ContentsPaper-I- Philosophy-2000 (Mains)...............................................................................................................1

SECTION A................................................................................................................................................1

1. Discuss arid evaluate any three of the following in not more than 200 words each:..........................1

(a) Plato’s theory of ideas:.......................................................................................................................1

(b) Monadology of Leibnitz......................................................................................................................2

(c) “Esse est percipi”................................................................................................................................2

(d) Sartre’s pncnomeno1og ontology......................................................................................................2

2. State and examine Kant’s criticism of the proofs for the existence of God.........................................2

3. Give a critical account of Moore’s refutation of idealism....................................................................2

4. Explain the verification theory and show whether it leads to the elimination of metaphysics...........2

SECTION B................................................................................................................................................2

5. Write short notes (not more than 200 words each) on any three of the following:............................2

(a) Sankara’s view on the nature and reality of individual souls (Jivas)...................................................2

(b) Saptabhngi Naya................................................................................................................................2

(c) Kshanikavada......................................................................................................................................2

(d) Ethics of Carvaka school.....................................................................................................................2

6. Explain critically the objections raised by Ramanuja against Sankara’s concept of maya...................2

7. Give a comparative account of the concept of causation as found in the various schools of Indian thought....................................................................................................................................................2

8. State and examine the doctrine of Pancabheda in the Davaita system of Vedanta............................2

Paper-II- Philosophy-2000 (Mains)..............................................................................................................2

SECTION A................................................................................................................................................3

1. Write critical notes on any three of the following in not more than 200 words each.........................3

(a) J. S. Mill on Liberty..............................................................................................................................3

(b) Retributive Theory of Punishment.....................................................................................................3

(c) Concept of Sustainable Development................................................................................................3

(d) Secularism in Indian Context..............................................................................................................3

2. ‘The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it.” Comment............3

3. Are the claims of the State and the Individual really mutually conflicting? Discuss............................3

4. Point out thee doctrinal differences between Socialism and Marxism................................................3

SECTION B................................................................................................................................................3

5. Write critical notes on any three of the following in not more than 200 words each:........................3

(a) Impersonality Concept of God............................................................................................................3

(b) Immortality of Soul.............................................................................................................................3

(c) Religion and Morality.........................................................................................................................3

(d) Reason and Revelation.......................................................................................................................3

6. Discuss traditional proofs for the existence of God and give your own criticism on each...................3

7. State and explain the chief doctrines of Mysticism.............................................................................3

8. Elaborate the nature of Liberation according to Advaita Vedanta......................................................3

Paper-I- Philosophy-2000 (Mains)

SECTION A1. Discuss arid evaluate any three of the following in not more than 200 words each:(a) Plato’s theory of ideas:

The Theory of Forms (also known as the Theory of Ideas) was the centrepiece of Plato’s philosophy. It is essentially the belief that everything on Earth is an inferior copy of an original, supreme and heavenly master-copy. In effect, it amounts to a philosophical counterpart of the popular religious concept of the fallen paradise.

It is important to recall that Plato sees a form as the ideal essence of something, a transcendent entity that is perfect, immutable, indivisible. The things of our everyday world are imperfect copies of the forms; they are multiple, but the forms themselves are one. For example, there are many different kinds of cats: some have black fur, some grey, others orange. There is, however, something that all cats have, namely, cat-ness. According to Plato, the many cats are merely a facsimile of the form Cat.

Socrates expounds the theory of ideas [forms]; he is sure that there are ideas of likeness, justice, beauty, and goodness; he is not sure that there is an idea of man; and he rejects with indignation the suggestion that there could be ideas of such things as hair and mud and dirt -- though, he adds, there are times when he thinks that there is nothing without an idea.

(b) Monadology of Leibnitz All the plenum of the universe is entirely filled with tiny Monads, which cannot fail, have no

constituent parts and have no windows through which anything could come in or go out. Every Monad is different and is continuously changing. All simple substances or Monads might be called Entelechies, for they have in them a certain perfection and a certain self-sufficiency. As they have some perception and desire, they may be called souls, but animal Souls are accompnied by memory. In dreamless sleep our soul is like a Monad. The knowledge of necessary and eternal truths distinguishes us from the animals and gives us Reason. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible: truths of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible. When a truth is necessary, its reason can be found by analysis, resolving it into more simple ideas and truths. The final reason of things must be in a necessary substance, which we call God. God holds an infinity of ideas, and chooses the most perfect ones. Each simple substance has relations which express all the others, and, consequently, that it is a perpetual living mirror of the universe; though it represents more distinctly the body of which it is the entelechy. Each portion of matter is like a pond full of fishes, where each drop of its liquid parts is also another pond. Thus there is nothing fallow, nothing sterile, nothing dead in the universe. All the parts of every living body are full of other living beings, each with its dominant entelechy or soul. Thus there never is absolute birth nor complete death. Minds are images of the Deity, capable of knowing the system of the universe, each being like a small divinity in its own sphere. Whence the totality of all spirits must compose the City of God, where no good action would be unrewarded and no bad one unpunished. If we could understand the order of the universe, we should find that it exceeds the desires of the wisest men.

