SAṀŚAYA EVAṀ PRAMĀ

Abstract

The nature, conditions, limits and validity of knowledge are perennial issues of contemplation in epistemic debates. In both Indian and Western Epistemology, epistemologists right since the beginning have deliberated upon ‘what knowledge is not’ and ‘what knowledge is’. As such knowledge and its anti-thesis, both are equally important in epistemic discussions. Saṁśaya or Doubt has been in both East and West, a catalyst to initiate philosophical reflection on the nature of knowledge.

In Nyāya, Saṁśaya is one of the 16 categories and how and why it affects the analyses of pramāṇa, prameya, and pramā has been a hot topic for classical and subsequent scholars. In Mīmāṁsā, later Vedānta, later Buddhism, śaṅkā, its nature and its implications for the possibility and impossibility of knowledge has a long history of reflection. Thus in order to understand the nature of pramāṇa and pramā, an understanding of apramā and its most important category saṁśaya, is imperative. Equally important is the need to understand the relationship between these two.

In order to understand the relationship between knowledge and its anti-thesis, knowledge and doubt, one yet again needs to have a survey of the classical debates and issues in 'theory of knowledge' as it developed from Greek to Analytical traditions. How doubt ignited the philosophical enquires in Greek and Modern Philosophy, could be seen in the thoughts of Plato, Pyrrho and Rene Descartes and hismethodic skepticism. Hume’s revolutionary topsy-turvying the entire flair of epistemic discussion in modern philosophy, whereby he categorically terms 'universal and necessary' and factual knowledge an impossibility, is indubitably a milestone in the history of Epistemology. It would be an ad-nauseam repetition to state here that how Kant’s slumber was broken by such devastating doubt of Hume and how he endeavors to show the possibility of certain knowledge.