Logic of Syād-Vāda

Abstract

The syād-vāda ("doctrine of syāt"), also called "sevenfold predication" (saptabhaṅgī), constitutes a cornerstone of the Jaina doctrine of multilateralism, since it prevents a predicate from being attributed absolutely to a subject. According to Jainism, in order to consider a single state of affair as exhaustively as possible, one has to submit every predicative relation between a subject and a predicate to a structural rule made up of seven propositions, which are not conceived of as alternative truths but are all endowed with the same truth-value. A thorough understanding of the syād-vāda raises tricky issues, such as the meaning of the adverb syāt in the context of this logical pattern, the compatibility of Jaina logic with basic logical principles, or the oddness of the number of propositionswhy seven?