinational(propositional) structure: this is a something or other. According toNyāya, perceptual illusion is right in part, that there issomething there, but wrong about what it is. Ontologically, Nyāya takes a disjunctivist position: an illusion is a different kind of critter than a genuine perception, since its intentionality is different.

To fill out the realist account in late Nyāya, thought-ladenperception, determinate perception, gets its content or intentionality—its “object-directedness”—not only from theobject in connection with the sense organ but also from theclassificational power of the mind (or self). With the perceptualcognition, “That’s a pot,” for instance, the pot as an individual inconnection with a sensory faculty is responsible for the awareness of aproperty-bearer, for what is called the qualificandum portion of theperception, without admixture of memory. But the sensory connection isnot by itself responsible for the qualifier portion, the pothood, thatis to say, the thing’s classification as a pot. A qualificandum asqualified by a qualifier is perceived all at once(eka-vṛtti-vedya), but a determinateperception’s portions have distinct etiologies. Now theclassificational power of the mind (or self) is not innate, as pointedout, but is rather the product of presentational experience(anubhava) over the course of a subject’s life. Repeatablefeatures of reality get impressed on the mind (or self) in the form ofmemory dispositions. For most adults, prior determinate cognitionis partly responsible for the content predicable of a particular, or a group of things,presented through the senses. That is, in perceiving a as anF, an F-saṃskāra formed by previousknowledge-source-produced bits of occurrent cognition of things F wouldbe a causal factor. The perception’s own content includes therepeatable nature of the qualifier through the operation of thisfactor. We see the tree as a tree.

But sometimes neither a prior determinate cognition nor a memorydisposition is at all responsible for the predication content, for example, when achild sees a cow for the very first time. Rather, an “in the raw”perceptual grasping of the qualifier (cowhood) delivers it to anensuing concept-laden and verbalizable perception. In other words,there are cases of determinate cognition whereindeterminate, concept-free perception furnishes the qualifier independently and theensuing concept-laden perception is not tinged by memory. Normally,saṃskāra, “memory-dispositions,” doplay a causal role in determinate perception, according to Nyāyaand Mīmāṃsā and indeedepistemologists of all flags. But sometimes an immediately priorconcept-free perception of a qualifier plays the role of thesaṃskāra, furnishing by itself the concept, thepredication content, the qualifier portion of an ensuing determinate,proposition-laden perception, which is the type of cognition thatfounds our beliefs about the world.

If this were not an “immaculate perception” but itself a grasping of aproperty through the grasping of another property, we would be facedwith an infinite regress and direct perception of the world would beimpossible. Concept-free perception need not provide the classifying notonly with second and third-time perceptions of something as F but noteven, strictly speaking, with a first-time perception, since therecould be an intervening cognitive factor (provided, say, by analogy:see below). But with that factor again the question would arise how itgets its content, and so since an indeterminate perception has to beposited at some point to block a regress it might as well be at thestart. This is the main argument ofGaṅgeśa, the late Nyāyasystematizer, in defense of positing the concept-free as a type orfirst stage of perception (Phillips 2001).

Nevertheless, for all intents and purposes, perception embodiesbeliefs, according to the realists. More accurately, a perceptualbelief is the result of the operation of perception as a knowledgesource. Everything that is nameable is knowable and vice-versa. Thereis nothing that when we attend to it cannot bear a name, for we canmake up new names. We can in principle verbalize the indications of ourexperience, though many of them are not named since we are indifferent(pebbles perceived along the road). Concept-free perception is theclassical Indian realist rendering of our ability to form perceptualconcepts by attending to perception’s phenomenological side.Epistemologically, it plays no role, since it is itself a posit and isunverbalizable and not directly apperceived (A. Chakrabarti 2000 givesthis and other reasons for jettisoning the concept from Nyāya’sown realist point of view).

As mentioned, Yogācāra takes issue with the realist theoryof perception, viewing all perception as concept-free. What isperceived is only the unqualified particular,sva-lakṣaṇa. Therealists’ “qualifiers” such as cowhood are mental constructions,“convenient fictions.” Various reductio arguments are put forth to showthe incoherence of the realists’ conception of a qualificandumperceived at once to be qualified by a qualifier(eka-vṛtti-vedya). The different views ofthe objects of perception feed different views of inference.

5. Inference

Logic is developed in classical India within the traditions ofepistemology. Inference is a second knowledge source, a means wherebywe can know things not immediately evident through perception. Oetke(2004) finds three roots to the earliest concerns with logic in India:(1) common-sense inference, (2) establishment of doctrines in the frameof scientific treatises (śāstra), and (3)justification of tenets in a debate. The three of these come together(though the latter two are predominant) within the epistemologicaltraditions in an almost universal regard of inference as a knowledgesource.

Seeing classical Indian logic as part of epistemology, as explaininghow we know facts through the mediation of our knowledge of otherfacts, makes it easy to understand why both the Buddhist and Vedicschools count a valid but unsound argument as fallacious: knowledgeis not generated. Classical Indian philosophers are not focused on logicper se, but rather on a psychological process whereby we come to knowthings indirectly, by way of a sign, hetu orliṅga, an indication of somethingcurrently beyond the range of the senses, whether at a distancespatially or temporally or of a sort (such as atoms or God or theBuddha mind) that by nature cannot be directly perceived.

