What Is the "Logic" in Buddhist Logic?

Author(s): R. Lance Factor

Source: Philosophy East and West, Vol. 33, No. 2 (Apr., 1983), pp. 183-188
Published by: University of Hawai'i Press
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R. Lance Factor What is the "logic" in Buddhist logic?

The history of Indian logic is usually divided into three periods, Old Nyaya (circa
250 B.c.), Buddhist logic (sixth century A.D.) and New Nyaya. The Buddhist logic
text, Nyayapravesa (Introduction to Logical Methods), had great influence upon
Indian and Chinese Buddhism and also among the Jains. As a pivotal work, the
Nyayapravesa has received critical attention from historians of religion, philol-
ogists, philosophers, and logicians. As with all advances in scholarship, there is
controversy over interpretation, but in the case of Buddhist logic, the con-
troversy cuts to the very heart of the issue of whether Buddhist logic is in any
recognizable contemporary sense a "logic." The received view holds that Bud-
dhist logic bears very close similarities to syllogistic forms and that it can be
represented and analyzed by standard deductive techniques.1 A much different
and opposing view has been argued by Professor Douglas Daye in a series of
papers. Daye maintains that "... the descriptive utility of mathematical logic
with early Nyaya texts has simply been overrated";2 that although the Nyaya
texts contain metalogical rules for evaluating the "legitimacy or illegitimacy" of
arguments, the distinction between validity and invalidity does not apply;3 that
Nyaya models are not inferences but "formalistic explanations"; and that "...
Buddhist logic is not deductive, nor can it be formally valid nor is it an
inference."4

The cumulative effect of these claims is to assert that Buddhist logic is not a
"logic" at all, at least not in any sense which is recognized by Western philoso-
phers. There is a radical incompatibility between the Nyaya methods of logic and
those of the Prior Analytics or Principia Mathematica. Of course, there will be
differences, possibly very great differences, between any two traditions so diverse
as fourth century (B.C.) Greece and sixth century (A.D.) India, but are we to go so
far as to say that the Nyaya does not contain inferences? The radical incompati-
bility thesis is, I maintain, a mistake; moreover, it is a mistake which can readily
be uncovered by examining the typical Nyaya inference scheme. Of the notion
that a Nyaya scheme could be a "formalistic explanation" without being an
inference, I shall say very little because I do not see how anything which functions
as an explanation could not involve inferences of some kind or other. It is im-
portant to know whether the Nyaya scheme is deductive or not, and if it is,
whether all of its parts are essential to the deduction. I will demonstrate that there
are two ways of reading the Nyaya form: one which is straightforwardly deduc-
tive and a second which is best understood by what the American pragmatist,
C. S. Peirce, and later Norwood Hanson, call "retroduction."
To begin with, consider this representative example from the Nyaya:5

1. paksa (thesis)- Sound is impermanent

2. hetu (mark or Reason) - Because of its property of being produced

R. Lance Factor is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois.

Philosophy East and West 33, no. 2 (April, 1983). © by University of Hawaii Press. All rights reserved.

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184 Factor

3. drstanta (Exemplification) - Whatever is produced, is impermanent

4. sapaksa (similar case) - As with a pot, and so forth
5. vipaksa (dissimilar case) - As (not with the case) of space, and so forth

Tachikawa proposes the following scheme for what he calls the "thre
membered Indian syllogism:6

6. There is property p in locus L

7. (because) there is property q (in L).
8. Wherever there is property q, there is property p, as in locus w

Clearly, if this schema is reversed, (8) and (7) become premises for a va
deductive inference of (6) as the conclusion. The reverse of our example becom
an instance of modus ponens.

9. drstanta - Whatever is created is impermanent.

10. hetu - Sound is created.
11. paksa - Sound is impermanent.