(c) “Esse est percipi” Esse est percipi: “To be is to be perceived”: According to this argument, all of the qualities

attributed to objects are sense qualities. Thus, hardness is the sensing of a resistance to a striking action, and heaviness is a sensation of muscular effort when holding the object in one’s hand, just as blueness is a quality of visual experience. But these qualities exist only while they are being perceived by some subject or spirit equipped with sense organs. The 18th-century Anglo-Irish empiricist George Berkeley rejected the idea that sense perceptions are caused by material substance, the existence of which he denied. Intuitively he grasped the truth that “to be is to be perceived.” The argument is a simple one, but it provoked an extensive and complicated literature, and modern idealists considered it irrefutable.

The reciprocity argument: Closely related to the esse est percipi argument is the contention that subject and object are reciprocally dependent upon each other. It is impossible to conceive of a subject without an object, since the essential meaning of being a subject is being aware of an object and that of being an object is being an object to a subject, this relation being absolutely and universally reciprocal. Consequently, every complete reality is always a unity of subject and object—i.e., an immaterial ideality, a concrete universal

(d) Sartre’s pncnomeno1og ontology Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (French: L'Être et le néant :

Essai d'ontologie phénoménologique), sometimes subtitled A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, is a 1943 book by philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.[1] Sartre's main purpose is to assert the individual's existence as prior to the individual's essence. His overriding concern in writing the book was to demonstrate that free will exists.[2]

While a prisoner of war in 1940 and 1941, Sartre read Martin Heidegger's Being and Time, an ontological investigation through the lens and method of Husserlian phenomenology (Edmund Husserl was Heidegger's teacher). Reading Being and Time initiated Sartre's own enquiry leading to the publication in 1943 of Being and Nothingness whose subtitle is "A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology". Sartre's essay is clearly influenced by Heidegger though Sartre was profoundly skeptical of any measure by which humanity could achieve a kind of personal state of fulfillment comparable to the hypothetical Heideggerian re-encounter with Being.

In Sartre's much gloomier account in Being and Nothingness, man is a creature haunted by a vision of "completion", what Sartre calls the ens causa sui, literally "a being that causes itself", which many religions and philosophers identify as God. Born into the material reality of one's body, in a material universe, one finds oneself inserted into being. Consciousness has the ability to conceptualize possibilities, and to make them appear, or to annihilate them.

2. State and examine Kant’s criticism of the proofs for the existence of God. Among the three early works noted above, Kant's most focused treatment of these arguments

for the existence of God can be found in The One Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God. He classifies arguments for God under just two headings, one that moves to the affirmation of God from a rational concept of the possible, the second that moves from experiential concepts of existent things. The ontological argument, as well as the argument Kant himself poses in this work as the only valid one, fall under the first heading. The cosmological and the physico-theological arguments fall under the second heading.

With respect to the positions about the validity and value of theoretical arguments for the existence of God that Kant later espouses and which are considered his definitive views, there are three features worth noting from this earlier work:

First, he has already formulated a central feature of the main objection that he will raise against the ontological argument in the Critique of Pure Reason, namely, that existence is not a predicate. Kant's objection is directed against rationalist accounts that took the judgment “Something exists” to predicate a property — i.e., “existence” — that is included in the concept of that thing. (An example of a property so predicated would be “extension” as a property of the concept “physical object.”) Fundamental to the ontological argument is the view that “existence” is necessarily a property of the concept of God. This then functions as the decisive consideration for the conclusion that God must exist. Against this, Kant argues that in no case — even that of God — can we predicate “existence” to be a property that is included in the concept of any object. He illustrates this by pointing out that the difference between the one-hundred dollars in my pocket and the one hundred dollars I imagine to be in my pocket is not a difference in the concept of “one hundred dollars.” To say that something “exists” — even in the case of God — is not to predicate a property that its concept lacks if the thing did not exist.

Second, at this earlier stage of his philosophical development he holds, in contrast to the position he takes in his critical philosophy, that there can be a theoretical argument that validly leads to the conclusion that God exists; of note about the argument he proposes, moreover, is that it falls under the same heading under which he has classified the ontological argument, namely an argument that starts from a concept of the possible.