The two greatest names for classical Indian logic belong to logiciansof the Buddhist Yogācāra school, Dignāga (sixth century)and Dharmakīrti (early seventh century). Dignāga laidout all the possible relationships of inclusion and exclusion for theextensions of two terms called the prover or “sign,” hetu, andthe probandum, sādhya, the property “to be proved.”Thereby he revealed the underpinnings of thepramāṇa of inference in terms ofsets of particulars, which, according to Yogācāra ontology,are the only reals. Dharmakīrti classified inferences basedon the ontological nature of the class-inclusion relationship thatunderpins all inference as a knowledge source. Earlier philosophers,both Buddhist and non-Buddhist, provide examples of everyday reasoning,several of which are abductive in character, informal reasoning to thebest explanation, from sight of a swollen river, for example, saysVātsyāyana in his commentary on the inferencesūtra (1.1.5) of theNyāya-sūtra, to the conclusion that it hasrained upstream. But there are also instances of inferences comprisedof deductive, extrapolative, and sometimes properly inductive reasoningon topics of everyday life as well as philosophy in numerouspre-Dignāga texts of several schools. It is not true, as issometimes claimed, that no one before Dignāga had the notion of aninference-underpinning “pervasion,” vyāpti, of a proverproperty by a property to be proved. Dignāga does however get thecredit for the earliest systematization, which employs three terms, asite or subject of a proposed inference(pakṣa, the mountain in the stock exampleof an inference from sight of smoke on a mountain to knowledge of fireon the mountain), the prover or prover property (hetu,smokiness), and the probandum (sādhya, fieriness).

Dignāga, it should be stressed, as a nominalist sees inferenceas proceeding from knowledge of particulars to other knowledge ofparticulars (avoiding the universals of the realists, as nicelyexplained by Hayes 1988 with reference to the Buddhist apoha,“exclusion,” theory of concepts). Dignāga formulates a threefoldtest for a good prover, trairūpya-hetu:

1. the prover’s occurrence on the inferential subject of a proposed inference mustbe known to the subject S
2. the prover’s occurrence at least once together with the probandummust be known to S
3. no counter-case of a prover occurring without the probandum mustbe known to S.

Uddyotakara in his Nyāya-sūtra commentaryincorporates Dignāga’s ideas to formalize many ofVātsyāyana’s informal inferences. The Nyāya philosopherowes almost everything to his Buddhist adversaries, as opposed to hisNyāya predecessors, but he does criticize and alter what he seesas the certification conditions of inference as a knowledge source,combining Dignāga’s second and third tests into a singlerequirement, knowledge of pervasion. He also adds a third condition,the subject’s having to “reflect” and put the information together, soto say:

1. pakṣa-dharmatā: the proverhas to be known to S as qualifying the inferential subject
2. vyāpti-smaraṇa: the prover’sbeing pervaded by the probandum has to be remembered by S
3. liṅga-parāmarśa: Smust connect by reflection the pervasion with the inferential subject.

The upshot of the addition may be interpreted as the recognitionthat knowledge is not closed under deduction considered in abstractionfrom the psychological process of “reflection.” But through thatprocess, epistemic warrant—or “certainty,”niścaya—passes from premises to conclusion, andwe act unhesitatingly, for example, to put a fire on yonder mountainout.

Things are yet more complicated. Inferential knowledge is defeasible,or, more precisely stated, what a subject takes to be inferentialknowledge may turn out to be pseudo, non-genuine, a false cognitionimitating a true one, or even in Gettier-style cases an accidentallytrue cognition masquerading as one genuinely inference-born. Knowledgehas a social dimension. Not only would awareness of a counterexamplebe a defeater, but also if someone were to present a counterinferenceto a conclusion opposed to ours, no longer would we have inferentialknowledge. Awareness of any of several kinds of “blocker”of “reflection” can undermine the generalization on whichsuch reflection depends. There are potential preventers of inferentialawareness, “defeaters,” bādhaka, leading tobelief relinquishment by someone who has hitherto not noticed acounterexample or the like and who has thus drawn a conclusionerroneously.

However, one should not think that the epistemologists’ inference isnon-monotonic, as established by Taber (2004) against Oetke (1996) inparticular. The paradigm logical form embedded in a good inference ismonotonic. New information is irrelevant to the validity of thepattern itself, although it may well be relevant to a subject’sjustification for acceptance of the premises. Examples of inferencesin classical texts often seem non-monotonic because fallibilityattaches to the premises. Such fallibility of course passes to theconclusion, too. (Cf. Israel 1980 who similarly voices anepistemological complaint against the very idea ofnon-monotonic logic, according to Koons 2013.)

Targeting the relationship of pervasion in Uddyotakara’s secondcondition, vyāpti-smaraṇa, whichappears to be the ontological underpinning of Dignāga’s conditions(2) and (3), Dharmakīrti divides inferences into threekinds:

• sva-bhāva (self-nature: “It’s a tree because it’s aśiṃśapā oak”)
• tad-utpatti (causality: “Fire is there becausesmoke is there”)
• anupalabdhi (non-perception: “There is no pothere because none is perceived”).

