Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c26.s3.7

c26.s3.7

Fallacies² are classed by Dharmakīrti according to the old division of fallacies of the thesis, i. e. the minor term combined with the major, e. g. the fiery hill, as insisted upon by Dignāga; of the middle; and of the example, divided according to the homogeneous and the heterogeneous example. His classification of fallacies of the middle, the only important class, is on the basis that a fallacy arises if a characteristic of the middle is unproved (*asiddha*), e. g. ‘Sound is eternal, because it is visible,’ visibility being admitted by neither party to the supposed argument; uncertain (*anaikāntika*), e. g. ‘Sound is non-eternal, because it is knowable,’ where ‘knowable’ is too wide since it covers both eternal and non-eternal things; and as contradictory (*viruddha*), e. g. ‘Sound is eternal, because it is a product,’ the middle contradicting the major. He differs from Dignāga in rejecting two of the forms of fallacy allowed by the former, the first³ being reduced very sensibly to a mere form of contradiction, while the latter⁴ is laid aside on the interesting ground that it does not rise from true reasoning but is based on the scriptures of the two disputants, and scripture alone is no authority for Dharmakīrti.