Third, he groups the cosmological and physico-theological arguments under a single heading as “cosmological,” inasmuch as he sees each making an inference to God from our experience of things as they exist in the world, but he already differentiates them from one another in terms of their relative cogency and persuasive power. One line of argument — which he will designate in his later terminology as the “cosmological argument” — moves in terms of a concept of

causality to its conclusion that there must be a first necessary being. He does not consider this line of argument, which he sees as characteristic of metaphysics in the tradition of Wolff, to be valid. As in his later criticism of this argument in the first Critique, he sees it ultimately resting upon the same conceptual considerations that function within the ontological argument, most notably the claim that existence is a predicate. The other — which he will designate in his later terminology as the “physico-theological” argument — moves from observations of order and harmony in the world to its conclusion that there must be a wise creator of that order. This argument he also finds lacking in strict probative force; he nonetheless considers it an important marker of the dynamics of human reason to seek an explanatory totality, even though it does not thereby provide a sure demonstrative route to an affirmation of God.

3. Give a critical account of Moore’s refutation of idealism.Moore's most famous criticisms of idealism are contained in his paper ‘The Refutation of Idealism’ (1903). The basic theme of this paper is the extension to sense-experience of the strong distinction between the mind and its objects which we have encountered in connection with meaning. Moore concentrates here on the case of a ‘sensation of blue’ and maintains that this experience is a kind of ‘diaphanous’ consciousness or awareness of blue, which is not a ‘content’ of experience at all, but something real whose existence is not dependent on experience. His argument here is in part phenomenological: ‘when we try to introspect the sensation of blue, all we can see is the blue’ (41); but he also argues that to suppose otherwise, that the ‘blue’ is merely a content of the experience is to suppose that it is a quality of the experience, so that the experience is blue in much the way in which a blue bead is blue, which he takes to be absurd. Not surprisingly Moore's critics were not happy with this comparison, but it was not until the formulation of the ‘adverbial’ theory of experience by Ducasse in the 1940's, according to which someone who has a sensation of blue is someone who ‘senses bluely’, that there was a reasonably robust response to Moore's criticism. What is, nonetheless, odd about Moore's paper is that he makes no attempt to address the famous ‘argument from illusion’. Moore concludes that ‘“blue” is as much an object, and as little a mere content, of my experience, when I experience it, as the most exalted and independent real thing of which I am ever aware’ (42). As he was soon to realise, more needs to be said to handle cases in which something which is not in fact blue looks blue.The final aspect of Moore's critical response to idealism concerns his rejection of the monism which was characteristic of British idealism. This is the holistic thesis that ordinary things are essentially inter-related in such an intimate way that they constitute together an ‘organic unity’ which is, in a sense, the only thing that ‘really’ exists, since it is the only thing whose existence is not dependent on the existence of anything else. This thesis is especially characteristic of Bradley's idealism, according to which the Absolute is the one real thing. In his early writings and in Principia Ethica Moore engages in a good deal of polemical criticism of this thesis, but it is hard to find any arguments against it, as opposed to a robust affirmation of a realist pluralism. Rather later, however, in his paper ‘External and Internal Relations’ (written in 1919) Moore focused on the idealist conception of internal relations which lies at the heart of the monist thesis. Moore's argument against the thesis that all relations are internal starts from the claim that the burden of proof lies on its supporters since it conflicts with our common sense conviction that things are not essentially inter-related in such a way that a change to one thing in one respect necessitates changes to everything else. Moore then argues that the best reason one could have for the thesis involves a logical fallacy; he shows how the thesis that all relations are internal might be plausibly, but fallaciously, inferred from Leibniz’ Law, the uncontentious principle that things which differ in their relations must differ in their identity. Simplifying a bit, and using Moore's concept of entailment (see below), his argument runs as follows:

Leibniz’ Law states that

xRy entails (z = x → zRy),

where ‘→’ is the truth-functional conditional Since entailment is a necessary connection, one might infer

xRy → Necessarily (z = x → zRy)

From (2) one can immediately infer

xRy → Necessarily (x = x → xRy)

Since x = x is itself a necessary truth, one can now infer

xRy → Necessarily (xRy)

which expresses the thesis that all relations are internal.

So, on the face of it, this thesis has here been inferred from Leibniz’ Law. Moore observes, however, that the step from (1) to (2) is invalid; it confuses the necessity of a connection with the necessity of the consequent. In ordinary language this distinction is not clearly marked, although it is easy to draw it with a suitable formal language.

