## 1. Historical particulars



Gangesa lived in the first half of the fourteenth century,
in Mithila, in northeastern India, where he was a prominent
teacher, both of Nyaya, including logic and critical reasoning,
and of Mimamsa, the school known for Vedic
interpretation and ritual. Gangesa endorses Nyaya in
his *Jewel*, but he was also a great master of
Mimamsa. Mimamsa is a
long-running tradition which, like Nyaya, pronounces on almost
every topic imaginable, along with Vedic ritual, the school's
specialization, as Nyaya's is critical reasoning.
Gangesa knew well Mimamsaka positions in
both of its major branches, the Bhatta (after
Kumarila Bhatta of the seventh century), and the
Prabhakara (after Kumarila's renegade student,
Prabhakara). And Gangesa may be supposed to have
learned the standard curricula in the grammarian literature, the epic
poems, etc., some of which he cites, for example, Panini
(c. 500 BCE), and, in several places, the *Bhagavad
Gita*.



Bhattacharya cites data from literary and other sources, and in about
a dozen pages devoted to Gangesa (1958: 96-109)
provides *termini a quo et ad quem*--1300 and 1350 for his
period of flourishing--from evidence that has not been corrected
to date. Genealogical records kept in Mithila suggest that he had
a wife and three sons and a daughter. One child was the famous
Nyaya author, Vardhamana. Gangesa apparently
achieved quite some fame during his lifetime, referred to as
"*jagad-guru*," which would be the rough equivalent
of "Distinguished University Professor" for the
educational institutions of his time.



About the person little more is known. About
Gangesa's reputation, Bhattacharya says (1958: 109):
"The work of Gangesa became highly popular very soon
and was studied and commented upon in various centers of culture of
India. It not only cast the works of the old school of logic into
oblivion but the neo-logical works of his predecessors also faded into
insignificance and were gradually were forgotten due to its
overwhelming popularity and all-embracing character." Concerning
the part on inference, the learned sanskritist writes (1958: 107,
108): "The second part on Anumana (Inference) is by far the
most popular, though the most intricate of the whole book. ...
The latest phase of Navyanyaya studies in India for about two
centuries flowed through a large number of channels cut by single
sentences or phrases of this part of Gangesa's work
and by far the widest channel emerged from the general definition of
Fallacy. It has now assumed proportions through the efforts of all the
best Indian brains in Navyanyaya, which is a world's wonder
in the field of intellectual feats ... ."



The *Jewel* has four chapters, each devoted to a source of
knowledge: perception, inference, analogy, and testimony. Within a
chapter are clearly delineated sections on various subtopics including
long reflections, mainly in the first chapter, concerning knowledge in
general and how it is known. Gangesa is lucid and precise,
leading the reader into a preferred position by careful examination of
alternatives.


## 2. Categories of possible referent in causal relationship



Gangesa's central focus is epistemology, not ontology
or metaphysics, but his analyses rely on a centuries-old ontological
system. In all four chapters of the *Jewel*, he addresses
ontological issues, especially the topics of universals and of the
ontological relation of qualification that is reflected in knowledge
of something as qualified by a qualifier, "That's a
cow," for instance, which would be an instance of knowledge of
something qualified by the universal being-a-cow.



The system that Gangesa takes over is inherited in
particular from his "teacher" Udayana. In a dozen
treatises, Udayana merges the separate literature and worldview of
Vaisesika--its advocates sometimes called
"Atomists" --with Nyaya's. Udayana also
added the category of absence to the
*Vaisesika-sutra*'s six, so that there
are seven basic types of things possibly referred to in technical
works as in everyday life:


1. Substance: four atomic substances, earth, water, fire, and air
atoms and their combinations; a "material" substance that
is non-atomic, ether, the medium of sound; time; space; mind
(*manas*); self (*atman*)
2. Quality: properties that dwell in, qualifying substances such as
color, weight, shape, and so on along with relational properties such
as conjunction
3. Motion: movements such as going-up which, like qualities, dwell in
substances
4. Universals: recurrent properties, and meta-properties, that
qualify qualities, blueness, for example, and motions, going-up-hood
as a class characteristic, as well as substances, for example,
earthenness and mountainhood
5. Individualizers: properties inherent in individual atoms and
selves (individualizer is not a category discussed by
Gangesa)
6. Inherence: ontic glue binding qualities, motions, and universals
to the things they qualify
7. Absence: four general types admitting further subdivisions and
innumerable instances: prior absence (the pot the potter contemplates
before producing it in the clay, with the pot as the
"counterpositive," i.e., what is absent), destruction (for
example, of a pot), mutual absence (the distinction of one thing from
another: a pot is *not* a cloth), and locatable (called
"absolute," *atyantabhava*, as a
pot's not being on the floor, or as my glasses not being on my
desk, where the glasses are the "counterpositive" and the
desk the locus): '\(\neg Ha\)' means \(H\) is absent at
\(a\), where "\(H\)" is the counterpositive to the absence
(an absence of *all* pots on a floor would have pothood as the
counterpositive)



There are also properties and entities that do not fit very well into
the typology. Some philosophers after Gangesa rework the
system, but Gangesa himself is ontologically conservative,
presenting arguments for its expansion in various ways without
endorsement.



Gangesa also inherits a causal schema that is crucial to
his causal theory of knowledge. Perception and the other sources
*generate* knowledge instances, in the sense of being the
"chief instrumental cause." To understand this, we have to
know that there are most generally three varieties of cause-effect
relationship:


1. Inherent, as blue in a lotus, cowhood in cows
2. Co-inherent, "emergent," as the color of threads
determining the color of a cloth
3. Instrumental, including both agential causes, such as a potter for
a pot, and non-agential, such as the stick used to turn the wheel



Gangesa, like other Naiyayikas, also works with the
distinction between the necessary and the sufficient, sufficient
causality being a whole bundle of causal conditions, including general
ones such as time and space. A source of knowledge is a process of
knowledge generation, and each has a distinct "trigger." A
trigger is that instrumental cause which, when all the other causal
conditions necessary for an effect are in place, brings it about. The
trigger of perceptual knowledge is said to be connection of a sensory
organ with an object to be known. The trigger of knowledge by
inference is said to be reflection on a property of an object as
pervaded by--invariably associated with--another property,
the former called the prover--the pervaded--and the latter
the probandum--the pervader. The trigger of testimonial knowledge
is said to be the statement of a trustworthy expert as comprehended by
the hearer, a trustworthy expert being defined as someone who knows
the truth and wants to communicate it faithfully, without lying or
deceiving. Causal relations are especially important because knowledge
of the occurrence of an effect allows the knower to infer any one or
more of its necessary conditions, as perception of smoke rising from a
mountain allows one to infer fire. Furthermore, recognizing a
particular knowledge source by its trigger is one way to certify a
result, an instance of testimonial knowledge for instance.



Gangesa often utilizes a simpler ontological schema in his
analyses of the generation of knowledge: an instance of knowledge is
about, at a minimum, a *qualifier-qualificandum*, the hyphen
standing for the qualificative relation, also discussed, with
qualificanda as property-bearers, anything we can talk about,
including universals and supervenient properties such as similarity,
and qualifiers as qualities or universals or even mind-imposed
properties that, as suggested, do not seem to have a place in the
traditional layout. No matter, we can deal with these later, seems to
be Gangesa's attitude, as he proceeds to focus on
knowledge and its generators.



Gangesa's Nyaya embraces realism along several
dimensions, realism in the sense of commitment to entities that exist
independently of consciousness. There are, however, exceptions in the
properties of a self along with some others that do require
consciousness to occur. Knowledge itself and other mental phenomena
are counted as reals and knowable intersubjectively, for instance.
Realism leads Naiyayikas to embrace fallibilism from very early,
because the transcendence, so to say, of a physical object to the
instruments of knowledge is seen to mean that the possibility of error
cannot be ruled out--except in the case of apperception,
according to Gangesa (see below). The *Jewel* is
filled out with numerous definitional projects where the definienda
(instances of knowledge, for example, as well as physical objects),
are realities. And all individuals of whatever fundamental type
(substance, quality, motion, universal, inherence, individuator, and
absence) are viewed as reals, although the mind can create fictions.
Against Buddhist subjectivists, it is argued that the components of
false and fictional awarenesses themselves indicate reals. Gold and
mountains are real but maybe not a gold mountain. More about illusion
and other instances of non-knowledge in practically every subsection
below.


## 3. Knowledge and certification



The target of epistemological evaluations in classical India is not
belief but rather cognition, which, however, like belief in the West,
is viewed as propositional. Buddhists, Naiyayikas,
Mimamsakas, and others address the issue of how a
proposition-laden cognition is known to be true, or false, for that
matter. Against Mimamsakas in particular,
Gangesa advances an "extrinsicality" position.
Although presumptive presentations of "fresh news" through
any of the sources--perception and the others--are naturally
and automatically taken to be veridical, according to
Gangesa's Nyaya, it takes a separate cognitive
act to determine whether a cognition is knowledge or
"non-knowledge." An awareness, an "experience"
(*anubhava*, a term used technically in the system), defined as
what a person takes to be presentation of news--i.e., takes
automatically to be new information--is presumptively knowledge
but on occasion is either false or not produced by a genuine knowledge
source, perception, inference, or testimony (analogy is, for
Gangesa, restricted to learning the meaning of words).
According to Mimamsa, certification is intrinsic
to the apparent presentation. Gangesa's refutation
centers on an alleged phenomenology of doubt and knowing that one
knows. If the Mimamsaka position were correct, it
would not be possible to doubt the veridicality of, for example, a
perception that is indeed an instance of knowledge, both veridical and
produced in the right way. But it is possible, he says.



