[Buddha-l] Non-arising

[Dan Lusthaus]

Hi David,

Thanks for your comments on logic.

There has been some debate about whether "Indian logic" is deductive or 
inductive (the majority opinion, I think, going with inductive). While there 
is some value in thinking about the Indians are doing in such terms, over 
the years I have come to the conclusion that this sort of approach is 
reductionistic and misleading -- it presumes we have the the basic and 
correct categories, and we can measure how successful the Indians are by how 
well they approximate what we do, or how well what they do can be recast in 
our terms. For years scholars applied the nomenclature of western syllogisms 
to the parts of an Indian syllogism, so that one had a probandum, middle 
term, major term, etc. -- but this terminology never fit properly, so the 
Indian "proofs" were eventually recast, even if subtley, as Western 
syllogisms -- missing their point (and scholars today are still largely 
mystified about why Dignaga insisted on the Examples section. See, e.g., 
Ernst Steinkellner and Shoryu Katsura, eds. On the Role of the Example 
(drstanta) in Classical Indian Logic. (WSTB 58). Wien: ATBS, 2004, pp. xii + 
275

One reaction, as mentioned, was to deny that what the Indians were doing was 
a syllogism of any sort (restricting the sense of syllogism to what 
developed from Aristotle through the Middle Ages in the West). Its corollary 
denial was that Indians were not doing "logic" but "debate," and their texts 
were "debate manuals," not logic texts.

Another common reductive move is to admit somewhere in the first or second 
paragraph of an article that converting Indian argument into mathematical 
notation is problematic -- and then proceeding through most of the rest of 
the piece to do exactly that, ignoring their own warning (and proving the 
caution was warranted in the process, without acknowledging or recognizing 
that).

> It would helpful if you could provide me some references to the
> literature. My specific interest would be the comparative analysis of
> historical treatments of so-called Buddhist logic and modern treatments
> of logic in a more general sense of the term.

Perhaps if Richard H. comes out of hiding, he can provide a more extensive 
bibliography.

Some classic works, not necessarily restricted to Buddhism:

Daniel H.H. Ingalls. Materials for the Study of Navya-Nyaya Logic. 
originally published by Harvard, now in several Indian reprints.

Karl H. Potter (ed.) (1977). Indian Metaphysics and Epistemology: The 
Tradition of Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika Up to Gaṅgeśa. Motilal Banarsidass rpt.

Richard S. Y. Chi. Buddhist Formal Logic: a Study of Dignaga's Hetucakra and 
K'uei-Chi's Great Commentary on the Nyayapravesa. Motilal Banarsidass 1990 
rpt. [with dozens of pages of charts of symbolic logic]

a bit more recent: Claus Oetke. "Indian Logic and Indian Syllogism," 
Indo-Iranian Journal, 46, 53-69, 2003.

And if you can read German, Oetke's Vier Studien zum altindischen 
Syllogismus.

That's starters...

Dan