Chris Rahlwes

With his extensive work on the Buddhist tetralemma (catuṣkoṭi) and the Jaina sevenfold sentences (saptabhaṅgī), Graham Priest has presented Indian logic as dialetheic, in which there are true contradictions. While Priest is not the only logician to present Indian logic as non-classical or paraconsistent, his dialetheic reading has gained widespread attraction among contemporary logicians. This attraction has led many logicians to posit that Priest is (historically) correct in his reading. However, those who study Buddhism and Jainism often do not share these convictions. The backlash from such specialists often simplifies Priest’s account and ignores the challenge that the dialetheic reading brings regarding the nature of negation. Following Priest’s claim that Aristotelian logic is incompatible with classical logic, I argue that Priest uses the wrong logical framework – the non-classical heir of classical logic – to understand Indian logic. In so doing, I present a neo-Pāṇinian or neo-Aristotelian account of Buddhist and Jaina logic emphasizing negation, denial, and (to a lesser degree) contradiction.

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