User:Hbmartin/Overview of Indian and Greek Development of Logic and Language
Please note that this article is not yet complete
In mankind's eternal quest to understand the world around him, he has always turned to a select set of essential elements to gain knowledge of that world. Among the most important of these is language, which has been recognized by philosophers across cultures and time periods as a crucial component in our attempt to grasp that which we call reality. Throughout history, we have attempted to understand, define, and communicate these concepts of reality through this framework. All conscious thoughts are carried out within language, all rational ideas which we form must be posited through language, and every element of philosophy must encoded and transited through language. The importance of language to philosophy has recently been enumerated through various methods. However, the purpose of this paper is to analyze such a relationship by comparing Greek philosophy with Indian philosophy. The value of this is that it provides a succinct yet poignant demonstration of the thesis, and illustrates it with two vibrant and distinct philosophical traditions.
Comparative philosophy is a rather recent movement that seeks to compare the ideas of different philosophical system not merely for the sake of comparison, but also to create a new set of analytical tools with which to develop philosophy. It is not merely a method of comparing pre-existing philosophies, but it serves as a philosophy unto itself. It makes great strides in its attempt to deal with what is perhaps the greatest obstacle when looking at cross-cultural systems, as opposed to divergent systems within the same culture, the problem of accurately understanding the original intent of the speaker in spite of vast linguistic and cultural chasms.
In order to begin analyzing these concepts, we must first define them with a sufficient degree of clarity to avoid ambiguity. The word language itself can be ambiguous, and given the continual modern movements of lexicon deconstruction, even it must be carefully defined. For the purposes of this paper, language shall be defined as the cultural construct which forms the basis for speech and writing. Among the constituents of language are syntax, grammar, and vocabulary which, when taken together, are capable of communicating concepts and thoughts. However, even in presenting these definitions, care must be taken to avoid bias in the definition of language, as Eastern and Western tradition both articulate the role differently.
A problem that arises in any paper analyzing language, particularly one that draws its sources from texts in philosophers who wrote and spoke other languages, is the problem of translation. No one could reasonably deny that the full extent of understanding the original author intended to communicate in his writing is lost or marred to some extent in the process of translation. Nuances in word definitions, cultural values, and circumstantial understanding are all lost to a degree when a work is translated, and nowhere does that create greater problems than when language is analyzed with three distinct languages are involved and texts spanning millennia. In his essay on comparative philosophy, Panikkar writes, "Every language is somewhat autonomous and internally complete ... Translation means finding the corresponding equivalences (homeomorphic equivalents) between languages"(125). However, often such equivalences do not exist, at least not in a directly equivalent form. Aside from gaining an indepth knowledge of each language in question, the only immediately practical solution is to be aware of the existence of such bias and handle translated texts with a special degree of care.
In his treatise Organon, Aristotle gives the foundation to the Western understanding of language in a philosophical context, "Spoken words are symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words ... Every sentence has meaning, not as being the natural means by which a physical faculty is realized, but, as we have said, by convention. Yet every sentence is not a proposition ... Let us therefore dismiss all other types of sentences but the proposition"(40-42). In the Nyâya-Sûtras, Gotama says, "Inference gives us the knowledge of an unperceived object through knowledge of an object which is perceived. Similarly, verbal testimony enables us to acquire the knowledge of an unperceived through the knowledge of a word which is perceived. The verbal testimony is, therefore, supposed by some to be inference, as the object revealed by both is unperceived"(36-37).
Of the numerous facets of philosophy that could be dealt with in such comparisons, logic stands out as an aspect of particular value in comparisons. Logic is one of the hallmarks of philosophical thought, as Ben-Ami says "Well-articulated reasoning, as I have said, is the test of philosophy. The clearest overt sign of such reasoning is the adoption of logical rules, that is, rules by which to ensure the strictness of the reasoning"(21). Thus it serves as a crystallization of a certain aspect of the particular philosophy to which it belongs. As such it serves as a significant point which can be briefly and effectively analyzed in light of two contrasting schools of philosophy.
It might also be asserted that logic plays an integral and essential role to the development of other aspects of philosophy. However, this idea betrays a lack of cross-cultural understanding of the philosophical traditions outside our own Western one. While it is true that in the Greek world, many aspects of philosophy are developed within the framework of Aristotelian logic, this is not the case in the ancient Indian schools. Quite the contrary, "The more orthodox or believing philosophers kept such analytic reasoning (Nyâya logic) in its place by insisting that is could be refuted and therefore could not reach absolute truth, which only the authority of scripture or intuition could establish"(Ben-Ami, 18). It is important that the culture biases be recognized and dealt with, since it may be especially tempting to dismiss any non-logical philosophical development as invalid.
Logic is especially well suited to be used in comparison involving language, since it parallels the purpose and form of language in many ways. However, it is important to first recognize that logic must be carried out through language, and as such even in a strictly specified form is affected by the ambiguities and biases of that language. Nevertheless, logic, like language, is a means to expressing a thought and must follow strict syntax. The key distinguishing feature is that logic is must arrive at a certain conclusion by the laws that govern. Aristotle calls it, "a discourse in which, certain things being stated, something other than what is stated follows of necessity from their being so"(66).