Certification happens through source identification, and the sources
are known mainly by inference from certain tell-tale signs called
"merits," *guna*, while falsification occurs
through recognizing tell-tale signs of pseudo-sources called
"flaws," *dosa*. Various fallacies, for
example, are flaws with respective to putative knowledge as determined
by way of inference. In certain cases, however, in contrast to the
norm, there is practically self-certification, as the
Mimamsakas claim. For example, perception is like that
with knowing that there is a small piece of *amalaka*
fruit in the palm of your hand. Much discussion throughout the
*Jewel* centers on certification conditions, some of which
figure in the definitions of the several sources. There is also much
concern with specification of the trigger, or triggers, of the
workings of the sources, which not only can serve to define them but
whose identification is one way certification proceeds.


### 3.1 Awareness as presumptively knowledge



The processes of perception, inference, analogy, and testimony
generate "awareness," *anubhava*, a technical term,
as mentioned, meaning "presentation of fresh news." No
non-veridical awarenesses are produced from the sources, but there are
of course occasions when we are fooled. There are pseudo-sources,
processes closely resembling the true ones, but flawed in some way and
generating wrong results. Consonantly, there are awarenesses that at
the time we take to be telling us something true in the usual
fashions--by perception and the rest--but are actually false
or not produced correctly. These are instances of
"non-knowledge," *aprama*, contrasting with
*prama*, "knowledge," entailing truth and
right production.



Pragmatic considerations reinforce our natural tendency to take the
deliverances of the sources to be veridical. We couldn't get
along in the world without knowledge, as Naiyayikas as early as
Vatsyayana stress (1996: 2). This is a recurrent theme.
Gangesa relies on "pragmatic contradiction" to
refute a skeptic about inference in the *Jewel*'s
"Hypothetical Reasoning" section (2020: 647-51):



> 
> 
> When there is doubt, there is no regular pattern of behavior. When
> there is a regular pattern, doubt does not occur. Thus it has been
> said (by Udayana): "That is doubted concerning which as doubted
> there occurs no contradiction with the doubter's
> action."
> 
> 
> 
> For it is not possible at once to resort regularly to fire and the
> like for smoke and the like and to doubt that fire causes it. This is
> how we should understand the saying.
> 
> 
> 
> Thus we may reject the argument that contradiction--understood as
> natural opposition (*virodha*), governing precisely which F
> cannot occur along with precisely which G--cannot block an
> infinite regress. It is the doubter's own behavior that proves
> the lie to the doubt, that blocks it (*pratibandhaka*).
> 
> 
> 



It may be true that repeated observation ("even hundreds of
times") is insufficient to guarantee knowledge of a pervasion
(pervasions underpin the natural entailments on which inference
depends). Not all things made out of earth are scratchable by iron;
diamonds, recently discovered, are a counterexample. Defending
pervasion-knowledge nevertheless, Gangesa cites this case
in admitting that the possibility of a counterexample cannot be
eliminated, at least generally speaking. But we do grasp pervasions,
and often meaningful doubt can be done away with. Absolute freedom
from doubt is not required to have knowledge. And knowledge guides
action. We may be wrong in any particular case, but we act on the
basis of the regularities in nature we take ourselves to be aware of,
automatically making inferences producing knowledge.



The same goes for perception, analogy, and testimony. With testimony,
for example, we may be aware of a defeater, a speaker's being a
liar, for instance, but in such a case we do not take ourselves to be
presented with news. Perceptual and other awarenesses do not occur
when blocked, when defeated in this way. A good example is the fallacy
called *badhita*, "defeated in advance." No
inference purporting to show that fire is cold can be successful
because we already know it's hot. But of course some defeaters
occur to us only later, and for a time we are fooled. In the market,
we learn that the piece of shell we thought was silver is really only
mother-of-pearl. Awarenesses are presumptively knowledge, but are also
defeasible. The exception concerns certain matters known by
apperception (see below), which, Gangesa argues, are known
without the possibility of being wrong.



In sum, the defeasibility character of Gangesa's
theory of knowledge centers on the fact that apparently trustworthy
sources of information at times mislead. But in those cases it is not
really the knowledge sources, perception, and the rest, that are at
work but rather close imitators. Knowledge sources
(*pramana*) themselves are inerrant. This makes the
concept of the apparent source central
(*pramanabhasa*): "You can't really
*see* John from this distance." Awareness naturally taken
to be informative is presumptively true but the presumption can be
defeated. It can also be certified. Defeating and certifying belong to
a second-level of knowing where we are self-conscious about
justification. But there, too, we give the benefit of the doubt,
*badhakam vina*, "unless there is a
defeater." In this way there is no justification regress as
feared by Western foundationalists and alleged by the second-century
Buddhist Nagarjuna (1978).


### 3.2 How knowledge is known



It is difficult to appreciate Gangesa's reflection on
certification without knowing something about the
Mimamsaka positions, called in general
"self-certification," which he attacks. Self-certification
is embraced also by Yogacara Buddhist philosophers, but
Gangesa focuses mainly on the arguments of
Prabhakaras as voiced in particular by the ninth-century
author Salikanatha (1961). It seems that
Mimamsakas would secure the authority of Vedic
testimony for rituals and various rules of everyday life effortlessly,
one suspects in overview, by maintaining that knowledge is
self-certifying. Gangesa focuses, however, on perceptual
knowledge, which, he maintains, can, in certain circumstances, both be
doubted and later certified as knowledge. "I wouldn't now
be drinking water, if the awareness had not been knowledge. But I am
now drinking, satisfying my thirst, and the awareness was knowledge
indeed" (translator's comments, *Jewel* 2020: 109).
In this case, the certification comes by way of an inference. Source
identification is another way of capturing the point. It is by
inference that one determines that an awareness-generating process is
indeeed perception, perception that is factively conceived. A genuine
source never misleads. Only "pseudo-sources" do.



There are different signs whereby one knows that an instance of
inferential knowledge is both true and produced in the right way. Do
we really know the premises, in particular the alleged
"pervasion," *vyapti*? For testimony,
certification conditions are the speaker's being a trustworthy
expert along with conditions governing what it is to be a proper
statement and of course certain hearer conditions (such as knowing the
language). And in certain cases there is, admittedly,
self-certification. But the Mimamsakas are wrong to
take that to be the general rule.


## 4. Perception



As with the English word 'perception', the Sanskrit
'*pratyaksa*' so translated is used for both
the process of sensory connection with an object perceived and as the
resultant awareness. In common Sanskrit, the word
'*pratyaksa*', etymologically "before
the eyes," means something like "experientially
evident" when used as an adjective and "immediate
experience" or "sense experience" as a noun.
Internal perceptions as of thought and emotion, pleasure and pain, and
indeed of a "self," *atman*, are considered in
Nyaya to be mediated by a "mind" or, in a better
translation, an "internal organ," *manas*. A
perception that targets a preceding perception or another cognition or
mental event is given a special word,
'*anuvyayasaya*', "apperception,"
literally an "after-cognition," a type of perception that
is especially important in cross-school controversy. The internal
organ, *manas*, also serves the function of channeling
information from sense organs and bringing it together in perceptual
knowledge for a self. Such a mental organ is denied by Buddhist
adversaries and others in other schools, and is hotly debated within
Nyaya.


### 4.1 Perception as producing knowledge



The processes of production of sensory awarness vary with modality and
with the type of thing perceived, earthen, watery, etc., universal or
particular, a group of things, something external or internal, and in
ways peculiar to perceivers. Neverthelesss, there are commonalities,
especially when it comes to the questions of epistemology, most
prominently that innumerable instances of knowledge are sensorily
produced. But awareness produced by the senses is not how
Gangesa defines perceptual knowledge. If what was
considered an instance of knowledge is discovered to be in fact a
false belief, then we say in English that there was no knowledge in
the first place, only a belief that was considered true and warranted.
The same logic holds for Gangesa's
'*pratyaksa*': if what was considered a
perceptual awareness is discovered to be in fact non-veridical, then
it is said that there was no perception in the first place, only an
awareness that was considered veridical and produced by an organ of
sense.



Thus there may be here only a verbal unity achieved cheaply, but it is
important to know that Gangesa works with this
understanding of the term. Perhaps this is why he spends section after
section in his "perception" chapter examining particular
problems with objects known such as air, the sound of one's own
son's voice in a "tumultuous racket," universals and
the types of sensory relation occurrent in knowledge thereof, apparent
simultaneous perception, and perception of perception itself. His
chapter is full of phenomenological insights, but the science he
relies on to understand the operations of the several sense organs is
obviously antiquated. Epistemologically, however, the goal is to
separate the pseudo-source that generates non-knowledge (awareness
that appears to to be true but is not or is not produced in the
assumed way) from the genuine, and the science is often not relevant
considering the signs of knowledge and non-knowledge. The longest
section of the chapter is devoted to a general account of illusion as
"appearance of something as other than as it is,"
*anyatha-khyati-vada*.



In illusion, Gangesa says, the presentation of
F-hood--silverhood, for example, in the illusion of
"seeing" a piece of shell as silver, and saying,
"Silver," when it's really
mother-of-pearl--originates in things' really being F,
through previous knowledge of F-hood, real bits of silver in the
world. The silverhood predication in the verbalization of the
perception-like experience is available to become illusory predication
content through previous experience of silver. It gets fused into a
current perception-like event by means of a foul-up in the normal
causal process through the arousing of a silverhood memory-disposition
(*samskara*) formed by previous experience of
silver, or, possibly, by testimony. The content or intentionality of
an illusion is to be explained causally as generated by real features
of real things just as is genuine perception although they are
distinct cognitive types. To repeat, genuine perception is factive;
illusion is a perception-imitator ("You don't really see
Maitra because that's Chaitra").



