As Indian philosophy reaches modem times, the contributions being made are not only in the Sanskrit but in Hindi, Tamil, etc., as well as Western languages, mainly English. This volume's coverage is limited to the works in Sanskrit that continue the classical tradition, although their authors include many who taught at British-founded institutions or served in traditions asramas and tols.
KARL H. POTTER is Professor of philosophy and South Asian Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle, and is the General Editor of the Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies containing 28 volumes.
Substance, Qualia and Action
According to the mainstream Nyaya-Vaisesika (NV) view there are seven kinds of reals (padartha), These are substance (dravya), quale (guna) , action (karma), universal (jati) , ultimate differentiator (visesa), inherence (samavaya) and negative entity (abhava), A substance is the substratum of qualia and actions and there is no absolute absence (atyantabhava) of the latter in the former.' A substance is a continuant, different from its qualia and actions and need not change when its qualia or actions are replaced by new qualia or actions. For example, the green color of a banana may change to yellow as the banana ripens, yet the banana as a substance may remain the same. Qualia and actions are often perceptible and when they are so the substance supporting them may also be perceptible. This differs from Locke's view that although qualia and actions are often perceptible a substance is always imperceptible.
Substances need to be admitted in order to account for such common usage as that the table is brown, oblong and hard." Clearly, what is not meant here is that the brown color is hard, that the oblong shape is hard, etc. Rather, what is meant is that the brown color, the oblong shape and the hard touch belong to one thing, the table, which is different from these three qualities.
Unless substances are admitted it cannot be explained how one and the same thing can be grasped by different sense- organs. 3 Thus, the organ of touch cannot grasp color and the visual organ cannot grasp touch. Both these organs can grasp one and the same thing only if that thing is different from both color and touch. In other words, we have the phenomenon of being grasped by only one sense-organ (ekendriyagrahyatva) with respect to qualia like color, smell, etc. But we also have the phenomenon of being grasped by more than one sense-organ (anekendriyagrahyatva) with respect to something that is presented as both colored and hard, and that something is a substance. Such common usage (vyavahara) and experience (anubhava) of a substance cannot be dismissed as false unless there is compelling evidence to the contrary (badhaka). There is no such counter-evidence according to NV.
On the NY view there are five kinds of physical substances. These are earth, water, fire, air and akasa (the substratum of sound). Each one of these has a specific and externally perceptible quale (e.g. earth has smell) and it is in this sense that they are physical. The first four in the above list are ultimately atomic (emu) and the last is all-pervasive (vibhu). The self, which also is all-pervasive and eternal is radically different from the physical substances, which are completely without consciousness. The self alone is conscious; but it is only conscious some of the time when certain other conditions are fulfilled. Conscious states are viewed as qualia that are supported by the self. The self, the support, is independent of them and can exist without them. Still the difference between the self and the physical substances remains: the latter, unlike the former, are completely without consciousness.
NV advocates a psycho-physical dualism (PPD) which, however, is different from Cartesian psycho-physical dualism. Descartes holds, like NY, that the mind and the body are different substances. However, for Descartes the essence of the mind is consciousness and the essence of the body is extension. Descartes also subscribes to the causal adequacy principle that there is nothing in the effect that is not contained in the cause. Descartes goes on to accept mind-body interaction and that bodily states cause mental states and vice-versa. This results in inconsistency. Given the causal adequacy principle, extension in bodily states cannot come from mental states and consciousness in mental states cannot come from bodily states.
There is no such inconsistency in the NV position. NV does not accept the causal adequacy principle and holds that new features missing in the cause can be found in the effect. NV also holds that the mind is not essentially conscious and that conscious states arise only when other requisite conditions are fulfilled. By holding that the mind is all the time and independently conscious Descartes goes against the findings of modem psychology and neuroscience that tend to show the dependence of mental states on the brain and other bodily states. The NV position that consciousness arises in the self only when other necessary conditions are available is consistent with the said views of modem psychology and neuroscience.
Again, a major argument of Descartes for PPD is that while the mind is indubitable the body is subject to doubt. The soundness of this argument has been challenged on the ground that psychological predicates do not suffice to prove ontological difference. On the other hand, a major NV argument for PPD is the following: bodily states are either imperceptible or externally perceptible; mental states are neither imperceptible nor externally perceptible; hence bodily states are not mental states and vice versa. This argument that has affinity with the argument from privacy has much broader support in recent philosophy of mind than the Cartesian argument just cited. Thus, the NV version of PPD, though older than the Cartesian PPD, appears to have more promise in the light of modem developments.