Moore's argument here is a sophisticated piece of informal modal logic; but whether it really gets to the heart of the motivation for Bradley's Absolute idealism can be doubted. My own view is that Bradley's dialectic rests on a different thesis about the inadequacy of thought as a representation of reality, and thus that one has to dig rather deeper into Bradley's idealist metaphysics both to extract the grounds for his monism and to exhibit what is wrong with it.

4. Explain the verification theory and show whether it leads to the elimination of metaphysics.

INTRODUCTION TO LOGICAL POSITIVISM

UNIT STRUCTURE

1. Learning Objectives2. Introduction3. Supporters of Logical Positivism4. Verification theory of meaning5. Elimination of Metaphysics6. Critical Appreciation7. Let Us Sum Up

8. Further Readings9. Answers to check your progress10. Possible Questions

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After going trough this unit you will be able toIdentify the principal aim of logical positivism;Explain logical positivism as a philosophical movement;Describe the verification theory of meaning; andWrite a critical appreciation.

INTRODUCTION

Logical Positivism is an early twentieth century philosophical movement. The movement started in Vienna in the year 1922 under the leadership of Moritz Schlick. Schlick was a philosopher with a scientific temperament. He also inherited the anti-metaphysical view- point of his predecessor Ernst Mach. A group of scientists and mathematicians joined in Vienna and the result was the birth of the famous “Vienna Circle”. Logical Positivism, or simply Positivism, is the philosophy propounded by this group of philosopher-scientists. Logical positivism may be said to be an outcome of the British Empiricist tradition. Locke’s thesis that knowledge is derived from experience alone was further developed by Berkeley into subjective idealism. Then in Hume’s hand it took the shape of scepticism according to which there was no sound footing for our knowledge. Hume maintained that our knowledge of the empirical world is dependent on the law of causation. But the law of causation itself is not beyond doubt. Empiricism, was thus, started with attractive premises but ended in unsatisfactory conclusions. Therefore, the philosophers of the Vienna Circle tried to overcome the difficulties of empiricism. Logical positivism was also influenced by the logical analysis of Moore, Russell, Wittgenstein, Whitehead, Frege and others.

SUPPORTERS OF LOGICAL POSITIVISM

The school of logical positivism was started under the leadership of Moritz Schlick. Other prominent members of the circle were Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, Hans Reichenbach, A.J. Ayer, E. Nagel and C.W.Morris. In the hands of these philosophers logical positivism was spread beyond Vienna to Prague, Warsaw, Berlin, Oxford and America. It became popular among the philosophers and came to be recognized as a twentieth century “revolution in philosophy”.

VERIFICATION THEORY OF MEANINGThe principal tool of the logical positivists in carrying out their philosophical activities was their theory of meaning. According to this theory, the meaning of a proposition is the method of its verification. A sentence is meaningful if, and only if it is either analytic or empirically verifiable. Sentences of mathematics and logic are called analytic. These sentences are divided into tautologies, that is, those which are true under all possible circumstances, and contradictions, that is, those which are false under all possible circumstances. So, an analytic sentence is either necessarily true or necessarily false. Apart from these, the other class of meaningful sentences according to the theory are empirically verifiable sentences. A sentence that depicts an empirical situation expresses a proposition. And a proposition is true if it corresponds to the fact, and false if it does not so correspond. It appears, therefore, that the criteria of meaning for the logical positivists lies in the capacity of the sentence to be either true or false. A sentence is meaningless if it is neither true nor false.Logical positivists have developed this verification theory of meaning in the light of the picture theory of meaning of early Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein in his Tractatus maintained that a sentence is meaningful in so far as it pictures a fact. Language for him is the symbolic representation of empirical facts. The world is composed of facts; a fact is an existing situation that makes a proposition true. The proposition “Ram is an intelligent student” is true if there is fact – a boy called Ram, who is a student and who is intelligent. The proposition will be false, though meaningful, if either there is no boy called Ram, or if Ram is not a student, or if Ram is a student but is not intelligent. But a sentence that does not depict any actual or possible state of affairs, cannot express any proposition. There is no means of ascertaining whether it is true or false. Therefore, such a sentence is meaningless according to this theory.However, this verifiability condition does not require that a sentence should be actually verified in order to be classed as meaningful. It only means the logical possibility of verification. Sentences about remote past or future state of affairs, for example, cannot be actually verified; but we can think of situations under which they can be verified. Again a statement like “there is no life in the planet Saturn” is also meaningful in this weak sense of verifiability, because we can theoretically think of visiting the planet Saturn and verify whether there is life there or not. There is a similar problem about general propositions such as “all men are mortal”. These propositions are not conclusively verifiable under any possible circumstances. Hence they are also meaningless from the point of view of verification. But since these general propositions are important, Schlick calls them an important type of nonsense.

