With the United States presidential election just days away, we’re inundated with arguments and debates, as various candidates from both parties desperately pitch their ideas and ideologies in a final bid for votes. We are constantly bombarded with competing arguments, competing facts and figures, and even competing versions of reality. How can we sort through all this information and determine some sort of truth? That question has vexed philosophers for over two thousand years. It forms the basis of two branches of philosophy: logic and epistemology.
In the West, the works of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle form the foundation of logic and epistemology. But philosophers in other ancient societies also formed equally sophisticated systems of logic and epistemology that are remarkably similar to Aristotle’s, but have distinctions that deserve to be considered in modern philosophy. In this article, we’ll examine the similarities and differences between the Aristotelian system of knowledge and the Hindu Nyaya school’s system of knowledge.
Aristotle was born in Macedonia in 385 BCE to the court physician of King Amyntas, the grandfather of Alexander the Great. After the death of his father in 367 BCE, Aristotle migrated to Athens, where he joined Plato’s Academy. He studied at Plato’s Academy, first as a student and then as a colleague, for 20 years, until the death of Plato in 347 BCE. Afterwards, he traveled across the Greek world. He helped found an academy in Assos, in modern day Turkey. He studied biology on the island of Lesbos. And he was hired by King Philip II of Macedonia to tutor his 13-year-old son, the future Alexander the Great[i]. In 335 BCE, he returned to Athens to found a new academy called the Lyceum. Although Aristotle would be forced to flee Athens following the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE, his students at the Lyceum continued to preserve, comment on, and expand upon his work for hundreds of years, cementing his legacy as one of Greece’s most prolific thinkers[ii].
Aristotle’s most influential work on logic is called Prior Analytics. In Prior Analytics, Aristotle establishes the theory of the syllogism. A syllogism is a set of premises that lead to a conclusion. For example,
- Every Greek is human.
- Every human is mortal.
- Therefore, every Greek is mortal.
Aristotle’s system of logic sets out to construct arguments in which the conclusion of the argument must be true if the premises are true. These are called valid arguments[iii]. Invalid arguments are arguments in which the conclusion is not necessarily true given the premise. For example,
- All Greeks are mortal.
- Anacharsis is mortal.
- Therefore, Anacharsis is Greek.
Just because all Greeks are mortal, it does not necessarily follow that all mortal things are Greek. This logical error is so common that it has its own name: affirming the consequent.
The most important thing to remember when considering Aristotle’s system of logic is that the conclusions are true ONLY if the premises are true. Thus, we cannot judge the truth of a conclusion without judging the truth of the premises. Still, Prior Analytics sets out a framework by which we can judge an argument based on its validity. While we cannot use Aristotle’s logic to definitively establish truth, we can use it to establish whether the premises of an argument can be used to justify the conclusion.
Little is known about the founding of the Nyaya school of philosophy. It is based upon the Nyaya Sutras, which were written by Aksapada Gautama, a philosopher who lived sometime between the 6th century BCE and 2nd century CE. The term “Nyaya” means “that by which the mind is led to a conclusion.” It is primarily concerned with the logic of arguments, and how those arguments can lead to the acquisition of knowledge. The Nyaya school’s system of logic is generally accepted by all major schools of Hindu thought, even in the heterodox traditions of Buddhism and Jainism[iv].
Each school of Hindu thought accepts the concept of karma. Although they differ in their specific views regarding the nature and consequences of karma, the general idea is that good things do not come from bad actions and vice versa. Thus, whether an action is ethical or not is judged by calculating the amount of suffering brought into the universe by the action versus the amount of suffering alleviated by the action. Under this ethical system, it is possible to commit unethical acts not out of evil intent, but out of pure ignorance. Because evil can result from ignorance, the acquisition of knowledge is about more than just sating our curiosity. Acquiring knowledge is itself a form of ethics.
The Nyaya school established a five-stage argument structure, in which a set of premises is given to support a conclusion (taken from Victoria S. Harrison, 2013):
- The premise to be established is stated
- The reason for the premise is given
- An example is provided
- The application of the example to the premise is explained
- The conclusion is stated
For example:
- There is a fire on this hill (premise established)
- Because there is smoke (reason given)
- Since whatever has smoke has fire, for example, an oven has smoke resulting from its fire (example provided)
- There is smoke on this hill, which is associated with fire (application)
- Therefore, there is a fire on this hill (conclusion)
Some argue that the Nyaya system of logic is reducible to an Aristotelian syllogism[v]. For example, we could restate the above argument as
- Wherever there is smoke, there is fire.
- There is smoke on this hill.