Why is this instance of modusponens a matter of dispute? The incompatibilists

point out that the relationship between the thesis (paksa) and the justification
(hetu) is always expressed in the Sanskrit ablative case and that this relationship
cannot be represented or translated as the English "therefore" (or ergo). Its best
translation is "because." Thus, for the incompatibilist, the primary objection to
identifying the Nyaya scheme as a deductive inference is the familiar one of
ordinary language philosophers who resist the translation of expressions as 'q
becausep' into 'p = q' on the grounds that the causal or explanatory meaning of
"because" is lost in the truth-functional conditional.
This objection has force, but one must distinguish between the assertion that
truth-functional connectives preserve or capture the meaning of'q becausep' and
the claim that truth-functional connectives can represent a deductive relation-
ship between propositions within the Nyaya scheme. It is the latter which the
received view upholds; it is the former which the incompatibilist vehemently
opposes. The issue is not joined, because surely one can maintain that there is a
deductive inference in the inversion Nyaya scheme without maintaining that it
captures the meaning of or even approaches synonymy with the original. In sum,
the issue between the received view and the incompatibilist pivots on the former's
willingness to invert the Nyaya form and read it as a valid deduction and the
latter's insistence that the form cannot be so reversed without losing the special
relationship of the hetu. Given the merits of both views and given the fact that
both positions are not explicit contradictories of one another, there is a way to
understand the Nyaya scheme which allows both sides to have their cake and eat
it too. I believe that the three-membered Nyaya is best understood as a retro-
ductive inference. A retroduction, as it has been described by C. S. Peirce and

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185

Norwood Hanson, is a pattern of reasoning which leads from some phenomenon

or perception to an explanatory hypothesis of that phenomenon. Its form is not
truth-functional nor are the relationships of its premises completely rule-
governed. Peirce said, "It must be remembered that retroduction, although
hampered very little by logical rules, nevertheless, is logical inference, asserting
its conclusion only problematically or conjecturally...." 7
Retroduction does have a recognizable pattern, and indeed it is very close to
the three-membered syllogism of Indian logic. Its form, according to Peirce, is:

12. The surprizing fact Q is observed.

13. But if P were true, Q would be a matter of course.
14. Hence, there is reason to suspect that P is true.

As a schema, for retroduction we have:

(12') q
(13') qbecausep
(14') p

which is isomorphic with that of the Nyaya (that is, paksa, because hetu and
drstanta; hence there is evidence for the paksa). The similarity (sapaksa) and
dissimilarity (vipaksa) cases serve as further evidence in support of the
explanatory justification.
The philosopher of science, Norwood Hanson, argued that retroduction was a
"logic of discovery" which led to deductive-nomological explanations. Like
Peirce, Hanson pointed out that the reversal of a retroduction was a deductive
inference 'q, q because p', becomes 'p, if p, then q, hence q'. The notion of
"reversal" or "inverting" a retroduction is not a technique or rule of formal logic,
but rather a simple psychological description of changing the order of premises.
If the three-membered syllogism is retroduction and if a retroduction is part of
a retroductive-deductive pair, one should expect to find internal evidence for the
presence or absence of a deductive fragment. To return to the Nyaya and its
commentary on this three-membered syllogism, is there internal evidence to treat
it as a retroduction-cum-deduction? A crucial point of philological interpre-
tation is the function of the ablative "because" and the meaning of "hetu" itself.
The weakness of the standard view is that it disregards the special features of the
ablative "because" and translates the three-membered syllogism as if it con-
tained conditionals. Following Daye, I suggest that that move is too hasty, and
that we must regard the ablative "because" as an operator connecting the hetu
and drstiinta to the thesis. Since the Sanskrit ablative expresses a relation of
physical or conceptual removal, separation, distinction, or origin, it was used to
convey the notion of causal explanation. This fact gives primafacie evidence for
interpreting it in the sense of "a reason for." Such an understanding is reinforced
by the meaning of "hetu," which is the name of the explanatory part of the three-

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186 Factor

membered syllogism. According to Tachikawa, "hetu" primarily means 'reason

This is solid ground for reading 'q because p' as: 'p is the reason for q', 'p is th
explanatory hypothesis for q', or even the Peircean 'ifp were true, q would be
matter of course'.