But verifiability whether maintained in the strong sense or in the weak sense, gives rise to many problems. Because of these difficulties Karl Popper speaks of falsifiability as the criterion for distinguishing between scientific and non-scientific propositions. According to him, a proposition is scientific if and only if we can think out the logical possibility of falsifying it. This theory can successfully accommodate general propositions under the head of scientific propositions. Because, although no amount of positive instances can conclusively verify a general proposition, a single negative instance can falsify it.

SECTION B

5. Write short notes (not more than 200 words each) on any three of the following:(a) Sankara’s view on the nature and reality of individual souls (Jivas)To Sankara, the Jiva or the individual soul is only relatively real. Its individuality lasts only so long as it is subject to unreal Upadhis or limiting conditions due to Avidya (ignorance). The Jiva identifies itself with

the body, mind and the senses, when it is deluded by Avidya or ignorance. It thinks, it acts and enjoys, on account of Avidya. In reality, it is not different from Brahman or the Absolute. The Upanishads declare emphatically: "Tat Tvam Asi" (That Thou Art). Just as the bubble (foam) becomes one with the ocean when it bursts, just as the space within a pot becomes one with the universal space when the pot is broken, so also the Jiva or the empirical self becomes one with Brahman when it gets knowledge of Brahman. When knowledge dawns in it through annihilation of Avidya, it is freed from its individuality and finitude and realises its essential Satchidananda (Existence, Consciousness, Bliss) nature. It merges itself in the ocean of bliss. The river of life joins the ocean of existence. This is the Truth.

The release from samsara means, according to Sankara, the absolute merging of the individual soul in Brahman due to dismissal of the erroneous notion that the soul is distinct from Brahman. According to Sankara, Karma and Bhakti (devotion) are means to Jnana (knowledge) which is Moksha (liberation).

(b) Saptabhngi NayaSyâdvâda is the theory of relativity of knowledge. It is also called saptabhangi naya or the seven fold judgment. The word ‘syât’ literally means ‘may be’, ‘probable’, ‘perhaps’. Therefore, it is also known as the probability theory of knowledge. Jainism through the theory of ‘syâdvâda’ holds that reality has infinite number of characteristics. People cannot know all the characteristics of a thing. Therefore, human knowledge regarding the absolute nature of a thing is probable. People can get partial knowledge of a thing. This indicates that Jainism advocates the probability theory of knowledge. But it does not mean that Jainism leads to skepticism or the impossibility of knowledge. Reality has infinite characteristics. It is not possible to bring out the complete nature of reality from one standpoint or angle. Therefore, all judgments are relative or conditional in relation to other judgments from different standpoints or perspectives.

We can take an example here to describe the nature of relativity or probability theory of knowledge. When we say “this mountain exists”, we do not mean that this mountain exists absolutely or unconditionally. Here, human knowledge of the mountain is necessarily relative, because we think that the mountain exists in a particular shape, length, breadth, height and also in a definite time and space. But the mountain does not exist in another form, matter and at other space and time. It is clear that we can make a judgment that the ‘mountain exists’ from one standpoint, and also make a judgment that ‘the mountain does not exist’ from another standpoint. Therefore, Jainas say that judgements are relative or conditional.

The theory of Syâdvâda holds that all judgments are conditional, relative and limited. No judgment can be absolutely wrong or true. This indicates that judgments are partially true or partially false. It means that all affirmative judgments presuppose negations as well as all negative judgments presuppose affirmation. Affirmation and negation are the two edges of a judgment.

In case of explaining the nature of Syâdvâda, Jainas put forward a story of the six blind men and an elephant. The blind men put their hands on the different parts of the elephants in order to describe the whole animal. The first blind man who touched the ear of the elephant opined that the elephant was like a- country made fan. The second blind man who caught the leg of the elephant viewed that the elephant was like pillar. The third blind man who touched the trunk of the elephant said that the elephant was like a python. The fourth blind man who caught the tail of the elephant viewed that the elephant was like a rope. The fifth one who touched the side said the elephant was like a wall. The last

one who touched forehead opined that the elephant was like the breast. From the story of the six blind men and an elephant it is derived that each blind man thought that his explanation regarding the elephant was correct. But he, who can see the animal, can view that each explanation regarding the elephant was partially correct. Therefore, the syâdvâda theory of the jainas shows that our judgments or standpoints bring out the different aspects of reality. Our judgments express only partial truth. No judgments are absolutely true. The word ‘syât’ should be incorporated to all judgments to point out the conditional character of judgments. There are seven different ways of expressing judgments by the word ‘syât’. These seven different ways are known as syâdvâda or sapta-bhangi-naya. These are as follows:

