Author Affiliations: Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, 208016, UP, India
關鍵詞
Tarka; Cognitive validator; Metatheory; Old Nyāya
摘要
The meaning of the term ‘tarka’ is not clear in the modern literature on Classical Indian Philosophy. This paper will review different modern readings of this term and try to show that what the Nyāyasūtra and its classical commentaries called a ‘tarka’ should be understood as the following: a tarka is a cognitive act that validates a content (of a doubt or a cognition or a speech-act) by demonstrating its logical fitness or invalidates a content by demonstrating its logical unfitness. A tarka can act as a metatheory too. Generating certainty is, according to the Classical Nyāya, a job assigned to an epistemic instrument (pramāṇa). It fails to do so when there arises a doubt regarding it. The moment a tarka dispels the doubt, the epistemic instrument generates certainty. Tarkas of different types will be exemplified by critically analyzing Gaṅgeśa’s applications of tarka in his magnum opus Tattvacintāmaṇi. These examples will clarify the definition of tarka formulated in this paper.
目次
Epistemic Mechanism in Nya¯ya: A Prerequisite for Understanding Tarka 49 Tarka and Validation 50 Strong and Weak Tarkas 51 Tarka as a Reasoning Based on a priori Principles 53 Avijn˜a¯tatattve ’rthe, Vibha¯ga and Ka¯ran: opapatti 54 Definition of Tarka 56 Ganges _ ´a’s Application of Tarka 57 Text: Tattvacinta¯man: i (Tarka: The Chapter on Tarka) 59 Text: Tattvacinta¯man: i (I¯s´varava¯da: The Chapter on God) 61 Text: Tattvacinta¯man: i (S´aktiva¯da: The chapter on semantic relation) 63 Concluding Remarks 64
