Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika View of Consciousness

In Indian philosophy, the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika, with their serious pre-occupation with the problems of epistemology, argued that the material body is indispensable for consciousness. It means consciousness requires embodiment. Yet, “they could not outgrow the age-old superstition about the self and its liberation”^[1]. Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika and Jainism are perhaps the only two Indian philosophical schools which attach great importance to the concept of the embodied or corporeal nature of the individual self called Jīva or Jīvātmā in Sanskrit.

According to the classical Nyāya there are two kinds of selves, viz. the individual selves which are innumerable (jivātmā) and an Absolute self which is one and infinite called the God (paramātmā). Both these kinds of selves are substances which are eternal and ubiquitous. Being substances these are endowed with certain general and certain special qualities. The general qualities are number, dimensions, separateness, conjunction and disjunction from other substances. The Special qualities that are common to the individual and universal selves are cognition, emotion or desire, happiness and conation: but those belonging to God are all eternal, while those belonging to the individual selves are transitory. Besides these four, the individual self is endowed with certain other special qualities like aversion, virtue, vice, misery and residual trace. These too are transitory in nature. The relation of these qualities with their substantive locus is inherence (samavāya). The self be devoid of cognition, desire etc. during deep sleep and similar states and in the state of release all these qualities disappear for good from the being of the self leaving it in an insentient-stone like condition.

Gotama, the founder of the Nyāya school, provides with a list of prameyas or objects of true knowledge, and this list begins with ātmā. Vātsyāna states:

‘The omniscient self is the seer, the enjoyer and the experiencer of all things, the body is the place of its enjoyment and suffering, and the sense-organs are the instruments for enjoyment and suffering. Enjoyment and suffering are cognitions of pleasure and pain. The inner sense or manas is that which can know all objects. Action (pravṛtti) causes all pleasure and pain; so do the doṣas (defects), namely, passion, envy and attachment. The self had earlier bodies than this one, and will occupy other bodies after this one, until the achievement of 'mokṣa'. This beginningless succession of birth and death is called 'pretyabhāva'. Experiences of pleasure and pain, along with their instruments, i.e. body, sense-organs, etc. are the 'fruit' (phala). 'Pain' is inextricably connected with 'pleasure'. In order to achieve mokṣa or apavarga, one should realize that all happiness is pain, which will result in detachment and, in the long run, freedom.^[2]

After this list of entities in N.S. 1.1.9, the next sūtra^[3] proceeds to say how the 'self' (or ātman) is known. The self being too “subtle” is not perceivable by any of the senses, and even if one experiences the self in such judgments as ‘I am happy’ or 'I am sad', this is not a knowledge of the true nature of self. Consequently, the question arises as to how the self can be known? The sūtra states that the self can be inferred from a series of marks: desire, hatred, effort, pleasure, pain and cognition (or consciousness). From these marks one can infer the existence of a self that is eternal and different from the body. These six are specific qualities (guṇas) of the self. The self can be defined as what possesses these qualities. Of these six, the presence of the three, desire, effort, and consciousness is common to both finite selves and the infinite self, i.e., God. The two, i.e. hatred and pain are present only in the finite selves; regarding the one remaining quality, god may be regarded as having eternal happiness while the happiness of finite individuals is non-eternal.

From these above remarks it is revealed that the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣikas regard consciousness as a guṇa (quality).^[4] The Nyāya-Vaiśesikas enumerate twenty-four guṇas of the self. Consciousness is one of these twenty four guṇas. Thus consciousness is a quality of the self. Consciousness cannot be a substance nor a manifestation of a substance, as a pot is of clay because it is part-less and yet not eternal.

A substance that is partless, such as an atom, is eternal. But consciousness, such as any perception of the flower on this table comes into being and then ceases to exist. It is not therefore a substance. Nor is it an action, for an action involves motion in space; consciousness, however, has no spatial movement. Not being a substance or an action, and yet being a particular (viśeṣa); consciousness can only be a quality. But whose quality is it? There are four possible answers to this question. Consciousness could either be a quality of the self, or of the body in which the self inhabits, or of a senseorgan belonging to that body, or of the mind (manas). The Naiyāyikas have argued in great detail to demonstrate that consciousness is neither a quality of the body nor of the sense-organs, nor of an action; it is rather a quality of the self.

Another argument often advanced in favour of the thesis that consciousness is a quality is as follows: consciousness is a quality, for though non-eternal, it can be apprehended only by one sense-organ (i.e. only by manas, the inner sense) as is 'colour'. Consciousness cannot be a quality of mind, because only the self is a knower, the sense organs, outer and inner, cannot be knowers for they are dependent while only the self is independent. Furthermore, qualities such as desire, aversion, activity, pleasure and pain must belong to the same locus as consciousness, for the same thing that cognizes, also desire to acquire it or shun it; it also acts to possess or shun it, and on reaching the desired goal, experiences pleasure or pain. Body, which is material, cannot be the locus of that structure, all those elements can belong only to a conscious self (N.S. 3.2.35-6)^[5].