1. Syâdasti: Relatively, a thing is real. It can be symbolically expressed as ‘Perhaps S is’.2. Syânnâsti: Relatively, a thing is unreal. It can be symbolically expressed as ’Perhaps S is not’.3. Syâdasti nâsti: Relatively, a thing is both real and unreal. Symbolically expressed as, perhaps S is, is not.4. Syâdavaktavyam: Relatively, a thing is indescribable. Symbolically expressed as, perhaps, S is indescribable.5. Syâdasti cha avaktavyam: Relatively, a thing is real and is indescribable. Symbolically expressed as, perhaps S is and indescribable.6. Syâdnnâsti cha avaktavyam: Relatively, a thing is unreal and is indescribable. Symbolically expressed as, perhaps S is not and indescribable.7. Syâdasti cha nâsti cha avaktavyam: Relatively, a thing is real, unreal and indescribable. Symbolically expressed as, perhaps S is, is not, and indescribable.

Now, we can explain the seven fold judgments of syadvada.

1. Syâdasti (Perhaps S is): This is an affirmative judgment. From the point of its own substance, place, time, and nature, a thing exists. The pot exists as an earthen substance possessing red colour in summar at Guwahati.2. Syânnâsti (Perhaps Sis not): This is a negative judgment. From the point of view of substance, place, time, and nature, a thing does not exist as other things. The pot does not exist as watery substance possessing dark colour in spring at Nagaon.

3. Syâdasti nâsti (Perhaps S is, is not): The third is an affirmative and negative judgment in succession. The pot exists as its own substance in its own place at a particular time with its own nature. It does not exist as substance in another place at another time with another quality.

4. Syâdavaktavyam (perhaps, S is indescribable): This is simultaneously both affirmative judgment, and negative judgment. The presence nature of the pot as an earthen substance with its red colour and absence of its watery substance with dark colour inhere in a substance. But it cannot be expressed. But in another sense it cannot be absolutely indescribable. Like the concept of maya of Advaita Vedânta it includes both the thesis and the anti-thesis at the same time.

5. Syâdasti cha avaktavyam (perhaps, S is and indescribable): This is an affirmative judgment combined with simultaneous affirmative judgment and negative judgment. This indicates that when a predicate is affirmed of a thing with reference to its substance, place, time, and nature, and a predicate is affirmed of it as decribed above and denied of other things as different substances in other places and times and with different natures simultaneously. Hence, we get affirmation and indescribability.6. Syâdnnâsti cha avaktavyam (perhaps S is and indescribable): This is a negative judgment combined with simultaneous affirmative and negative judgment. It shows that when a predicate is denied of other

substances in different places at other times and with different natures and a predicate is simultaneously affirmed of the thing and denied of other things. Hence, we get negation and indescribability.

7. Syâdasti cha nâsti cha avaktavyam: (Perhaps S is, is not, and indescribable) This is successive affirmative judgment and negative judgment combined with simultaneous affirmative and negative judgment. It indicates that when a predicate is affirmed of a thing as its own substance in its own place at its own time and with own nature, and the same predicate is denied of other substances in other places at other times and with other natures. So, affirmation and denial are made simultaneously. Here, we get affirmation, negation, and indescribability.

From these seven fold judgments it is clear that an affirmative judgment holds that a thing exists in its own substance, its own place, its own time, and with its own nature. On the other hand, a negative judgment holds that a thing is non-existent in its other substances, other places, other times, and with other natures. The five other judgments are the combinations of affirmative and negative judgment. Affirmation implies negation and negation implies affirmation. It shows that a thing is existent with its own nature and non-existent with other natures. Therefore, it is clear that Jaina’s concept of Syâdvâda advocates relative pluralism or a many-sided of reality.

Although syâdvâda seems to be the correct view of syâdvâda, still it creates some confusing states in mind, some of which are really subject of discussion critically.