Yogācāra holds that with the first type of inference theunderpinning pervasion is “internal” (antar-vyāpti). Wemay think of this as an internal relation between concepts and thus assimilar to the a priori of Western philosophy. But it isactually a technical point about whether the term that picks out theinferential subject or subjects—think of thepakṣa as a set—closes it off from beingincluded in the inductive base of the generalization (or extrapolation,according to Ganeri 2001b) that gives us knowledge of a pervasionrelationship. Mīmāṃsā andNyāya rule out this kind of inference as begging the question: wewant to know whether the inferential subject possesses the probandumproperty and so to cite that subject itself, even a part of it, runscounter to the very purpose of inference.

Later Nyāya divides inferences not according to the ontology ofpervasion (which is mapped onto theNyāya-Vaiśeṣika ontology andcausal theory, sometimes not very successfully) but rather by the way apervasion is known:

• anvaya-vyatireka (“positive and negative”): inferencesbased on positive and negative correlations where both are available,i.e., cases where, for example, smokiness and fieriness have been knownto occur together, kitchen hearths, campfires, etc., like (it isclaimed) yonder smoky mountain where being-fiery is to be proved, takenalong with negative examples where the prover as well asthe probandum is known not to occur
• kevala-anvaya (“positive only”): inferences based onpositive correlations only, where there are no known examples of anabsence of the probandum property, such as would have to be the casewith the universally present property, knowability (there is nothingthat is not knowable)
• kevala-vyatireka (“negative only”): inferences based onnegative correlations only where outside of the inferential subject thereare no known cases of the probandum.

Many of the inferences that Buddhists identify as hinging on an“internal pervasion” (antar-vyāpti)Nyāya philosophers see as “negative only”(kevala-vyatireka). Taking aparticular śiṃśapā oak asthe pakṣa, we have the negative correlation proving itis a tree: whatever is not a tree, is not aśiṃśapāoak, for example, a lotus.

Western interpretations and representations of inference as classicallyconceived have often missed its unity as a knowledge source. Ganeri(2001b: 20) claims that it is better to understand both the Buddhist andearly Nyāya patterns as “not enthymematic,” not skipping a step ofgeneralization and then implicitly using universal instantiation (UI)and modus ponens (MP) in applying the rule to a case at hand.Case-based reasoning need not be interpreted as relying on universalquantifiers, and the representation of Schayer (1933) and others whichuses them is misleading. Theirs is indeed misleading, and Ganeriappears to be right with regard to the early theories. But with lateNyāya Schayer’s argument form of UI and MP misleads for yetanother reason, namely, failing to be sufficiently sensitive to thelogic of occurrence and non-occurrence of properties at a location, orqualifying a property-bearer, as Staal (1973) and others have broughtout. Furthermore, Ganeri is right that in analyzing the pattern onetends to miss the unity of the causal theory that has one mental statebrought about by another. In the Nyāya theory, everything isintegrated in the notion of “reflection,”parāmarśa, as an inference’s proximateinstrumental cause or “trigger,” karaṇa.While not the only necessary condition, this one is the last in place,securing the occurrence of inferential knowledge.

Following Matilal (1998), we can reconstruct such “reflection” as asingular inference:

(K)(S^pHa) → (K)Sa

This says that on the condition that a subject knows thatH-as-qualified-by-being-pervaded-by-Squalifies a, then the subject knows that Sa. The arrowshould be interpreted as depicting causal sufficiency, in line withUddyotakara and the later tradition. “Reflection” is acomplex mental state that is nevertheless a unity, both as aparticular cognition that can be a causal factor for the rise ofanother cognition and as having intentionality, or “objecthood,”expressible in a single sentence. Attempts to find a single rule arein consonance with both of these dimensions of the theory. But a lotof inductive depth is packed into the idea of a pervasion being known,and a lot about it is said that shows that there is generalization, atleast in the later Nyāya theory. Knowing a general rule isconsidered crucial, not just extrapolation to a next case. FromUddyotakara on, Nyāya philosophers treat pervasion as theequivalent of a rule stating that—to use the language of setsand terms—the extension of the probandum term includes that ofthe prover term, includes it entirely such that there is nothing thatlocates the pervaded property (the prover) that does not also locatethe pervader (the probandum), as argued by Kisor Chakrabarti (1995)among others.

The centralmost issue with inference, to consider the effort oflate Nyāya philosophers, is to make plain the logic of pervasionas well as how we know the universalized items, or entire extensions,of the terms figuring in our knowledge of such rules, the items thatunderpin our knowledge of such inclusions, such naturally necessarypervasions of a prover by a probandum property. Lots of work from theearliest focuses on fallacies and inference in the context of formaldebate. And there are many philosophical inferences advanced in theliteratures of the various schools, such as proofs of momentariness,the existence of God, the possibility of liberation from birth andrebirth, and dozens more.