Thus, according to the Naiyāyikas consciousness is an attribute of the self which is a substance (dravya). The self is eternal; it cannot be produced or destroyed. The self is real; it exists. It is not one but many. The self is a substance and not a function or state. It is non-material. Though consciousness is a quality of the self, it nevertheless is not an essential quality of the self. One evidence for the Nyāya-Vaiāeṣika claim that the self can exist without consciousness is the experience of deep sleep state or coma. In deep sleep the self exists, yet it is not knowing, nor desiring, nor willing. Another argument that the self is a substance which can exist without consciousness is based on the conviction that the self can be liberated. The liberated self is devoid of consciousness. The self may exist without consciousness but is, however, capable of having consciousness when the appropriate causal conditions are present. That is, when the self comes in contact with the mind, the mind with the senses, and the senses with external objects. In other words, the self, though eternal, is by itself unconscious and thus not different from material objects such as table and chair, excepting for the fact that the self alone is capable of having consciousness.

In this regard a series of questions may arise. How does consciousness in this sense originate? What are the conditions to be fulfilled so that a self, in spite of being intrinsically unconscious can acquire the accidental attribute called consciousness? The first and foremost is of course the conjunction of the self with the body, because the body is endowed with sense-organs and no self can acquire consciousness without being conjoined with the objects through the agency of the sense-organs. A pure or objectless consciousness is inconceivable for the Nyāya philosophy.

Again, because of its conjunction with the body, the self gets conjoined to its internal sense-organs or manas. Through this it is conjoined to one of the five external senseorgans. These in their turn are conjoined to the various things of the external world, and thus help the self to have conjunction with the external objects. As the final result of this chain of conjunctions, there results the emergence of consciousness or knowledge (jñāna) in the self.

We may schematically put this view by using the plus sign for conjunction which is as follows:

Self + body + internal sense (manas) + external sense + external objects implies consciousness

The Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika position differs substantially from the views of Advaita Vedānta and Sāṅkhya. As Nyāya sūtra 1.1.15 states, on the Nyāya view the words ‘buddhi’, ‘upalabdhi’, and ‘jñāna’ are synonymous. For the Sāṅkhya and Advaita Vedānta view, buddhi is a modification of the first evolute of Prakṛti, i.e, mahat, or the cosmic intelligence, while 'jñāna' or consciousness is the nature of the self (or puruṣa). “Knowledge” (such as perceiving a jar) is a modification (vṛtti) of buddhi, in which consciousness is reflected.^[6] The Naiyāyikas reject this account of our cognitive state, because for them there is no consciousness per se; there is of course a universal “consciousness” which is instantiated in every cognitive state. “Consciousness” stands for all such particular cognitive states of all selves. Each such state, a perceiving, an inferring, a remembering, and so on is called either a buddhi, a jñāna, an uplabdhi, i.e. consciousness, which arises in a self when the appropriate causal conditions are present.

The issue whether consciousness is formless (nirākāra) or has a form (sākāra) and whether it is of–an-object (saviṣaya) or objectless (nirviṣaya) occupy an important discussion in Indian philosophy. What is meant by asking whether consciousness is with form (sākāra) or without form (nirakara)? It is asking whether consciousness itself possesses an ākāra. The word ākāra literally means “form” or shape. The ākāra of a thing is a function of the structural arrangement of its parts. External objects have ākāra in this sense, they have a form or a shape. The Nyāya realists who believe that there are external objects deny that Consciousness has its own (ākāra) form. They hold that the knowledge, “This is blue” itself is formless, but derives its form from the form of its object. The Nyāya view accords well with its realism, for the form or shape that appears in a knowledge cannot belong to that knowledge itself which is form-less and therefore must belong to an object outside of knowledge^[7].

It is interesting to note that although the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣikas mean by ‘consciousness' only specific cognitive states for example, seeing a physical object, hearing sound, these specific cognitive states are described as formless or nirākāra. Consciousness of a cow, for example, could not have the ākāra of a cow; it could only have the cow image. The mental picture of a cow is like a cow, but the cognition of a cow is not like a cow. Consciousness of a cow does not contain something like a cow within it. So one possible translation of ākāra is the cognitive content, the 'content' as distinguished from the object. According to Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika, there is nothing within consciousness which appears in consciousness. Everything that appears in consciousness is really outside of it. Consciousness itself has no inner component or constituent and so its being is totally exhausted by its reference to its object, that is, by its intentionality. According to the Nyāya view, the essential nature of a cognition is to reveal its object; consciousness is essentially intentional.

Again, though consciousness is a quality, it is different from other qualities such as pleasure and pain. Whereas consciousness is always cognitive, pleasure, pain etc. are not in themselves cognitive; they are affective. Such qualities as pleasure and pain, although intentional like consciousness, derive their intentionality from that consciousness which presents the objects. For example, in the instance 'I am happy about X', the object of my happiness, X is first an object of cognition or consciousness, and then through it an object of happiness.

