Part 1 - Definition of Knowledge (buddhi)

If we take knowledge in its widest sense to mean any way of cognising objects, then valid knowledge will be a special form of cognition (buddhi). All cognitions are not valid knowledge. Hence in order to understand the nature of the method of valid knowledge (pramana), we have to consider first the nature and different forms of cognition or knowledge (jnana) as such. In the Nyaya-Vaisesika philosophy cognition (buddhi) is taken to mean the same thing as apprehension (upalabdhi), knowledge (jnana) and cognisance (pratyaya).' Hence we say that knowledge means awareness or apprehension of objects. It includes all cognitions that have a more or less determinate objective reference. The object of apprehension may be a thing or a quality, an act or an emotion, the existent as well as the non-existent. But in every case in which there is knowledge there must be something that stands out as the object of knowledge. Knowledge consists simply in the manifestation (prakasa) of objects." All things are made manifest or revealed to us when they become objects of knowledge. Further, knowledge is said to be the property of illumination or manifestation that belongs to the self. Without this luminous light of knowledge we lose the ground of all rational practice and intelligent activity. It is on the basis of knowledge of some kind that all living beings deal with other objects of the surrounding world. Hence knowledge (buddhi) is regarded as the ground of what may be called the behaviour or conduct of a living 1 Buddhirupalabdhirjnanamityanarthantaram, Nyaya-sutra, 1.1.15. Buddhirupalabdhirjnanam pratyaya iti paryayah, Nyayakandali, p. 171. 2 Arthaprakaso buddhih, Tarkakaumudi, p. 6. 2-(0.p. 103)

being. A living creature behaves differently in relation to different objects because it somehow knows them to be different. Then we are told more definitely that knowledge is that kind of awareness which is meant when, by introspection, one says 'I I am knowing." This means that knowledge is intellection as distinguished from affection and volition. Something different is meant by the phrase 'I am knowing,' from what is meant by saying 'I am desiring or willing or doing something, or simply being pleased or displeased with it.' Although knowledge is distinguishable, it is not separable, from feeling and volition. In knowledge the knower does not passively allow himself to be impressed by external objects and end by having mental copies of those objects. According to the Nyaya, the self is not a mere aggregate or series of conscious phenomena, which is only acted on and determined by sense-impressions, but has no power to react on and determine them. This materialistic and sensationalist theory of the self is rejected by the Nyaya. On the other hand, it conceives the self as a conscious agent which receives impressions of sense, knows external objects through them and acts upon things according to its subjective purposes. Knowledge is a cognitive fact by which we have an apprehension or understanding of objects. But it is bound up with certain affective elements, namely, the feelings of pleasure and displeasure, according as the known objects are pleasurable or painful. Through such feelings knowledge leads to certain conations, viz. desire, aversion and volition in the form of an exertion (samiha) to obtain pleasurable objects and avoid painful ones." Hence knowledge may be said to be a cognitive phenomenon which is generally connected with conation through the mediation of feeling. In any particular act of knowledge of an object, there is a feeling of being pleased or displeased with it and an active attitude of desire or aversion which may lead 1 Tarkasamgraha and Tattvadipika, P. 32. 2 Nyaya-Bhasya, 1.1.1-2.

to certain overt movements towards or away from the object. The Nyaya, however, does not go so far as to say that knowledge is at once a phase of cognition, feeling and conation. In cognising an object we may also cognise its pleasurable or painful character and also become conscious of certain tendencies in relation to it. But the actual feelings of pleasure and pain or the conative processes of desire, etc., take us beyond cognition. Knowledge is not a phase of feeling or the will, although it may be generally connected with them. It has a distinctive and self-sufficient character of its own and should not be reduced to feeling or volition. With regard to the essential nature of knowledge we may ask: Is knowledge a substance or an attribute? Is it a mode or an activity? According to the Nyaya, knowledge is an attribute of the self. It is not a substance, since it cannot be the stuff or the constitutive cause of anything, nor is it the permanent substratum of certain recognised and variant properties. The Sankhya and the Yoga systems look upon cognition as a substantive mode or modification (vrtti) of the material principle called buddhi, as it reflects the light or consciousness of the self in it. This, the Naiyayika contends, is unintelligible. We cannot understand how the self's consciousness, which is immaterial and intangible, can be reflected on any material substratum. We should not speak of any reflection, but rather say that knowledge or consciousness belongs naturally to buddhi itself. But this will commit us to the absurd hypothesis of two selves or subjects for any case of knowledge. In truth, however, there is but one conscious subject for all cognitions in one person. 1 It is generally believed that knowledge is neither a mode nor a substance but a kind of activity or function (kriya). The Bauddha and the Mimamsa systems agree in describing knowledge as an activity, a transitive process.2 The Nyaya, 2 1 Nyaya-Bhasya Nyaya-varttika-tatparya-tika Nyayasutra-vrtti and Nyayamanjari on Nyaya-sutra, I.I.15. See also Nyaya-sutra, 3.2,1, ff. Jnanakriya hi sakarmika, Sastradipika, p. 56. Cf. also Nyayabindutika. Ch. I.

