Concept
Indian logic
Overview
Indian logic refers to the exercise of reasoning and the practice of arguments recorded in early texts of India, with treatment intimately connected with questions of ontology, epistemology, dialetics, and the nature of reason and arguments. The field arose independently of the Greek tradition and is generally counted as one the three original traditions in the world, alongside Greek and the Chinese. The development of Indian logic dates back to the Chandahsutra of Pingala and anviksiki of Medhatithi Gautama (c. 6th century BCE); the Sanskrit grammar rules of Pāṇini (c. 5th century BCE); the Vaisheshika school's analysis of atomism (c. 6th century BCE to 2nd century BCE); the analysis of inference by Gotama (c. 6th century BC to 2nd century CE), founder of the Nyaya school of Hindu philosophy; and the tetralemma of Nagarjuna (c. 2nd century CE). The Indian tradition continued to develop through early to modern times, in the form of the Navya-Nyāya school of logic.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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The chief business of the logician is to classify arguments; for all testing clearly depends on classification. The classes of the logicians are defined by certain typical forms called syllogisms. For example, the syllogism called _Barbara_ is as follows: S is M; M is P: Hence, S is P. Or, to put words for letters— Enoch and Elijah were men; all men die: Hence, Enoch and Elijah must have died.
Charles S. Peirce, Chance, Love, and Logic
States what Indian logic is.
One of the most successfully cultivated branches of philosophy in our time is what is called inductive logic, the study of the conditions under which our sciences have evolved. Writers on this subject have begun to show a singular unanimity as to what the laws of nature and elements of fact mean, when formulated by mathematicians, physicists and chemists. When the first mathematical, logical and natural…
William James, Pragmatism
States what Indian logic is.
To infer a proposition from a previous proposition or propositions; to give credence to it, or claim credence for it, as a conclusion from something else; is to _reason_, in the most extensive sense of the term. There is a narrower sense, in which the name reasoning is confined to the form of inference which is termed ratiocination, and of which the syllogism is the general type. The reasons for not conforming to…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic
States what Indian logic is.
Philosophers who discussed Indian logic
- Udayana
- Abhinavagupta
- Dignāga
- Haribhadra
- Bimal Krishna Matilal
- Buddhism
- Bhāviveka
- George Boole
- Charles Babbage
- Jonardon Ganeri
- Raghunatha Shiromani
Related ideas
- Hellenistic philosophy
- Udayana
- Hemachandra
- Pingala
- Dignāga
- Argument
- Western philosophy
- Jain philosophy
- India
- Analytic philosophy
- Jainism
- Indian mathematics
- Nyāya Sūtras
- Dharmakirti
- Augustus De Morgan
- Mahabharata
- Henry Thomas Colebrooke
- Infinity
- Nagarjuna
- Ontology
- Haribhadra
- Set theory
- Sanskrit
- Kundakunda
Place in the tradition
Part of Nyaya.