Ethos

 Ethos is one of the three aspects of rhetoric based on the reliability and general authoritativeness of the rhetor or the one that is trying to persuade us.  Pramana theory (Indian epistemology)  of the sources of valid knowledge regards the utterance of an ‘apta’ (reliable person) as a source.  

What I sense is that once you lose that reliability seal of truth telling even when you speak sooth that can be objectively checked it somehow lacks its force. The virtue has gone from the utterance.  The Israelis have reached that point.  Even the truth falls dead from their lips.  

Henri Bergson on Recognition

 I am creeping along following  my reading plan for Matter and Memory by Henri Bergson.  No more that 3 or 4 pages at a time writing notes as I read as if each observation was a nail to hold it down.  I can see how this dilatory notation could have exasperated Samuel Johnson during his tour of the Hebrides but for a work like Bergson’s it induces the stasis that allows some of the profound insights to penetrate.  Like recognition as a foundational native power.  How do you know that this perception is similar to another that occurred in the past.  Looking for evidence for this knowledge is the reflex of empiricism but looked at closely it chases its own tail.  We can only recognise similarity if we already have it and in many cases familiarity precedes the memory of our previous encounter.

The advaitin Dharmaraja Adhvarindra writing on the Pramanas (means of valid knowledge)  devotes his shortest chapter to upamana  or comparison - “The instrument of the valid knowledge of similarity is comparison”.  Even those astute observers of the furniture of the mind did not see the difficulty involved in the comparison of what is a present experience with an experience which is past and thereby judge their congruence or not or slight resemblance etc.  Here epistemology trumps neuroscience’s engrams.

“But, along with this definite and perceived resemblance which (pg 107) consists in the common element seized and disengaged by the mind, there is a vague and in some sort objective resemblance, spread over the surface of the images themselves, which might act perhaps like a physical cause of reciprocal attraction.[13] And should we ask how it is, then, that we often recognize an object without being able to identify it with a former image, refuge is sought in the convenient hypothesis of cerebral tracks which coincide with each other, of cerebral movements made easier by practice,[14] or of perceptive cells communicating with cells where memories are stored.[15] In truth, all such theories of recognition are bound to melt away, in the end, into physiological hypotheses of this kind. What they were aiming at, first, was to make all recognition issue from a bringing together of perception and memory; but experience stands over against them, testifying that in most cases recollection emerges only after the perception is recognized.” Matter and Memory

Admit it: the ball joint of the philosopher’s neck is made wry by this confounding of the intuitive question - how do we know?  We just know.  A vertiginous prospect rejected by right thinking empiricists.

Note on Non-Apprehension of Existence in Nyaya Manjari

A pramana has been defined as a means of valid knowledge. One of the means of valid knowledge that has been accepted by advaita vedanta and rejected by the Nyaya school is that of anupalabadhi. The standard example is – 'There is no jar on the floor'. This is interpreted as non-apprehension of existence by Swami Madhavananda in Vedanta Paribhasa(trans) and as non-perception by Janaki Vallabha Bhattacharyya in Nyaya Manjari(trans). This divergence is the crux of their disagreement. I find the justification of the pramana in V.P. to be sound but incomplete and its rejection in N.M. not convincing but nevertheless raising some interesting points.

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?
- Puzzled, she replied, what am I looking for?
- Water.
- You mean you fixed the leak in the shower stall upstairs.

(domestic fiction)

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)

pointing, mapping, and other mysteries

If every rose was an individual rose there would be no rose and each of them would have another name. But then there would be no naming of anything. The finger points at the moon but can we point at pointing. As in the childrens' card game of snap, images flow over each other and await congruence.Well, you may say, pointing, mapping, comparing are meta 'activities' supervenient on the data. True but can they be taught?

A response: It is not necessary to know what we are doing. 'Doing is the mother of doing' said Samuel Johnson. So that is what I was at. Comparison is one of the Pramanas or a valid means of knowledge that is underived. This is a scandal for the Empiricist.