Perception gets content not only from the object in connection with
the sense organ but also from the classificational power of the mind
or self. With the perceptual awareness, "That's a
pot," for instance, the pot as an individual in connection with
a sensory faculty is responsible for the cognition of a
property-bearer, for what is called the qualificandum portion of the
perception, without admixture of memory, but the sensory connection is
not by itself responsible for the qualifier portion, the pothood, also
identified as the "predication content"
(*prakara*, the verbalizable "way" something
appears), the thing's classification as a pot. The
classificational power of the mind should not, however, be understood
as innate so much as the product of experience over the course of a
lifetime. Repeatable features of reality get impressed on the mind or
self in the form of memory dispositions. That is, in perceiving
*a* as an F, normally an F-*samskara* formed
by previous knowledge-source-produced bits of awareness of things F
would be a causal factor. The perception's own content includes
the repeatable nature of the qualifier through the operation of this
factor. We see the tree as a tree, and it is a tree in fact.


### 4.2 Indeterminate cognition of a qualifier



The idea of indeterminate perception is a latecomer in Nyaya
tradition. Gautama, Vatsyanana, and Uddyotakara, whose
writings form the core of the early school, do not recognize an
indeterminate type of perception. The tenth-century author
Vacaspati introduces the notion into the system (1996: 111).
Gangesa is clearly aware of this history, for he opens his
discussion by echoing Vacaspati's commentary on
*Nyaya-sutra* 1.1.4 where, in considering the
*Nyaya-sutra*'s definition of perception,
Vacaspati takes the two words
'*avyapadesya*' ("non-verbal") and
'*vyavasayatmaka*'
("definite") as indicating two types of perception,
indeterminate and determinate. Udayana and Gangesa follow
him, but there seems to have been some dissension among later
Naiyayikas (Sibajiban Bhattacharyya 1990: 172-6).



Determinate perception, i.e., perceptual knowledge, is concept-laden,
a cognizing of a qualificandum *through* a qualifier. Things
have multiple properties some of which normally go undetected on any
given occasion of experience. One can see Devadatta without seeing his
back. Wholes are implicit in their parts, the very notion of which
makes no sense cut off from that of the whole: parts are parts of a
whole. If the ontological layering of things having qualifiers were
not reflected in a causal ordering of an indeterminate perception
feeding, so to say, the determinate, then perception of a
qualificandum should entail that the "thick" particular be
presented, i.e., the thing with all its properties, and, as
Gangesa argues, a blind person in touching a yellow piece
of cloth would know its color as yellow (2020: 359-60). The idea
of indeterminate perception picking up just one or another feature of
things is thus tied to Nyaya realism. The idea historically,
however, was taken over from Buddhists, it seems (Perrett: 2016).



In a thought experiment, Gangesa imagines a child
encountering a cow for the very first time (2020: 560). He argues that
the child can grasp the concept of cowhood and, had she the right
words, could say, correctly, "That's a cow," even
though she has had no previous experience of cows. The cowhood
predication content is supplied by what is called
"indeterminate" cognition of the qualifier, a first stage,
so to say, of the sensory information flow. According to
Gangesa, such indeterminate cognition has to be positied to
understand how we have, on the whole, workable concepts of things. The
argument is that in a typical case of a first-time perceptual
awareness of, for instance, a cow, there is a prior stage in the
causal process that is an indeterminate cognition, indeterminate in
that cowness is cognized but not as related to the particular cow, the
qualificandum of the ensuing determinate perception. All other cases
of cognition of an entity as qualified have a prior cognition of the
qualifier as a causal factor. It is thus reasonable that the case of a
first-time perception does as well. But since here clearly we do not
have a mental disposition (*samskara*) at work,
indeterminate cognition has to be posited.



Something like indeterminate perception is posited by moderate
foundationalists in analytic epistemology as helping to solve the
problem of a justification regress, it seems (Phillips 2012: 50). A
mental state not embedding an assertion and so immune to questions
whether it is true or false is proposed. BonJour (2003: 20): "
... such a state is, as it were, semi-assertive or
semi-judgmental in character: it has a kind of content or cognitive
significance, but not in a way that would raise a further issue of
justification." Such a comparison could be misleading, however.
Perception, according to Gangesa, is a doxastic justifier.
The foundations of our worldly beliefs are doxastic in that
determinate perceptions embed propositions that say at a minimum that
something is some way or another. Concept-free perception may be
thought of as Nyaya's way of rendering our ability to form
concepts merely from perception's phenomenological side. It is a
theoretical posit made to explain how our concepts originate in
reality--a problem that is epitomized in cases of a first-time
perception of something as an F, the concept F-hood being previously
unavailable to the perceiver.


### 4.3 Apperception



"Apperception," *anuvyavasaya*, is defined as
a perception taking a preceding cognition or another psychological
property as its object, typically a scoping cognition in relation to
another scoped (Phillips 2012: 48-50). Efforts and desires can
be similarly targeted. Through apperception, Gangesa
claims, one knows infallibly the intentionality, the
"objecthood," *visayata*, of the
cognition scoped, in its qualificandum, qualifier, and relational
portions. One knows, in other words, what the scoped purports to be
about, and one knows this independently of a determination of the
target's being knowledge or not. Gangesa argues that
since the sensory connection in this case is not mediated by a
material organ, apperception is infallible about the contents of the
scoped, but not of course about its truth. He devotes a long section
of his perception chapter to defending this and other views about
apperception in the face of opponents claiming he is giving up central
planks of his theory.



Apperception makes certification possible because it sets up the item
to be certified, showing the type of cognition the scoped is. Our
apperceptive ability to determine whether the scoped cognition is
putatively perceptual, inferential, analogical, testimonial, or of
another character has epistemic relevance, since, as with all
perception, there would be a presumption in favor of its correctness.
Thus there would also be restoration of a presumption of the truth for
a scoped cognition that had been brought into doubt were it judged to
be perceptual, inferential, analogical, or testimonial in character,
although further examination might prove the identification wong. Note
that if further examination were called for, its direction would be
determined by the apperception of cognitive type. For, the criteria of
genuine perception, inference, and the rest vary according to origin.
The characteristic epistemic merits and flaws (*guna* and
*dosa*) are very different for each knowledge source and
there are also significant differences within species of perception in
particular. Thus apperceptive judgment of putative type directs
inquiry, telling us what to check.



Corollary to Gangesa's thesis of the apperceptibility
of cognitive types is his view that illusion can be scoped such that
there too we find, abstractly, a cognition of an object as qualified
by a qualifier, for example, of a piece of tin appearing to be silver.
He also presents the argument that the fact that we can later see the
same thing as really the tin it is shows that the illusion is a single
cognition and not, contra the Prabhakara, two cognitions, a
perception and a remembering along with a failure to notice their
difference. But scoping an illusory awareness is supposed to show
this, too, and in a particularly dramatic way when one knows that the
cognition is illusory while it continues, such as apparent sight of a
double moon or a person with hepatitis seeing a wall she knows is
white as yellow. Although apperception is said not in itself to be
able to determine the veridicality of an awareness, in such a case the
subject practically sees one thing (the wall) appearing to be
something it is not (yellow), *anyatha-khyati*.


## 5. Inference



Gangesa's contributions to understanding the
knowledge source called "inference,"
*anumana*, and "inferential knolwedge,"
*anumiti*, come on top of a long history of advances both
within Nyaya and outside, from Yogacara Buddhist
logicians and epistemologists, in particular, but also others.
Gangesa was a great student of philosophy. Most of the
technical system can be found in his near predecessor,
Manikantha Misra (1953), and discussions of
fallacies echo the seventh-century Buddhist Dharmakirti (1993)
and others. However, his treatment of inference is, arguably, more
elaborate than that of any predecessor, and, as is his ususal
practice, he examines a host of similar definitions of key items, such
as "pervasion," as well as many opponent positions before
defending one or more of his own.



Considering the development of logic in the West, it important to keep
in mind that inference throughout Nyaya is part of epistemology.
Something about the world is known by any veritable inference. An
inference must have premises that are themselves known. Nyaya
philosophers do not distinguish between a formally valid deductive
argument (which may or may not have false premises) and deductive
arguments that are "cogent" (with no unjustified premises
and no errors).



A set of logical terms is standard across Nyaya and most of the
other classical schools, and Gangesa both uses them and
provides his own precise definitions:



> 
> 
> 
> |  |  |
> | --- | --- |
> | *paksa* | (*a*) inferential subject; a mountain in a stock
> example |
> | *sadhana* | (\(H\)) prover ('*hetu*' is a synonym);
> smokiness |
> | *sadhya* |  (\(S\)) probandum, the property to be proved; fieriness |
> | *vyapti* |  \(\forall x (Hx \to Sx)\) inference-grounding pervasion;
> 
> "Wherever smoke, there fire" |
> 
> 
> 



For example, he characterizes an inferential subject,
*paksa* (2020: 734):



> 
> 
> An inferential subject (*paksa*) occurs where there is no
> knowledge source that has positively established something in
> coordination with an absence of a desire to know. Thus, that is
> not an inferential subject if there is a knowledge source that has
> already positively established whatever *and* no desire to know
> (it by inference). ... This is what it is to be an inferential
> subject (as a factor in the generation of inferential knowledge).
> Admittedly, this definition does not differentiate it from anything,
> since to be an inferential subject is a property with universal scope
> (anything can be an inferential subject, qualities as well as
> substances, universals as well as particulars, and so on).
> Nevertheless, the way the word '*paksa*' is
> used has been explained.
> 
> 
> 



A stock example of an inference:


1. \(Ha\) (The mountain is smoky.)
2. \(\forall x (Hx \to Sx)\) (Whatever is smoky is fiery.)
3. \(Sa\) (The mountain is fiery.)