(c) Kshanikavada

(d) Ethics of Carvaka school Cārvāka does not believe in any spiritual values.Of the four purusārthas or humanvalues, Cārvāka rejects the two values of ‘Dharma’ and ‘Moksha’. Therefore, thehuman effort is onlyfor the attainment of sensual pleasure (kāma) andwealth (artha),which is themeans to get pleasure. Briefly said, it is crudeHedonism. Cārvāka isaware that pleasure is often accompanied by pain. They say that no one throws thegrain because it has the husk.Does one stop plucking a lotus because there is thorn;does one stop eating fish because there is bone and scales? Awife or child whocreates heaven on earth,when they depart there is bound to be pain. But the life ofonewith no love in his heart is alsomiserable and barren.Cārvāka admits that there issorroweverywhere –in king’s palaces and beggar’s huts. Still thisworld of ours is notfull ofmisery.The amount of pleasure is greater than pain. If itwere not so,whywouldpeople desire to live and get frightened to die? It is important to enjoy the pleasureand to avoidpain,which is invariablyassociatedwith it.We shouldnot forego pleasurefor the fear of pain.AccordingtoCārvāka, one’s aimin life should be to getmaximumamount of pleasure. The advice is tomake the best of a bad bargain, and to enjoy.Sometimewewonder if reallythere could have been anysystem,which askedman tobe just selfishwithout even being useful to the society inwhich he lives. It is easy tothink of a systemwithout the ideal of ‘Moksha’ but to think of any systemwithout

‘Dharma’ is reallydifficult. 6. Explain critically the objections raised by Ramanuja against Sankara’s concept of maya. First, the fact that there are differences of views and various states of consciousness serves as rebutting defeaters for Sankara’s monism. Sankara affirms that there can be no differentiation at all in reality. But if there are real differences in consciousness and in ideological views then this negates Sankara’s position. Ramanuja’s argument runs as follows:1. If different beliefs exit, then reality includes extant differences. (“We observe that there takes place a discussion of different views”).2. Sankara argues his theory by means of contrasting his views with the different views of others. (“. . . and you yourself attempt to prove your theory by means of the differences between those views and your own”).3. Therefore reality includes differences. (“It therefore must be admitted that reality is affected with differences.”)[8]Thus, this argument implies the existence of two things. It implies the existence of individual consciousness since one person’s conscious view can be argued over against another person’s conscious view. It also implies the existence of a separation (or differentiation) of real entities reflected in genuinely different ideas held by separate persons. Thus, if both the ideas and conscious persons who hold them can be differentiated then Sankara’s view of unqualified monism must not attain.If this argument posed by Ramanuja is unsound it is difficult to see where it fails. One might (as Sankara amounts to doing) simply assert that logic itself is part of the cosmic illusion and that argumentation cannot be trusted. But if logic cannot be trusted then this, itself, serves as an undercutting defeater for Sankara’s own view. If logic is an illusion, then we have no warrant to follow Sankara’s own arguments. But, given his own method of reasoning and persuasion, it seems that Sankara trusts his own line of arguments. But this seems to serve as a de re admission on Sankara’s part that logic might have the ability to be trusted after all. But if this implied admission be true, then Ramanuja’s argument seems to attain and, thus, enjoys a strong amount of plausibility and warrant. If so, Sankara’s view seems self-contradictory and cannot, as such, be true.

The second argument Ramanuja uses against Sankara’s unqualified monism is that of the existence of distinct sounds and words. The argument runs something like this:

1. If sounds and words “possess the power of denoting only such things as are affected with difference,”[9] then such differences must exist in reality.

2. Sounds and words do possess the power of denoting only such things as are affected with difference.

3. Therefore differences must exist in reality. (“The conclusion is that sound cannot be a means of knowledge for a thing devoid of all difference.”)[10]

According to Ramanuja, “the plurality of words is based upon plurality of meanings.”[11] If the word “cow” correlates to an animal that can be milked and the word “cat” correlates to an animal that cannot be milked, then, even if there were no other differences, there is at least this difference of meaning that these two words carry. But any difference in meaning at all serves as a rebutting defeater for Sankara’s unqualified monism. And since Sankara himself uses different words to communicate his ideas, the words themselves must imply differences in meaning. Thus, according to Ramanuja, Sankara’s view is

again found to be self-defeating. If there are different meanings within words, then there are non-illusionary realities that these meanings must correlate to.

Ramanuja’s third argument we will mention has to do with the cognitive function of intentionality. According to Ramanuja, “Determinate perception clearly has for its object things affected with difference, for it relates to that which is distinguished by generic difference and so on.”[12] That is to say, if I have a thought about an apple then the thought itself suggests there is, in fact, some object of which the thought is about. This “aboutness” suggests differences in objects as well as our thoughts about them. We perceive the object and are immediately aware of it. If we think about an apple in front of us and then go on to think about an orange next to it, we are making distinctions about two separate things. Of course, if Sankara’s view is right then this would be impossible unless we assume a kind of Cartesian demon making us think the external world exists when it really does not. But Sankara’s view cannot even allow for Descartes’s demon, for even this would imply a kind of dualism that is not allowed in his Advaita Vedanta. Descartes could not deny that he existed as a thinking individual. But Ramanuja goes further to suggest that neither are we warranted in denying the reality of the external objects that we are thinking about. Human intentionality is supported by common sense. We may intuitively gravitate to Ramanuja’s suggestion concerning intentionality because we cannot help but experience the world in this way.