Bergson, Universals, Upamana and the Gavaya

We may then suppose perceptions as different as possible in their superficial details: if only they are continued by the same motor reactions, if the organism can extract from them the same useful effects, if they impress upon the body the same attitude, something common will issue from them, and the general idea will have been felt and passively experienced, before being represented. - Here then we escape at last from the circle in which we at first appeared to be confined. In order to generalize, we said, we have to abstract similarity, but in order to disengage similarity usefully we must already know how to generalize. There really is no circle, because the similarity, from which the mind starts when it first begins the work of abstraction, is not the similarity at which the mind arrives when it consciously generalizes.

(from Matter and Memory)


Here is a move towards the solution of the problem of universals and indeed the upamana pramana. The misunderstanding of the latter problem is underlined by the displacement of the problem into the recognition of a gavaya. Essentially the instruction is simple - the gavaya (bos gaurus) that roams in the jungle is like your domestic cow. Very good but what is a cow like? What do you mean? A cow just a cow, you know what a cow is. The point that Bergson is making, as I understand him, is that the immediate response that generates the sense of sameness is at a different conceptual level from the universal that is a rational construct. An example that he gives from inorganic reactions i.e. hydrochloric acid and marble, does not lead us to believe that one recognises the other.

Advaita Vedanta's theory of the Mind going out to the Object

Many odd philosophical theories are more instructive about the core issues than those which align with our common sense beliefs. Berkeley’s immaterialism is an example. Understand that and the rationality of empiricism will seem specious. An analogue within the classical canon of Indian Philosophy is Advaita Vedanta’s theory of perception generally discussed within the context of the six valid means of knowledge or pramanas.

It’s quite complicated because in the Indian way each element in the theory is itself a subject of discussion and subdivision. Therein lies the danger of distraction that lures the fine forensic mind of the advaitin away from the central insights. It is significant that Shankaracarya does not indulge himself in the fine slicing and dicing that is so attractive to a certain kind of thinker. What then is his central observation, his protophaenomenon? It is the aporiai of realism. How can we know the object out there as it is?

In Shankara’s preamble to the Brahma-Sutra-Bhasya he uses this aporiai as a departure point for the superimposition theory of avidya (ignorance/maya)but it also might be held that it is foundational for a theory of perception as such with the ‘out there as it is’ status of the object as the knot which has to be unpicked. If the object is ‘in here’ or ‘in’ my mind then the alienation of the representational presents itself. The advaitin move is to assert that the mind goes out to the object and takes its form. This sounds like sheer voodoo unless we bear in mind that in Advaita the mind is regarded as inert or as material that only becomes conscious when it is pervaded by pure consciousness. The human mind is the complex of brain/body being conscious. Mind is matter, a monism which avoids the causal problem of the interaction of mind and matter in Western thought. In perception we have a physical interaction which is pervaded by consciousness and becomes knowledge. It, as I understand it, then becomes perceptual knowledge through the power of superimposition on the consciousness of the subject. It becomes ‘owned’ by the individual subject.

The organs that go out and take the form of the object are not to be confused with the actual physical organs of sight, touch etc. They are in Shankara’s words in his commentary on the Brh.Up. II.iv.11- but modes of the objects in order to perceive them. They are, so to speak, empty modalities that become informed by the object.

That in broad outline is the advaitin theory of perception. To investigate the full complexity of Manas, Buddhi, Citta, Antahkarana, and Indriyas refer to the The Six Ways of Knowing by D. M. Datta:
The Six Ways

Advaitin Negative Thinking

The advaitins are clever about negation. First of all there is the concept of superimposition or the mis-take i.e. you took something to be that which it was not. That such error is also the explanatory analogy for a theory of knowledge that slips between the Scylla and Charybdis of Realism and Idealism is a cunning lateral swerve. That requires deep explication but let it stand for now.

Next there is the unknown object, the ajnanatta satta. That an object can exist as an unknown object is an indication of its reality. It shelters under the great umbrella of being even if covered by a fog of ignorance. Mental existence is only for the time in which its object is present to the mind. It only exists by being known - it cannot be an unknown existent.