Gangesa devotes several long sections of the chapter to
issues surrounding the inductive support that inferential knowledge
presumes, a basis for the proper formation of the inference-informing
*samskara* or "mental disposition"
responsible for a subject's being able to remember (in a crucial
mental event called "reflection,"
*paramarsa*) a *vyapti* or inclusion of
all things \(H\) as also things \(S\). This is the
"example."



> 
> 
> 
> |  |  |
> | --- | --- |
> | *drstanta* | \(Hb,Sb\) & \(\neg Hc, \neg Sc\) pervasion-supportive
> example, a location known to possess both the prover and the probandum
> (a fiery kitchen hearth); also, a known absence of the prover where
> there is a known absence of the probandum. |
> 
> 
> 



Inference-grounding "pervasions," *vyapti*,
are of different sorts, but they all obtain in nature, such as that
between smokiness and fieriness. Gangesa and all
Naiyayikas are much occupied with pervasions, their nature and
how they are known.


### 5.1 Natural entailment, *vyapti*, "pervasion"



After rejecting twenty-four attempts--close attempts--to
define the natural relation of pervasion such that the presence of a
pervaded property at a location proves that another, the pervader, is
there, too, Gangesa endorses the following characterization
(2020: 623):



> 
> 
> Pervasion, *vyapti*, is a prover \(H\)'s having its
> locations shared by a probandum \(S\) so long as \(S\) when specified
> as the counterpositive of an absolute absence (i.e., as \(\neg S\))
> has shared locations, shared with the absence of the prover (i.e.,
> with \(\neg H\): no \(\neg S\) occurs on anything that is not also a
> \(\neg H\)), and if shared with something that is the counterpositive
> of such an absence (\(H\)) also does not share it there (in the case
> of a non-locus-pervading property).
> 
> 
> 



All \(H\) are \(S\) so long as there are no \(\neg S\) that share a
location with something that is not a \(\neg H\). That is, there will
be pervasion given co-locatedness so long as what the \(S\) is,
according to the definition, is not something that in serving as the
counterpositive of an absence--specifically a counterpositive
having shared locations, a universal, a class character, a repeatable
property and not a particular instance (firehood as opposed to, say,
kitchen fire)--does not share any location that does not also
house a \(\neg H\). Goekoop (1967: 111) has a nice paraphrase that
makes the point a little clearer: "There is a pervasion of \(H\)
by \(S\) if and only if \(H\) has a common locus with \(S\) in such a
way that \(S\) is none of the things that qua class are completely
absent from some locus of \(H\)."



Gangesa's definition is supposed to solve a problem
concerning inferences about non-locus-pervading properties, such as a
monkey-conjunction in a tree, a case on which many of the rejected
definitions floundered. "This tree possesses a
monkey-conjunction, *since* it is this tree (which always has
monkeys)" is a good inference even though the tree at its roots
has the ruled-out sort of counterpositive according to the definition.
Inferences involving conjunctions are ruled in if the \(S\) is a
property that while not present at \(l\) along with the \(H\) in some
specified portion of \(l\) is not so overall, that is, at or in all
portions of \(l\). The location \(l\) would be something that is
indeed \(S\) in some portion, as a tree does have a monkey in its
branches though not at its roots.


### 5.2 How entailments are known



Inferences put forth for others (*parartha*) make plain
the conditions that work with oneself (*svartha*)
automatically, and in texts of philosophy little is automatic. Thus
built into the conception of the operation of inference are the
inductive procedures whereby a pervasion is known. Putatively similar
instances, *sapaksa*, are defined as cases known to
possess the probandum and thus should also, at least in one (as first
insisted by the Buddhist Dignaga), exhibit the prover (e.g.,
\(Hb\) and \(Sb\))--while putatively dissimilar instances,
*vipaksa*, are defined as cases known not to possess the
probandum and thus should lack the prover, too (e.g., \(\neg Sc\) and
\(\neg Hc\)). The example, *drstanta*,
is normally a single instance of *sapaksa* where the
prover also occurs (\(Hb\) and \(Sb\)), its citing thus indicating
that there is inductive support. In other words, by reference to cases
that are *sapaksa* --i.e., known instances of the
probandum--where the prover is also found, positive evidence is
marshalled to support an inference-underpinning pervasion
(*anvaya*, "positive correlation"). And by
reference to cases that are *vipaksa* --i.e., known
instances of the absence of the probandum--further support is
garnered by our not finding the prover (*vyatireka*,
"negative correlation"). Citing an example is shorthand to
indicate that such a procedure supports assertion of a
*vyapti*, "pervasion" or general rule.
Gangesa devotes several sections of the
*Jewel*'s inference chapter to elucidating inferences
based on both *sapaksa* and *vipaksa*, as
well as those based exclusively on *sapaksa*
("positive-only inference") and exclusively on
*vipaksa* ("negative-only inference"). In
general, it is "wide experience,"
*bhuyo-darsana*, that is responsible for
pervasion-knowledge. But this term, championed by Udayana, and others,
is vague, and Gangesa devotes several sections to inductive
method.



There is also "hypothetical reasoning," *tarka*,
which, although not itself a knowledge source, is said to be able to
shift the balance of what it is rational to accept. Its main role is
to help people grasp pervasions, and is an important supplement to the
inferences that are central to philosophic controversies.
Gangesa explains *tarka* as a hypothetical argument
revealing a fallacy or defeater with respect to a position
[?]*p* opposed to another position *p* that is to be
accepted so long as *p* has independent evidence in its favor,
technically called, *pratikula-tarka*. There is, however,
also *anukula-tarka*, "supportive reasoning,"
such as economy of conception, that is positive in character. The
types of *tarka* that Gangesa recognizes are: (1)
*atmasraya*, "self-dependence"
(begging the question), (2) *anyonyasraya*,
"mutual dependence" (mutual presupposition), (3)
*cakraka*, "circularity" (reasoning in a circle),
(4) *anavastha* "infinite regress," (5)
*anista-prasanga*, "unwanted
consequence" (contradiction), (6)
*prathama-upasthitatva*, "being presupposed by the
other," the "first established" (a form of
*anukula,* "favorable," *tarka*), (7)
*utsarga*, "hasty generalization," (8)
*vinigamana-viraha*, "differentiation
failure," (9) *laghava*, "economy of
conception," "theoretic lightness" (another form of
favorable *tarka*), and (10) *gaurava*, "lack of
economy of conception," "theoretic heaviness"
(Bagchi 1951: 151).



Gangesa devotes a section of his inference chapter to
*tarka* where he shows "pragmatic contradiction"
also to be included, which was mentioned above in connection with his
rejection of skepticism and defense of knowledge as the default for
awareness. That passage begins (2020: 649):



> 
> 
> As an example, consider the particular doubt about smoke as pervaded
> by fire. If smoke is not produced from a set of causes excluding fire,
> then smoke, as not produced from a causal complex including fire,
> would not be produced (a conclusion in contradiction, presumably, with
> the doubter's belief that smoke is produced). Now doubt (against
> this hypothetical reasoning): Could the smoke come to be from
> something that is not fire? Or just in some instances could it come to
> be without fire? Or could it come to be simply by chance
> (*ahetuka*, "without a cause")?
> 
> 
> 
> Were a subject \(M\) who has ascertained thoroughgoing positive
> correlations (\(S\) where \(H\)) and negative correlations (where no
> \(S\), no \(H\)), to doubt that an effect might arise without a cause,
> then--to take up the example of smoke and fire--why should
> \(M\), as \(M\) does in a rulewise manner, resort to fire for smoke,
> to food to allay hunger, and to speech to communicate to another
> person?
> 
> 
> 



Gangesa argues that *tarka* is useful for--as
we might say these days--reestablishing a presumption of
truth in favor of one or another thesis brought into doubt. For
example, by supposing the truth of an opponent's thesis and
showing how it leads to unacceptable consequences, one repossesses a
presumption of truth, provided one's own thesis is supported by
at least the appearance of a knowledge source and, further, that it
has not itself been ruled out. Thus *tarka* comprises arguments
that are not in themselves knowledge-generators but capable
nonetheless of showing what we should and should not believe. In
particular, reasoning can show "untoward ramifications"
(*prasanga*) of not accepting a conclusion that is
evidenced, Gangesa says. Forms of *tarka* such as
self-contradiction, infinite regress, and circular reasoning are
employed in the dialogic exchanges constructed in the *Jewel*
and other works of later and indeed early Nyaya philosophy and,
for that matter, all the philosophic schools.


### 5.3 The "additional condition," *upadhi*, and other fallacies



Inferential awareness, like the other types, is defeasible, and while
we have every right to accept, and act on, undefeated inferences, we
are sometimes wrong. In particular, knowledge and justification do not
pass from premises to conclusion if we become aware of an
*upadhi*, an "additional condition," which
would be a blocker of "reflection" through undermining the
generalization on which such reflection depends. Thus awareness of an
*upadhi* is a preventer of inferential knowledge, a
"defeater," leading to belief relinquishment by someone
who has hitherto not noticed the condition and who has erroneously
arrived at a conclusion on the basis of a falsely induced,
pseudo-pervasion. A rough (and non-classical) example: I know that Al
has a temper that will flare up in certain circumstances from having
witnessed many tantrums such that I expect that Al will explode by
making an inference when I see that the circumstances obtain, but
having overlooked that it is only with Belle that Al is so irascible
and Belle not being present in the circumstances where I expect, by
pseudo-inference, Al's temper to flare, Belle would be the
*upadhi*, the "additional condition."
Discussion of the concept occupies more than a tenth of
Gangesa's long inference chapter.



