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Of the many charges levelled against the doctrine of Syadavada, the most fundamental is that of self-contradiction. In other words, the charge is that the Jaina doctrine flagrantly violates the law of non-contradiction which says that A cannot be both B and not B at the same time. Thus how can a pen have the A characteristics of both existence and non-existence? Before answering this objection, let us first discuss the attitute of the Jaina towards the law of non-contradiction propounded by formal logic. The conviction of the Jaina is that the law of non-contradiction is a priori and thus does not state any facts about reality. If it is asked what is the criterion of contradiction, the reply of the Jaina would be that it is experience and not pure thought. It is by the former that the notion of contradiction should be decided. Two facts are contradictory, if they are not found to co-exist in experience just as light and darkness, heat and cold and the like. On the contrary, if experience confirms the co-existence of seemingly contradictory attributes in a thing, it should be regarded as valid. Thus the Jaina insists that the source of the law of noncontradiction should be sought not in a priori thought, but in experience of the behaviour of things. Following the mode of logic, the Jaina finds no empirical contradiction in asserting that the pen has the characteristics of both existence and non-existence, as has been explained above.
The Jain Philosophy
105
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