Finally there is the means of valid knowledge known as anupalabadhi or non-apprehension of existence. The book that was supposed to be on the table in the hall is not there. My friend was not in the cafe where I expected him to be. Please do not confuse this with the apprehension of non-existence which is impossible because that which does not exist cannot be apprehended.

Addendum: previously snakes and ropes

Sishyphean Task/Pramana

It occurred to me that by taking pramana as a means of knowledge the focus is taken away from the means as an end in itself. We are shunted into wrangles about whether a particular end might not have been achieved by some other means. Is our knowledge of the denotation of ‘gavaya’ due to the testimony of the forester or an inference and so on and so forth? The logical end point of these diversions are a reduction of all pramana to perception. However if you take like/unlike as a knowledge bearing dyad which is immediate and irreducible to any other, the primitive insight is preserved. The Sisyphean task of contriving an example which isolates the single pramana that plucks the fruit is left as the sport of philosophy.

Tabula rasa with desk-like features.

When my wife points out that I am leaving books on every surface and turning the sitting room table into a desk I respond:
- It's not a desk, I know that, it's a table with desk-like features.

Is this upamana at work? I think so. Moreover, rather than being restricted to the gavaya (bos gaurus) of the standard example and its configuration which seduces us into trying to devise congruent examples; we are in fact using the pramana all the time in various ways. The usage in translation of 'means of knowledge' may be a misdirection. We are inclined then to think of some sort of device that we utilise whereas upamana as a capacity that only exists as it is being used, mysterious as that sounds, may be closer to its reality. My resistance is to a Lockean abstractionist view which sees the the tabula rasa as the primitive condition.

The Pramanas as valid means of knowledge or valid means of cognition

Have you ever wondered why there is such variance as to the number of pramanas? Some say one, some say 2 and and others three and six. Surely we ought to know how many ‘hands’ we have. As possibly a result of the creeping force of the illative I’ve lately begun to notice the different translations for pramana generally as ‘valid means of knowledge’ or ‘valid means of cognition’. Therein may lie the core of variance.

Knowledge it seems to me is part of the established mental store. This is the stuff we are sure of and this very right to claim knowledge is the entry point of the sceptical wedge. This has been the focus of discussion about 'justified true belief’ , Moore’s paradox and so forth. Now Indian epistemology has focused on empirical rules of thumb as it were, which are sound ways of getting to the point where you might claim knowledge but yet prescind from certainly as to whether it is. For example you were using a valid means of cognition or cognising normally when you spotted a coin. However when you bent to pick it up it was only a piece of silver paper. Knowledge evaded you for the moment in one respect but in another you now know that it was just silver paper. A lose/win situation sort of.

Is the reduction of the number of pramanas to just two, perception and inference, the result of two forms of apphension viz. physical and mental. We grasp the particular in the physical and abstract the universal mentally. There seems a basic robust modesty about this view unlil we consider that an important element of the definition of pramana is that it is a means of knowledge that cannot be reduced to any other. Ignoring that is to change the conversation.

Ethan Mills has a note on Dignaga's view:
dignaga

Arthatpatti// Language goes on holiday

Elisa Freschi was discussing the pramana (means of valid knowledge) arthapatti
arthapatti
It has been variously translated as ‘postulation’ and ‘presumption’. One commentor ‘Bama’ preferred ‘presumption’. Elisa offered a palette of terms including ‘cogent evidence’. This led me to thinking - maybe arthapatti is too simple for words.

My first bit of philosophical semaphore was:

We know how arthapatti works. It’s a bit like a switch where there is disjunction between the two values, on/off, true/false, yes/no. Plump Devadatta does not eat during the daylight hours therefore he must be eating at night. If one state is known i.e. alive and not at home then the other state is immediately know i.e. outside the home somewhere. Postulation does not apply. Postulation may be shown to be correct or it may be impossible to show whether or not it is. Think of Hig’s Boson and Kant’s Transcendental Postulate. We are attempting to reach towards a picture of how things must fundamentally be for things to appear as they do. Arthapatti is not tentative in any sense.