Two other eternal and all-pervading substances are space and time. They lack any specific and externally perceptible qualia and are imperceptible. They are infinite and continuous and are inferred as two of the common causal conditions without which nothing non-eternal can arise.
The ninth and last substance is the inner sense (manas). It too lacks any specific and externally perceptible qualia and is imperceptible. Its existence is inferred to explain the direct awareness of internal states like pleasure, desire, etc. It is also inferred to explain why one does not always notice an external stimulation that must, to be noticed, be connected to the inner sense that in its turn must be connected to the self. The inner sense is an indispensable instrument without which no internal state can arise. The internal states nevertheless belong only to the self.
Qualia are features of a substance that do not primarily serve as causal conditions of action and are as particular as the substances themselves. Thus, the red color of a tomato, say, is causally dependent on the tomato and does not belong to anything but that tomato. That red color, however, is a particular quale in which inheres the universal property redness, which is inherent in all red colors. Since a guna is a non-repeatable feature, we call it a "quale" for the lack of anything better, without implying that it is always mental. Color, taste, smell, size, etc., are examples of physical qualia, and cognition, pleasure, pain, etc., which belong only to a self, are examples of mental qualia.
Actions are features of a substance that primarily produce motions that result in contact with or disjunction from other substances. Examples of actions are going upward, going downwards, going sideways, and so on. These are also, like qualia, causally dependent on a given substance and do not belong to anything else. Like qualia, actions also are instances of universal properties, e.g., of going-upwardness, and each action inheres in its relevant particular substance.
**Contents and Sample Pages**
In this Volume the history of Nyaya-Vaisesika is resumed from Volume Six of the Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies Series and brought up to the time of Gadadhara (ca. 1660). This is the period of the great subcommentators (Jagadisa, Mathuranatha, Gadadhara) on Raghunatha Siromani’s Tattva-cintamanididhiti, the culmination of some of the most intricate philosophical analysis the world has ever known. Prof. Sibajiban Bhattacharyya has in his extensive Introduction provided a thorough explanation of the basic style and content of these sub-commentators, along with a readable account of many of the main topics discussed in these works. His Introduction is followed by analyses of some of the chapters of these subcommentaries, provided by those few Indian scholars of recent times able to command the difficulties their interpretation poses. These summaries can be consulted for an initial acquaintance with the topics covered, free from the intricacies of the subcommentaries.
Karl H. Potter is retired Professor of Philosophy and South Asian Studies at the University of Washington, and is General Editor of the Present series, which attempts to summarily present the though of all the great philosophical systems of India.
Sibajiban Bhattacharyya was Professor at North Bengal University and then as Acharya B.N. Seal Professor of Mental and Moral Sciences at the University of Calcutta, where he remained until his retirement in 1988. During this period he also taught as Visiting Professor at the Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand and at the University of Washington in Seattle, U.S.A. He was Director of the Institute of Universal and Spiritual Values of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta (1986-88) and lectured regularly at the Ramakrishna Mission Institute, Gol Park, Calcutta (1987-1994). During these periods he received many laurels, among them General President of the Indian Philosophical Congress in 1987. He gave. Memorial Lectureships at various Indian universities between 1977 and 1993.
It is my sad duty to have to write this memorial to my old and good friend Sibajiban Bhattacharyya. Born in 1926, and having won many medals and honors during his schooling in and around Calcutta, he gained his first appointment in 1949 at Saugar University, moving to Burdwan, near Calcutta, in 1962, where he stayed until 1973. By that time, having gained renown as an exceptional scholar, and having published a number of articles in respected journals, both Indian and Western, he spent several years as Professor of Philosophy at the Centre (or Institute) of Advanced Studies in Simla. He finally arrived for good back in Calcutta, first as Professor at North Bengal University and then as Acharya B. N. Seal Professor of Mental and Moral Sciences at the Universe of Calcutta, where he remained until his retirement in 1988. During this period he also taught as Visiting Professor at the Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand and at the University of Washington in Seattle, U.S.A. He was Director of the Institute of Universal and Spiritual Values of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta (1986-88) and lectured regularly at the Ramakrishna Mission Institute, Gol Park, Calcutta (1987-1994). Even after retirement he continued teaching and writing at several of the above-mentioned centers of higher education. During these periods he received many laurels, among them General President of the Indian Philosophical Congress in 1987. He gave Memorial Lectureships at various Indian universities between 1977 and 1993.