6. Testimony

Vaiśeṣika among the Vedic schoolsalong with Buddhists who of course impugn the “testimony” of the Vedareject testimony as an independent knowledge source,pramāṇa. Buddhists claim that theirreligious teachings are founded on nothing other than reasoning andexperience, albeit mystical experience, thenirvāṇa experience that makes aBuddha an expert about spiritual matters. As with memory, whosecorrectness is dependent on the veridicality or non-veridicality of thecognition that forms the saṃskāramemory-impression, the veridicality of testimony depends on theknowledge of the testifier, the speaker, whose source has to be bona fide, namely,depending on the epistemological theory,perception or inference or perhaps testimony in a series where an original testifier would know by means of a source other than testimony . Vaiśeṣikaand Yogācāra join together in seeing a hearer H’s knowledgethat p which other philosophers see as flowing from testimonyas really resulting from an inference having as one premise that thespeaker S is trustworthy and as another that S has said p, assumingthat trustworthy people who know the truth communicate it faithfully, toconclude that p is true. Nyāya resists such asinferentialist account from the earliest, in the sūtras ofGautama, claiming that the inferentialist conflates inferentialcertification of the truth of p with testimonial knowledgethat p at a first or unreflective level (as nicely explainedby Mohanty 1994). Vātsyāyana and others argue (underNyāya-sūtra 2.1.52) that the certificationconditions are different for the two knowledge sources. Theeighth-century Jayanta Bhaṭṭawrites (Nyāya-mañjarī 322):“The conditions that determine inferential knowledge and those thatdetermine verbal knowledge are not the same.” The Nyāya positionis that comprehension and acceptance are normally fused such that(normally) we do get knowledge immediately (non-inferentially) frombeing told. Here they joinMīmāṃsā, though there is alsomuch controversy on this matter between the two schools.

Gautama provides a definition at Nyāya-sūtra1.1.7: “Testimony is the (true) statement of an expert(āpta).” An “expert,” āpta, is atrustworthy authority such that “expert” is not entirely adequate as atranslation. Vātsyāyana in defining the term outlines a moraldimension. An āpta is a person who not only knows thetruth but who wants to communicate it without deception(Vātsyāyana’s commentary underNyāya-sūtra 1.1.7). The commentator alsobrings out a certain egalitarianism in the workings of the knowledgesource. Contra the privilege afforded the priestly caste in matters ofVedic interpretation, he says that even foreigners—“barbarians,”mleccha—can be the experts whose statements convey to ustestimonial knowledge, provided, as always, they know the truth andwant to communicate without deception.

According to those who accept testimony as a genuine knowledge source, the process of generating testimonial knowledge begins with a speaker Swho knows a proposition p by perception, inference, ortestimony (chains of testimony are okay) and who has a desire tocommunicate p to someone or other. A hearer H gains knowledgethrough a speech act of S communicating p to H, who has to becompetent in the language in which p is expressed, to know thewords and grammatical forms, which H has learned, on most accounts,also chiefly through testimony but also in other ways such as analogy(according to some).

Mīmāṃsā, whose leaders Kumārila andPrabhākara are followed by many Vedāntins and by someNyāya philosophers, comes to the debate about testimony with anaxe to grind, namely, to defend Vedic authority. The words of the Vedaare not spoken by anyone originally. Speakers are subject to error butnot the Veda, whose verses are not originally composed(apauruṣeya). Vedāntic theists, in the main, alongwith almost all Nyāya philosophers, take the position that likeall sentences, those of the Veda should be understood as spoken (orcomposed, etc.) by someone with the intention to communicate. Thusthe Lord, īśvara, is the author of the Veda (the best oronly candidate, according to Udayana, eleventh century,Nyāya-kusumāñjalī).Mīmāṃsā, however, is atheistic, viewing the Vedaas primordial, resounding in the ether that surrounds the universe,heard and memorized by great rishis intheir pellucid consciousness (not cluttered by ordinary thought). Thusaccording to Mīmāṃsā, sentences can be meaningfulwithout having a speaker with an intention to communicate.Vedāntin and Nyāya theists generalize from the everyday toassume that, no, statements and sentences require a speaker, acomposer, who, in the case of S’s knowledge passing to H, must be anāpta expert, i.e., someone who knows the truth and wantsto tell it without a desire to deceive. The Lord is this speaker in thecase of the Veda, it is inferred by some.

The Prābhākara takes the view that everyday testimonialknowledge wears, like all knowledge, its truth on its sleeve; similarlyVedic knowledge. Speaker’s intention is irrelevant. A parrot can makeus know something like a tape-recorder. And even a liar (S) deceivedinto believing p can communicate ¬p tryingto deceive H who nevertheless learns the truth through S’s statement.Nyāya, in contrast, champions speaker’s intention,tātparya, as epistemically relevant. According to thelater writers, speaker’s intention is not the trigger of testimonialknowledge on H’s part (which is instead the transmitting sentence underthe interpretation of H), but is a slightly upstream causal factorrelevant for certification. If we knew it were a parrot or a liar whowas responsible for the statement, we would no longer believe. It istrue that H has to understand something in the case of the parrot, etc.Otherwise, there would be nothing to check in finding out that theparrot’s speaking is a case of “apparent testimony,”śabda-ābhāsa (e.g.,Gaṅgeśa,Tattva-cintā-maṇi, testimonychapter, 329). But discerning speaker’s intention is championed asnecessary for disambiguation in some cases of testimony and as relevantto triggering figurative speech according to many including writers inthe aesthetics literature calledalaṅkāra-śāstra.

