Content area
Full Text
J Philos Logic (2011) 40:633662 DOI 10.1007/s10992-010-9164-0
Context-Sensitivity in Jain Philosophy: A Dialogical Study of Siddhars.igan.is Commentaryon the Handbook of Logic
Nicolas Clerbout Marie-Hlne Gorisse
Shahid Rahman
Received: 30 December 2009 / Accepted: 13 October 2010 / Published online: 30 October 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
Abstract In classical India, Jain philosophers developed a theory of viewpoints (naya-vda) according to which any statement is always performed within and dependent upon a given epistemic perspective or viewpoint. The Jainas furnished this epistemology with an (epistemic) theory of disputation that takes into account the viewpoint in which the main thesis has been stated. The main aim of our paper is to delve into the Jain notion of viewpoint-contextualisation and to develop the elements of a suitable logical system that should offer a reconstruction of the Jainas epistemic theory of disputation. A crucial step of our project is to approach the Jain theory of disputation with the help of a theory of meaning for logical constants based on argumentative practices called dialogical logic. Since in the dialogical framework the meaning of the logical constants is given by the norms or rules for their use in a debate,
N. Clerbout (B) M.-H. Gorisse S. Rahman
Univ. Lille Nord de France, UdL3, STL (CNRS UMR 8163), Villeneuve dAscq 59653, Francee-mail: [email protected]
M.-H. Gorissee-mail: [email protected]
S. Rahmane-mail: [email protected]
634 N. Clerbout et al.
it provides a meaning theory closer to the Jain context-sensitive disputation theory than the main-stream formal model-theoretic semantics.
Keywords Jain logic Jain theory of viewpoints Jain epistemology
Universals Particulars Argumentation Dialogical logic
1 Jain Philosophy of Logic
In classical India, Jain philosophers developed a theory of viewpoints (nayavda) according to which any statement is always performed within and dependent upon a given epistemic perspective or viewpoint. The Jainas furnished this epistemology with an (epistemic) theory of disputation that takes into account the viewpoint in which the main thesis has been stated. In nowadays terms, it would be quite natural to understand such a theory from a modal perspective. But the conceptions of Jain philosophers do not seem to meet modern standard (and normal) modal logic. The main reason is that viewpoint bounded epistemic operators are not part of the object language. Indeed, in the Jain framework...