A History of Indian Philosophy Volume 1

by Surendranath Dasgupta | 1922 | 212,082 words | ISBN-13: 9788120804081

This page describes the philosophy of the theory of causation: a concept having historical value dating from ancient India. This is the tenth part in the series called the “the nyaya-vaisheshika philosophy”, originally composed by Surendranath Dasgupta in the early 20th century.

Part 10 - The Theory of Causation

The Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika in most of its speculations took that view of things which finds expression in our language, and which we tacitly assume as true in all our ordinary experience. Thus they admitted dravya, guṇa, karma and sāmānya. Viśeṣa they had to admit as the ultimate peculiarities of atoms, for they did not admit that things were continually changing their qualities, and that everything could be produced out of everything by a change of the collocation or arrangement of the constituting atoms. In the production of the effect too they did not admit that the effect was potentially pre-existent in the cause. They held that the material cause (e.g. clay) had some power within it, and the accessory and other instrumental causes (such as the stick, the wheel etc.) had other powers; the collocation of these two destroyed the cause, and produced the effect which was not existent before but was newly produced. This is what is called the doctrine of asatkāryavāda. This is just the opposite of the Sāṃkhya axiom, that what is existent cannot be destroyed ( - bhāvo vidyate sata/i) and that the non-existent could never be produced (nāsato vidyate bkāvafj). The objection to this view is that if what is non-existent is produced, then even such impossible things as the hare’s horn could also be produced. The Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika answer is that the view is not that anything that is non-existent can be produced, but that which is produced was non-existent[1] .

It is held by Mīmāṃsā that an unseen power resides in the cause which produces the effect. To this Nyāya objects that this is neither a matter of observation nor of legitimate hypothesis, for there is no reason to suppose that there is any transcendental operation in causal movement as this can be satisfactorily explained by molecular movement (parispanda). There is nothing except the invariable time relation (antecedence and sequence) between the cause and the effect, but the mere invariableness of an antecedent does not suffice to make it the cause of what succeeds; it must be an unconditional antecedent as well (anyathāsiddhiśūnyasya niyatāpūrvavarttitā). Unconditionality and invariability are indispensable for kāryakāraṇa-bhāva or cause and effect relation. For example, the non-essential or adventitious accompaniments of an invariable antecedent may also be invariable antecedents; but they are not unconditional, only collateral or indirect. In other words their antecedence is conditional upon something else (ua svātantryend). The potter’s stick is an unconditional invariable antecedent of the jar; but the colour of a stick or its texture or size, or any other accompaniment or accident which does not contribute to the work done, is not an unconditional antecedent, and must not therefore be regarded as a cause.

Similarly the co-effects of the invariable antecedents or what enters into the production of their co-effects may themselves be invariable antecedents; but they are not unconditional, being themselves conditioned by those of the antecedents of which they are effects. For example, the sound produced by the stick or by the potter’s wheel invariably precedes the jar but it is a co-effect; and ākāśa (ether) as the substrate and vāyu (air) as the vehicle of the sound enter into the production of this co-effect, but these are no unconditional antecedents, and must therefore be rejected in an enumeration of conditions or causes of the jar. The conditions of the conditions should also be rejected; the invariable antecedent of the potter (who is an invariable antecedent of the jar), the potter’s father, does not stand in a causal relation to the potter’s handiwork. In fact the antecedence must not only be unconditionally invariable, but must also be immediate. Finally all seemingly invariable antecedents which may be dispensed with or left out are not unconditional and cannot therefore be regarded as causal conditions.

Thus Dr Seal in describing it rightly remarks,

“In the end, the discrimination of what is necessary to complete the sum of causes from what is dependent, collateral, secondary, superfluous, or inert (i.e. of the relevant from the irrelevant factors), must depend on the test of expenditure of energy.

This test the Nyāya would accept only in the sense of an operation analysable into molar or molecular motion (parispanda eva bhautiko vyāpāraḥ karotyarthah atindriyastu vyā-paro nāsti. Jayanta’s Mañjarl Ahnika I), but would emphatically reject, if it is advanced in support of the notion of a mysterious causal power or efficiency (śakti)[2].”

With Nyāya all energy is necessarily kinetic. This is a peculiarity of Nyāya—its insisting that the effect is only the sum or resultant of the operations of the different causal conditions—that these operations are of the nature of motion or kinetic, in other words it firmly holds to the view that causation is a case of expenditure of energy, i.e. a redistribution of motion, but at the same time absolutely repudiates the Sāṃkhya conception of power or productive efficiency as metaphysical or transcendental ( atīndriya) and finds nothing in the cause other than unconditional invariable complements of operative conditions (kāraṇa-sāmagrī), and nothing in the effect other than the consequent phenomenon which results from the joint operations of the antecedent conditions[3].

Certain general conditions such as relative space (dik), time (kāla), the will of Īśvara, destiny (adṛṣṭa) are regarded as the common cause of all effects (kāryatva-prayojaka). Those are called sādhāraṇa-kāraṇa (common cause) as distinguished from the specific causes which determine the specific effects which are called asādhāraṇa kāraṇa. It may not be out of place here to notice that Nyāya while repudiating transcendental power (śakti) in the mechanism of nature and natural causation, does not deny the existence of metaphysical conditions like merit (dharma), which constitutes a system of moral ends that fulfil themselves through the mechanical systems and order of nature.

The causal relation then like the relation of genus to species, is a natural relation of concomitance, which can be ascertained only by the uniform and uninterrupted experience of agreement in presence and agreement in absence, and not by a deduction from a certain a priori principle like that of causality or identity of essence[4].

The material cause such as the clay is technically called the samavāyi-kāraṇa of the jug. Samavāya means as we have seen an intimate, inseparable relation of inherence. A kāraṇa is called samavāyi when its materials are found inseparably connected with the materials of the effect. Asamavāyi-kāraṇa is that which produces its characteristics in the effect through the medium of the samavāyi or material cause, e.g. the clay is not the cause of the colour of the jug but the colour of the clay is the cause of the colour of the jug. The colour of the clay which exists in the clay in inseparable relation is the cause of the colour of the jug. This colour of the clay is thus called the asamavāyi cause of the jug. Any quality (guṇa) or movement which existing in the samavāya cause in the samavāya relation determines the characteristics of the effect is called the asamavāyi-kāraṇa. The instrumental nimitta and accessory (sahakāri) causes are those which help the material cause to produce the effect. Thus the potter, the wheel and the stick may be regarded as the nimitta and the sahakāri causes of the effect.

We know that the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika regards the effect as nonexistent, before the operation of the cause in producing it, but it holds that the guṇas in the cause are the causes of the guṇas in the effect, e.g. the black colour of the clay is the cause of the black colour of the effect, except in cases where heat comes as an extraneous cause to generate other qualities; thus when a clay jug is burnt, on account of the heat we get red colour, though the colour of the original clay and the jug was black. Another important exception is to be found in the case of the production of the parimāṇas of dvyaṇukas and trasareṇus which are not produced by the parimāṇas of an aṇu or a dyaṇuka, but by their number as we have already seen.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Nyāyamañjari, p. 494.

[2]:

Dr P. C. Ray’s Hindu Chemistry , 1909, pp. 249-250.

[3]:

Dr P. C. Ray’s Hindu Chemistry, 1909, pp. 249-250.

[4]:

See for this portion Dr B. N. Seal’s Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus, pp. 263-266. Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha on Buddhism. Nyāyamañjarī, Bhāṣā-pariccheda, with Muktāvalī and Dinakarī, and Tarkasatngraha . The doctrine of Anyathāsiddhi was systematically developed from the time of Gaṅgeśa.

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