Bihar Intermediate Philosophy (BSEB) key terms

The Jain doctrine that reality is many-sided: every object has countless aspects, so no single description exhausts it. It grounds tolerance between rival views.

The Jain method of qualified assertion: every judgement is prefixed by 'syat' (in some respect), yielding seven conditional predications about a thing's existence, non-existence and inexpressibility.

A partial standpoint or one-sided viewpoint in Jain epistemology. A naya grasps one aspect of an object truly but incompletely, and becomes error when mistaken for the whole.

In Jainism, the living, conscious soul-substance, infinite in number, whose essential nature is knowledge and bliss but which is obscured by accumulated karma.

The non-living category in Jain metaphysics, comprising matter, space, time, the medium of motion and the medium of rest; it includes the karmic matter that binds the soul.

In Jainism, fine material particles that attach to the soul as a result of passion-driven activity, obscuring its knowledge and binding it to rebirth until exhausted.

The Indian materialist school holding perception alone as valid knowledge, earth-water-fire-air as the only elements, and the body as the sole basis of consciousness.

The Charvaka ethical stance that pleasure, especially sensual enjoyment, is the proper human aim, since death ends experience and no afterlife rewards or punishes action.

The Buddha's core teaching: suffering exists, it has a cause in craving, it can cease, and the eightfold path leads to that cessation.

Dependent origination: every phenomenon arises only in dependence on conditions, so nothing exists independently or permanently. The twelve-link chain traces suffering from ignorance to rebirth.

The Buddhist doctrine of non-self: no permanent, unchanging essence underlies a person; what we call 'I' is a stream of changing physical and mental aggregates.

The Buddhist goal: the extinguishing of craving, hatred and delusion, ending the cycle of rebirth and bringing unshakeable peace rather than annihilation.

Buddhism's practical discipline: right view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness and concentration, grouped into wisdom, ethics and mental cultivation.

A valid means of knowledge in Indian epistemology. Each school counts different pramanas; Nyaya accepts perception, inference, comparison and verbal testimony.

Perception as a pramana: cognition produced by contact between a sense organ and its object, which is direct, non-conceptual at first and free from error.

Inference in Nyaya: knowledge of an unperceived object through a sign or reason, as when smoke on a hill yields knowledge of fire. It has five-membered formulation.

The invariable concomitance linking a reason with what it proves, as smoke is invariably accompanied by fire. Establishing vyapti is the heart of sound inference.

A fallacious reason in Nyaya logic: a pseudo-sign that fails to establish its conclusion, for example a reason that is inconclusive, contradictory or merely presumed.

A category of reality in Vaisheshika ontology. Seven are listed: substance, quality, action, universality, particularity, inherence and absence.

Substance in Vaisheshika: the substratum in which qualities and actions inhere. Nine kinds are recognized, including earth, water, fire, air, ether, time, space, self and mind.

Inherence in Vaisheshika: the inseparable relation between a whole and its parts, a quality and its substance, or an action and its agent.

In Samkhya, primordial unconscious nature, composed of three gunas in equilibrium, which evolves the world for the sake of purusha's liberation.

In Samkhya, pure consciousness: passive, unchanging and plural, witnessing the modifications of prakriti without acting or being affected.

The three constitutive strands of prakriti: sattva (clarity, lightness), rajas (activity, passion) and tamas (inertia, darkness). Their proportions shape every phenomenon.

Isolation or liberation in Samkhya-Yoga: the state in which purusha is realized as distinct from prakriti, ending identification and hence suffering.

Patanjali's eight limbs: yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana and samadhi, forming a graded discipline culminating in absorption.

Shankara's non-dualism: brahman alone is real, the world is appearance produced by beginningless ignorance, and the individual self is ultimately identical with brahman.

Ramanuja's qualified non-dualism: brahman is real and one, but the world of conscious selves and matter are real modes or attributes of brahman, not illusions.

Madhva's dualism: God, individual souls and matter are eternally distinct realities, with God supreme and souls dependent on him for existence and liberation.

The ultimate reality in Vedanta: infinite, unchanging consciousness and bliss, described in the Upanishads as the ground and inner self of all things.

In Advaita, the power of ignorance that makes the one brahman appear as a manifold world; maya is neither real nor wholly unreal but sublated by knowledge.

The ritual-centered school that treats the Vedic injunctions as authoritative and focuses on dharma, the obligatory duties revealed in Vedic commands, rather than liberation through knowledge.

In Mimamsa, the good or duty enjoined by Vedic command; it is known only through scriptural testimony, since it concerns what ought to be done, not observable fact.

Verbal testimony as a pramana: reliable assertion from a trustworthy speaker, understood through the meanings of words and sentences. Mimamsa and Vedanta treat scripture as its highest form.

The epistemological view, associated with Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, that reason alone can yield substantive knowledge of reality, independent of sense experience.

The view, associated with Locke, Berkeley and Hume, that all knowledge derives from sense experience and reflection, leaving no room for innate ideas.

Descartes' 'I think, therefore I am': the indubitable first certainty that even radical doubt presupposes a thinking subject, used as the foundation of knowledge.

Locke's image of the mind at birth as a blank slate, on which experience writes ideas through sensation and reflection, denying innate knowledge.

A property of deductive arguments: the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises, so that it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false.

A property of deductive arguments combining validity with actually true premises; a sound argument therefore guarantees a true conclusion.

The content asserted by a declarative sentence, capable of being true or false; different sentences in different languages may express the same proposition.

The correspondence of a proposition to how things actually are; a proposition is true when reality is as it states, independent of what anyone believes.

Kant's supreme moral principle: act only on maxims you could will as universal law, and treat humanity always as an end, never merely as a means.

A consequentialist theory holding that the right action maximizes overall well-being, weighing everyone's happiness equally, as developed by Bentham and Mill.

In Indian ethics, the duty or right conduct appropriate to one's station and circumstances; it is the central moral concept, grounding obligation rather than mere consequences.

In the Bhagavad Gita, action performed without attachment to its fruits; one does one's duty for its own sake, and this disinterested action purifies the self.

The Vedic idea of cosmic order or truth that governs the regularity of nature, the seasons and the gods, later connected with the moral law of karma.

The pan-Indian moral law that actions, good or bad, produce corresponding results for the agent, in this life or a future one, unless counteracted by knowledge or grace.

The self in Upanishadic thought: the innermost conscious principle of a person, held to be eternal and ultimately identical with brahman.