CRITIQUE OF KNOWLEDGE

 

The contact of the sense organs with the object is a condition of perception as mentioned by the Naiyayikas,[62] although, according to the Jainas, such a contact is not necessary in The case of visual experience. Helracandra said that objects and light are not conditions of experience, because of lack of coordinance between the two.[63]But it is not denied that they are remote conditions, like time and space, which subserve the subsidence and destruction of the knowledge obscuring Karmas. They are in directly useful to the visual organs, like collyrium. Perception of a particular object is, in fact, according to the Jainas. due to the destruction and subsidence of the relevant knowledge-obscuring Karmas, Jnanavaranya Karma. This implies a psychological factor.  An appropriate physical condition in the destruction and subsidence of knowledge-obscuring Karma is a necessary factor of the perceptual experience. It also depends on the competency of the appropriate psychical factor. The psychic factor of selective attention is needed before we get the sense experience. This is possible when all psychic impediments are partially or wholly removed through the destruction and subsidence of knowledge-obscuring Karma.[64] Such a psychic factor may be described as a mental set which is necessary for the perceptllal experience.  Emphasis on the mental factor in perception has been mentioned in the Upanisad also. In Western thought Aristotle was clearly a-vvare that perception is not possible merely through the sense organs.[65] For him, perception consists in being moved and affected. Sense perception does not arise from the senses themselves, as organs of sense perception are potentially and not actually.  Locke writes that, whatever alterations are made in the body, if they reach not the mind whatever impressions are made in the outward part, if they are not taken notice of within, there is no perception. For we may: burn our body with no other effect than it does a billet unless the motion be continued to the brain; and there the sense of hurt or idea of pain be produced in the mind, wherein consists actual perception.[66] In modern psychology, Prof. Woodworth gives formula 'W-S-O-R-W' for explaining the fascinating problem of how an individual perceives an objective fact. At any given moment a man is set for the present situation. He might be listening to a low hum just as a smooth tone. But if he tries to make out what the sound can be, he is more likely to perceive it as the hum of an aeroplane.[67]

 

According to the Jainas, sense perception can be analyzed into four stages as (i) avagraha,[68] (ii) that (iii) avdya, and (iv) dharana . These stages of sense experience arise through the operation of the sense organs and the mind. The earlier forms like Avagraha, develop into the subsequent forms, and all of them partake of the same essential nature.[69] Avagraha refers to the first simple and primitive stage of experience.  This may be said to be merely the stage o£ sensation. Next comes Iha. In this stage there is a mental element, and it refers to the integrative factors of the mind.  In the third stage, we get a clear and decisive cognition of the object. This is Avaya. It implies the presence of the inferential element in perception. Dharana is retention of what is already experienced in the perceptual cognition. In fact, it is not actually a stage of perceptlial experience although it is included in perceptual experience.

 

Psychologists point out that perception is not a simple process nor is it merely the sensedatum. It consists in the organization and interpretation of sensations. It is 'knowledge about' and not merely 'knowledge of acquaintance', as William James said.  Perception involves certain psychological factors like association, discrimination, integration, assimilation and recognition. Perception also involves inference. We perceive a table, and when are perceive the object as a table, we recognize it and we get a defined picture of the object. As Angell said, perception is a synthetic process, and the combination of the new and the old is an essential part of the synthesis. This process of combining has often called.  by early psychologists, 'apperception'. This problem will be referred to later. Structural psychologists like Wundt and Titchner analyzed perception into sensations. They said that perceptions combine and fuse together a number of sensory elements as in the process of forming H2O. It is not merely a sum of sensations.  It gives a new psychological product, a creative synthesis, Like the mental chemistry of J. S. MILL. Later, the Gestalt psychologists gave a new turn to the psychology of perception. They hold that every perceptual experience is an unanalyzed whole; it has a quality of its own. The Jainas were concerned with giving a logical and episteirological analysis of the perceptual experience-There-fore, they were more interested in giving the conditions and the stages of knowledge. Their analysis was more on the basis of logic, of coirlmon sense and on insight; and yet, the stages of perception mentiorled by the Jaina philosophers very much Correspond to the analysis of perception, given by the traditional psychology and the structuralist.

 

Avagraha-Sensation: Avagraha is the first stage of sense experience. It may be said to be analogous to sensation. It is the level of sensation in which perceptual experience can be analyzed. Umasvatl defines avagraha as implicit awareness of the object of sense. He says that grahana (graspmg), dlocana (holding). and avadharana (prehending), are synonyms of avagraha.[70] It Is indeterminate. The object presented through sense stimulation is cognized in an undefined and indeterminate way. In this stage, we are merely aware of the presence of the object without any association, without cognizing the specific features. and in fact without even being aware of its association and name.[71] In the Avasyaka-Niryukti, Avagraha has been defined as awareness of the sense data.[72] Jinabhadra insists that Avagraha is indeterminate in its character. He is not prepared to consider that it has reference to any specific features of the object, because even relative reference is enough to promote the experience to the stage of Avaya.