The *upadhi* (\(U\)) has a negative character, serving, at
least in the first place, to undermine a putative inferential
conclusion by showing that the pervasion--all \(H\) as \(S\), a
prover (\(H\)) as pervaded by a probandum (\(S\))--on which it
depends does not hold. But an *upadhi* may also serve as
positive restorer of knowledge in that when it occurs *together
with* an original prover (\(H\)) that it undercuts (thus \(H \
\&\ U\)), the inferential conclusion is reestablished.



According to a traditional definition which, although refined by
Gangesa, suits most purposes, an *upadhi* is a
property \(U\) such that


1. \(U\) pervades the probandum, the *sadhya*, \(S\)
(i.e., anything that is an \(S\) is a \(U\),
*sadhya-vyapaka*): \(\forall x (Sx \to Ux)\)
2. \(U\) does not pervade the prover, the *sadhana* or
*hetu*, \(H\) (i.e., there is something that is an \(H\) but
not a \(U\), *sadhana-avyapaka*): \(\exists x(Hx \
\&\ \neg Ux)\)



It follows then that there is "deviation" (the prover is
said to "deviate," being somewhere the probandum is not)
and no relation of pervasion.


3. \(\exists x(Hx \ \&\ \neg Sx)\)



There are lots of other fallacies that Gangesa discusses.
The *Nyaya-sutra* lists five
"pseudo-provers," *hetv-abhasa*, which
Gangesa examines at length:


1. "Deviation," in three varieties:
	1. the "common," which is knowledge of a counterexample
	(\(Hb, \neg Sb\))
	2. the "unique," defined as a putative prover's not
	being known to occur in places where the probandum is known to occur
	or not to occur (for example, the "prover," being-sound,
	with respect to an inferential subject, sound, since only sound has
	the universal being-a-sound which then cannot prove anything)
	3. the "inconclusive," where the property specifying the
	inferential subject is universally locatable such that there can be no
	evidence outside it (nothing is outside it) without begging the
	question (thus, with a few exceptions, no inference beginning
	"*Everything* is \(F\) (momentary, material, etc.)"
	is acceptable since nothing could count as evidence if the inferential
	subject is everything)
2. the "contradictory," where \(Ha\) proves the absence
of a putative probandum, i.e., \(\neg Sa\)
3. "counterinference," which is a putative prover that
would establish a conclusion \(Sa\) except that its evidence base
consisting of correlations, positive and negative, between things
\(H\) and \(S\), is matched by an opponent's inference to \(\neg Sa\)
complete with correlations between a counterprover \(J\) and \(\neg
S\) (this fallacy reveals a social dimension to knowledge)
4. the "unestablished," which Gangesa views as
three separate fallacies:
	1. a putative prover as unestablished with respect to location or
	property-bearer, e.g., \(Ha\)?
	2. its being unestablished with respect to essential nature (e.g.,
	"The lake is fiery *since* it is smokey")
	3. the unestablished by way of not being pervaded by the probandum
	(said not to be a separate fallacy but reducing to deviation, the
	contradictory, or the defeated)
5. the "defeated," the "defeated in advance,"
as it were, a kind of "patent falsehood."



These "flaws of the prover," *hetu-dosa*, are
also called "constant flaws," *nitya-dosa*,
as opposed to *purusa-dosa*, "flaws of a
person," which are *anitya-dosa*, "occasional
flaws." Admittedly, Gangesa contends that sometimes
even "failure to grasp a pervasion is (not a logical flaw but) a
flaw belonging to a person or subject" (2020: 884).
Nevertheless, the five pseudo-provers are separated out from other
defeaters called clinchers from the *Nyaya-sutra* on,
because they highlight logical--or in the case of (3)
epistemological--rules as opposed to personal failures such as
failing to pay attention. The *upadhi* fallacy, too,
entails a counterexample and so is a "constant flaw,"
although failure to notice one on occasion can be a personal
error.



Two further types of defeater or pseudo-defeater identified in the
*Nyaya-sutra* are, first, *jati*,
"false analogies," which seem dismissed by
Gangesa (in the voice of an opponent) saying that they are
not good responses in a debate or controversy (2020: 949), in contrast
with, second, "clinchers," *nigraha-sthana*,
whose importance in debate is acknowledged but not in any detail taken
up (perhaps Gangesa sees the
*Nyaya-sutra*'s list, as explained by
Vatsyayana, as satisfactory). But *jati* are
dismissed because, it seems, however they may have been conceived in
early years (Prets 2001), long before Gangesa they come to
be understood as *misleading* analogies and classified as
*tricks* of debate or philosophic conundra, not really worthy
of inquiry. A *jati* is a pseudo-defeater in the broad
sense of a misleading analogy, and there is less agreement about them
across school than about pseudo-provers, clinchers, and, we must add,
types of *tarka*, "hypothetical reasoning," which
were reviewed above.


### 5.4 Three philosophic inferences



Gangesa advances three contentious inferences in his
inference chapter, two of them--a theistic inference and one
about the possibility of "liberation,"
*mukti*--defended at considerable length (all three are
reconstructed and examined in Phillips 2012: 65-71). As much as
supporting longstanding positions of Nyaya on (a)
"self," *atman*, (b) "Lord,"
*isvara*, and (c) *mukti*, his treatments
illustrate his inferential system including defeating and hypothetical
reasoning. Indeed, illustration of the system sometimes seems to be
the main goal.



Although Gangesa accepts the position of early
Naiyayika Uddyotakara (c. 600) that one knows oneself
perceptually as expressed by the word 'I' in perceptual
judgments such as "I am seeing a pot" (Taber 2012),
presumably he sees proving a self by inference as useful because
Buddhists, for one, deny it (famously). And at least in
Yogacara Buddhism perception is accepted as a knowledge
source, with the insistence that no self is known by it or indeed by
any other means.



The *Nyaya-sutra* has two arguments: diachronic
synthesis and synchronic. The former is illustrated by the
recognition, "This is that Devadatta I saw yesterday,"
which could not be an expression of knowledge (and of course it is) if
the self of the recognizer had not endured (the recognition is fed by
a memory of Devadata as seen the day before, and one person does not
have another's memories). The latter is illustrated by, "I
am touching what I see" (a self is needed to bring together the
information across sensory modality). In the *Jewel*'s
perception chapter, Gangesa at times refers to or echoes
these arguments, but the argument for a self in the inference chapter
is different.



Gangesa follows Vatsyayana under
*Nyaya-sutra* 1.1.5 (the "inference
sutra"): "Every living body (the inferential subject)
has a self (the probandum), *since* every living body has
breath (the prover), *unlike* a pot (the example, a pot being
qualified by both absence-of-self and absence-of-breath)." My
sense is that here the main point is as much to illustrate
"negative-only" inference as to endorse
Vatsyayana's reasoning, but it is endorsed. The
inferential subject includes all living bodies, and so there is no
*sapaksa*, no examples of the probandum known outside the
set of things that are living bodies. Thus the inference has to be
*negative-only*, based solely on correlations of absences,
"unlike a pot," a pot having neither breath nor self.
Fundamental truths of things (*tattva*), which are captured by
philosophical definitions, seem accessible only through fundamental
distinctions being known through negative-only inferences, for
example, this inference to self (*atman*) as a fundamental
category of substance.



In a slightly more more elaborate version, Gangesa puts
forth two steps. First, desires and the like are proved to have a
locus, like all qualities. In step two, self is proved to be that
locus, a distinct substance, different from earth, water,
*tejas*, and so on down the traditional list, by eliminative
argument. Defeaters for the proposition that desire and the like
belong to earth or any of the rest of the items on the ontological
list consists of hypothetical reasoning such as the following. If
desire were a property of earth (or water and so on), then like the
color that exists in earthen things, it, too, would be perceived.
Surveying pots and the like, we find that nothing material has desire,
cognition, etc., outside of living bodies. He writes (2020: 803):



> 
> 
> Given that desire has been proved to have an inherent cause (by the
> inference previously stated, "Desire has origins in an inherent
> cause, *since* it is an effect," we formulate a second
> inference), being-a-desire occurs in that (namely, desire) which has
> as emergent cause a connection, *since* being-a-desire is a
> universal directly pervaded by the
> qualityhood-that-occurs-in-specific-qualities-grasped-by-an-eternal-organ
> (i.e., *manas* or the organ of hearing), *like*
> being-a-sound (soundhood, the universal of sound). And this emergent
> cause, which is a connection, is specified by something, since it is a
> connection. (That "something" is the living body.) If
> merely connection with a self were the origins of desire (without
> requiring something else delimiting it), then ramifications would
> overextend. Therefore, having-a-self, which is the specifier of the
> connection that gives rise to desire, is proved with respect to the
> living body. (That is, every living body is
> "enselved.")
> 
> 
> 



The inference for positing an *isvara*, the
"Lord," is a little less system-bound than this one for an
*atman*, but its history stretches through several earlier
Nyaya efforts, in particular by Vacaspati (c. 950). It is an
inference to a creator based on both positive and negative
correlations: "Earth and the like have a conscious agent as an
instrumental cause, *since* they are effects, like a pot and
unlike an atom (whatever is an effect has a conscious agent as an
instrumental cause)." Buddhists point to counterexamples, such
as growing grass. Growing grass has the prover property,
being-an-effect, but not the probandum,
having-an-agent-as-an-instrumental cause. The Nyaya reply is to
point out that growing grass and all such examples are in dispute,
that is to say, fall within the domain of the inferential subject
(*paksa*), here "earth and the like," to wit,
anything that is an effect but whose agential cause is not apparent,
unlike the comparison class, a pot, for instance, which is clearly
both an effect and has an agent as an instrumental cause. Nothing that
falls within the domain of the subject can be used either as an
example supporting the rule of *vyapti* inclusion or as a
counterexample, since that would beg the question. The whole point of
inference is to make something known that was not known previously,
and here, as with the existence of atoms, the conclusion could not be
known perceptually. The theological inference has the purpose of
showing that things like the earth *and* growing grass have an
agent within the causal complex that brings them about. This is not
something that we know without making the inference.



