Abstract

The study of human reasoning and the study of human language have been closely connected in European philosophical thought. Except for the Buddhist thinker Dignāga, these two areas of study have not been connected in classical India. The connection which Dignāga made between inference and meaning in his theory of exclusion is a distinguishing feature of Buddhist philosophical thought in classical India and, for that reason, it is useful to treat the Indian Buddhist views of reasoning and meaning together. Logic, seeks to distinguish good reasoning from bad. Since reasoning is often communicated and, to that extent, expressed in a language, it is natural to use the forms of language to identify the forms of reasoning.