Epistemology and Logic in Indian Philosophy

Abstract

The publication presents the overview of the content of special discipline — pramāṇavāda (doctrine of the instruments of valid cognition), which formed in the Indian systems of philosophical knowledge — the darśanas. The review begins with the fixation of pramāṇavāda’s similarities with the Western epistemology and logic, with the determining its structure and a brief excursion into the history of its development. Then the author points out the influence of Panini’s grammar (IV century BC) on the Akṣapāda’s (III–IV centuries) choice of the conceptual framework of the pramāṇavāda. The structure of pramāṇavāda was determined on the basis of the «Nyāya-sūtras» of Akṣapāda, the writings of Buddhist Dignāga (C. 450–520) and Jain canonical works by Umāsvāti (II–III centuries) and Kundakunda (III–IV centuries); the contents of the main logical-epistemological concepts are revealed on the basic texts of the eight darśanas.

The author draws attention to the role of the concept of vyavāhara (conventional usage of the words, and everyday practice), which influenced the specificity of critical discourse in India, she reveals content of the ideas of the linguistic reference which had place in the traditional Indian philosophy. The contents of the basic concepts of pramāṇavāda (the subject of cognition, the knowing consciousness, the perceptual abilities, supernatural cognitive abilities, the ideals of knowledge, aims of knowledge, truth, the everyday practice, the instruments of valid cognition, an inference in Nyāya and Buddhism, «points of view» of the Jains, the theory of debate) are revealed through their comparison with the Western logical-epistemological ideas. Specifics of pramāṇavāda are seen, along with the uniqueness of solutions of theoretical problems, in the absence of a symbolic language for the analysis of reasoning, in the presence of a particular formalism (which consists in the fixation of the traditional methods of polemics), and in the conservation of limited freedom of critical discourse in a formalized skepticism.