Issue #51

Abstract: The short critical survey, which can be considered an addendum to the author’s main study dedicated to the Indian epistemological doctrine svataḥ prāmāṇya, is devoted to the consideration of two of its most notable recent interpretations, which can be characterized as causal, along with a recent acausal interpretation thereof. It focuses on the epistemology of a medieval representative of the Bhaṭṭa Mīmāṃsā school, Sucaritamiśra, and its critique by another philosopher of the same school, Pārthasārathimiśra, considering that the views of the former had a significant impact on the modern research papers analyzed in this survey. Its main goal consists in demonstrating the falsity and senselessness of the causal interpretation of svataḥ prāmāṇya. That is shown during the analysis of Lawrence McCrea’s article on Sucarita and the works of the Russian orientalist L.G. Roman dedicated to the notion of prāmāṇya and the doctrine of svataḥ prāmāṇya. To provide a contrast, a recent acausal interpretation of this doctrine by Nilanjan Das is considered in conclusion. In the former two cases, the distortions of sense and factual errors made by the researchers in their interpretations of svataḥ prāmāṇya are analyzed. In the latter, Das’s views are compared with the author’s own acausal interpretation of svataḥ prāmāṇya. In this context, it is emphasized that to make the svataḥ prāmāṇya doctrine consistent and single-option, it is necessary to acknowledge the possibility of the factual correspondence between a mind-external object and a cognition, i.e., the correspondence theory of truth, and it is highlighted that the truth of a practical activity entailed by a cognition, according to the correct understanding of this doctrine, is derivative from the truth of this correspondence, which reduces its “pragmatic” elements to the very same correspondence theory. It is concluded that the causal interpretation of svataḥ prāmāṇya is incapable of refuting the acausal interpretation thereof since the latter contains all the necessary elements while being devoid of the flaws of the former.