Pranam
THE SYLLOGISTIC INTERPRETATION OF INDIAN LOGIC
NYAYA SUTRA better than western logic
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1 Introduction: If by 1853, Max Muller went so far as to ask "the
Brahmans themselves [to] take up the gauntlet and defend their Logic
against the attacks of European critics" , it was a reflection as much of
the failure of the philosophically untrained Orientalist ###scholars{
imported western writrers of both sides} plausibly to interpret the 'Hindu
syllogism' as it was of the negative reaction of many British and German
logicians { for which they were invited} and historians of philosophy to
the idea of an origin of logical enquiry other than Greek. Indeed, most of
the objections leveled by these critics follow immediately from the hasty
reductive comparison of the Nyaya analysis of sound reasoning with syllogistic
schemata, a comparison implicit in the very phrase "Hindu syllogism" . Cole
brooke describes the Nyayasutra analysis of an argument schema as follows
:
A regular argument or syllogism (nyaya) consists of five members (avayava)
or component parts
1st, the proposition (pratijna);
2nd, the reason (hetu or apadeSa);
3rd, the instance (udaharalJa or nidarsana);
4th, the application (upanaya)
5th, the conclusion (nigamana). Examples.
1. This hill is fiery:
2. For it smokes.
3. What smokes is fiery: as a culinary hearth.
4. Accordingly, the hill is smoking:
5. Therefore it is fiery. {HILL}
NOTE: {### {Some confine the syllogism (nyaya) to three members; either
the three first, or the three last. In this latter form, it is quite
regular. The most influential of the 'European critics' to whom Muller
refers, was without doubt H. Ritter. His 1846 History of Philosophy
contained a chapter entitled "Oriental Philosophy, and its Influence on
the Grecian". Indian philosophy, according to Ritter, "has an irresistible
claim on our attention", which it attracts to a lesser extent than Greek
philosophy "only because its ideas have not entered in such extensive and
therefore influential combinations into the present development of science
(p. 332)". } (conbtd)
(1) What is your thesis? That the hill has fire on it.
(2) Why? Because there is smoke there.
(3) So what? Where there is smoke, there is fire: e.g. the kitchen.
(4) And? The hill is such a smokey place.
(5) So? Therefore, it has fire.
For Milller, the function of the example was to indicate what he called
the 'modality' of the general rule. He noted that Indian logicians
distinguish between three kinds of such rule: those whose antecedent holds
over the whole domain ("Whatever is nameable is knowable"); those whose
antecedent holds over only part of the domain ("Whatever has smoke has
fire"); and those whose antecedent holds over none of the domain ("
Anything except earth which is different from the elements other than
earth has odour")4. According to Milller, the example indicates which kind
of rule is being employed in the third step. Relying on the distinction
between valid and sound inference, he argued that "the Nyaya wanted not
only to give rules for the correctness of the logical operation, but to
guard against false premises" (1850: xxiii). Citing an example could then
be seen as a gesture in the direction of an inductive confirmation of the
major premise, upon whose truth the soundness of the inference rests.
The real grounds for the inference, he claimed, were just the observed
instances on which our belief in the major premise rests, and therefore
inference is from particular to particular, in which, as he puts it, the
major premise is just a "memorandum" of previously observed instances.
Mill's doctrine seemed to the Western expositors of Nyaya to be very
similar to the Indian pattern of inference, with its emphasis on citing
examples, and they constantly, and perhaps aptly, referred to his theory in
their expositions. Mill himself, however, though he worked as a Indian
colonial administrator for most of his life, never once refers to the
Indian syllogism or to the Indian rationalist schools, though he was
certainly acquainted with the Orientalists, like Ballantyne, who promoted
them.
Remembering that Indian logicians insist on both positive and
negative examples of the concomitance relation, Randle records the Indian
syllogism as having a form such as the following :
1. That hill is on fire.
2. Because it is smoking.
3. As smoke and fire go together, on the hearth, while non-smoke and
non-fire go together, in the lake.
4. So here: [or, so not here:]
5. Therefore is that hill so, i.e. on fire.
The syllogistic interpretation now represents this inference pattern
as a combination of a syllogism in Barbara with a syllogism in Cesare:
All that is smoky is fiery
This hill is smoky
Therefore, it is fiery
and
Nothing that is not-fiery is smoky
This hill is smoky
Therefore it is not non-fiery, i.e. it is fiery.
As soon as this reductive interpretation is accepted, the three classical
objections can be given: (1) that one of these syllogisms is unnecessary,
(2) that the two examples are superfluous, and (3) that the first two
members are identical with the last two and serve no purpose. In
rehearsing the standard defences of the Indian 'syllogism' - that it
functions rhetorically as a device of demonstration, that the examples
inductively support the major premise in both its standard and contra
posed form - one implicitly commits oneself to accepting as correct the
syllogistic interpretation. Yet it is the very acceptance of that
interpretation which made it inevitable that Indian logic should seem
impoverished in comparison with its Greek counterpart. Randle himself,
however, is at pains to emphasise the distinctiveness of the early Indian
'syllogism' arising from its emphasis on cases or examples in the process
of reasoning. KR IRS 2822
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