Avinash Jha
Abstract:
Pramāṇa theories open the doors to how knowledge was envisaged and conceptualised in Indian philosophical traditions. This article seeks to draw the philosophically curious reader’s attention to certain distinctive features of these theories that make them relevant for contemporary upheavals in the world of knowledge. Issues discussed include the relation of knowledge to loka or society, the nature of philosophical tradition in India, and the cognitive powers of experience.
Introduction
When the veracity of a knowledge claim is doubtful, the question asked in India is - what is the pramāṇa for this knowledge? This is a practical question. A justification is being sought for the claim of knowledge. But there is a further question. What kind of justification is sought and how is that justification justified. This gives rise to theoretical and normative questions: How should knowledge be analysed? What is the criteria of true knowledge? Pramāṇa theory offers a framework for addressing such questions in Indian philosophical traditions.
Pramāṇa theories expounded in various darśanas form an important part of Indian philosophical corpus. Pramāṇa is understood as a means, instrument or source of knowledge. When we are asked the question ‘what is the pramāṇa’ with respect to a knowledge claim we come up with various answers which fall into one of several categories. When we appeal to direct experience - I saw something, or heard something - then it is pratyakṣa pramāṇa. Another category is anumāna or inference. We deduce or infer something from what we experience. I see smoke and infer fire. This is anumāna pramāṇa. Then there is the knowledge that we get from reliable testimonies which is śabda pramāṇa. This is knowledge conveyed through words. This pramāṇa becomes especially important for ethical injunctions - injunctions for doing something or not doing something. Pratyakṣa, anumāna and śabda are the most important pramāṇās discussed in Indian philosophies. There are other independent pramāṇās like upamāna (comparison), arthāpatti (postulation), etc. accepted in one or another darśanas.
Any introductory text in Indian philosophy informs us that various philosophical schools accept one, two or more pramāṇas [see for example Hiriyanna (1993), or Radhakrishnan (2008)]. Nyāya accepts four pramāṇas, for example, and Buddhists and Vaiśeṣiks accept only two. What is meant is the number of ‘independent’ pramāṇas accepted by a darśana. Buddhists don’t accept ṣabda as an independent pramāṇa. This does not mean they reject knowledge through words. It only means that they consider ṣabda as a form of inference. Even when a pramāṇa is accepted as an independent pramāṇa by darśanas their definitions may be different. Pratyakṣa, for example, is defined by Nyāya as the knowledge arising out of a contact of sense organ with the object (इन्द्रियार्थसन्निकर्षोत्पन्नं) whereas for Buddhists it is knowledge without conceptuality (प्रत्यक्षम कल्पनापोढम).
Pramāṇa comes from the root word pramā which means knowledge as well as ‘measure’. Measure of knowledge is nothing but its truthfulness. In this tradition, knowledge is analysed into four factors: pramā (truth in knowledge), pramāṇa (means or instrument of knowledge), prameya (object of knowledge), and pramātā (knower). A means of knowledge (pramāṇa) leads to or causes true knowledge (pramā) of an object (prameya) to arise in a knower (pramātā). It is clear that knowledge is conceived as a process. Pramāṇa theory offers an analysis of this process of generation of true knowledge. It is not meant to bestow a programme of knowledge to the rest of society. It is assumed that society is abundant in knowledge and talk about truth or knowledge is happening all the time. All knowledge in ordinary life is not true but ordinary life has the criterion of truth. Various knowledge traditions that populate the loka have their own take on criterion of truth. Some are explicitly in terms of pramāṇas (in Ayurveda, for example), but every tradition whether arts, crafts, sciences or knowledge involved in various practices and activity of life have their own understanding of truth. Ultimately, it can be argued that each individual has the power of judgment in matters of knowledge.
Pramāṇa theory seeks to provide a general theory about the sources of truth in knowledge. It is part of a discourse traditionally designated as darśana which we now translate as philosophy. Many of the the issues discussed and the method of reasoning employed in both darśana and philosophy are overlapping. But there are fundamental differences in basic assumption and in the analytical equipment that has been employed in the two traditions. For example, in darśana knowledge is conceived as events or episodes of knowledge which follow each other in time. In the modern tradition however it is conceived as a proposition or a statement, which is true.
