Vaisheshika “The Particularist School”
vishesha: difference, particularity, specialness, the
quality of individuality.
Vaisheshika Sutra
• Kanada, “atom eater”
• Circa 1st century BCE
• systematized by Prashashtapada, 6th century CE
• by whose time God has been introduced as the
regulator of karma.
Nyaya “The Method” “Logic”
“The School of Reasoning”
Nyaya Sutra
• Gautama, aka Akshapada, “eye on his foot”
• 2nd to 4th century CE
• Systematized by Vatsyayana, 5th century.
Vaisheshika and Nyaya merge into one system in the
later Medieval period.
Vaisheshika is the ontology for Nyaya epistemology
and logic.
Two views of the origins of Vaisheshika
Pure Natural Philosophy
Defense of Vedic orthodoxy
Nyaya as correct methods of proof originates in the
ancient Indian tradition
of debate and argument: Vada
As manuals of debate defining the rules for fair
argument.
We shall now consider the nature of dharma.
It is from dharma that the highest and supreme
good is achieved.
The Veda has its authority because of its concern
with dharma.
Vaisheshika Sutra 1-3
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Means of valid knowing •
Objects of knowing
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Doubt
•
Purpose
•
Familiar Example
Established Tenet
Syllogism
Confutation
16 Categories
of Nyaya
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Certainty
Discussion
Wrangling
Cavil
Fallacy
Quibble
Futility
Defeat
Vaisesika Metaphysics
Metaphysics explains the fundamental nature of being
and the world and answer two questions:
"What is there?” and "What is it?”
The word is from the Greek words μετά ("beyond" or
"after") and φυσικά ( "physical"), "physical.”
A central part is ontology, the investigation into the
types of things there are in the world, their relations,
existence, property, space, time, and causality.
Before the development of modern science, scientific
questions were known as “Natural Philosophy."
The physical world is natural and atomic.
Creation and destruction is a natural process.
The world of particular things arises by the
combination of elemental atoms.
Atoms (paramanu) are eternal,
their combinations as not.
Atoms are invisible and so inferred.
Atoms combine into binaries (dyads) and triads.
Three binaries form a three-dimensional triad or
molecule—the size of a particle of dust in a
sunbeam.
The character of things result different proportions of
the elemental atoms.
Adrishta is the law-like impersonal causative power
inherent in atoms in their combinations of qualities.
Vaisheshika thus is not a pure materialist
physics like Carvaka.
In addition to atomism, it accepts the existence
of immaterial eternal substances including
souls.
The elements have a dual psycho-physical
nature. Sensory qualities inhere in things,
more precisely, in their atoms.
Earth or solidity possesses smell, taste, color, touch.
Water or liquidity taste, color, touch.
Fire or light possesses color, touch.
Air or gas possesses touch.
Akasa or ether possesses no perceivable qualities.
Vaisheshika Sutra II.1.1-5
Atomism Criticized
1. Problem of inferring the existence of
atoms, which cannot be perceived.
2. The contradiction of atoms: atoms are
partless, spaceless points, yet have sides
that contact other atoms, which would
seem to require magnitude and extension.
PADARTHA Sk. pada-artha = word-thing
• Referent of words, the kinds of objects knowable.
•Commonsense view of how and what we know.
•Realist view of the relation between word and thing.
Gau =
= Cowness
Seven Categories
Perceptible objects
Substance dravya
Quality
guna
Action
karma
Inferable objects
Universality
Particularity
Inherence
Non-existence
samanya
visesa
samavaya
abhava
Nine Substances
Extensionless, eternal,
elemental atoms
1. Earth prithivi
2. Water ap
3. Light tejas
4. Air vayu
9. Mind
manas
Immaterial,
eternal, and allpervading, nonelemental
5. Ether akasha
6. Time kala
7. Space dik
8. Soul atman
24 Qualities
Universal
Impulse
Heaviness
Distance
Nearness
Conjunction
samyoga
Separation
Distinctness
Size
Number
Fluidity
Particular
Touch
Smell
Taste
Color
Sound
Merit
Demerit
Desire
Aversion
Effort
Cognition
Pleasure
Pain
Viscosity
Theory of Causality
Adrishta: the “unseen” invisible power of karmic
causality.
Explains all motion and change as due to the
physical, atomic nature and organization of
entities from the movement of atoms to human
bodies and behavior.
“The movement of the jewel toward a thief and
the turn of a needle toward a lodestone have
adrishta as their cause.”
Vaisheshika Sutra V.1.15
Only later does the more moralistic notion of
adrishta as the potency connecting good and bad
human actions to their future results come to
predominate.
Vaisheshika is commonsense realism about the
physical world to which a theistic cosmology and
the later notion of karma seem awkwardly added
on as some think.
Prashashtapada 6th century CE
Compendium of the Nature of Fundamental
Categories.
Asatkaryavada
The view that the effect does not pre-exist in its
cause;
effects are new entities and differ from their causes;
Things are separate.
New combination of atoms are new things separate
from their cause in line with a pluralist realist world
view of many permanent things non-reducible to
other things or categories.