Testimonial knowledge is a matter of comprehending a statement, atransmitting sentence, and to be a transmitting sentence certainconditions must be met. The following three necessary conditions for ameaningful statement are proposed and discussed throughout thephilosophical and grammatical literatures (Kunjunni Raja 1969:149–169).

1. words’ mutual “expectancy,”ākāṅkṣā
2. semantic “fittingness,” yogyatā
3. contiguity (or proper presentation, pronunciation and the like),āsatti

The words in a sentence have their “expectancy” mutuallysatisfied in the completion of the sentence as a string of words. Thisand the third condition are pretty obviously required for sententialmeaning, but not the second, at least not to philosophers of languagein the West, although the notion seems related to the a priorias understood in early modern philosophy. In any case, semantic“fittingness” is connected to a theory of figurative meaning throughoutthe schools including the aesthetics literature. A stock negativeexample is “The gardener is watering the plants with fire”(agninā siñcati). Watering cannot be donewith fire, and so the meanings of the words do not fit together exceptpossibly figuratively. Some define yogyatā in a positivefashion, but it seems easy to find counterexamples (Kunjunni Raja 1969:164–166). Language has to be flexible so that we can report novelties.Furthermore, we understand something when we understand a falsestatement. Otherwise, again, we would not know where to look todetermine its falsity, or truth, for that matter.Gaṅgeśa says explicitly that falsestatements as well as statements of doubt meet the requirement ofsemantic fittingness(Tattva-cintā-maṇi,testimony chapter, 372–373). Even statements that are not just falsebut that we know are false can pass the semantic-fittingness test, as,for example, (in the quip by A. Chakrabarti 1994) the views of one’sopponents! For these and other reasons,Gaṅgeśa, for one, definesyogyatā negatively as “absence of knowledge of a blocker(of testimonial knowledge)”(Tattva-cintā-maṇi,testimony chapter, Sanskrit, IV.iii.6, p. 136). This shows a coherencetie. We cannot even understand testimony way out of whack with what weknow already.

Two Mīmāṃsā views compete to explain sententialunity, along with a third, a sentence holism belonging to thegrammarian Bhartṛhari (third century), who holds that words haveno meaning outside the context of the sentence, which is the basicsemantic unit. Words are abstractions from sentences, and a sentenceis understood holistically “in a flash”(sphoṭa; Bhartṛhari’s theory iscalled sphoṭa-vāda). This is an easy target forthe Mīmāṃsākas, who point to our abilities to usethe same words in different sentences. But the one camp, thePrābhākara, agrees with the grammarian that words do notconvey meaning apart from the full sentence being understood, that isto say, apart from the full fact indicated being known “in aflash,” as it were. The other camp, the Bhāṭṭa,whose theory comes to be taken over by Nyāya, claims thatindividual words have reference in isolation, and that inunderstanding a sentence we understand the meaning of the individualsemantic units which get combined not so much by the sentence as bythe fact that makes a true sentence true, the relation holding thefact together becoming reflected in the unity of the sentence, so thateach word’s meaning or referent is hooked up with every other. Thesetwo views are termed inSanskrit anvita-abhidhāna-vāda, “reference ofthe connected,” which Siderits (1991) translates as the“related designation view,”and abhihita-anvaya-vāda, “connection of thereferents,” which Siderits translates as the“words-plus-relation view.” However, the latter might notbe the best rendering, since its advocates argue that the relation isnothing other than the individual denotees as related.

In other words, according to the more radically referentialist view,which is incrementalist, the relation is not just an additionalelement: it’s not words-plus-relation. No word is“unsaturated”; ‘bringing’ for example,requires that its referent be related to both an agent and an objectand no reference to bringing would generate a bit of new testimonialknowledge if these were not also mentioned or the ideas of themsupplied. There are only a few purely logical and syntacticallybinding words in Sanskrit, only a few (mainly connectives) that arejust syncategorematic, since every other word is inflected and thereis no need for prepositions, etc. Alternatively, we could say thatevery word is unsaturated because no word, no single semantic unit,conveys the meaning of a sentence by itself alone independently of itsrelation to at least one other unit. The main difference between thetwo Mīmāṃsā views is that the former insists thatonly a sentence successfully refers, not the individual words of whicha sentence is composed, whose meanings have to be connected to oneanother in order for there to be reference (abhidhā, theprimary mode or power,śakti, of language); whereas the latter holdsthat words do have reference individually but not to the connection ofthe things mentioned, which is given by the sentence as a whole. Inboth cases, the fact or object known by way of a sentence hasconstituents. On the second view, the fact is the relatedness of thewords’ referents as they are in the world, a relatedness(anvaya) not indicated by a semantic unit. The connection isto one another of the things referred to, a connection in the worldwhich we become aware of because of the order and connectedness(anvaya) of the words. Gopinath Bhattacharya writes apropos(seventeenth-century) Annambhaṭṭa’sdiscussion of the Bhāṭṭatheory (Annambhaṭṭa: 301–302): “Itcomes to this then that the understanding of a statement, i.e., of whatis signified by the constituent terms in relation to one another,depends among other things on the presentation of the terms in therequired order. But the order of arrangement of the terms is notitself a term of the sentence, so that it cannot be said that thisorder has its own śakti like the terms.”