Various darśanas make very general claims about the ultimate nature of reality and these are intertwined with claims about the nature of truth in knowledge. These general claims spring from the quest for a well-grounded basis of actions and exploration of the goals of life. They get woven into various forms of life that constitute society. At a certain point in Indian history pramāṇa theory emerged as a instrument for a dialogue between these different views. It lead to the creation of rigorous philosophical discourse and many insights into the nature of knowledge, language, action etc were accumulated in various darśans. These insights offer an understanding of human existence and how human existence has been analysed and understood in the Indian tradition.
Pramākaraṇ
The philosophical conception of Pramāṇa is first expounded in the Nyāya Sūtra, where the ultimate context of knowledge is ‘release’ or apavargaḥ.
दुःख जन्म प्रवृत्ति दोष मिथ्याज्ञानाना मुत्तरोत्तरापाये तदनन्तरापायादपवर्ग:
“Pain, birth, activity, fault, and false knowledge – on the successive annihilation of these in the reverse order, there follows release.” (Nyāya Sūtra 1.1.2) Going in the reverse order, the first step is annihilation of false knowledge. Knowledge being discussed here is not the knowledge of a specific domain like spiritual knowledge. Pramāṇa is not concerned with some specific domain of knowledge. It is concerned with all knowledge.
Nyāya has an intimate relationship with the world of ordinary experience and ordinary beliefs. It takes its departure from the world of ordinary experience. In this world, experience and language are not exactly indistinguishable, but they always go together even though the relation between them is conventional. In this world of ordinary experience and ordinary language, there is a broad area of agreement about what is true and what is false. There are areas where beliefs may differ and may even conflict with each other. There would be occasions when doubt and uncertainty may enter our minds and we are unable to come to a decision about what is true and what is not. It is in such a scenario that the Nyāya enterprise of pramāṇa theory defines its role as delineating a secure process of knowledge. The pramāṇa theory though is part of a philosophical system and serves to justify the system. As such it is a theoretical enterprise.
Theories of pramāṇa conceptualise the process of knowledge as a causal process which shows how different means of knowledge generate true cognition. Perception (pratyakṣa pramāṇa) comes to acquire a special place in the pramāṇa scheme. Realism about the world of ordinary experience is one reason for privileging of perception by Nyāya. But this privilege is consolidated once a causal description of the process of knowledge is adopted. Where can knowledge originate if not in experience. Perception is the first pramāṇa in the causal scheme of knowledge with other pramāṇas following it. Inference, comparison, and ‘word’, they all presuppose the knowledge as it is given through perception. This fundamental feature of pramāṇa theory, a pramāṇa being the cause of resulting cognition, is what is called pramākaraṇ.
Nyāya pramāṇa theory presupposes a realist ontology. Ontology is a theory of reality and a realist ontology is a theory which considers the objects of ordinary experience to be real in the ultimate sense. Relying on the pramāṇas which are supposed to follow perception, like inference (anumāna), comparison (upaman) and ‘word’ (śabda), Nyāya shows its realist ontology to have a basis, a justification, in terms of pramāṇas. Introduction of this discourse of pramāṇās created a new manner for establishing the authority of a darśana which was inaugurated by Nyāya.
Then another darśana comes along with a different set of presuppositions about the nature of reality, a different ontology. It also seeks justification in terms of showing how its presuppositions are true. It gives a different pramāṇa theory. The process of Pramākaran has to be shown to generate the widely shared aspects of the world of ordinary experience as well as a different set of ideas about the ultimate nature of reality. In other words, this darśana has to show that the world of ordinary experience is consistent with another set of presuppositions about the nature of reality, and not consistent with Nyāya presuppositions. This entails a reformulation of the process of knowledge itself. As we said earlier, pramāṇa theory is not only about some ultimately true knowledge of special kind. It must be able to formulate a general process of the creation of knowledge in general.
