The meaning of the term 'tarka' is not clear in the modern literature on Classical Indian Philosophy. This paper will review different modern readings of this term and try to show that what the Nyāyasūtra and its classical commentaries called a 'tarka' should be understood as the following: a tarka is a cognitive act that validates a content (of a doubt or a cognition or a speech-act) by demonstrating its logical fitness or invalidates a content by demonstrating its logical unfitness. A tarka can act as a metatheory too. Generating certainty is, according to the Classical Nyāya, a job assigned to an epistemic instrument (pramān : a). It fails to do so when there arises a doubt regarding it. The moment a tarka dispels the doubt, the epistemic instrument generates certainty. Tarkas of different types will be exemplified by critically analyzing Ga _ ngeśa's applications of tarka in his magnum opus Tattvacintāman : i. These examples will clarify the definition of tarka formulated in this paper.

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We perform conceptual acts throughout our daily lives; we are always judging others, guessing their intentions, agreeing or opposing their views and so on. These conceptual acts have phenomenological as well as formal richness. This paper attempts to correct the imbalance between the phenomenal and formal approaches to conceptualization by claiming that we need to shift from the usual dichotomies of cognitive science and epistemology such as the formal/empirical and the rationalist/ empiricist divides-to a view of conceptualization grounded in the Indian philosophical notion of "valid cognition". Methodologically, our paper is an attempt at cross-cultural philosophy and cognitive science; ontologically, it is an attempt at marrying the phenomenal and the formal.

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Brahmānanda Sarasvatī has written an elaborate comment on the following inference cited in Advaitasiddhi: attribute etc. are identical to and different from attributee etc. since they are co-referential. There he wants to prove that every significant case of attribution (such as 'x [is] y') is a case of identity that coexists with a difference between two demarcators (upalakṣaṇa). The identity that coexists with difference is called 'equality' (tādātmya). This paper will argue that in each case of equality, the realist ontology chooses either identity over difference or the reverse. In the case of 'the black pot', the realist ontology prefers difference over identity. In the case of 'the qualified object is the mere object', the same ontology prefers identity over difference. Accordingly the ontological 'entity' gets projected. This is perhaps because the realist ontology is guided by Ockham's razor and the grammatical classification of objects. Keywords tādātmya • equality • identity • difference • Brahmānanda SarasvatīPadmapāda (8 th century CE)-a direct disciple of Ś aṅkara-proposed the following definition of falsehood (mithyātva): a thing, which is neither eternally existent (sat) nor absolutely inexistent (asat), is false. An example of that is an illusory thing, which is definitely not eternally true. A round square is absolutely inexistent. According to the Non-dualist (Advaitin), i.e., an adherent of the Non-dualist system & Nirmalya Guha