however, emphatically repudiates the conception of knowledge as an activity. Jayanta in his Nyayamanjari (p. 20) traces the act theory of knowledge to a grammatical prejudice, a confusion between knowledge as manifestation and the verb, ' to know' as denoting an action. When we hear the expressions I know,' 'I cognise,' etc., we are apt to be misled into the belief that knowledge or cognition is an activity or process. But this only shows how in philosophy we may be deceived by the vague expressions of ordinary language. Knowledge, although it is not an activity of any kind, is still a transient phenomenon as it appears from the three tenses of the verb 'to know'. It is a dated event which is to be regarded as a quality and so can be perceived like physical qualities. Just as physical qualities are perceived by their special sense organs, so knowledge is perceived by the internal sense called manas.' But knowledge cannot be the quality of any material substance, since, unlike that, it does not admit of external perception. Physical properties are perceived by the external senses, but knowledge is not so perceived. Being thus fundamentally different from all physical qualities, knowledge is to be regarded as the property of an iminaterial substance called soul. Still, knowledge is not an essential attribute of the soul. The soul has acquired this property in its bodily setting, i.e. in relation to a body. To the Advaita Vedanta, knowledge or consciousness is just the self, the very stuff of it. For the Nyaya, knowledge appears as the result of a relation between the soul and the body, which in themselves are not knowledge. But when it does appear, it has to exist as an attribute inhering in the soul substance. Knowledge, as an attribute of the self, is always directed to objects. It always refers beyond itself, i.c. to objects outside of and different from itself. Knowledge is never selfmanifested. The capacity of self-manifestation in knowledge is, according to the Nyaya, a mere hypothesis of the SankhyaNM., p. 496; Tarkabhasa, p. 18. * Vijnanamanatmasamvedanam, Nyaya-varttika-tatparya-tika, p. 4.

Vedanta and the Prabhakara Mimamsa. Cognition cannot cognise itself. It can grasp, not itself, but an 'other.' Knowledge is not indeed, like the will, a way of acting on other objects, only it refers or points to something else. We shall have to consider later the question as to how knowledge can be known. The direction towards an object is what has been called 'intentional inexistence' by Brentano and Meinong. They take it as a character common to ali psychical phenomena.' The Nyaya, however, limits it to cognition and denies to cognition the capacity of being directed to itself, i.e. being self-cognised. From what has been said it will appear that knowledge is conceived by the Nyaya in a very wide sense. In Western philosophy thought or consciousness, as a cognitive fact, has sometimes been regarded as an essential attribute of the mind and a pervasive character of all mental phenomena.2 The Nyaya, however, does not pass over the distinction between thought (jnana), on the one hand, and feeling, including pleasure and pain, desire and aversion, and will, on the other. Under knowledge it brings together all cognitive facts, like sensation, perception, inference, memory, doubt, dream, illusion and the like. In this sense the buddhi of the Nyaya corresponds to cognition which, placed by the side of feeling and will, gives us the tripartite division of mental phenomena in the traditional school of Western psychology. It stands, as Alexander also has said, "for all kinds of apprehension of objects, whether sensation, or thought, or memory, or imagination, or any other.' 3 So far the Nyaya view of knowledge seems to be just and comprehensive. But, then, a more fundamental problem is raised. It is the ontological problem of the status of knowledge as a fact of reality. Is knowledge a quality, or a relation, or an activity ? 1 Vide Russell, The Analysis of Mind, pp. 14 f. 2 Cf. Descartes's distinction of res extensa and res cogitans. ³ Cf. Space, Time and Deity, Vol. II, p. 82.

First, we have the act theory that knowledge is an activity. It is not difficult to see what induced some philosophers to accept this view of knowledge. There can be no knowledge unless the mind responds to the influences of the surrounding world. At any moment of inattention or absent-mindedness we do not perceive sounds or know things other than those in which we are engrossed, although the sounds or things may be acting on our senses. If there is to be knowledge, the mind must react to the actions of other things on it. Knowledge is not a reflection of objects on the mind which receives them passively like a mirror or reflector. It is a process in which the mind actively reaches out to objects and illuminates them. Hence knowledge must be a kind of activity, rather it is a mental activity. The act theory of knowledge has been accepted by various schools of philosophy. In Indian philosophy, the Bauddha and the Mimamsa systems uphold it. For the former, to exist is to act and so to change. Knowledge as an existent fact consists in the act of showing and leading to an object. According to the Mimasaka, the act of knowing (jnanakriya) refers to an object. For Kant also knowledge involves the synthetic activity of the understanding. Spencer' tells us that consciousness arises when the tendencies towards action counteract one another and are therefore thrown back on themselves so as to become conscious of their existence, and knowledge appears as an incident in the adaptation of the organism to the environment. For Bergson also consciousness is a ceaseless creative activity. The voluntarists identify knowing with willing when they hold that cognition is the will when it is thwarted by difficulties and so looks for (i.e. thinks) means to overcome them. With the pragmatists knowledge is a belief determined by the will. For neo-idealists like Croce and Gentile knowing is the form of theoretical activity and in 1 Principles of Psychology, Vol. 1, Pt. IV. 2 Cf. C. E. M. Joad, Introduction to Modern Philosophy, Ch. 3.