I can see where ‘assumption’ or ‘presumption’ may not be a perfect fit for what arthapatti does. There is no ‘before’ for arthapatti, there is no ‘after’ for arthapatti. Implication doesn’t fit. Knowing that plump Devadatta is fasting during the day is knowing that he eats at night. Implications have to be worked out so this is not one. Arthapatti has a bi-polar nature. It is basic and irreducible.

to which I added as an afterthought:

I wrote the following paragraph before I read your response. There is a general difficulty in the explanation of basic powers. Ostensive definition has the problem of knowing what it is you are pointing at. (I admit to being an unreconstricted Wittgensteinian)

If I might add. Even if the Sanskrit has the sense of apatti – artha then it too is explaining the simple in terms of the more complex and that cannot be a good explanation. Here as Wittgenstein wrote – ‘my spade turns’. If the complex has the simple embedded in it then circularity ensues. Simply by having a human mind you get ‘switches’ in the ‘kit’.

The ‘ostensive definition’ entry in the index to Philosophical Investigations is worth looking at. Here the well known ‘logos’ occurs (38)

For philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday.

Language has stopped doing what it normally does when it tries to express something that is too simple for language. Switch then may express the cybernetic aspect of arthapatti, or what in Advaita is called the inert nature of mind, its mechanical quality.

Connected with this cybernetic notion in my understanding of it is the counterpositive pratiyoga concept. Broadly speaking the illusory is founded on there being an actual reality. It works like figure and ground and it is again a mechanical thing. The counterpositiveness.......abiding in the illusory silver, is characterised by conventional reality(from Vedanta Paribhasa on Perception)

You haven’t heard the last of this.

Upamana and Bergson

Upamana (comparison) is a King Charles’s head with me. Like Mr. Dick with the latter (David Copperfield) I am fascinated by it to the extent that I believe that even those who accept it as a pramana aren’t aware of its decisive role in the problem of universals. Nobody understands upamana ! That way lies madness.

When re-reading Matter and Memory I find that Bergson with his sense of the foundational nature of comparison/resemblance takes a similar view:

It would seem, then, that we start neither from the perception of the individual nor from the conception of the genus, but from an intermediate knowledge, from a confused sense of the striking quality or of resemblance: this sense, (pg 206) equally remote from generality fully conceived and from individuality clearly perceived, begets them both by a process of dissociation. Reflective analysis clarifies it into the general idea; discriminative memory solidifies it into a perception of the individual.

Sankara with his theory of vedic words proposes a notion of universals along the same lines as Plato’s. Pramana for Sankara then might be restricted to a way of going from the innately known genus to the unknown particular - from cow to gavaya as per the standard example. Bergson would deny ideas and accept comparison (upamana) which he would term the “striking quality”. Upamana on its own could generate a world of universals and particulars.

Bergson’s statement of the classic problem is succinct:

individual objects. The whiteness of a lily is not the whiteness of a snow-field; they remain, even as isolated from the snow and the lily, snow-white or lily-white. They only forego their individuality if we consider their likeness in order to give them a common name; then, applying this name to an unlimited number of similar objects, we throw
back upon the quality, by a sort of ricochet, the generality which the word went out to seek in its application to things. But, reasoning in this way, do we not return to the point of view of extension, which we just now abandoned? We are then, in truth, revolving in a circle, nominalism leading us to conceptualism, and conceptualism bringing us back to nominalism.
Generalization can only be effected by extracting common qualities; but, that qualities should appear common, they must have already been subjected to a process of generalization.

Moreover what Bergson says about this power of discerning resemblance namely that it is of the nature of a primal force that does not have to be set into motion by a psychological effort, has the true flavour of pramana as irreducible.

But we relegate nothing to the unconscious, for the very simple reason that it is not, in our opinion, an effort of a psychological nature which here disengages similarity; this similarity acts objectively like a force, and provokes reactions that are identical in virtue of the purely physical law which requires that the same general effects should follow the same profound causes.

