Nyaya
Nyāya (Sanskrit: न्यायः, IAST: nyāyaḥ), literally meaning "justice", "rules", "method" or "judgment",[1][2] is one of the six orthodox (Āstika) schools of Hindu philosophy.
[2] Nyāya's most significant contributions to Indian philosophy were systematic development of the theory of logic, methodology, and its treatises on epistemology.
This premise led Nyāya to concern itself with epistemology, that is the reliable means to gain correct knowledge and to remove wrong notions.
[9] Naiyyayika scholars approached philosophy as a form of direct realism, stating that anything that really exists is in principle humanly knowable.
[10] An influential collection of texts on logic and reason is the Nyāya Sūtras, attributed to Aksapada Gautama, variously estimated to have been composed between 6th-century BCE and 2nd-century CE.
[14][15] Nyaya (न्याय) is a Sanskrit word which means justice, equality for all being, specially a collection of general or universal rules.
In the theory of logic, and Indian texts discussing it, the term also refers to an argument consisting of an enthymeme or sometimes for any syllogism.
The historical development of Nyāya school is unclear, although Nasadiya hymns of Book 10 Chapter 129 of Rigveda recite its spiritual questions in logical propositions.
[17] The people of Mithila (modern Darbhanga in North Bihar) ascribe the foundation of Nyāya philosophy to Gautama, husband of Ahalya, and point out as the place of his birth a village named Gautamasthana where a fair is held every year on the 9th day of the lunar month of Chaitra (March–April).
[27] These sixteen categories are: According to Matthew Dasti and Stephen Phillips, it may be useful to interpret the word jnana as cognition rather than knowledge when studying the Nyāya system.
[35] In Nyaya philosophy, knowledge is a type of "awareness event that is in accordance with its object by virtue of having been produced by a well-functioning epistemic instrument.
These include saṁśaya (problems, inconsistencies, doubts) and viparyaya (contrariness, errors)[38] which can be corrected or resolved by a systematic process of tarka (reasoning, technique).
[41] Ordinary perception is defined by Akṣapāda Gautama in his Nyāya Sutra (I, i.4) as a 'non-erroneous cognition which is produced by the intercourse of sense-organs with the objects'.
[42] Ordinary perception to Nyāya scholars was based on direct experience of reality by eyes, ears, nose, touch and taste.
[47]: 19 Hetu further has five characteristics[48] The fallacies in Anumana (hetvābhasa) may occur due to the following[49] Upamāna (उपमान) means comparison and analogy.
[6][7] Upamāna, states Lochtefeld,[50] may be explained with the example of a traveller who has never visited lands or islands with endemic population of wildlife.
Such use of analogy and comparison is, state the Indian epistemologists, a valid means of conditional knowledge, as it helps the traveller identify the new animal later.
The 7th century text Bhaṭṭikāvya in verses 10.28 through 10.63 discusses many types of comparisons and analogies, identifying when this epistemic method is more useful and reliable, and when it is not.
[citation needed] Śabda (शब्द) means relying on word, testimony of past or present reliable experts.
[53] He must rely on others, his parent, family, friends, teachers, ancestors and kindred members of society to rapidly acquire and share knowledge and thereby enrich each other's lives.
[55][56][57] In Nyaya philosophy, direct realism asserts that our cognitions are informational states revealing external objects.
According to Nyaya, the world consists of stable, three-dimensional objects, and their system of categories accurately mirrors reality's structure.
A literal interpretation of the three verses suggests that Nyāya school rejected the need for a God for the efficacy of human activity.
Nyāya Sūtra verses IV.1.22 to IV.1.24, for example, examine the hypothesis that "random chance" explains the world, after these Indian scholars had rejected God as the efficient cause.
[21] In Nyayakusumanjali, Udayana gives the following nine arguments to prove the existence of creative God and also refutes the existing objections and questions by atheistic systems of Carvaka, Mimamsa, Buddhists, Jains and Samkhya:[24] Naiyyayikas characterize Ishvara as absent of adharma, false knowledge, and error; and possessing dharma, right knowledge, and equanimity.
[65] Jayanta, in his Nyayamanjari describes salvation as a passive stage of the self in its natural purity, unassociated with pleasure, pain, knowledge and willingness.
Udyotakara's Nyāya Vārttika (6th century CE) is written to defend Vātsāyana against the attacks made by Dignāga.
[68] The later works on Nyāya accepted the Vaiśeṣika categories and Varadarāja's Tārkikarakṣā (12th century CE) is a notable treatise of this syncretist school.
This distinction between form and matter is made whenever we distinguish between the logical soundness or validity of a piece of reasoning and the truth of the premises from which it proceeds and in this sense is familiar from everyday usage.
Thus Indian logic is not concerned merely with making arguments in formal mathematics rigorous and precise, but attends to the much larger issue of providing rigour to the arguments encountered in natural sciences (including mathematics, which in Indian tradition has the attributes of a natural science and not that of a collection of context free formal statements), and in philosophical discourse.