thinking we create the thought we think about. Alexander,' who is a realist, seems to treat knowledge as a mental act when he says that every experience may be analysed into two distinct elements and their relation to one another, namely, the act of mind or awareness and the object of which it is aware, and that the one is an -ing and the other an -ed'. The Bchaviourists go to the other extreme and identify knowing with the activity of the body. They hold that consciousness is implicit behaviour, thinking is sub-vocal speaking, and knowledge is a particular kind of behaviour in animals, or such response to the stimulus as has the characteristics of appropriateness and accuracy. We may dismiss the behaviouristic contention that knowledge is a particular kind of bodily behaviour. That there is any behaviour, explict or implict, can be known only if there is a knowing subject. Behaviour cannot explain knowledge, but presupposes knowledge in order to be understood. Further, from all we know about the conduct of living beings it appears that behaviour arises out of knowledge and is not identical with it. Behaviour may be the objective side of knowledge. It has also a subjective side which is reflected in behaviour or overt action. This is recognised by Russell in his Outline of Philosophy, in which he supplements the objective view of knowledge as a way of reacting to the environment, by the subjective view of it as an awareness. The Naiyayika rejects altogether the act theory of knowledge as a grammatical prejudice, and excludes knowledge from the category of karma or action. Even if we suppose that knowledge is an activity, the question will arise: What is the nature of this activity? It cannot be any kind of physical activity, force or motion. Nor can it be a psychical activity. The existence of any activity in the mind or consciousness is a highly questionable fact. According to James, the will is a relation between the mind and its ideas, 3/ p. 86. 1 Space, Time and Deity, Vol. I, pp. 11-12; Vol. II, 2 Cf. Watson, Behaviorism, Lect. X.; Russell, Analysis of Mind, pp. 255 ff. ³ The Principles of Psychology, Vol. II. Ch. XXVI.

and in willing there is no innervation or putting forth of energy by the mind into the body. Titchener' and some modern psychologists also endorse this view and exclude the will from among the elementary mental processes. The Bhagavadgita anticipates these modern psychologists when it says that 'all actions take place in the material world and it is only egoism that deludes the self into the belief that he is an agent.' In so far as this is true, we cannot speak of knowledge as an activity except by way of metaphor. In knowledge itself as an awareness we find an object that is cognised and a subject or self that cognises it, but not any activation or energisation. An act is as much an object of knowledge as any physical thing, quality, or action. It is manifested by knowledge, and is not identical with it. On the other hand, knowledge appears as a standing and an accomplished fact which manifests everything that comes before it. It is more like a static illumination than a sweeping flow of conscious stuff. Hence knowledge is different from action. Among modern writers Moore and Broad refute the act theory of knowledge so strongly advocated by Dawes Hicks. 3 The second theory with regard to the nature of knowledge is that it is a relation between certain entities. According to Meinong, the Austrian realist, and the Critical realists, knowledge is a relation between three terms, viz. a mind, an object, and a content. When I know the table, by mind comes into relation with a physical object through the content of tableness. In The Problems of Philosophy Russell seems to accept the view that knowledge is a three-term relation. Some other realists hold that knowledge is a relation between two terms, namely, a mind and any object. Moore reduces cognition to the holding of a relation between a sense datum and a character. Broad also agrees with Moore in this respect and denies the existence of any mental act. Russell in his work Our Knowledge of the External World... A Text-Book of Psychology, Sec. 10. 2 Ad., III, sl. 27. 3 Cf. L. A. Reid, Knowledge and Truth, pp. 186 f. 1 Cf. L. A. Reid, op. cit.