Pramāṇa and Loka
We have different Pramāṇa theories associated with different darśanas. They offer their own view of the nature and number of fundamental pramāṇās or sources of knowledge. How are these Pramāṇa theories justified? If the justification ultimately draws upon the philosophical viewpoints or tenets with which they are aligned, then we are moving in circles. If that is the case, if pramān̩a theories are nothing but logical extensions of respective metaphysical tenets, then the discourse of pramān̩a would be quite lame. One could then argue that pramāṇa theory is just a kind of language-game where multiple theories of knowledge are offered flowing from one’s preferred theory of reality. In modernity, this question always casts a shadow over theory of pramāṇa.
Let us ask the other related question: What is the criterion which allows for the possibility of different pramān̩a theories, and therefore different philosophical standpoints arguing with each other? Pramān̩a theory did in fact create such a ground for a diversity of darśanas to engage in dialogue and contestation with each other and thus helped in creating a shared universe of discourse which we call Indian philosophy. What made this possible?
First, we must not forget that pramāṇa theory is expected to account for the whole range of knowledge activity that we participate in. There is an assumption that knowledge is an essential part of life and a whole range of knowledge exists in society. Any pramāṇa theory has to provide an account of this knowledge. We do not live by metaphysical knowledge alone. This imposes a severe constraint on any proposal of pramāṇa theory irrespective of what metaphysical view they are aligned with. It is on such a ground that philosophical discourse among participants with radically diverse standpoints could be conducted. Different pramāṇa theories compete to provide the best account of knowledge and bolster their own metaphysical commitments in the bargain.
Another question arises now. Where do the standards on which to test knowledge arise? Pramāṇa theory does not merely provide a description of knowledge. It is a normative theory seeking to offer criteria of true knowledge. Pramāṇa theory seeks to provide the most general standards of ‘true’ knowledge. Where does this ‘truth’ stem from. A clue to this can be found in the primacy that is accorded to perception among all prāmāṇas in all pramāṇa theories. Perception or pratyakṣa is the only pramāṇa which is accepted by all darśanas without exception even though there is no agreement on the precise nature and scope of perception. Given that perception is the knowledge that is given in experience, we arrive at the fundamental assumption shared by all pramāṇa theories that experience is truth-bearing. Our experience of the world is suffused with a sense of its own truth. This is what gives us our sense of reality. This sense of reality is not limited to the external world but extends to our own bodies and our own thoughts and feelings. All of this is premised upon the faith that we have in the truth-bearing character of our own experience. We are indeed aware that sometimes our experience can be illusory and mistaken but in ordinary circumstances, this does little to shake our perceptual faith or our sense of reality. We take steps to correct the errors and are alert to avoid the deception to which we may be occasionally victims.
Pratyakṣa is always the first pramāṇa in the scheme of pramāṇās. It is the first because knowledge is conceived in a causal manner - pramāṇa being the cause of resulting cognition, pramākaraṇ. Nyāya thinker Uddyotakara says: “We emphasise perception, for all pramāṇas are (in some way or other) preceded by (sensory) perception”. This primacy of perception translates into the fact that a pramāṇa which contradicts experience cannot be a pramāṇa. Tenth century Buddhist thinker Jñānaśrīmitra makes it explicit in his Apoha treatise: “When something is contradicted by experience, one needn’t think about other ways of proving it, since every means of valid awareness [pramān̩a] derives its power from experience alone. This is because it arises from experience and culminates in it”.
We can say that the starting point of pramān̩a theory is ordinary experience, or rather the truth in ordinary experience. Pramān̩a assumes the truth-bearing character of experience and tries to specify it. Different darśanas come out with different analyses of the truth-bearing character of experience. Pramāṇa theories build a train of arguments between ordinary experience and specific darśanas. At the same time, it is also a questioning of experience in order to determine the exact nature of truth in experience. And this questioning is done from a specific philosophical standpoint. We can say that pramān̩a theory stages a confrontation and reconciliation between the truth of experience and the truth of a darśana.
