Truth and Falsity in Indian Philosophy
By and large, classical Indian philosophy treats truth within an epistemological context, and different theories of truth are connected with different theories of knowledge. Truth is regarded as a property of cognitions, not of sentences or propositions, although it is presupposed that a true cognition, if appropriately verbalized, would be expressed by a true statement. Cognitions form dispositions or beliefs, but the concept of a belief is also not in the forefront in classical Indian analyses. Modern interpreters tend to use the term veridicality, rather than truth, because of this focus. Cognitions are episodic psychological events divided into types according to epistemic and other criteria, and perceptual, inferential, testimonial, and hypothetical veridical (true) cognitions are not only the results of processes that are veritable "knowledge sources" (pramāṇa) but are also causes of effort and action, including speech. A cognition has objecthood, its indication or intentionality, which is a feature it can share with other cognitions: two people can have the same cognition in this sense. Against such a background, contested issues include, most notably, the nature of veridicality as a cognitive property and the nature of justification, that is, how veridicality is known.
Preclassical and Early Classical Metaphysics
Classical Indian philosophy proper stretches from about 100 BCE to the modern period (1800s and beyond).
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