Pramanas as irreducible means of knowledge

An important and to my mind a very interesting aspect of the Pramana (Means of Valid Knowledge) theory is that each pramana is unique and cannot be reduced to any other. Dharmaraja Adhvarindra writer of the classic book on the topic Vedanta Paribhasa which he says is for the enlightenment of backward students is at great pains to stress this point particularly on the pramanas which are not universally recognised as separate by all schools. He recognised 6 whereas Vaisesika counted 2, Sankhya 3, and Nyaya 4. He justifies the inclusion of upamana (Comparison) and anupalabadhi (Non-Apprehension of Existence) as freestanding which other schools reduced to a function of pratyaksha (Perception).


This point is not mentioned in the Wikipedia article on the pramanas, unless I missed it. I also sense that this ‘gavaya in the room’ is overlooked generally but I could be wrong by those who would link upamana to modality. While on the topic of modality surely the ultimate source of deontic modadlity is the Gita - what ought I do, what can I do, what may I do, what must one do and what is impossible.

Note on Substance

Substance ought to be easy. 'Thus I assert thee' as I stumble over a stone, as it were. That's fine but then we are obliged to distinguish between 'stone' as stuff, generic stone and this particular stone called by Aristotle the primary substance and the former the secondary. By the way none of the interpretations of Aristotle's views are uncontroverted so shop around. However the primary/secondary division seems to me a sensible view of the basic furniture of the world or the floor we start from. The Advaitins who employ different criteria of what really is regard 'stuff' as more fundamental than individual items. In their airy way they assert that 'clay alone is real, things made from clay are mere names'. The changeless element, the material cause in the Aristotelian schema, is the clay and the various forms that are made out of clay are simply conventional names. We can see this view in some Western ontologists who would regard a table as 'timber arranged table-wise'. Is this a monist view which would regard our primal encounter as being with an undifferentiated continuum? Given evolution this seems unpersuasive as animals seem to be 'designed' to fit a habitat and prey. For the fox is a rabbit 'food arranged rabbit-wise'?

The pramana of upamana seems to contradict the primacy of 'stuff' (cf various posts on the topic of upamana by label). Recognising genus and species is a basic function of this innate means of knowledge ie. a means of knowledge not reducible to any other. Once we have decided on the criteria of division we can place everything. Encountering anything precipitates automatic sorting on however crude a basis. True but for the Advaitins their concept of 'the real' as changeless supervenes so the opposition may be more a contrast than a contradiction.

The contrast that exists between everyday awareness and knowledge and the reality that underpins that knowledge is brought out in the concept of the primal reality of the substratum. At the risk of confusion it is arguable that the clay/vessels dichotomy with clay alone as real is merely an analogy for the reality of the substratum and the unreality of the upadhis/forms of limitation which the substratum manifests.

Or the characteristic of Brahman is Its being the material cause of the entire universe. By 'material cause' is meant the substratum of the superimposition of the universe, or the substratum of the cosmic illusion (maya) that transforms itself in the shape of the universe. It is in view of such material causality that Brahman and the universe have been described as identical in Sruti texts like the following: “This all is the Self” (Br.II.iv.6) “It became the gross and the subtle (Tai:II.6) and “Let Me multiply, let Me be effectively born (Ibid II.6, Ch.Up. VI, ii, 3) Conventional statements like, “The jar exists,” “The jar is manifest,” and “The jar is desirable,” are also on account of the superimposition of its identity with Brahman, the Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute.

(from Vedanta Paribhasa tranlated by Swami Madhavananda.)

Upamana once again

The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something - because it is always before one’s eyes.) The real foundations of his enquiry do not strike a man at all. Unless thatfact has at some time struck him. - And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful.

Philosophical Investigations #121 by Ludwig Wittgenstein.

I quote this in full because the valid means of knowledge (pramana) known as upamana (comparison) is so fundamental and basic to consciousness of the world, i.e. classification, differentiation, exclusion and inclusion, specification etc., that we no longer see it as such. Moreover the continued use of a single example in its traditional Nyaya explication misleads us as to this global nature. I refer back to my earlier thoughts on the matter at
upamana
but I will reproduce the entry on upamana in Vedanta Paribhasa in full. My present thinking on the matter arises out of my comments on the topic at the blog:cidabhasa


To save going back and forth to my earlier note I will reproduce in full the entry on upamana in V.P.