So, by the rules governing proper inference, the putative
counterexample is rejected, and the proof looks pretty good. For,
cleverly it divides all things into three categories, as
Vacaspati remarks (1996: 563). There are uncreated things, atoms,
for instance, created things that clearly have an agential cause, such
as pots, and things such as the earth and growing grass that do not
clearly have an agential cause. This last set becoming the inferential
subject is bracketed such that no examples can be pulled from it.



However, another refutation refined by Buddhist philosophers over the
centuries is not dismissed so easily (Moksakaragupta
1998: 98; Patil 2009). The Nyaya argument falls to an
*upadhi*, in this case the property,
having-a-perceptible-body. As we have seen, an *upadhi* is
defined as a property that pervades the probandum while failing to
pervade the prover, that is to say, that is entailed by the presence
of the probandum while not being instanced in at least one case of the
prover. Having-an-agent-as-an-instrumental-cause, which is the \(S\)
or probandum property of the target inference, is pervaded by the
agent's-having-a-perceptible-body, which is the \(U\) or
*upadhi* property: all agents have bodies. But there is
something that is an \(H\) but not a \(U\); something that is an
effect but does not have within its causal complex an agent with a
perceptible body, e.g., growing grass. The two conditions being met,
it would follow that there is something that is an \(H\) but not an
\(S\), something that is an effect but does not have an agent as an
instrumental cause. Thus the *upadhi* defeats the apparent
inference by showing that the required pervasion and entailment do not
hold.



Gangesa's response is to deny that the putative
*upadhi*, an-agent's-having-a-perceptible-body,
pervades the probandum of the target inference,
having-an-agent-as-an-instrumental-cause, and several rounds of
objection and response centering on Nyaya's conception of
the Lord as an agent without a body are aired. The Lord's
creative activity requires, like that of any agent, familiarity with
the material to be shaped, like the potter's knowledge of clay
and of what to do to make a pot. The Lord's knowledge is to be
conceived as appropriate to the tasks to be undertaken, such as
originally combining atoms, and if the Lord, like us, had to have a
body to have knowledge, including the knowledge required to combine
atoms, then, since bodies are combinations of atoms, there would have
to be some earlier Creator to make the necessary
combinations--*ad infinitum*. Simpler than this conception
is that of a bodiless Creator whose knowledge is appropriate to the
material forming earth and the like but, unlike our knowledge, is not
generated. This seems to be the core of Gangesa's
reasoning, which is complex *tarka* targeting simplicity and
following Vacaspati in particular.



An inference to the possibility of "liberation,"
*mukti*, brings the *Jewel*'s inference chapter to
a close. It is particularly dense (2020: 1142) and cannot be unpacked
in a short space, but its central analogy is noteworthy.



> 
> 
> Then the justification (the inference to the conclusion that suffering
> can come to an end for an individual), well, it is that suffering in
> general, or the suffering in general of Devadatta (i.e., of any
> individual), is the counterpositive of a non-simultaneous destruction
> existing in the same locus, *since* it is a property that
> occurs only as an effect, or *since* it is continuous until its
> end, *like* the light of a lamp. This continuity is its being a
> property that occurs only as an effect at distinct times. And in this
> way the probandum, the property to be proved (viz., being the
> counterpositive of a non-simultaneous destruction existing in the same
> locus), is also applicable to pleasure in general and the like:
> liberation is the breaking up of the causal chain along with its
> source.
> 
> 
> 



Translator's comments (2020: 1142) bring out that the crucial
point seems to be that something destroyed has no causal power,
existing only as an effect, in connection with the destruction for
which it is the counterpositive. The destruction that is
*mukti* is not of current but of future suffering, thus a
"non-simultaneous" destruction. The destruction exists in
the same locus as the suffering that would occur were it not blocked.
The suffering does not really occur--it never comes
about--and so its ontological status is problematic. Clearly, it
does not cause anything. It comes about only as an effect in
connection with the bringing about of the destruction in relation to
which it is the counterpositive. And any destruction is of something
(the counterpositive) at a place or locus: \(cDl\). Note that the
example appears to work only with the second of the two provers
mentioned: like a lamp's stream of light that can cease
absolutely, the suffering of an individual goes on continuously
(through life, death, and rebirth)--in the sense of regularly if
not without occasional spells of pleasure--until its absolute
end. Pleasure is similar.


## 6. Analogy



Different schools of classical philosophy have very different
understandings of "analogy," *upamana*, and,
unlike with perception, inference, and testimony, cross-school
controversies seem often at cross-purposes. For example,
Mimamsakas, worried about the criteria for substitutes
for materials enjoined to carry out rituals, talk about similarities
as objective, whereas Naiyayikas are concerned principally with
word meanings, although Vatsyayana (1997: 170-1) does
show the usefulness of analogy to indicate something new, a medicinal
plant, for instance, similar to one with which an interlocutor is
familiar. Gangesa sees the working of analogy to result
solely in learning the meaning of words. Nevertheless, appreciation of
similarity, which he sees as a supervenient property, is, he says,
crucial in the operation of the knowledge source. The
*Jewel*'s chapter on analogy is quite short and lacks
subsections, hardly a "chapter" in comparison with the
other three.



What comes to be a stock example of analogical knowledge according to
Nyaya is elaborated in *Nyaya-sutra*
commentaries and textbooks preceding Gangesa, who fills in
details. A subject \(S\) inquires of a forester about a
*gavaya*, which is a kind of buffalo, having heard the word
'*gavaya*' used among her schoolmates but not
knowing what it means, i.e., not knowing to what
'*gavaya*' refers. Questioned by \(S\), the
forester replies that a *gavaya* is like a cow, mentioning
certain specifics as also some dissimilarities. To simplify,
Nyaya philosophers say that the forester makes an analogical
statement ("A *gavaya* is like a cow"), whereby,
according to Gangesa, our subject \(S\) now knows in
general what the word means. But \(S\) does not yet know its
reference, which he deems its principal meaning. Later encountering a
*gavaya* buffalo, \(S\) says, "This, which is similar to
a cow, is the meaning of the word
'*gavaya*'," a statement which expresses
\(S\)'s new knowledge. Every instance of knowledge has a source,
and this one has been generated by *upamana,*
"analogy." Gangesa writes (2020: 1207):



> 
> 
> **Objection**:
>   
> 
> The question [of the subject to the forester] concerns only the cause
> of her (eventual) knowledge (qua qualificandum). The answer gives its
> qualifiers.
> 
> 
> 
> **Gangesa**: No. Since she does not know the particulars
> (that would ground use of the word), she would be answered by the
> forester *also* with reference to a need for a sensory
> encounter: "If you go into the forest, you will see."
> 
> 
> 
> Therefore, \(S\)'s questions would concern only the distinct
> grounds of employment: "What is a *gavaya* like? On what
> grounds does one employ the word '*gavaya*'?"
> Since the one asked (viz., the forester) would not be able to show
> immediately, directly (*saksat*), what it is to
> be a *gavaya* buffalo, he would talk about similarity,
> indirectly indicating it (i.e., indicating what it is to be a
> *gavaya* buffalo). And then later, when an individual has been
> seen by \(S\) who remembers the meaning of the analogical statement,
> she acquires the knowledge: "This thing qualified by what it is
> to be a *gavaya* is the referent of the word
> '*gavaya*'." \(S\)'s knowledge is of a
> particular that is the grounds for the employment of the word. It is
> the result of analogy (as a knowledge source).
> 
> 
> 


## 7. Testimony



Gangesa begins his final chapter of the *Jewel* with
a defense of the integrity of testimony as a knowledge source,
following a long tradition beginning with an extended
*Nyaya-sutra* passage (2.1.49-56) that elicited
much commentary. Like his predecessors, he resists an opponent's
contention that "testimonial" knowledge results from
inference of a certain sort such that supposing an additional
knowledge source is unnecessary. Gangesa's response
is to argue that testimony works uniquely through language, that
without testimony the inferentialist's premises in the
substitute inference could not be understood. Furthermore, the
certification conditions for testimony are different. The chapter
includes much reflection on linguistic meaning, including sections on
grammar near the end. How to understand reference is a chief concern,
reference being viewed as the primary mode of meaning. But there is
also "indirect indication,"
*laksana*, which works by way of a referent
indicating something else, as when a poet says, "The
moon," meaning the face of the beloved. All these are standard
topics in Nyaya literature. Injunctions, which are also talked
about from the earliest by Naiyayikas as well as their
Mimamsaka champions (the Veda is injunctive in
character), command a lot of attention. Their supposed ethical force
is wrestled with, as Gangesa shows his mastery of
Mimamsa and resists its view of a moral
universe.



Nyaya and Mimamsa are referentialist allies
with similar agendas when it comes to knowledge from testimony, both
opposed to a Yogacara pragmatic theory of meaning. Although
concerned mainly with Vedic hermeneutics, Mimamsaka
philosophers pioneer many of the best arguments and counterarguments
against Buddhists and others who attack Vedic authority. But
Gangesa does not accept the Mimamsaka
contention that the overall purport of a statement or sentence can in
general, even in cases of secondary meaning,
*laksana*, be understood without an idea of
the speaker's intention. We do not have to understand the
speaker's intention to grasp a statement in all cases, although
sometimes we do, for example, when multiple meanings are possible and
with some statements employing *laksana*. But
the Mimamsaka view that Vedic sentences have no author
is false.