This is only possible if ordinary experience and ordinary language, on the whole, is independent of any particular philosophical system. In other words, ordinary experience is consistent with a multiplicity of darśanas. Of course, the world of ordinary life is neither unified nor fixed. It changes with time and place. There are contradictions, conflicts and ambiguities in ordinary experience. In a given time and place though, there is large sphere of experience about which there is broad agreement. In other words there is a realm of experience and knowledge which is lokasiddha, i.e., ‘proven in the world’. Our conjecture is that non-violation of this sphere of conventional or pragmatic consensus, which is the world of ordinary life and ordinary experience, constitutes a benchmark, which enables pramāṇa theories to overcome the alleged circularity. The fact that the loka is neither unified nor unchanging can be seen as a weakness in one sense. We cannot have a final pramāṇa theory. Or this could be a strength which enables a open-ended poly-centric tradition of thought without compromising on dialogical possibilities. Story of Indian philosophy is story of several different philosophical standpoints existing and developing concurrently. The story of philosophy in the west however is mostly framed as a story of overcoming and overthrow of one philosophy by another. These contrasting narratives have perhaps something to do with the different normative framing of knowledge.
There is a more general point too. Methodological commitment to ordinary experience is not limited to its function as a point of departure. It is also about the ultimate testing ground of any claim to knowledge, however exalted it may be. Any knowledge is ultimately validated in ordinary life. Any insight however exalted has to ultimately translate into ordinary language. It has to become part of ordinary experience.
Indian philosophies seek their ‘beginning’ in seed texts which are supposed to encapsulate the contents of an insight-full summarising experience (samādhi) or enlightenment. Ordinary life, in contrast, is conceived as without ‘a beginning’. It contains residues of innumerable ‘beginnings’. In other words, ordinary experience and ordinary language reflect within themselves fragments of many philosophical systems. No philosophical system, or system of knowledge, however, can supplant or replace ordinary experience, just as no formal language can supplant or replace ordinary language. Many ‘beginnings’ exist simultaneously in ordinary life and different forms of life get organised around them. If systems are represented by circles with their seed texts at the centre, then the boundary of the circle represents ordinary experience.
Great summarising insights that constitute the multiple beginnings are not ‘relative truths’. In themselves they represent certitudes about the ultimate nature of reality. Poly-centricity is the mark of a recognition that there are bound to be multiple claims of such truths in society. New ones may emerge in future. Human culture is full of a multiplicity of proposals for constructing forms of life based on claims of fundamental insight into the nature of reality and the nature of human existence. Poly-centric dialogical thought is the only way of dealing with this reality of our social existence.
Pratyakṣa Pramāṇa and the Authority of Experience
We have thus far seen two fundamental assumptions in the discourse of pramāṇās. One is that knowledge is integral to human life and is always present. The real question is the discrimination of truth from falsehood. The other assumption is the truth-bearing character of experience which grounds the norms of discrimination.
We then suggested that Pramāṇa theory represents the theorisation of a normative framework of knowledge which allows for a plurality of philosophical standpoints. We argued then that pramāṇa theory receives its power to serve as an instrument of dialogues among darśanas from the way it uses ordinary experience as a benchmark.
We will conclude with a discussion of pratyakṣa pramāṇa. It is about the cognitive powers of experience. This will have to be done under the full glare of modern thought and from the ground of Pramāṇa theory.
In modern thought Pratyakṣa represents a major conundrum in part because of a certain ideal of rationality and reason. The excellence of knowledge is conceived in terms of the degree of its independence from experience. Independence of the ‘proposition’ from the experienced event of knowledge is the ideal. Perception is always in the nature of an event or an episode of knowledge. The authority of Pratyakṣa becomes compromised in modern thought. This may seem puzzling and counter-intuitive considering that a common sense realism prevails. But there is an unresolved tension within realism between philosophical realism and scientific realism. Which is ultimately real - the objects of ordinary experience or the objects of scientific research. There is a split between the world as revealed by our experience and the world as articulated by science.
