• Masamichi Sakai discussed the role and fortune of examples in Dignaga, Dharmakirti, Arcata and his successors. The example is essential to show the vyapti for Dignaga, but risks to become in fact unessential for Dharmakirti, who thinks to be able to ground the vyapti ontologically. Arcata pushes this risk further, insofar as he admits that in the case of the sattvanumana, namely the inference through which one infers that everything that exists is momentary, an example is in fact only fictitious (kalpanika). For, the paksa is just everything, since everything is momentary, so that one only artificially separates the paksa from the sapaksa. Ratnakirti, who dealt with the same problem had in fact to admit that the process through which one gets at the example leads in fact already to the same result as the sattvanumana (so that either the one or the other ends up being redundant).

It has been argued that examples are an evidence of the inductive nature of Indian inference. Does this apply to Pramanavada as well? Or did Dharmakirti change it all?

This post is a part of a series on the IABS. For its first day, see here. For the first part of the second day, see here. For the second part of the second day, see here. Please remember that these are only my first impressions and that all mistakes are mine and not the speakers’ ones