Now comparison is being described. The instrument of the valid knowledge of similarity is comparison. For instance a man who has seen a cow's form in cities and has gone to a forest, where his eyes have come in contact with a gayal (gavaya - bos gaurus) has the cognition, "This thing is like a cow". Then he has the conviction, "My cow is like this." Here by a process of agreement and difference, the knowledge of the likeness of a cow which exists in a gayal is the instrument, and the knowledge of that likeness of a gayal which exists in a cow is the result.

this is not possible through perception, for then the cow's form is not in contact with the eyes. Nor is it possible through inference, for that likeness of a cow which exists in a gayal cannot be the sign (reason) for inferring the likeness of a gayal in a cow. Nor can it be urged that this is possible through the following inference:

My cow is like this gayal.
Because it corresponds to its likeness existing in a gayal.
That which corresponds to its likeness existing in a thing is like the latter.

As Caitra, who corresponds to his likeness existing in Maitra, is like him.

For even without this sort of inference, the cognition, "My cow is like this," is a matter of common experience, and has also the apperception, "I am comparing the two,". Hence comparison is a distinct means of knowledge.

In my first comment on the general topic at cidabhasa I began at the aspect of genus/species differentiation.
Whenever the example chosen is always the same you can be virtually certain that the proposer does not understand what is at issue and is staying close to the shore of the canonical. Even the translation of upamana sends one in the wrong direction. It’s not really a comparison but more of a slipping back from the specific into the generic. You don’t know, by virtue of having no experience of, a bos gaurus but you do know a bos bos. By falling back into the generic concept of bos, (an unexperienceable conception), divided hoof, horned etc you can recognise another species the bos gaurus. The knowledge gained from a reliable source that there exists such creatures is an unnecessary addendum in my opinion. Zoologists find new species without that.

Why is this a valid means of knowledge not reducible to any other? I believe that it is due to the mystery of how general concepts arise, if in fact they do arise. We know what red, green, yellow objects are by ostensive definition but how is the concept coloured arrived at. This is a concept which is required for the experience of various colours but which itself cannot be arrived at by experience. Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations talks of the procedure of going on as in 2, 4, 6, 8 now go on. We know what the answer is but how can we be taught what going on is. All our examples of it assume it.

This may be part of Plato’s puzzlement about universals and curiously enough Shankara in B.S.B. I.iii.28 offers the notion of vedic words which is not a long way off the same aporia.

In short we have a means of attaining valid knowledge which is embedded within us. It is not reducible to any other means of knowledge and is therefore a pramana. This is of course anathema to the empiricist tradition.

In my second comment on Cidabhasa blog I get down to the task of discovering in the V.P. treatment of upamana a deictic demonstration of a facet of differentiation i.e. the discovery of similarity.

The text that I am familiar with on the subject of pramanas is Vedanta Paribhasa and of course the bos gaurus comes out to play there too. Now the question I put to myself is: suppose upamana is a separate pramana distinct from perception and inference etc. Does the classical account bear the weight of this position? The empiricist account with perception as its mainstay seems to be a stronger candidate for the power behind the naming of this strange beast. We have seen domestic cattle, we have seen their hooves and horns, we now see this new creature. By a sort of mental Venn diagram it moves partially into the cow area. Prior to this we have been primed by a reliable source so we can now name it with confidence.

To answer this story I propose the view that you can’t gain the concept of common as in common features without having the concept common already and that is not perceptible or inferential etc. If I accept the notion of upamana as a pramana this is the direction I find I am pushed in. On the face of it this seems to be a sustainable interpretation.

Here by a process of agreement and difference the knowledge of the likeness of a cow which exists in the gayal is the instrument, and the knowledge of that likeness of a gayal which exists in a cow is the result.

