Abstract
This chapter aims at providing a broad overview of Indian logic pursued in the classical Indian philosophical systems as well as in contemporary India. It will be seen that traditional systems of logic do share some features, yet diverge from each other due to the differences in their ontology and practice. During the colonial period, logic was pursued mainly within a comparative framework. However, the perception of Indian logicians changed entirely as they came into contact with modern symbolic logic. The chapter is divided into five sections. The first section deals mainly with the distinction between Western and Indian conception of logic. The second section provides the structure of inference in classical Indian philosophical systems. The third section analyzes the concepts of negation available in the Nyāya, Buddhist, and Jaina logic and links different concepts of negation to the metaphysical presuppositions of the systems. The fourth section lays bare the nature of contradiction as conceived in these systems, and the final section gives a brief account of the developments in Indian logic during the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries.
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Chatterjee, A. (2022). Logic in India. In: Sarukkai, S., Chakraborty, M.K. (eds) Handbook of Logical Thought in India. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-2577-5_39
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