Aristotle created the the first formal logic system in the Western world ex nihilo. At least, we have no record of any system that approaches anything near the complexity and comprehensiveness of the Aristotelian logic. This is not to say that there were no divergent philosophies of logic after Aristotle. Indeed, "By the Hellenistic period, interest in both Plato and Aristotle, which was typical in the classic milieu of the polis, had waned ... Epicurean logicians stripped Aristotelian logic of its universals and reshaped it into an empiricist form"(McEvilley, 512). Despite these challenges to its dominance, Aristotle's system remained largely dominant throughout the following millennia.
The history of Nyâyan logic is more difficult to trace. Philosophical historiography is consistently challenged in its attempts to date documents, differentiate original authorship from subsequent commentary, and map the evolution of the various schools within the Indian tradition. Although the date of the beginning of Indian philosophy and religion, for the two were intertwined for many centuries, is frequently placed at around the eighth century B.C.E., the Nyâyan school is dated around the fourth century C.E. Ben-Ami writes that atomism, "appears relatively early among the Jains and in two Hindu schools, the Nyaya (School of Logic or School of Theory of Argument) and the Vaisheshika (School Referring to Individuality). Their respective founders are namedas Gautama (note: also spelled Gotama) and Kanada (early commentators give the author of the Nyaya Sutras the name Akshapada, literally "eyes in his feet"). The origins of Nyaya and Vaisheshika go back more or less to the beginning of the first century A.D. - as usual in India, dates are problematic. By somewhere close to the fourth century C.E. the teachings had taken the authoritative form in which it appears in the Nyaya Sutras (which may have been based on a preceding text supplemented by interpolations of a later date)"(181).
Having examined contrast between the Greek and Indian history of logic, without having yet fully examined them, the history each tradition's respective of language can also be examined. According to McEvilley, "In the Rg Veda and the Upanisads language was worshipped as the goddess Vāc, from whom both those bodies of texts are said to have been born. Among the Greek philosophers, similarly, Logos, "word" or "speech," means "the governing principle of the universe," a law "universal and all-pervading" ... But subsequently the two cultures developed the theme of language somewhat differently. The idea of language became steadily secularized in the Greek tradition and steadily sacralized in the Indian ... The apparently earlier development of grammatical thought in India than in Greece may speculatively be connected with the social function it was performing"(672). The social functions included an elitist maintenance of the caste structure, but more important ensuring the utter accuracy of Vedic rites and texts.
Given this framework, the foundation of Nyâyan logic can be more thoroughly developed. The core of Nyâyan logic consists of a five part syllogism of analogous particulars, in contrast with Aristotle's three part syllogism in universal principles. Gotama writes that, "The members (of a syllogism) are proposition, reason, example, applications, and conclusion. 1. Proposition. - This hill is fiery, 2. Reason. - Because it is smoky, 3. Example. - Whatever is smoky is fiery, as a kitchen, 4. Application. - So is this hill (smoky), 5. Conclusion. - Therefore this hill is fiery"(10). It should be immediately apparent that this is an inductive logic system, one which generalizes based on a given set of particulars.
The problems of inductive logic are centered on it's inability to provide the same certainty many associate with deductive reasoning. It must be remembered that even the Nyayan tradition holds the Vedas as the final source of truth, "The so-called untruth in the Veda comes from some defect in the act, operator or materials of sacrifice ... Therefore there is no untruth in the Veda"(39-40), and as such logic did not need to be absolute or universal in the Indian philosophical tradition. Furthermore, McEvilley comments on the problems of induction by saying that, "The Naiyayikas 'viewed the examples as providing evidence for pervasion'- that is, for the formation of a category generalization which, being based on generalizing from examples, only really applies to those examples and hence is less ambitious than the universal proposition- but they generally admit that the statement of pervasion is always fallible"(512).
The key insight is that Nyayan logic does not seek certainty of reasoning in the same sense that the Greek logic does. This is likely due not only to differing cultural values (i.e. the acceptance of scriptures in the Indian tradition), but also to the intuitive manner in which inductive reason is used in normal activities, as demonstrated by Hume. The Nyaya-Sutras are also careful to articulate the the acceptable ways of knowing, "Perception, inference, comparison, and word (verbal testimony) - these are the means of right knowledge"(2). The key insight here is that sufficient justification required of a syllogism is fundamentally different. If the the components of the Nyayan syllogism meet the necessary justifications as specified by Gotama, then the syllogism as whole is true.
Aristotle stands in opposition to this view, and says that, "in every syllogism one of the premisses must be affirmative, and universality must be present: unless one of the premisses is universal either a syllogism is not possible, or it will refer to the subject proposed, or the original position will be begged"(80). Instead, Aristotle insists on his three part syllogism, "We must first state the subject of our inquiry and the faculty to which it belongs: its subject is demonstration and the faculty that carries it out demonstrative science ... (requiring) a premiss, a term, and a syllogism"(65).