(Vedanta Paribhasa)

knowledge of the likeness is the common of common feature

In Vedanta Paribhasa the establishing of the concept of upamana as a means of knowledge not reducible to any other is done by showing that the alternatives are impossible.

This is not possible through perception, for then the cow’s form is not in contact with the eyes. Nor is it possible through inference for that likeness of a cow which exists in a gayal cannot be the sign (reason) for inferring the likeness of a gayal in a cow. Nor can it be urged that this is possible through the following inference:
My cow is like this gayal.
Because it corresponds to its likeness existing in a gayal.
That which corresponds to its likeness existing in in a thing is like the latter.

The latter reasoning underscores the question begging aspect of seeing common features.
(End Comment)

Now that last sentence might be better expressed as the circularity of abstracting the concept ‘common’ from features that we know are common. In short upamana is a power which is innate like perception itself. It might well be said to be the eye of the mind in that it distinguishes ‘forms’/eidoi. Henry Bergson uses the term ‘cut’ for this cutting out of whole cloth. What is this whole cloth? More, much more can be written on this topic. Anon.

Lastly I leave you with an alteration of Leibniz’s Question: Why is there something rather than nothing? -- Why are there some things rather than an undifferentiated continuum?

Thomas Reid, the unaccountable and the pramana.

The expression of unaccountability in relation to the intellectual powers of man as distinguished by Thomas Reid has a certain creative ambiguity about it. Like the famous fudging of the Anglo-Irish Agreement it allows for everyone to take whatever they want out of it and to nudge it in the direction of their predilections by 'clorification'. 'Unaccountability' might for the proponents of mysterianism be only the implicit admission that we cannot by virtue of our conceptual schema grasp what that schema is in itself. 'It outruns the mind' as it says in an Upanishad. Take it up with 'the Author of our being'; 'not my desk' in civil service jargon.

In conjunction with that you can take unaccountability as an expression of the concept of the pramana. A pramana is a valid means of knowledge which cannot be reduced to any other. Naturally different schools vary on what is fundamental and irreducible. The Advaitins recognise six pramanas. Memory is not one. Inference (anumana) cannot be reduced to perception (prataksha) or sabda (reliable witness) etc. There comes a point where the most cunning of philosophic alchemists cannot further fractionalize in the alembic of his mind the crude propositions of the laity.

Memory and belief can hold hands but are they conceptually welded.

When I believe that I washed my hands and face this morning there appears to be no necessity in the truth of this proposition. It might be, or it might not. A man may distinctly conceive it without believing it at all. How then do I come to believe it? I remember it distinctly. This is all I can say. This remembrance is an act of my mind. Is it possible that this act should be, if the act had not have happened? I confess I do not see any necessary connection between the one and the other. If any man can shew such a necessary connection, then I think that belief which we have of what we remember will be fairly accounted for, but if this cannot be done, that belief is unaccountable, and we can say no more but that it is the result of our constitution.

from EIP Essay III. i. pg.321 Sony ereader/search- distinctly. This -((the full stop is followed by a single space))

What does this have to say to the contemporary article of philosophic faith, the Justified True Belief as the touchstone of knowledge? Memory is not a valid means of knowledge on its own but it may share with the concept of the pramana a degree of irreducibility. The notion of belief that accompanies clear memory is definitive and not explanatory. Ultimately there is just memory as an element of our constitution.


For some light relief: I bet Flannery O'Connor loved this poem by Thomas Hood:

I Remember, I Remember

I remember, I remember
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn;
He never came a wink too soon
Nor brought too long a day;
But now, I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away.

I remember, I remember
The roses red and white,
The violets and the lily cups--
Those flowers made of light!
The lilacs where the robin built,
And where my brother set
The laburnum on his birthday,--
The tree is living yet!

I remember, I remember
Where I was used to swing,
And thought the air must rush as fresh
To swallows on the wing;
My spirit flew in feathers then
That is so heavy now,
The summer pools could hardly cool
The fever on my brow.

I remember, I remember
The fir-trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky:
It was a childish ignorance,
But now 'tis little joy
To know I'm farther off from Heaven
Than when I was a boy.