Satkaryavada
Things emerge by the transformation of more
fundamental substances.
1. Results pre-exist in their cause. The prakriti of
Sankhya.
2. Or only the cause exists. The Brahman of
Vedanta. Effects are maya (illusory appearance).
Atman is never really separate from Brahman.
The Soul
Vaisheshika’s thing-like conception of the self
much criticized later.
The atman ends up as an unconscious rock-like
thing devoid of all qualities of thought, feeling,
life, and activity.
What is the point of existence if it ends in a
state so null and void?
16 Nyaya Categories
1. Means of Valid Knowing pramana
2. Objects of knowledge
prameya
3. Doubt
4. Purpose. Attaining desirable or avoid
undesirable objects.
5. Familiar Example
6. View accepted as valid
7. Logical argument the five part syllogism
8. Confutation tarka
9. Certain knowledge attained by removing doubt.
Three Types of Debate
10. Discussion. Valid argument aiming at the
truth. Vada
11. Arguing to win, not to get at the truth. Jalpa
12. Disproving your opponent’s view without
proving your own. Vitanda reductio ad absurdum
13. Fallacies.
14. Tricks and misrepresentation of the opponent’s
argument.
15. False analogies.
16. Clinching the argument, grounds of defeat in
debate.
Theory Of Knowledge
Prama: Sure Knowledge always of some real
external objects as by means of the 4 pramanas.
As the light of a lamp reveals things in a room,
The mind is not illuminating things internal to itself.
Aprama: Invalid Knowledge
memory
error
doubt
hypothetical arguments
Nyaya accepts 4 Pramanas.
Perception
1. Ordinary (laukika)
a. External: visual auditory, tactile, taste, smell,
b. Internal: internal awareness (manas)
2. Extraordinary (alaukika)
a. Intuition of universals
b. Yogic perception
12 Objects of Knowing
(desire, hatred, delusion)
Self
atma
Afterlife
Body
sharira
Fruits of action
Senses
indriya
Pain
duhkha
Sense objects artha
Intellect
buddhi
Mind
manas
Liberation
pretyabhava
phala
apavarga
Two Modes of Perception
Indeterminate-pure awareness of things
Determinate-perception with concepts and language.
Shabda
Verbal testimony of a “reliable person”
Comparison
Analogy
Inference anu-mana “after-knowledge.”
Inference is knowledge of an object, not by direct
observation, but by means of a sign and its universal
connection with the inferred object.
Nyaya logic has a tendency to the inductive,
empirically verifiable, pragmatic, and non-formal.
Retains the form of a debate.
In a deductive argument the conclusion
necessarily follows from the premises.
All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Socrates is mortal.
All men are from Mars.
Deven is a man.
Deven is from Mars.
Induction allows for the possibility that the
conclusion is false even where all of the premises
are true, but aims at the constant and invariable.
All of the ice we have examined so far is cold.
Therefore, all ice is cold.
Three Kinds of Inference
From a perceived cause to an unperceived effect
From perceived effect to an unperceived cause
From the empirical to the non-empirical
or general correlation established by experience
Argument from perceived cause to unperceived effect.
It will rain.
Because the clouds are dark and heavy.
The clouds are now dark and heavy, which invariably
in experience precedes a rain.
Therefore, it will rain.
Five Part Inference
From perceived effect to unperceived cause.
What is to inferred: There is fire on the hill.
Reason (hetu): Because there is smoke (linga).
Example: As in a kitchen, where there is smoke,
there is fire (vyapti).
Application: There is smoke, which is associated
with fire, on the hill.
Conclusion: There is fire on the hill.
Linga: the sign or mark invariably linked with
something else that can therefore be inferred from.
Smoke is the linga of fire.
Vyapti “pervasion” is the universal concomitance
between-the major term
(fire)
and the minor term
(hill)
by means of -the middle term
(smoke)
Argument from the empirical to the non-empirical
A Cosmological/Teleological Argument for God
(Ishvara)
1. The world was created by Ishvara.
2. Because the world has been made out of atoms.
3. Whatever has been created has an intelligent
maker,
like a pot made from clay and a potter.
4. The world has a formal order, which is always
associated with an intelligent creator.
5. Therefore, Ishvara created the world
The Self is a real unique substance, to which thoughts
feelings, and actions (karma) belong as attributes.
Desire, hate, will, pleasure, pain, cognition are all
temporary, karmically determined qualities (gunas) of
the self when the self comes into contact with the
internal sense (manas) and the manas with the senses.
The self is itself indestructible and eternal.
Apavarga is total freedom from all qualities,
in particular, pain (duhkha).
Classical Nyaya accepted the idea of liberation
(moksha) as the purpose for acquiring correct
knowledge.
It did not concerned with the Vedas.
Nyaya was always mainly interested in correct
argument and logic, but became the great champion of
the existence of God against the Buddhists.
For Nyaya, God is the efficient cause or regulator of
the action of souls and atoms.
He is not the material cause, as in Vedanta