Just what a word refers to is sometimes ambiguous not just apart fromsentential context but within it. Still we know what the word means. Weknow that a speaker wants salt when S asks for it even though inSanskrit the word used for salt, ‘saindhava’, is a homonymwith a word that means horse. S’s intention to communicate pis in such a case crucial to disambiguation in that S speaks in acontext (prakaraṇa). Ordinarily, theoverall context need not be taken into account, according to NewNyāya philosophers, to ascertain the meaning of a sentence, whichhas to meet only the three conditions of grammaticality, semanticfittingness, and proper pronunciation. But we do have to take intoaccount the overall context—let us say “speaker’s intention,”tātparya—it is stressed (e.g., byAnnambhaṭṭa: 294–295), in somecases of ambiguity as also of figurative speech, which involves asecond power of words, the power (śakti) toexpress meaning indirectly.

However, we have to be able to understand a spoken sentence to be ableto determine a speaker’s intention, which we infer from what is saidsupplemented sometimes by contextual cues. Thus knowing the intentionis not an invariable antecedent of testimonial knowledge. UnderstandingS’s intention is not a fourth condition on a statement’s meaningfulnessfrom the perspective of H—except in some cases of ambiguity andindirect, figurative speech. But in those cases it is indeed crucial,and there is no way to get around the need to make it out in order tofix the meaning, which cannot be gathered at, so to say, a first pass.

But on a second pass, we are able to gather not only indirect,secondary meaning but also more information through inference. In thisway, Annambhaṭṭa would explain whatothers see as the results of the activation of a third power of words,namely, dhvani, also called vyañjana,“suggestion” (289–293). In other words, if a sentence contains anambiguous word or indirect, figurative meaning (admitted as a bonafide second power of words, śakti), theremay well be no way to tell what it means without considering S’sintention. Now advocates of the third power analyze the stock exampleof indirect speech where a village is said to be in theGaṅgā as suggesting that the village is cooland purified by association with the Gaṅgā.The whole point, they argue, of poetic use of indirect, figurativespeech is to release the third power of suggestion. Why otherwise notsimply say that the village is on the river bank? The speaker uses thefigurative speech to suggest the attributes of coolness andpurification. Annambhaṭṭa respondsthat if one understands from the statement these attributes then theindirect, figurative meaning(lakṣaṇā) of “inthe Gaṅgā” is not just being on the bank ofthe river but on a bank that lends coolness and fosters purification.This is then just a more complex case oflakṣaṇā,which is indeed a second power of words (but there is no third),indicating a cool and purifying location on the indicated bank.

Finally we might mention that with veridical testimonial knowledge notinvolving figurative meaning where all three sentential conditions aremet, we do not notice the grammaticality, etc., of the transmittingsentence or sentences. These factors have to be present, but we do nothave to be aware of them. For figurative meaning, in contrast, we haveto notice a blocker (Uddyotakara underNyāya-sūtra 2.2.59), which paradigmaticallymay be thought of as a violation of semantic fittingness (Kunjunni Raja1969: 166), though this is not precisely correct according to severaltheorists who provide examples of figures where semantic fittingness isnot violated. Examples of less severe misfit occur than to water withfire. Violating yogyatā is not the only way to triggerthe second power of words. Yet further exploration of figurativemeaning and of “suggestion” (dhvani) would carry us outside ofthe epistemological into the aesthetics and grammaticalliteratures.

7. Analogy and Other Candidate Sources

7.1 Analogy and Similarity

Briefly we may consider the more exotic candidate sources proposedin the classical literature mainly withinMīmāṃsā (often elaborated byVedāntins), beginning with analogy, which is viewed as thepramāṇa for knowledge of similarityin Mīmāṃsā and Vedāntabut is rejected by the other schools, Vedic and non-Vedic alike, exceptfor Nyāya which however provides a radical reinterpretation. Toprovide a hermeneutics of Vedic injunctions to make them suitable forpractice in actual performances, theMīmāṃsā exegetes need to beable to designate substitutes, of one type of grain for another, forexample, or one animal for another, depending upon availability in thefirst place but upon similarity in the second place. In Vedānta,analogy is useful for understanding the Upanishads which makecomparisons between spiritual or yogic experience and the experiencesof ordinary humans, as pointed out by Kumar (1980: 110).Yogācāra, Jaina, and Nyāya logicians find similarity—orrelevant similarity—to figure in inference as a knowledge-generatingprocess. It is through cognizing similarity and dissimilarity that wearrive at knowledge of pervasion as required for inferential knowledge.A kitchen hearth counts as an “example” in the stock inference becauseof its relevant similarity to the mountain which is the center ofinquiry. It is part of what is called thesapakṣa, the set of positive correlations,that make us know an inference-underpinning pervasion. Knowledge ofsimilarity is not viewed in Nyāya (or Yogācāra, etc.) asthe result of analogy as a knowledge source—for Nyāya, analogy isrestricted to a subject’s learning the meaning of a word (andYogācāra does not countenance it as a separatepramāṇa). But pervasion is knowntypically through generalization from cases (although in some cases a single observation, somesay, will suffice), presupposingknowledge of relevant similarity which can be a matter ofperception.