Beyond points of translation, one of the strongest reasons for seeing the three-
membered syllogism of the Nyayapravesa as a retroduction-deduction is the
existence of the five-membered syllogism in the earlier Nyaya tradition, par-
ticularly the Nyaya Sitra.9 The five-membered syllogism of the Nyaya Sutra is
perfectly symmetrical between its three initial retroductive steps and its two
culminating deductive steps:

15. Thesis (pratiUha) - for example, there is fire on the mountain.

16. Reason (hetu) - The mountain smokes.
17. Exemplification (drstanta) - Wherever there is smoke, there is fire, as
(for example) on the hearth in the kitchen.
18. Recapitulation of the reason (upanaya) - The mountain smokes.
19. Conclusion (nigamana) - There is fire on the mountain.

If one were to picture this pattern as an isosceles triangle, one side would
represent the retroduction from (15) the pratijUi reasoning through the (16) hetu
to (17) the drstinta, and the opposing side of the triangle would represent the
deduction beginning with (17) the drstanta to (18) upanaya and inferring the
nigamana.
The French Indologist Rene Guenon pointed out that after the appearance of
the Nyiya Sutra, there were two abridged forms of the five-membered syllo-
gism, o in which either the first three (15-17) or the last three (17-19) parts
appeared alone. Guenon also pointed out that the latter abridgment resembles
the syllogism of Aristotle; the former abridgment, of course, is precisely the one
found in the 6th century Nyayapravesa and indeed the same smoke-fire example
occurs there also. Given the interpretation I have offered, it is not surprising that
there should be two abridgments of the five-membered syllogism. One abridg-
ment captures the retroductive move; the second captures the deductive move.
Deduction and retroduction are inversions of one another, and they can be
separated by positioning the property-locus statement. One abridgment reasons
from the thesis statement to an explanatory generalization; the other abridg-
ment deduces the thesis from the generalization. The Buddhist logicians were
quite emphatic about which abridgment they favored. The Nyaya quite explicitly
says, "We say that these three statements make the members of the syllogism and
no more!" ' Tachikawa's gloss on this statement indicates that it is an assertion
that only three statements are necessary for an inference.
We may conclude that what "inference" primarily meant to the Buddhist
logicians was "reasoning to an explanatory causal hypothesis"; however, it
would be wrong to further conclude that they had no appreciation of the

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187

deductive abridgment. To them logic was a means of bringing others to a recog-

nition of particular statements; it was an upaya, a heuristic teaching device. The
retroductive abridgment of the five-membered syllogism clearly teaches in the
sense that it brings the hearer to an awareness of a causal or conceptual connec-
tion. The deductive abridgment does not "teach" in this sense because like all
deductions its conclusion does not contain information nor already found in the
premises. Thus, from the standpoint of an upaya the retroductive inference is
enough, or, as the author of the Nyayapravesa put it, "... these three members
make the [retroductive] syllogism and no more."
A further point in favour of reading the Nyaya inference schema as a retroduc-
tion is that it makes the remainder of the manual on logical methods, especially
the detailed sections on kinds of fallacies, more intelligible and enlightening.
More than two thirds of the text covers identification and classification of
fallacies, but none bear any resemblance to the formal fallacies of deduction such
as affirming the consequent or denying the antecedent, nor does the system
resemble Western notions of an informal fallacy. Fallacies of irrelevance such as
the ad hominem or post hoc propter hoc call attention to the lack of support
between premises and putative conclusion. In Buddhist logic the classification of
fallacies does not attempt to circumscribe the ways premises can be irrelevant;
on the contrary it gives criteria for grading the strength or weakness of the
explanatory hypotheses. This is precisely what is required for retroductive
accuracy. Weak hypotheses emerge in three circumstances: (1) the hetu is
unrecognized by proponent or opponent, (2) the hetu is inconclusive, or (3) it is
contradicted. Inconclusive hetus are those which are not supported by further
evidence from the similarity and dissimilarity cases; contradicted hetus are those
which prove the opposite of the paksa. Such a contradiction is established by
deducing the opposite property-locus assertion. A hetu can fail to be recognized,
that is, it can fail as a teaching device by not making the auditor (or speaker
aware of the connection between the assertion statement and its warranting hetu.
Thus, when hypotheses fail to be understood, they engender fallacies of recog-
nition, but when they fail in evidential support they engender fallacies of con-
tradiction or inconclusivity. On the whole, this classification of fallacies reflects a
sophisticated, but also a commonsensical, means of evaluating hypotheses. It is
open textured as retroductive reasoning must be, and more importantly it does
not attempt (as the Western notion of fallacy does) to classify fallacious reason-
ing as a kind of deductive argument gone awry.
In this paper I have attempted to enlarge the dialogue about the nature of
Buddhist logic by arguing that it is essentially retroductive. As philosophers and
psychologists continue to investigate the conceptual and factual aspects of
hypothesis formation, the study of Buddhist logic will increase in importance
because, unlike other logical treatises, the Nyayapravesa is an historically signi-
ficant document about ways of reasoning and misreasoning to an explanatory
hypothesis.