It is assumed that the world of experience is produced by a reality which is (or can be) explained by science. But the paradox is that science itself becomes possible only if experience has cognitive powers. Schrödinger has pointed to this paradox long ago in his essay ‘The Mystery of Sensual Qualities’. Science must begin from qualities that are directly experienced though sense organs or otherwise, but these experiential qualities are absent from the results of science. Currently the metaphysical project ot science is to explain the experiential qualities. New disciplines like consciousness studies and cognitive science have emerged on the scene. Study of perception is now a multi-disciplinary enterprise. Field of consciousness studies emerged in the last quarter of twentieth century which sought to solve the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness, which was to produce a scientific understanding of experience. The unexplained experience left after causal explanation has been exhausted has also been called ‘qualia’ in recent literature. The meaning of experience here is understood in terms of consciousness, our awareness of experience, which is subjectivity. The essence of experience is understood as subjectivity and the epistemic function of experience as an instrument of knowledge is ignored.
Experience is a source of knowledge. A claim of its own truth is inherent in experience. In fact, our experience is suffused with a sense of its own truth. This is an undeniable phenomenal fact about perceptual experience. Pramāṇa theory acknowledges this fact and then tries to explain the truth-bearing character of experience as well as the illusions of experience. In modern philosophy, experience’s claim of disclosing reality is not recognised as a claim that experience makes on us, but as an implicit judgment, belief, or assumption which we automatically append to experience. Pure experience is considered to be devoid of any cognitive claim. Experience merely presents something, without any claim of truth. Experience is innocent of any consideration of truth or falsehood.
New knowledge originates in experience. This is what is called pratyakṣa. Pratyakṣa is of various kinds - perception through senses, through inner sense, or it can be an extraordinary form of perception which is called yogi pratyakṣa. Sants are often endowed with powers of acute perception. Authority of experience as a means of knowledge is accepted universally in Indian philosophies. This does not mean there is unanimity on the nature of this authority. A renewed interest in this question will require reopening the debate on pratyakṣa pramāṇa in the tradition. A centuries-long debate chiefly among Nyāya, Buddhist and Mimamsa lost its urgency after the disappearance of Buddhism in India, though the Buddhist tradition carried on elsewhere. But the debate remained incomplete because there was no Buddhist response after a certain point. On the question of pratyakṣa, this premature termination of the debate is particularly significant because Dignāga’s conception of nirvikalpa pratyakṣa and his pramāṇa theory shook up the discourse of pramāṇas and prompted incorporation of nirvikalpa pratyakṣa in rival theories. It is worth exploring what exactly created this necessity of including nirvikalpa pratyakṣa in understanding the nature of perception and experience.
While exploring the differences among darśanas it is equally important to look at the shared assumptions of Pramāṇa theories. These shared conceptions are less explored in the tradition since all parties to the debate accepted them. But when we want to initiate a renewed investigation of the nature of experience, then these shared assumptions will come to the fore because they reveal the deep differences in conceptualisation of knowledge in Indian and western conceptions. For example, what are the consequences of conceiving knowledge as episodes embedded in experience in time as opposed to knowledge as propositions in a timeless ‘space of reasons’? The question is not of winning or loosing, but of continuing the quest.
REFERENCES:
Hiriyanna, M. (1993). Outlines of Indian Philosophy, Motilal Banarsidas, Delhi.
Matilal, B. K. (1986). Perception: An Essay on Classical Indian Theories of Knowledge, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Radhakrishnan, S. (2008).Indian Philosophy Vol 1 & 2, Oxford, 2008. (2nd Ed).
Schrödinger, Erwin, The Mystery of Sensual Qualities, in What is Life: With Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches, 1992.
Vidyābhûṣana, Satish Chandra (tr). (1990). Nyāya Sûtras of Gotama. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
About the author:
Avinash Jha spent most of his working life in documentation and librarianship. He retired as librarian from Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi. He was a research scholar at the Centre for Exact Humanities, IIIT, Hyderabad, and has been associated with Vidya Ashram, Sarnath, since its inception. Avinash lives in New Delhi.
Some of his writings are at https://independentresearcher.academia.edu/AvinashJha
Email: kalisaroj@gmail.com
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