Vedānta and Mīmāṃsāphilosophers, who take similarity to be a special object known throughthis special source, give examples different from the stock scenarioprovided by Gautama and elaborated by Vātsyāyana (underNyāya-sūtra 1.1.8) who limit the scope ofanalogy to learning the meaning of a word. But for brevity’s sake, let ustake up only the Nyāya theory. A subject S inquires of a foresterabout a gavaya, which is a kind of buffalo, having heard theword ‘gavaya’ used among his schoolmates but not knowing whatit means, i.e., not knowing what a gavaya is. Questioned by S,the forester replies that a gavaya is like a cow mentioningcertain specifics as also some dissimilarities. To simplify, Nyāyaphilosophers say that the forester makes an analogical statement (“Agavaya is like a cow”), whereby our subject S now knows ingeneral (sāmānyataḥ) what theword means, according to Gaṅgeśa andfollowers (Tattva-cintā-maṇi,analogy chapter). But S does not yet know how it is used, does not knowits reference, which is deemed a word’s primary meaning. Laterencountering a gavaya buffalo, S says, “This, which is similarto a cow, is the meaning of the word ‘gavaya’,” a statementwhich expresses S’s new analogical knowledge. The knowledge has beengenerated by analogy, its “knowledge source,”pramāṇa.

The ontology of similarity is controversial. Several different theoriesare proposed, one of the best of which belongs toGaṅgeśa, who sees it as a relationalproperty supervening on other properties and defined as something’shaving a lot of the same properties as something else. It is not auniversal, he argues, for similarity relates a correlate (thegavaya buffalo) and a countercorrelate (the cow), whereas auniversal, in contrast, rests as a unity in, for example, with cowhood,all individual cows. In this way it is like contact, samyoga,but there are also rather obvious differences. It is not reducible toany single category among the traditional seven (substance, quality,motion, universal, individualizer, inherence, and absence), for somesubstances are like one another as are certain qualities and actions.But similarity also is not, pace the Prābhākara, acategory over and above the recognized seven.Gaṅgeśa’s main argument there isthat similarity is not uniform. It is to an extent a property that ismind-imposed in that the counterpositive (the cow) is supplied from ourside. Moreover, it supervenes on other properties.

7.2 “Presumption” (arthāpatti)

Another candidate source championed by Mīmāṃsāand Vedānta philosophers but rejected by everyone else as anindependent pramāṇa is arthāpatti, akind of reasoning to the best explanation which Nyāya views asthe same as “negative-only” inference (see above). A stockexample: from the premise, “Fat Devadatta does not eat duringthe day” (known by perception and/or testimony), the conclusionis known (by arthāpatti), “He eats atnight.” For Nyāya, the inference (which is no specialsource) can be reconstructed where F = “is fat but does not eatduring the day” and G = “eats at night”: Whoso F,that person G; what is not so (F) is not so (G), like Maitra (who eatsduring the day and not at night). This would be a“negative-only” inference so long as not only hasDevadatta not been observed to eat at night but also there is no oneelse known to be like him in being fat and having been observed to eatonly at night. We do know that he eats at night (though this has notbeen observed), and our inductive base is comprised only of negativecorrelations. Mīmāṃsā rejects this analysis andholds in contrast that presumption is an independentknowledge source and an important one, operative in basic languagecomprehension as well as in knowledge of various everyday facts. Thereasoning is not inferential because no pervasion is known, it iscommonly argued.

7.3 “Non-cognition” (anupalabdhi)

How do we know absences? I know that my glasses are not on the tablebut how? Dharmakīrti would answer, “By inference,”inferential knowledge of an absence being one of three fundamentaltypes identified by the Yogācārin (see above). “If anelephant were in the room, I (S) would perceive it. I (S) do notperceive an elephant. Therefore, there is no elephant in theroom”—similarly for my glasses not being on the table (presuming thetable is not so cluttered that they could be concealed). Gautama andVātsyāyana, without elaborating, agree that absences areknown inferentially (Nyāya-sūtra 2.2.2). ButUddyotakara and the later tradition argue that we know absencessometimes perceptually. I cognize immediately my glasses’ absence whenI look for them on the table.

BhāṭṭaMīmāṃsā says no, there isoperative here a special knowledge source called “non-cognition” or“non-perception,” anupalabdhi. The main arguments center onthe sufficiency of perception, or inference, to make known suchnegative facts, which clearly we do know. TheBhāṭṭa argues, for example,that perception makes known only presences. Indeed, Nyāya has adifficult time assimilating such knowledge to its theory of perception,in particular since the difficulty widens into what is known inanalytic philosophy as the generality problem. Nyāya recognizesthat an absence has a peculiar relational structure, namely, to relatea locus (the table) to a counterpositive (my glasses) and that the idea of the counterpositiveis furnished by the cognizer entirely from memory. If memory can have such acrucial role in a type of perception, how then to draw the limits onwhat is perceptible? The Nyāya project threatens to spin out ofcontrol. Not surprisingly, therefore, there is a large literature onabsence and its epistemology.