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188 Factor

NOTES

1. Daniel H. H. Ingalls, Materialfor the Study of Navya-Nyaya Logic, Harvard Oriental Ser
vol. 40 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951); Hajime Nakamura, "Buddhist L
Expounded by Means of Symbolic Logic," Indogaku Bukkyogaku Kenkyu 7 (1958): 375-395
Staal, "Means of Formalization of Indian and Western Thought," Logic, Methodolog
Philosophy of Science, Proceedings of the XIIth International Congress of Philosophy, Venice
H. Kitagawa, "A Note on the Methodology in the Study of Indian Logic," Indogaku Bukky
Kenkyu 8 (1960): 380-390; S. S. Barlingay, A Modern Introduction to Indian Logic (Delhi: Nat
Publishing House, 1965); A. Charlene S. McDermott, An Eleventh-Century Buddhist Log
"Exists," Foundations of Language, Supplementary Series, vol. 2 (Dordrecht, Holland: D. R
1970); B. K. Matilal, The Navya-Nyaya Doctrine of Negation, Harvard Oriental Series, vo
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968); and particularly Epistemology, Logic and Gramm
Indian Philosophical Analysis, Janua Linguarum, Series Minor, 111 (Mouton: The Hague, 1
2. Douglas Daye, "Metalogical Incompatibilities In the Formal Description of Buddhist
(Nyaya)," Notre Dame Journal of Logic 28, no. 2 (1977): 231.
3. Douglas Daye, "Empirical Falsifiability and the Frequence of Darsana Relevance in the S
Century Buddhist Logic of Sankarasvamin," Logique et Analyse 86 (June 1979): 221.
4. Douglas Daye, Comparative Issues in Buddhist and Anglo-European Formal Log
(unpublished manuscript), p. 121.
5. Musashi Tachikawa, trans., "A Sixth Century Manual of Indian Logic (the Nyayaprav
Journal of Indian Philosophy 1, no. 2 (1971): 114.
6. Ibid., p. 115; Norwood R. Hanson, Patterns of Discovery (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer
Press, 1958), pp. 93-105.
"Is There A Logic of Discovery," Current Issues in Philosophy of Science, edited by H. Fer
and G. Maxwell (New York: Holt-Rinehart & Winston, 1961), pp. 20-35. Also Aristotle, P
Analytics II, 25.
7. C. S. Peirce, Collected Works (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1933), vol. 1, p. 188
vol. 6, pp. 522-28.
8. Tachikawa, p. 116.
9. A. B. Keith, Indian Logic and Atomism (Oxford: 1921), p. 21. The author dates the N
Sutra at 200-450 A.D.
10. Rene Guenon, Introduction generale d l'etude des doctrines hindous (Paris: 1930), pp. 226-227.
11. Tachikawa, p. 122.

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