Gangesa apparently accepts the
*Nyaya-sutra*'s definition, 1.1.7:
"Testimony is the (true) statement of an trustworthy
expert" (Vatsyayana 1997: 14), which indicates
certification conditions centering on the speaker. He focuses,
however, on the conditions wrapped up in what it is to be a (true)
statement from the hearer's point of view. The condition known
as *yogyata*, usually rendered "semantic fit,"
is given by him a broad interpretation, where not only infelicitous
statements such as "The gardener is watering the plants with
fire," are violations, as is commonly pointed out, but also the
hearer's knowing that the speaker is not an *apta*,
that the sounds are, for example, from a parrot.


### 7.1 An irreducible knowledge source



Yogacara Buddhists have a pragmatic theory of
concept-formation and view language as at best helping us get what we
want and avoid what we want to avoid. The Buddha's words are to
be trusted because of his special experience and superior capacity as
a reasoner as well as his compassion motivating his most excellent
advice. Gangesa imagines an attack on testimonial knowledge
from Buddhist skeptical quarters such that, in fact, there is no
knowledge but only helpful or unhelpful advice because there is no
truth, no veridicality. Statements do not correspond to facts.
Gangesa's rebuttal centers on knowledge production
through words. Any instance of knowledge has a mode of production
distinct from one that fails so to produce. The argument that
erroneous utterances fail to generate knowledge cuts no ice, since
erroneous utterances are not veritable testimony as we Naiyayikas
understand it, he says (2020: 1215). We are able to distinguish
erroneous and true utterances by the processes that produce them, and
thus meet the skeptical challenge.



A different line of rejection of testimony is attributed to the
Vaisesika school, which is said to admit testimonial
knowledge but to see its generation as coming from inference of a
certain sort. A hearer reasons: (1) Speaker \(S\) states *p*,
(2) \(S\) is a "trustworthy authority,"
*apta*, (3) what such authorities state is true, and so,
therefore, (4) \(p\) is true. And if challenged, S could say that she
knows \(p\) because of the inference. Gangesa's
rebuttal centers on how premise (1) could be known. Testimony has to
be admitted as a separate knowledge source to understand how the
reductionist's inference could get started. Just what is the
knowledge source for (1)?


### 7.2 The meaning of a statement



In the long chapter on testimony, one would expect speaker
certification conditions to be taken up, but they are not. Perhaps
Gangesa sees them as satisfactorily elucidated by
Vatsyayana on *Nyaya-sutra* 1.1.7 along
with the later commentaries. In any case, the *Jewel*'s
focus is on sentential conditions such as grammaticality and semantic
fitness as remarked. Three conditions prominent in the grammatical
literature are addressed, "expectation,"
*akanksa*, "semantic
fit," *yogyata*, and "contiguity,"
*asatti*. Gangesa also takes up
*tatparya*, "(speaker's) intention,"
disputing the views of Mimamsakas and championing
common sense. Throughout the chapter, two views of sentence meaning
are in view, (a) a "Bhatta" radically
referentialist theory (due to Kumarila) that a word refers
independently of sentential context, and (b) a
"Prabhakara" holistic view that has the sentence
as a whole as informational, not words independently of sentential
context. Although Gangesa endorses the
Bhatta view that a factual relation, not directly
expressed, accounts for sentential unity, often he frames a point
using the Prabhakara theory.



Vatsyayana and company discuss word meaning in terms of
possible referents (*Nyaya-sutra* 2.2.59-69),
(i) the individual, for example, 'cow' used for a
particular cow, (ii) the universal, cowhood, what all cows have in
common, and (iii) "shape," *akrti*, as
with a cow-shaped pastry. The settled view is that all three are
generally meant in a single usage, with predominance varying with
context. Against this background, Vacaspati (1979) explores five
views of sentential meaning including both (a) the "theory of
the connection of the referents," the radically, incrementally
referentialist view espoused by Bhattas and
Naiyayikas, *abhihitanvaya-vada*, and (b) the
"theory of reference of the connected," "holistic
reference," the Prabhakara view of reference as
occurring at the level of the sentence,
*anvitabhidhana-vada*. In his
*Nyaya-sutra* work (1996), Vacaspati imports the
Bhatta view, according to which sentence meaning is
derivative from the reference of individual words and other semantic
elements taken together, with the overall connection, *anvaya*,
provided by the fact (if the statement is true) of the words'
referents being in relation, the "truth-maker." Later
Naiyayikas such as Gangesa follow him, although, to
repeat, Gangesa often talks about sentential unity
presupposing the Prabhakara view that the component words do
not individually have referential power but only as connected
grammatically, with a complex object or fact as that which is referred
to by the unifying sentence.



"Expectation,"
*akanksa*, "(*verbal*)
expectation," is the first of three sentential conditions taken
up. After rejecting four attempts to define the phenomenon in its
relevance for the epistemology of testimony, Gangesa
endorses the following (2020: 1259):



> 
> 
> Expectation amounts to incompleteness of reference, specifically, an
> incompleteness of \(Y\) with respect to \(X\); that is to say, without
> \(Y\) there would be, with respect to \(X\), no generation of
> awareness of an overall connection among the meanings of words and
> other factors taken in their native senses. Words (and other semantic
> units) used as nouns, case endings, verbal roots, verbal endings,
> finite verbs, and words in declension are such that, in a particular
> instance, without the one or the other, there would not be awareness
> generated of an overall connection among all the referents mutually,
> taking everything in its native sense.
> 
> 
> 



Lists of words do not fulfill the "expectation" condition,
for example, "Cow, being-the-object-of-an-action (as designated
by a word in the accusative case), bringing." Gangesa
admits that it "could be an instance of knowledge of verbal
meaning, but it would not produce knowledge of an overall
connection" (2020: 1547). Nevertheless, with him the expectation
is also something *felt* by a hearer, whose grasping the
reference of one word with its case ending (which also refers,
according to him) leads to expectation not just of another word but of
its referent. Thus expectation is a psychological property mediated by
words in reference to a fact. It is embedded in a subject's
understanding of words as united by their references comprising the
fact that is captured by a statement. Sometimes
Gangesa's dialectic, particularly in several sections
on verbal compounds and the like at the end of the chapter, trades on
the difficulty of finding a factual item to which a word would
correspond in its real-world relationality as implicated in the
incorporation of the word grammatically into a declarative sentence.
Thus while the "expectation" seems to work as a matter of
grammar, the "grammar" is thought to reflect a fact that
the words pick out.



Gangesa often refers to the problem of the word list that
is not unified, several times appearing to reinstate a grammatical
understanding of "expectation" as opposed to how
objects--referents--are related in fact. And once (2020:
1547) this comes right at the heart of his endorsement of
"incremental referentialism" as opposed to the
connectivist, "holistic" variety of the
Prabhakara. He says, " ... a word endowed with
expectation and meeting the other requirements is what brings about a
particular presentation of an overall connection." This seems to
be the answer to the problem of the list whose items do not show
grammatical connections although they are just what the things
themselves demand to constitute a fact, a truth-maker: "Pot,
being-the-object-of-an-action (as designated by the accusative case),
bringing, action." The endings on the words in the list do not
refer to relations that connect up the other things properly. This is
the difference. Each item listed appears incomplete because, for
example, reference to bringing demands not only the meaning of a word
as something that could be brought but a word in the accusative case
with the case ending indicating that it is in the right kind of
relation objectively. Every base word is by itself
"unsaturated," to use the Fregean term, referring to
something in the world that has to hook up with something else
referred to, if there is to be a sentence and statement,
*abhihitanvaya*.



In addition to a section devoted to a second sentential condition,
"semantic fit," *yogyata*, Gangesa
provides a brief definition in other places in part because its
violation is commonly taken to be the trigger to take a word in a
secondary way, not directing us to a "native" referent (he
also advances a slightly different view of the trigger which
we'll review later). For example (2020: 1228):



> 
> 
> Semantic fit (*yogyata*) amounts to there being no
> legitimate block to understanding a statement.
> 
> 
> 



Included in this is the "Gettier case" of a parrot's
saying something that a hearer \(H\) would take as true if \(H\) did
not know the sounds were from a parrot. In the scenario, \(H\) fails
to put together the sounds as words and as a sentence and does not
acquire testimonial knowledge. Knowing that the sounds are from a
parrot is a block. The *yogyata* condition is defined
negatively and is commonly invoked as a kind a coherence check. And
here Gangesa concurs.



He resists, however, the application of the principle to a Vedic
injunction to perform a sacrifice whose result is supposed to be in
the distant future, going to heaven, say, which wouldn't make
sense, the ritualists reason, without elliptical reference to
*apurva*, a magical "Unseen Force,"
*adrsta*, that connects the completion of the
sacrifice with its goal. According to Gangesa, no
*apurva* is thereby referenced (etymologically that which
is "not understood before" comprehension of an injunction
as applying to oneself, say Mimamsakas) and if there
is "Unseen Force" created by a sacrifice or another good
work it, like all karma, inheres in the self of the performer,
affecting, in particular, his or her next incarnation. Thus again he
endorses a doctrine of the *Nyaya-sutra*, which also
rejects *apurva* but accepts karma as popularly
understood.



The *Jewel*'s section on "contiguity" is
short, and special topics such as ellipsis, etymology versus
reconventionalization (only lotuses are referred to in Sanskrit by the
compound '*panka-ja*',
"mud-born," although plants like the water-lily are also
born in mud), homonymy, and others are treated more or less briefly.
But the topic of injuction looms large in the chapter overall along
with a concern with Mimamsaka views of moral authority
as fundamenally a matter of Vedic injunction.