7.4 Gesture and Rumor

We learn some things from gesture(ceṣṭā), such as tocome when beckoned by a conventionalized movement of the hand.Gaṅgeśa says this is an aid totestimonial knowledge, not really a form of it since it depends on othersemanitc items, he says, being supplied (Tattva-cintā-maṇi, testimonychapter, 922–926). Rumor (aitihya) is defined byVātsyāyana (under Nyāya-sūtra2.2.1) as a testimony chain whose originator is unknown. The Nyāyaattitude is to regard even it as presumptively veridical in consonancewith the school’s overall theory of testimony.

8. “Suppositional Reasoning” (tarka)

Many classical Indian philosophers held that apparent certificationmay not be enough to warrant belief in some instances. Even if ourbeliefs/cognitions have indeed been generated by processes that wouldbe counted knowledge sources did they not face counterconsiderations,in facing counterconsiderations—in being reasonablychallenged—they are not trustworthy and do not guideunhesitating effort and action. There is a social dimension toknowledge, where reasoning reigns resolving controversy in ways overand above the sources. These are the ways of tarka,“hypothetical” or “suppositional reasoning.”Paradigmatically, tarka is called for in order to establish apresumption of truth in favor of one thesis that has putative sourcesupport against a rival thesis that also has putative source support,a thesis and a counterthesis both backed up by, for example,apparently genuine inferences (the most common situation) or bycompeting perceptual or testimonial evidence. By supposing the truthof the rival thesis and (in Socratic style) showing how it leads tounacceptable consequences or breaks another intellectual norm, onerepossesses a presumption of truth, provided—the classicalepistemologists never tire of emphasizing—provided one’s ownthesis does indeed have at least the appearance of a knowledge sourcein its corner. The consensus across schools is that such arguments arenot in themselves knowledge-generators, but they can swing the balanceconcerning what it is rational to believe.

Suppositional reasoning is what a philosopher is good at, drawing outof implications of opposed views and testing them against mutuallyaccepted positions, according to, broadly speaking, criteria ofcoherence but also of simplicity. Here we come to the vital center ofthe life of a classical philosopher, which is reflected in honorificappellations and book titles, dozens of which use ‘tarka’ asin “Crest Jewel of Reasoning”(tarka-śiro-maṇi).

Udayana (Nyāya, eleventh century) appears to inherit a sixfolddivision of tarka according to the nature of the error in anopponent’s position, and expressly lists five types (a sixth,“contradiction” or “opposition,” either beingassumed as the most common variety, or subsumed under Udayana’s fifthtype, “unwanted consequence”). Philosophers from otherschools present distinct but overlapping lists. The Nyāyatextbook-writer, Viśvanātha, of the early seventeenthcentury, mentions ten, Udayana’s five plus five more, many of whichare used by the Advaitin Śrīharṣa (probablyUdayana’s younger contemporary) among other reasoners. They are: (1)self-dependence (begging the question), (2) mutual dependence (mutualpresupposition), (3) circularity (reasoning in a circle), (4) infiniteregress, and (5) unwanted consequence (including contradictionpresumably)—Udayana’s five—plus (6) being presupposed bythe other, the first established (a form of “favorable”suppositional reasoning), (7) (hasty) generalization, (8)differentiation failure, (9) theoretic lightness, and (10) theoreticheaviness.

It is tarka that establishes a presumption againstskepticism. Gaṅgeśa (fourteenth century): “Were aperson P, who has ascertained thoroughgoing positivecorrelations (F wherever G) and negative correlations(wherever no G, no F), to doubt that an effect mightarise without a cause, then—to take up the example of smoke andfire—why should P, as he does, resort to fire for smoke (in thecase, say, of a desire to get rid of mosquitoes)? (Similarly) to foodto allay hunger, and to speech to communicate to anotherperson?” (Translation from Phillips 1995: 160–161, slightlymodified.) The argument, which is found in theNyāya-sūtra and other works (e.g.,Vātsyāyana, preamble toNyāya-sūtra 1.1.1), is that without theconfidence that presupposes knowledge, we would not act as we do.

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Academic Tools

Other Internet Resources

• Bibliography,Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies, by Karl Potter (University of Washington).

Related Entries

analogy and analogical reasoning | Bhartṛhari | certainty | concepts | contradiction | Dharmakīrti | dispositions | Early Modern India, analytic philosophy in | epistemology | Gaṅgeśa | God: concepts of | Indian Philosophy (Classical): language and testimony | individuals and individuation | induction: problem of | intentionality | knowledge: analysis of | Kumārila | memory | Nāgārjuna | perception: the problem of | predication | presupposition | properties | reasons for action: justification, motivation, explanation | reference | skepticism | sriiharsa | substance | truth | Yogācāra

Acknowledgments

Indian Philosophy Book In Hindi Movie

Portions of the present entry were taken from the author’sEpistemology in Classical India, London: Routledge, 2012.

Introduction To Philosophy

Copyright © 2019 by
Stephen Phillips<stephen_phillips@utexas.edu>