For the Naiyāyikas, ‘knowing’ is a temporal act directed towards an object. Consider the sentence ‘This is a jar'. In this sentence the jar is the object of knowledge. On their view, such cognition (vyavāsaya) reveals only the object; it does not reveal either the cognizer or the cognition. This primary cognition is revealed by a second introspective awareness in the form 'I know the jar', or 'I see that this is a jar’, or ‘I have knowledge of the jar’. The second cognition, the cognition of the primary cognition, is termed anuvyavasāya. This difference between the sentences ‘This is a jar’ and ‘I know that this is a jar’ is essential for the purpose of Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika. The two sentences give expression of two different cognitions, the former to the perceptual cognition whose object is the jar before me, the latter to the reflective cognition whose object is the first cognition. Any analysis of the content of the first sentence, ‘This is a jar’, for Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika, should not contain reference to the cognition whose expression the sentence is; on the other hand, an analysis of the second sentence viz. ‘I know the jar’ just contains reference to that original, perceptual cognition. In other words, although the sentence ‘This is a jar’ expresses the perceptual cognition of the jar lying before me, it describes the object of that cognition, not that cognition itself. The expression 'the knowledge that this is a jar’ names that cognition, but does not express it; for this expression is possible only when the original (primary) cognition itself is cognized in a reflective inner perception.

From the above discussion it follows that for Nyāya Vaiśeṣika, a cognition is not self referential (or self manifesting), it is wholly and fully referring to its own object. The form of the cognition ‘This is a jar’ is wholly determined by the form of the object; other than the form of the object, the cognition (consciousness) itself has no form of its own. The two thesis (1) that consciousness is not self-manifesting i.e. it is paraprakāśa, and not svayamprakāśa, (2) that its form is in fact the form of its object so that in reality consciousness is formless (nirākāra), jointly entail a realistic ontology. One has only to bear in mind that since consciousness is not selfmanifesting, it does not “show” itself, what does appear in consciousness is not itself but its object. Further, all the forms, “this” “jar” e.g. are originally forms of the object, and not of the consciousness. Thus the Nyāya system, emphatically denies self-luminosity to consciousness and stresses its intrinsic intentionality.

A comparison of the Nyāya view of consciousness with that of the view upheld by Advaita Vedānta is worth attempting here. No two philosophical schools, in Indian philosophy, are so unlike each other as the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika and Advaita Vedānta. The relation of Nyāya-Vaiseṣika is totally unlike the Advaita Vedānta. The former is pluralistic, the latter monistic.

In Advaita Vedānta, the two cognitions “This is a pot” and “I know this a pot” are similar, the latter expressing no new knowledge, for every knowledge is selfreferential i.e. self manifesting (svaprakāsa). Every knowledge therefore both manifests itself and its other, the object. But it can manifest its object, it is argued only by assuming the form of its object. Form originally belongs to the objects, the Advaita Vedānta agrees with the realist. According to Advaita-Vedānta consciousness, being essentially self-manifesting, can manifest only that with which it identifies itself by assuming its form. Empirical consciousness, then, with all its diverse forms and modalities is distinct from the original nature of consciousness, which in its purity it formless (nirākāra). The real self is pure-Consciousness; it is not Consciousness of anything.

On the Advaita account consciousness cannot be apprehended by any of the six means of true cognition, because the objects known by them presuppose the existence of consciousness. It cannot be known by another consciousness either, because such reasoning will lead to an infinite regress of consciousness. It is apprehended by the witness-consciousness, which can't be an object of knowledge, and thus it does not become the content of true cognition (pramāviṣaya), it is the very condition of the possibility of knowing anything. But the Naiyāyikas, argue that since the witness-consciousness is not accessible through any of the recognized means, it cannot be known by any of the pramāṇas, it is not established by the scriptures either; the self-luminous witness-consciousness, therefore, does not exist.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

N. S. Dravid, “Anomalies of the Nyāya Vaiśeṣika concept of Self”. Indian Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 1, (1995), 1.

[2]:

Vātsyāyana's commentary on the Nyāya-sūtra, 1.1.9. Bina Gupta, Cit Consciousness, (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), 40.

[3]:

Nyāyasūtra, 1.1.10, Ibid.

[4]:

A guṇa, often translated as 'quality', means that which is non-independent and non-primary (apradhāna). Thus, a guṇa can reside only in a substance, and not by itself.

[5]:

J.N. Mohanty, “Intentionality and Theory of the Qualities of the Soul”, in Philosophical Concepts Relevant to Sciences in Indian Tradition, Pranab Kumar Sen (ed.), Vol. III, Part 5, (New Delhi: Centre for Studies in Civilizations, 2008), 243.

[6]:

Ibid.

[7]:

J.N. Mohanty, “Consciousness and Knowledge in Indian Philosophy”, Philosophy East and West, Vol. 29, No. 1, (The University Press of Hawaii, 1979), 1-2.