"pakSatA" in (Navya-)NyAya

[Birgit Kellner]

Wednesday, January 17, 2001, 9:24:02 PM, Jogesh Panda wrote:

JP> Depending on the emphasis of your enquiry, pakSatA in its latent form can be traced to the works of Jayanta BhaTTa [nyAyamaJjarI, anumAna section]JJAnazrImitra, RantakIrti, RatnAkarazAnti and
JP> others.

Thank you for your helpful reply.
I was going over the anumAna section of the NyAyamaJjarI, but could
not find discussions of my main point of interest: Whether inference
necessarily presupposes uncertainty and/or the desire to establish the
probandum. It is possible, of course, that this question is not
discussed in connection with the concept of "pakSatA" in such "early"
sources (I actually expected to find such discussions under the
heading of "anumeya", but with no luck so far) - at any rate, in case I overlooked some important passages in
the NyAyamaJjarI, I would be grateful for more concrete suggestions.

JP> The point of your interest in pakSatA  and the example you quote from Mohanty [as discussed in siddhAntamuktAvalI] seem to me to be different from the Navya variety of pakSatA. This concept or
JP> notion of pakSatA is an approximation of the old nyAya category of sAmAnyatodRSTa anumAna. I do not have the Mohanty book with me, so cannot comment further on this point. Prof. Mohanty is
JP> knowledgeable, so I need to know the context in which he uses the siddhAntamuktAvalI to be able to talk about it. But I would like to offer a general caution regarding siddhAntamuktAvalI used as
JP> an example of NavyanyAya. This work is a revisionist approach to the Navya variety of nyAya [claasical nyAya updated with navya terminologies,and navyanyAya understood according to the concepts
JP> of classical nyAya].

Mohanty summarizes the pertinent passages from the siddhAtnamuktAvalI
while discussing the psychological dimensions of inferential
processes. In particular, he states: "While such is the mental process
involved in inferring, there are also specifiable psychological
conditions which must be satisfied in order that an inferential
process may take place". By "such is the mental process", he refers to
the common sequence of (a) cognizing the probans, (b) remembering the
inseparable relation between probans and probandum, (c) cognizing the
probandum. He then goes on to state that "these conditions have been
discussed by the NyAya logicians under the title PakSatA". I.e.
answering the question as to when an object is a logical subject of an
inference (pakSa), "NyAya logicians want to exclude all those
circumstances under which one would not infer."

It is precisely because I am hesitant to draw any conclusions from a
brief discussion in the siddhAntamuktAvalI that I am looking for
earlier discussions. DharmakIrti, for instance, holds that every
inference is necessarily preceded by an error regarding the probandum
(or by doubt). This claim is defended against an opponent who argues
that, when spontaneously inferring fire from smoke, no preceding error
is given. I have not so far been able to locate accounts of such
"spontaneous" inferences in pre-DharmakIrtian or at least pre-Udayana
sources.

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Best regards,

Birgit Kellner
Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies
Vienna University