Injunctions are commonly formed in Sanskrit through use of the
optative verbal form, and a central question is just what does the
optative affix mean. That one should do such and such seems to be the
core meaning about which everyone agrees, but different analyses are
given of the idea that one should do such and such. A central thesis
is that a certain kind of knowledge both prompts and guides any action
that is voluntary, *pravrtti*, whether in everyday life
or with a ritual. So now since rituals are actions, some of these
action-prompting thoughts are prompted by comprehending Vedic
sentences. Gangesa's effort is often directed to
integrating our understanding of Vedic and everyday language, and he
uses his criticisms of Mimamsa analyses of ritual
actions to illumine the voluntary in general along with "desire
to do," effort, and the knowledge that directs action,
including, especially, knowledge of a "means to what's
wanted," *ista-sadhanata*, an idea
hotly debated by all factions of Mimamsa. A basic
division in the school occurs on the issue whether means of
accomplishing what is enjoined, or contemplated because desired,
*ista-sadhanata*, is part of the content
of an injunction (as itself implicated in any "desire to
do" as the desire's cognitive content).
Bhattas insist that it is, but Prabhakaras
demur, claiming that such is known by a separate intellectual act of
"presumption," *arthapatti*. For
Prabhakaras, it is simply that something "ought to be
done," its *karyata*, that is the meaning of an
injunction, with the means to what's wanted known by
presumption. Gangesa rehearses extensive arguments on both
sides, and seems generally to favor the positions of the
Prabhakaras.



In the end, Gangesa champions an understanding of the
injunction as expressing a certain kind of knowledge-prompting action,
especially "what one ought to do,"
*karyata*, which he sees, agreeing with the
Prabhakara, as the meaning of an injunction. That is to say,
for him, "what one ought to do" is the meaning in part.
But he also agrees with the Bhatta that a means has
to be known or made known, and he adds another factor, effort, and the
requirement that the action be known as accomplishable by one's
own effort.



An ethical view centered on Vedic injunctions is embedded in
Mimamsaka attitudes, and Gangesa shows
sympathy for the life regulated by ritual, in particular daily rituals
that require no special qualifications. But his own ethical outlook is
nowhere explicitly stated. At places he shows affinity for a
soteriological ethics implicit in a mystical way of knowing the
"truth" concerning the "self,"
*atman*, a self as experienced in a special kind of yogic
meditation. At several places, he quotes the *Bhagavad
Gita*, apparently endorsing its karma-yoga teaching of
benevolent action. Despite sympathy for Mimamsaka
positions, when it comes to the striking and longlasting conflicts,
ethical and otherwise, between ritualists and mystics/yogins in the
subcontinent, Gangesa seems to line up with the
yogins--like, it should be noted, Gautama, the author of the
*Nyaya-sutra* and his commentators. Indeed, although
airing Mimamsa opinion apparently with much
sympathy, Gangesa sees injunctions to perform rituals as
trumped by yogic teachings of the way to self-discovery. But also like
many Naiyayikas before him, Gangesa appears to try to
find middle ground in ethics as in other areas of theory. Surely, he
is not a radical critic of the ritualists' moral codes, more
likely one of their number trying to nudge colleagues into broader
points of view.


### 7.3 "Indirect indication," *laksana*



The longest section in the testimony chapter and indeed in the
entirety of the *Jewel* is devoted to
*laksana*, which is a second mode of meaning
dependent on the first or primary called "denotation,"
*abhidhana*, i.e. reference. *Nyaya-sutra*
2.2.62 gives about a dozen examples of semantic transference, for
example, "The stands are shouting," where it is not the
stands but the people in them who are shouting. And with "Usher
in the sticks," it is ascetics who carry walking sticks who are
to be ushered in. In this example, the primary, denotative meaning is
not entirely transferred since the ascetics would carry their sticks
in with them into the dining room, it is presumed. The most common
example in the *Jewel* is "The village is
in-the-Ganga," where we understand the village to be
on the river's *bank* (the indicated) because we know
that no village is actually built *in* the Ganga,
which is very deep.



The inherited view is that a violation of *yogyata*,
"semantic fit," triggers a hearer to understand a
secondary sense. But one of the first comments Gangesa
makes about *laksana* rejects this view,
bringing up the phenomenon's relevance to the debate about
sentential unity, *anvaya*. He writes (2020: 1250):



> 
> 
> ... [*laksana*] is not triggered by a
> violation of semantic fit (as is commonly held) but rather by a
> violation of *anvaya* itself, of the overall connection of
> words, the overall construction. For example, by force of context we
> understand from a violation of *anvaya* with the word
> 'stick' in connection with 'usher in'
> ("Usher in the sticks") that the speaker's purpose
> is to feed certain ascetics (who typically carry walking sticks) who
> would be ushered in along with their sticks.
> 
> 
> 
> In a case where a secondary usage does not involve entire
> relinquishment of the primary meaning but retains it in part, as (with
> the previous example but also) in "The umbrella-holders are
> coming," it is precisely the context that tells us that the
> coming is on the part of *an* umbrella-holder *and also*
> those who are *not* umbrella-holders (important people over
> whose heads a large umbrella is being held). Because of the violation,
> the agency of the movement is understood. There would be a violation
> of *anvaya* in taking the meaning to apply only to a
> holder.
> 
> 
> 



Since it is entirely possible that several umbrella-holders are
coming, it must be something broader than "semantic fit"
that is violated in this and similar cases.



"Indirect indication" does a lot of work for
referentialism, since there are many, many examples where no direct
referent is meant but a hearer comprehends a statement and acquires
testimonial knowledge. And although Gangesa resists
overemployment of the notion, he uses it extensively. Further examples
concern the meaning of certain Sanskrit compounds and grammatical
number, when, for instance, a plural form is used while what is meant
is a single something or other.



Naiyayikas are hardly the only theorists who employ the tool.
Some Mimamsakas argue that reference is to the
universal, the individual being indicated by
*laksana*. Gangesa considers the
view that it is the universal that is known by
*laksana*, not the individual, the universal
as specifying the character of the individual. On the dispute about
reference to universals or individuals, Naiyayikas want to agree
with all parties, it seems. Importantly, Gangesa sees
reference to an individual as invariably to an individual of a kind,
for example "(A) cow," would be to one qualified by
cowhood: "the referent is an entity as qualified by a
universal" (2020: 1576). To focus just on the cowhood would be
"indirect indication," he says, with the indicator being
the individual cow referred to. Prabhakaras tend to find no
use for *laksana*, since according to them
reference is holistic, a matter of the entire sentence, and the
meanings of the individual words are united in the hearer's
mind. Thus it is the radical referentialists who seem to need it
most.



In a remarkable passage, Gangesa puts forth a core argument
for *laksana* (2020: 1631):



> 
> 
> **Objection**:
>   
> 
> Reference (*sakti* = *abhidha*) is alone
> sufficient (with no need to posit an additional mode of meaning),
> since the conventional practice that supports anyone's understanding
> meaning is common to both (what you call) primary and indicated
> senses. For, the words (that make up a sentence and statement) having
> been put together, an etymological analysis can inform us of the
> overall connection because *sakti*, the power of
> reference, has accomplished a setting in mind, or settings in mind,
> produced by the words. Otherwise, there could be neither testimony as
> a knowledge source nor speaker's intention, since this power
> governs and regulates them both.
> 
> 
> 
> Moreover, if the speaker's intention is understood (by anyone
> hearing "The village is in-the-Ganga"), then
> only reference need be imagined as accounting for the communication
> (no indirect meaning, *laksana*), since that
> is the economical position. Like homonyms such as
> '*aksa*' ("eye/dice") and
> company, multiplicity of meaning is alone the right view. No
> uneconomical additional mode need be supposed.
> 
> 
> 
> **Gangesa**:
>   
> 
> We answer. If we had to imagine that the word
> 'Ganga' is used (as you claim) for the
> thousands of things that could be indicated by using the word for such
> a thing as a bank, then in order to understand a usage we would have
> to be familiar with another conventional practice of older persons
> (who have taught us the conventions of language) in each case among
> all the innumerable things that could be indicated. And so this view
> is uneconomical, and it is not borne out by experience.
> 
> 
> 
> Indirect meaning (*laksana*), on the other
> hand, is single, unitary, by nature to be related to what is picked
> out. And it does not require us to be familiar with another
> conventional practice of of older persons having the indicated as
> intentional object. Thus to have an economical position, it alone is
> appropriately posited.
> 
> 
> 



Without *laksana*, reference would have to do
too much work and could not tie use of a word to a certain type of
thing. It is to save the fixity of the referential tie that
*laksana* has to be posited. Its usefulness as
a concept depends on its flexibility.



Gangesa also swims against the mainstream by eschewing
knowledge of speaker's intention to explain the triggering of
*laksana*. He points out that typically one
has to understand a statement before knowing the speaker's
intention in making it. A hearer's knowing the speaker's
intention is not a necessary factor in the generation of the
hearer's testimonial knowledge through indirect indication, he
says, but he admits that knowing a speaker's intention could be
sufficient.



About the principles of transference, he has little to say other than
to point to "relevant context" and "being set in
mind quickly." Indirect indication is preceded by comprehension
of conventional meaning and is directed toward something that is
*related* to the conventional meaning. But some cases,
"frozen metaphors," are reconventionalizations where the
primary, original meaning has been forgotten. A "windfall"
seems to be a good example in modern English. There is a long and
intricate discussion of this. Can we refer to a water-lily by using
the word 'mud-born'? No, says Gangesa. The word
has been reconventionalized to mean in a primary way only lotuses and
if used for a water-lily we would have a case of
*laksana*.