reduces the knowledge-relation to a two-term process, i.e. a relation between the mind and the external world. The Neo-Realists go further and reduce knowledge to a relation between one kind of terms. According to them, "knowledge is not a relation between a knowing subject and an object known. It is merely a special sort of relation between objects. In the words of the new realists, Things when consciousness is had of them become themselves contents of consciousness; and the same things thus figure both in the so-called external world and in the manifold which intro- « spection reveals."2 Russell advocates this theory in The Analysis of Mind. James in his Essays in Radical Empiricism reduces knowledge directly to a relation between one type of entities. According to him, knowing can be easily explained as a particular sort of relation into which portions of ' pure experience' may enter. The relation itself is a part of ' 'pure experience,' one of its terms becomes the subject or bearer of the knowledge, the knower, and the other becomes the object known. The relation theory of knowledge does not stand the test of sound criticism. Although the relation between the subject and the object takes the form of knowledge, knowledge itself is not a relation. All that we seem to be justified in saying is that knowledge appears when the subject becomes related to the object, but it is a new phenomenon other than the subjectobject relation. According to the Naiyayikas, knowledge may be said to arise ultimately out of the relation between the soul and the body. Still, it is not merely a relation between the two, but a new property accruing to the soul therefrom. Whether knowledge can be treated as a quality or not, we shall consider next. The point we are to stress here is that a relation as such is not a cognition but a cognitum, i.e. an object of cognition. Of course, when a thing is known, it enters into 3-(O.P. 103) 1 1 Essays in Critical Realism, p. 89. 2 The New Realism, p. 35.

what we call the knowledge-relation. But this assumes the subject's awareness of the thing as the basis of the relation. So the relation cannot constitute knowledge. As Reid has said, 'knowledge is not itself a relation but the apprehension of relations." Supposing that knowledge is a relation, we ask: How do we know it? It must be through some other knowledge which, therefore, transcends the relation and is not identical with it. In fact, the subject-object relation does not produce knowledge but only serves to manifest it, just as the contact between the eye and a physical thing serves to manifest its colour but does not produce it. The third view with regard to knowledge is that it is a quality. According to Descartes and his followers, thought or cognition is the essential attribute of the mind or the soul substance, just as extension is the essential attribute of matter. The Sankhya and the Yoga system look upon knowledge or cognition as a modification of buddhi or the intellect which is its substratum. The Ramanuja school of the Vedanta takes knowledge as an essential quality of the self. The self is not, as the Advaitins say, itself knowledge but is qualified by knowledge. Knowledge is not the essence of the self, but an attribute owned by the self. The Naiyayikas and the Vaisesikas also advocate the quality theory of knowledge. For them, knowledge is an attribute which inheres in the soul substance which, however, is separable from it. But the quality theory of knowledge also involves certain difficulties. It cannot account for the reference to objects that is inherent in knowledge. A quality is an intransitive property of a thing. It hangs on the thing and does not point to anything beyond. It is in activity that we find a transition from one to an 'other.' For one thing, to act means aggressively to reach another. But at the same time we must not overlook the distinction between the ideal reference' to object that we find in knowledge and any form of physical process or transeunt causality. Knowledge refers to its object and is in this sense 1 L. A. Reid, op. cit., p. 189.

a cognition of the object. It does not however move towards it. In it there is no transition from point to point in space. In so far as this is the case, the Nyaya is right in opposing the attempt to identify knowledge with activity. But the view of knowledge as a quality misses the other fact of objective reference that we find in knowledge. Knowledge seems to be what Reid calls a self-transitive process.' Its self-transcension is, as Hoernle points out, directly experienced by us.' So it seems to occupy a position intermediate between quality and activity. To describe its self-transcension or objective reference and, at the same time, demarcate it from physical activity, we may say that knowledge is an ideal or theoretical activity.' But after all the characterisation of knowledge as an activity, be it physical or ideal or theoretical, is only a symbolic description. While physical activity is real and intelligible, an 'ideal or theoretical activity' can hardly be made intelligible to us. Knowledge is, therefore, neither a quality, nor an activity, nor a relation. Knowledge is the most fundamental fact of reality. It is the intrinsic character of all reality. Without pausing here to discuss the ontological problem as to the nature and constitution of reality, we may say that reality is a living intelligent system. The ultimate constituents of things are not material but living particles which not only exist and interact with one another, but somehow experience their existence and activity. These many living particles are the differentiations of one universal spiritual life. A pluralistic constitution of things is not inconsistent with the unity of their ultimate ground which is the Absolute Reality. The real is, therefore, an objective system, of which existence and knowledge are two inseparable aspects. It is true that what we know as the consciousness or knowledge of human beings is a specific phenomenon determined by certain conditions as the subject-object relation or the activity of the nervous system and the brain. But while these conditions explain the specific empirical form and character of this or that knowledge, 1 L. A. Reid, op. cit., p. 188.

they cannot account for the original sentience or experience which is embedded in reality and conditions those conditions themselves. Hence we conclude that knowledge is present in all reality and is manifested in a specific form in man by the subject-object relation. It does not require to be attached as a quality to any other reality, say, matter or mind or soul. It is just the self-expression of reality. In the words of Bosanquet' we may say: "Knowledge is an essential form of the self-revelation of the universe; experience as a whole is the essential form."