In Buddhist
logic, the origin of every judgment and concept from data of our
senses starts with the act of running through the manifold of
undetermined pure sensations first before we fasten upon one point
of that series of pure sensations, a point with regard to which the
rest will be divided in two. On the one side we have a
comparatively limited number of similar things, on the other the
less limited number of dissimilar ones. Both parts mutually
represent the absence of each other. Therefore, every of our
conscious thought or cognition thus represents a division into two
parts. Thus, our cognition begins with an act of dichotomy. As soon
as our intellectual eye begins to ‘see’, our thought is already
beset with contradiction. Once our thought has stopped running and
has fixed upon an external point, to produce a judgment said, ‘this
is blue’, we have already separated the universe of discourse into
two unequal halves, the part that is blue and the infinite part
that is non-blue. Both parts are relative to each other. There is
actually nothing blue in itself. The Law of Contradiction is an
expression of the fact that all cognition is dichotomizing and
relative. We can only cognize or determine a thing by opposing it
to what it is not.
Now, everything
be it real or imagined, is subject to the Law of Otherness also.
Otherness and opposition are realized as representing the negation
of the similar. Differences and the contraries cannot be conceived
so long as the non-existence of the similar is not realized.
Otherness and opposition is the absence of the similar
indirectly.
Contradiction
can be conceived in its logical or dynamic forms. View logically it
is a complete mutual exclusion such as e.g., blue and non-blue.
They can co-exist in close proximity with each other without
interference with each others’ existence. This mutual exclusion can
also be referred to as the Law of Excluded Middle. In its dynamic
form, both the opposing parts are mutually endeavoring to oust one
another out of their mutual opposition. Light and darkness is such
an example as each is a complete negation of the other. They cannot
peacefully co-exist in close proximity with each other. They appear
and disappear due to the totally of causes. This is the Buddhist
theory of causation. The Law of Excluded Middle also fully applied
here as well.
In real
phenomena, there is always something in the middle. If light
appears all of a sudden, there is always an intermediate moment of
twilight between darkness and light. This is different in the case
of logical opposition between light and non-light, the opposition
is complete without an intermediate twilight moment. Here, it can also be mentioned that the Theravada
tradition maintained that between pleasure and pain there is the
third position of Indifferent feeling in the middle. To the
Buddhist logician, the last moment of the series of darkness is the
cause (in the sense of dependent origination) of the first moment
of light. Real causation belongs to a single moment only. On the
other hand, efficient opposition is between one set of moments
(duration of time) and another set which is constructed by our
intellect. It is not ultimate reality. It is constructed
phenomena.
The Laws of
Contradiction is one of the main tools used by the Buddhist
logicians in establishing their theory of Instantaneous Being, for
Instantaneousness is the very essence of every real thing. The
logical law of contradiction does not apply to the ‘Things-in
Themselves’, as logic is thought and thought is imagination and not
ultimate reality. Ultimate reality in Buddhist philosophy is the
reality of a point instant. It is the efficiency of a point
instant. There is no relation of opposition between
entities.