Consequently, Ramanuja’s realism is akin to the common sense approach taken by Thomas Reid and Alvin Plantinga. In the end, we cannot help but find Ramanuja’s view carrying a greater weight of both rational plausibility and explanatory power compared to Sankara’s unqualified monism.

A fourth argument Ramanuja presents against Sankara is the argument from the difference between a persistent self across time verses fleeting states of consciousness that are themselves experienced non-persistently. Concerning the conscious self, Ramanuja states that,

We clearly see that this agent (the subject of consciousness) is permanent (constant), while its attribute, i.e., consciousness, not differing herein from joy, grief, and the like, rise persists for some time, and then comes to an end. The permanency of the conscious subject is proved by the fact of recognition, ‘This very same thing was formerly apprehended by me.’ The non-permanency of consciousness, on the other hand, is proved by thought expressing itself in the following forms, ‘I know at present,’ ‘I knew at a time,’ ‘I, the knowing subject, no longer have knowledge of this thing,’ How, then, should consciousness and the conscious subject be one? . . . .[13] According to Ramanuja, Sankara’s view implies that there should not be any distinction between our persistent self and the non-persistent experiences that we have as selves. Why, if we are only bundles of illusionary sensations, should there be any agent that is persistently aware of these sensations across time? Even if we were to grant that the sensations themselves, we would still be left wondering what (or who) is this bearer of these illusive sensations. And why are there temporal and diverse experiences at all if there exists only a single continuous Self-agent called Brahman as Sankara affirmed? For example, the fact that “I” remember waking up this morning implies two distinct things. 1) That there is some kind of “I” that experienced it and that, 2) there was such an event in the past of “waking up this morning” that “I” should have experienced in the first place. The fact that I am still the same self-conscious being (i.e., qualia) that I seem to have been throughout my life seems to suggests that I am more than a bundle of sensations (as Hume may have suggested). It seems then that, whatever else might be true of the “self,” there is a subject of some kind that is being aware of the sensations that are being experienced in temporal secession. Yet, if this is true, then this seems to imply a dualism of some kind which Sankara could not accept. For if there can be a distinction

between my persistent self across time and the non-persistent experiences which I have (even if illusionary) then there seems to be at least some differences found in reality.To deny this would, again, involve oneself in a self-defeating proposition. Either there is no persistent self, or there are no non-persistent experiences that the self has. But if we deny that the self exists then we deny the very foundation of memory and rationality. But if memory and rationality does not exists, then the very basis on which Sankara’s arguments fall apart as before. If we deny that there are any non-persistent experiences then we deny any momentary thoughts or events that fill our lives. But if we deny the existence of these non-persistent experiences then any sense of a persistent individual self becomes meaningless (which is what Sankara affirms). But to affirm this means that Sankara’s entire view of reality is a logical non-starter. This is so because any proposition that he makes would imply some non-persistent thought or statement. But if there are no such thoughts or experiences then Sankara’s own thoughts and propositions seem to have never existed in the first place for us to be talking about them.Thus, given the above arguments, something like Ramanuja’s qualified non-dualist account of reality seems to confer a greater degree of plausibility than Sankara’s. It seems that we are (without self-contradiction) virtually forced to think that there are numerically distinct entities in the world.

7. Give a comparative account of the concept of causation as found in the various schools of Indian thought.

8. State and examine the doctrine of Pancabheda in the Davaita system of Vedanta.

Paper-II- Philosophy-2000 (Mains)

SECTION A

1. Write critical notes on any three of the following in not more than 200 words each(a) J. S. Mill on Liberty(b) Retributive Theory of Punishment(c) Concept of Sustainable Development(d) Secularism in Indian Context

2. ‘The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it.” Comment.

3. Are the claims of the State and the Individual really mutually conflicting? Discuss.

4. Point out thee doctrinal differences between Socialism and Marxism.

SECTION B

5. Write critical notes on any three of the following in not more than 200 words each:(a) Impersonality Concept of God(b) Immortality of Soul(c) Religion and Morality(d) Reason and Revelation

6. Discuss traditional proofs for the existence of God and give your own criticism on each.

7. State and explain the chief doctrines of Mysticism.

8. Elaborate the nature of Liberation according to Advaita Vedanta.