The Nyaya position has an intuitive immediacy. Not seeing the jar on the floor is a matter of simple perception. The visual input does not include a jar. Agreed says the Vedantin you are seeing something viz.the floor and at that locus you do not see a jar. This non-apprehension is an instrument of knowledge or a means of knowledge. Here I venture my own interpretation of this point. Clearly a non-apprehension cannot be a means of knowledge of itself or an otiose, pointless self-referential observation. What then is its informational content? Must it not be related to a context of expectation? You were told that there was a jar on the floor in the kitchen. On going there you don't see one and make the canonical report.
Then there was the case of the dog that did not bark in the night-time.
- Look at the ceiling' I said to my wife, what do you not see?(domestic fiction)
- Puzzled, she replied, what am I looking for?
- Water.
- You mean you fixed the leak in the shower stall upstairs.
Jayanta Bhatta mentions in Nyaya Manjari similar real situations with a context of non-apprehension.
Happiness or sorrow arises in the absence of a foe or of a friend. A man places his feet on the way seeing the absence of a thorn on it. A man is earnest to search for the material of a jar if he finds that no jar has come into being. A man refrains from taking medicine when he realises that he is free from disease. No thoughtful man can deny objective existence to negation having noticed that it actually exists and many worldly transactions are based on it.(pg.124/160 adobe pdf)
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