His major publications are listed below. Though his central Concern became classical Indian philosophy, especially the Navya-Nyaya, he was a keen student of Anglo-American philosophical analysis, as will be evident not only from the references in the Introduction to the present volume that follows, but also from the many articles he published in major Western philosophical journals such as Mind, Analysis, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, and the Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic. And of course it must be mentioned that he collaborated in the preparation and production of Volume Six of this Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies. To me he remains a life-long colleague in our chosen field of specialization. Sibajiban and I must have first met at a philosophical meeting some time in the 1950s, quite possibly one hosted in 1953 by the Maharaja of Mysore, But my first clear memory of him stems from a visit my wife and I made to Saugar in 1958, where another old and recently departed friends, Daya Krishna, was also teaching at that time. After that I visited Sibajiban a number of times in Calcutta, being warmly received and fed in the Bhattacharyya’s home by Sibajiban and his wife Arati. But the strongest memories my wife and I have are of the family’s visit to Seattle in 1981, where Mr. And Mrs. Bhattacharyya were accompanied by their own right. Sheuli is now teaching at Manipal University in Karnataka, while Shyamasree is on the Philosophy faculty at the Alipur campus of the University of Calcutta. I recently learned that Mrs. Bhattacharyya passed away in early 2008.
In closing, I wish to express my thankfulness at having had such a wise and caring friend and colleague as Sibajiban. He was always generous in his participation in our scholarly ventures. My life and work have been infinitely enriched by his participation, for which I am forever grateful.
About the Book:
The present volume of the Encyclopedia of Indian philosophies takes up the history of Nyaya-Vaisesika where Volume Two left off in the 14th century. With Gangesa we enter the literature that has come to be known as Navyanyaya, i.e. new Nyaya Gangesa's seminal work, the Tattvacintamani is one of the most famous, as well as most difficult works of Indian Philosophy and this Volume begins with the most exhaustive account of ists contents hitherto available. Over a dozen different summarizers have collaborated in preparing this treatise which totals some 300 pages.
The volume reconstructs the development of Nyaya-Vaisesika through the next two centuries. Some fifty author's names are known to us from this period, and 36 of their works are summarized. The volume closes its reconstruction of literary history into the early 16th century, with Raghunatha Siromani the great commentator on Gangesa's seminal works and one of the most innovative analytical philosophers the world has known.
Although this is but a brief attempt to cover the complex literature of the period, this volume represents the basic elements of present-day understanding of the contributions of the philosophers discussed. A detailed introduction by the two Editors provides a bird's eye view of the ideas expounded in the text. A total of 22 different scholars combine to render the gist of these materials available to the general public. Subsequent volumes in this siries will take Nyaya-Vaisesika to the present.
About the Author:
Karl H. Potter is professor of Philosophy and South Asian Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle, and is General Editor of the Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies.
Professor Sibajiban Bhattacharyya taught philosophy for more than forty years in different universities in India and abroad. He was the General President of the Indian philosophical Congress in 1989 and is Fellow Emeritus, University Grants Commission, Calcutta.
Volume Six of the Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies picks up the history of the Nyaya - Vaisesika system where Volume Two left off. The time covered in this volume is much smaller than in any of the previous volumes of the Encyclopedia, a scant two hundred years between approximately 1310 and 1510. There are good reasons for this intensive attention to such a brief period. For one thing, two of Indian's most remarkable philosophers, Gangesa and Raghunatha Siromani, are covered in these pages-in fact, they initiate and terminate the period surveyed. More generally, we here begin to treat the literature of Navyanyaya, a movement comparable in its implication to the burgeoning of symbolic logic and its concomitant philosophical speculations found in the writings of Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein in the West at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The excitement of newly pioneered techniques of philosophical analysis developed by Gangesa spawned a bevy of philosophical talents. Indeed, this period is even richer than we are able to summarize here, since a good part of it is still unavailable in print.
The history of Indian philosophy, and specifically of Navyanyaya, has been treated in a quite extensive literature. The Bibliography of Indian Philosophies (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1970, referred to below as "B"; Revised Edition, New Delhi: Banarsidass and Princeton, Princeton University Press 1983, referred to as "RB") provides assistance in suggesting a chronology of Indian thought in general within which Navyanyaya philosophers find their appropriate places.
The form of this book features an extended introductory section followed by summaries of works belonging to the system's literature. These summaries are arranged in relative chronological order to assist the reader in tracing the development of the school's thought. Summaries have been provided by scholars from India, England and the United States. Remarks in the Introductions to previous volumes of the Encyclopedia explaining the intended reading public to whom these volumes are addressed apply here as well.
Thanks are due to the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Indo-U.S. Subcomission for Education and Culture, the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State, the Joint Committee on South Asia of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council, and the National Endowment for the Humanities; all of these bodies provided needed assistance in the development of this volume through financial assistance of various sorts. Finally, special thanks are due to Laura Townsend for assistance in preparation of the manuscript.
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