 

Sensations, as William James said, are the first things in Consciousness. This does not mean that all our experience is only fusing and compounding of sensations. Our experience can be analyzed into sensations, and these form the elements of our sensory experience. As Stout says, sensations are of the nature of immediate experience, like the experience of cold : and warm, a specific tinge of pair, or a touch located in the body or at the surface of the body. The term Sensation is also extended to cover the visual data, sound, taste, and smell which may enter into immediate experience. Sensations vary not only with the variations in the presented objects but also in accordance with the state of the individual.[73] During the period of two hundred years between the publication of Lockes Essay and of James's Principles, two further characteristics, new largely of antiquarian interest, were gradually attributed to sensation.  Sensations were held to be the simple elements of which complex ideas are formed, as well as the matter or crude stuff out of 

which the associative machinery fashions the organized and meaningful world of everyday experience.[74]

 

Avagraha has been further distinguished into two stages: i) vyanjanavagraha and ii) arthavagraha.[75] Vyanjanavagraha is the earlier stage. It is a physiological stimlulus condition of the sensation of the immediate experience . In the Visesavasyaka Bhasya we get a description of Vyanjanavagraha.  There it is said that what reveals an object, as a lamp reveals a jar, is Vyanjanavagraha. It is, only the relation of the sense organ and the object in the form of sense stimulation such as sound.[76] In the Nandisutra.  we get an example of the earthen pot and drops of water, mallaka-drstanta.  It gives a description of the state of Vyanjanavagraha. A clay pot is to be filled with water. In the beginning, when a person pours out one drop of water, it is absorbed and there is no sign of existence of water.  He goes on pouring drops of water and at a certain stage a drop of water will be visible. Then the water begins to accu-mulate. We may call this stage when the water becomes visible the 'threshold of saturation'. The drops of water below the threshold are all absorbed, similarly, a person who is asleep receives sound stimulation successively for some time.  The sound atoms reach the ears. InnurnerabJe instances have to occur before the ears become full of sound atoms. At a particular stage, the person becomes conscious of the sound.  So far he was not aware of the sound although the auditory stimulation was pouring in.  We may call this stage of first awareness 'the threshold of awareness'. The sensation of sound starts the moment the threshold is crossed and the become aware of the sound.  That is the immediate experience of sound, arthavagraha. So far there was no awareness of the sound although the conditions of stimulation for such awareness were operating below the threshold. ' The stimulus was pouring in constantly although no awareness of sound was possible up to a particular stage.  Such a preparator; stage of sensation presents physiological and stimulus conditions for the sensational stage. It is indeterminate and undefined.  Vyanjanavagrah has been just described as implicit awareness, the physiological and stimulus condition of awareness. It gradually develops into awareness and gives the sensation.  It is very often described as 'contact awareness'. However, it would not be appropriate to call this 'awareness' although there is the stimulation flowing in. Awareness gradually emerges later, through he accumulation of stimulation. It is merely potentiality of awareness, or implicit awareness.

 

As soon as a person becomes conscious, the stage of vyanjana vagraha is over, and it transforms itself into arthavagraha.  This maybe called the stage of sensation proper. It is awareness of the object. In the Nandisutra there is a statement that, in this stage, we are aware of the sound as 'this is sound or 'colour' or 'touch, but not exactly cognize the nature of the sound, colour or touch.[78] But in the Visesavasyakabhasya, this kind of determinate awareness, as 'this is sound' is denied in the stage of sensation.  It is merely awareness of the occurrence of the cognition because-it lasts only for one moment.[79] It is, therefore, indeterminate and indefinite. It does not reach the stage of cognition of specific content.

 

On the basis of such a distinction regarding the two stages of Avagraha. it is stated that VyanJanavagraha lasts for indefinite moments, gradually proceeding towards the level of consciousness.[80] The physiological and stimulus conditions of awareness in the form of sensation continue to accumulate for a number of moments till the threshold of awareness is reached. But once the stage of awareness in the form of sensation is reached.  it lasts only for an instant. Which is an indivisible point of time and is infinitesimal.

 

Western psychologists, like Stout. describe sensations as something of the nature of immediately experienced warm or cold, a specific tinge of pain. touch located in or at the surface of the body rather than anything outside.  Psychologists have extended the term to cover the visual data. the sounds and the smells that may enter into immediate experience. Stout further says that all recognition of sensation as of a certain kind. and all apprehension of it as continuing to be of the same nature or as changing in nature at different moments. involves a reference beyond this experience.  For, sensation is immediate experience and nothing more. At any one moment there is no other immediate experience except just the experience itself at the moment.1 Sensations are genuine and factual. While mental constructs are spurious and artificial.  Sensations are new-uncontaminated and untouched by those mental processes which render ideas suspect. They are not structured by perception, dimmed and blurred through detention. Abridged through forgetting or artificially anranged as a result of fortuitous associations. From Hume to Russell modern empiricism has tended to regard the inchoate beginnings of knowledge in unformed sensation as more authentic than the cognitive refinement which recent enquiry provides.[82]

 

Iha: Cognition of objects in empirical experience is not com-plete with the mere awareness at the sensational stage. In fact, pure sensations are not possible. As Stout says, we have hardly any pure sensations. Sensations absolutely devoid of meaning, either original or acquired. except perhaps in the case of children.  Sensations transcend the immediate experience because they are inseparably connected with thought. They have a reference to external objects. They mean something beyond themselves.

 

In this sense, our empirical experience will not be complete with avagraka. Avagraha is not self-subsistent. It involves meaning and it has reference to object. It brings in 'iha', a factor involving meaning. The next stage in the experience.  then, is 'iha.' In avagraha a person simply hears a sound In Iha 'he cognises the nature of the sound also. [83] Jinabhadra says that Iha is enquiry for the distinctive features of the object [84] Akalalika defines Iha similarly.84. Hemacandra defines it as striving, for the cognition of the specific details of the object apprehended by sensation.[85]  It would be apter to use 'associative integration' as standing for Iha. And Iha is the stage in the formation of perceptual experience. It brings in associative integration of sensory element experienced in the stage of sensation.