- Therefore, there is fire on this hill.
However, this reduction is missing a crucial element of Nyaya logic. Nyaya logic requires an example in order to establish the truth of the premises. Remember that Aristotelian logic can only establish whether the argument is valid, not whether the conclusion is true. By requiring an example to justify the truth of the premises, Nyaya logic attempts to establish that an argument is both valid and that the conclusion is true.
Logic is concerned with how to form arguments in such a way that the conclusion of the argument must be true. Epistemology is concerned with how to establish knowledge, whether from abstract arguments or from our sensory experiences. For example, consider the following argument:
- Only dogs bark.
- Jimmy barks.
- Therefore, Jimmy is a dog.
A logician would ask whether the premises “Only dogs bark” and “Jimmy barks” lead to the conclusion that Jimmy is a dog. An epistemologist would ask “Is it true that only dogs bark? Did Jimmy actually bark, or did he make a noise that sounds similar to a bark? What is a bark? How can I be certain that I actually heard Jimmy bark and that I didn’t experience an auditory hallucination of Jimmy barking?”
Clearly, an epistemologist has their work cut out for them. How can we be certain that our sensory experiences are representative of some underlying material truth? How can we justify the use of one observation (or many observations) to generalize about any future event? For example, if every dog I’ve ever met barked, does that necessarily mean that every dog in the universe barks? In philosophy, this is referred to as “the problem of induction.” As far as I know, no philosopher has ever come up with a conclusive solution to it.
Aristotle sidesteps the problem of induction by simply establishing validity, rather than by attempting to establish truth. The Nyaya school, on the other hand, dives headfirst into the problem of induction by attempting to establish the validity of the argument and the truth of the conclusion. However, the Nyaya school does not solve the problem of induction because an argument can be entirely valid within their argument structure, but still produce a false conclusion. For example, consider this argument
- A dolphin gives birth on land
- Because a dolphin is a mammal.
- Since all mammals give birth on land. For example, a bear is a mammal and a bear gives birth on land.
- A dolphin is a mammal, which is associated with giving birth on land.
- Therefore, a dolphin gives birth on land
This argument fails to establish a true conclusion because the premise that all mammals give birth on land is not true. The premise “all mammals give birth on land” cannot be established as true because the example of a bear giving birth on land cannot be generalized to all mammals.
The structure of arguments in modern science is similiar to the Nyaya school of philosophy. Scientists construct arguments that must be valid, and they support the premises of those arguments with experimental data (examples). But the problem of induction remains. For example, say I perform an experiment which finds that corn plants grow better when given one liter of water a day compared to corn plants that receive a half liter of water a day. Can I generalize that example to conclude that all corn plants grow better when given a liter of water a day?
Instead of solving the problem of induction, modern scientists attempt to alleviate the problem of induction. Rather than attempting to conclusively prove the truth of their argument, they provide examples as evidence of the truth of their argument. They then challenge others to find a counterexample that proves their experimental observations cannot be generalized. This concept, called falsificationism, was expounded on by the 20th century philosopher Karl Popper[vi].
The point of comparative philosophy is not to conclusively prove that one system of philosophy is objectively “better” than another. Instead, by examining the ways in which different philosophers from different parts of the world have thought about the same problems, we can think about these problems in deeper and more nuanced ways.
People are often extolled to “think logically” or “think rationally.” While thinking logically is an undeniably good thing, it’s important to remember that just because we come to a logical conclusion, it does not necessarily mean that this logical conclusion is “correct.” The Nyaya school of thought drives that point home by demanding that the argument not just come to a logical conclusion, but justify the premises that led to that conclusion.
With a major election just around the corner, now is a great time to take stock of our own beliefs. Are the arguments in support of your political beliefs valid? Can you justify the premises of your arguments? These questions are worth asking. Our society faces many deep and urgent problems. How can we solve climate change? How can we safeguard privacy and liberty in the era of Big Data? How can we build a society that is both prosperous and equitable? I believe if more people think more deeply about these problems, we have a better chance of finding and implementing solutions.
-Erik Schwerdtfeger
[i] Anthony Kenny. A New History of Western Philosophy Volume 1: Ancient Philosophy. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 65-73.
[ii] Richard McKeon. The Basic Works of Aristotle. (New York: Random House, 2001).
[iii] Anthony Kenny, 2004. 117-120.
[iv] Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Charles A. Moore. A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967). 356.
[v] Victoria S. Harrison. Eastern Philosophy: The Basics. (New York: Routledge, 2013).
[vi] Peter Godfrey-Smith. Theory and Reality. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). 57-61.
The Scientific Ecstatic 