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It is platitudinous to say that whenever we try to read some ancient text or interpret some theory distant in space and/or time, we employ contemporary tools of analysis, contemporary techniques of modeling. Even while building theories, theoreticians (philosophers and scientists alike) are found to take help from the technology of the time. Aristotle, for example, had a wax-tablet view of memory. Leibniz used the model of a clock to explain the harmonious universe. Freud used a hydraulic model of the flow of libido, and the telephone switchboard model guided psychologists while they were theorizing on intelligence. Nearer to our time, we have seen physicists explaining the structure of an atom by the model of the solar system and cognitive scientists explaining the working of the human mind by the analogy of a computer. In this essay, we would like to borrow the tool of mental models from the famous cognitive psychologist P. N. Johnson-Laird and his team, to offer an alternative picture of the Buddhist 'logical' scenario, which we think will enable us to understand some perplexing issues in the given area and offer some solutions to them.
I
Theory of inference, which is the core of any logical theory, belongs to the prama.a theory in Indian philosophy. Stalwarts of Indian philosophy have attempted to glean logical insights from the prama.a theory by interpreting it in their own way. Consequently, we have come across all sorts of views regarding Indian logic. For example, (a) inferences are syllogistic in nature, hence Indian logic is deductive;1 (b) inference always depends on a vyaptivakya, a generalization based on observations, and therefore Indian logic is inductive;2 (c) inference is both deductive and inductive;3 (d) inference is neither inductive nor deductive;4 (e) Indian theory of inference can be reconstructed within the first-order logic,5 in spite of its explicit intentional language;6 and (f ) inferences cannot be understood at all within the framework of monotonic reasoning-these are instances of non-monotonic reasoning,7 especially of default reasoning.8
Indian theories of inference definitely form the core of Indian logic. But because of its epistemological origin and motivations, the contour of Indian logic does not nicely fit the outline of Western logic, which moves around the consequence relation and its formal properties. Though these...