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The Buddhist 笔腻濒颈 suttas do not offer a theory or a technical distinction between thoughts and utterances, and also show that there is no way to determine exactly a distinction between language and cognition. Hence, it is not plausible to say that there is a definite treatment of the relationship between language and thought in Buddhist philosophy, though it is equally significant to know that Buddhist ideas present a significant corpus of ideas on language and thought.

1. The Buddhist Theory of Thought

In the Buddhist philosophy, there is a considerable distinction between cognition and recognition. Cognition is defined as a 鈥榥ew cognition鈥�; that is, according to Stcherbatsky 1999: 64, 鈥渃ognition of the object not yet cognized. It is the first moment of cognition, the moment of the first awareness, the first flash of knowledge, when the light of cognition is just kindled. Enduring cognition is recognition; it is nothing but repeated cognition in the moments following the first flash of awareness. It certainly exists, but it is not a separated source of knowledge.鈥� Accordingly, only the first moment of a fresh sensation is a right cognition in the fullest sense. A perceptual judgment is already a subjective construction of the intellect. The human sensations such as memory, love, hatred, greed, and so on are intent upon objects already cognized, and therefore they are not regarded as sources of knowledge. A source of knowledge is a cognition of the object not yet cognized, but they admit enduring objects and enduring cognition. The cognitive element of one鈥檚 mind is limited to that moment when he gets first aware of the object鈥檚 presence. It is followed by the synthetic operation of the intellect which constructs the form, or the image, of the object. But this construction is produce by productive imagination; it is not a source of cognition. It is not cognition, but recognition (Stcherbatsky 1999).

Buddhism also draws a distinction between right cognition and wrong cognition. Right cognition is cognition followed by a resolve or judgment which is, in its turn, followed by a successful action. In a word, it is successful cognition. Whereas cognition leads astray, deceives the sentient beings in their expectations and desires, is error or wrong cognition. Error and doubt are the opposite of right knowledge. Doubt is again of a double kind, one of the five hindrances of developing concentration.

The Buddhist theory admits only objects as moments, as string of events, and makes a sharp distinction between the senses and the intellect as two different instruments of cognition. One can logically argue that the senses apprehend, while the intellect constructs. In the cognitive process, the first moment is always a moment of sensation, it has the capacity of kindling the action of the intellect which produces a synthesis of moments according to its own laws. The first moment of awareness鈥揷ognition鈥搃s what constitutes the source of right knowledge, the source of uncontradicted experience. In brief, for Buddhist philosophy, cognition is new cognition, and not recognition. It is only one moment and this moment is the real source of knowledge, or the source of knowledge reaching the ultimate reality of the object (see Stcherbatsky 1999).

2. Reality and Ideality

The two major focal issues evolving all along on the stage of cognition are Reality and Ideality. The former is called Point-instant, the later is called Concept. Reality always appears in the first moment in its genuine purity, unintelligible and unutterable, but vivid, and directly reflected. A reality, as observed by Stcherbatsky (1999: 185) 鈥渋s stripped off from every relation and every construction, which has neither any position in time and space, nor any characterizing quality, cannot be expressed, because there is in it nothing to be expressed, except the fact that it has produced a quite indefinite sensation.鈥� Ideality, on the other hand, emerges to be the indirect, or conditioned, reflex of Reality in a concept or language.

If a patch of blue has produced a visual sensation, as pointed out by Stcherbatsky, one must distinguish in this mental occurrence two radically different facts.

He explains:

In the first moment a sensation is produced, it is the real moment of a fresh cognition. We have cognized the blue, but we as yet do not know that it is the blue. The sense of vision which alone has produced this cognition is by itself incapable of imparting to it any definiteness. It therefore commits, so to speak, all further work to its associate, the understanding, which operates upon the material supplied by the senses and constructs with the help of mnemonic elements a conception. This conception alone is capable of being expresses in speech. The thing as it is in itself, its unshared essence, can never receive such a name, it is unexpressible. A conception and a name thus always refer to many moments. The pure reality of a single moment is unutterable. A reflex whose scope is strictly limited to the objective reality of one moment is susceptible neither of conceptual determination nor of linguistic expression. To maintain that ultimate reality, the thing as it is in itself, can neither be conceived nor named means that it cannot be cognized by consistent logical methods, in this sense the Thing-in Itself is uncognizable. (Stcherbatsky 1999: 186)

The ultimate reality, the thing as they really are in themselves, is characterized as an external point-instant. But, strictly speaking, even that cannot be said, because in the first moment it is a simple sensation in an internal something and its source. It is differentiated into subject and object; into a sensation proper and its external cause. This is the first mindconstruction, a kind of 鈥渢ranscendental apperception,鈥� a feature owing to which every further cognition is accompanied by the consciousness of an Ego (Stcherbatsky 1999).

Relatively, the judgment disclosed itself as a function bringing together the seemingly irreconcilable Reality and Ideality. Inference appeared as an extension of the Judgment, and its function is to link together Reality with extended or inferred concepts. The unutterable reality can nevertheless be designated, indirectly, by names or concepts. Language, in this sense, is means to establish the part of reality. Though touching reality only dialectically and indirectly, language may be considered as the act of the Buddhist Dialectical Method.

3. On Language and Thought

The question at the moment is: What is really the part of language in our cognition? Is it a real source of knowledge? Is it a separate source, different from the senses and the intellect, or is it a secondary source included in one of the two main sources? The dignity of a source of real knowledge, in fact, cannot be refused to verbal testimony, because a source of real knowledge is always uncontradicted experience. A right utterance is the adequate expression of external reality. External reality produces a stimulus upon human cognitive apparatus, which, when stimulated by reality, constructs an image of the thing from which the incoming stimulus proceeds. Guided by thus image we take action and, if the image is right, the action becomes successful, the object is reached.

The Buddhist philosophy, however, does not tend to accept the view that reality is interwoven with name, or that there is no reality without a name, and that language is a kind of 鈥淏iotic Force,鈥� (see Stcherbatsky 1999) which shapes our concept and even shapes reality itself in accordance with those concepts. On the other hand it goes to suggest that language is not a separate source of knowledge, and names are not the adequate or direct expressions of reality. Names correspond to images or concepts; they express only universals while reality consists of particulars, not of universals. The universals cannot be reached in purposive actions. Thus, concepts and names are the indirect, or conditional reflex of reality; they are the 鈥渆cho鈥� of reality, they are logical, and of course, not real. And language, being an indirect cognition of reality, does not differ from inference, which has also been defined as an indirect mode of cognition.

According to the 顿颈驳苍腻驳补鈥檚 Theory of Names (Stcherbatsky 1999), knowledge derived from words does not differ in principle from inference means it is indirect knowledge.

One given example here is the word 鈥榳hite鈥�.

The word 鈥榳hite鈥� does not communicate the cognition of all while objects. They are infinite and no one knows them all. Neither does it communicate cognition of a Universal Form of 鈥榳hiteness鈥� as an external Ens cognized by the senses. But it refers to a line of demarcation between the while and the non-while, which is cognized in every individual case of the while. The while is cognized through the nonwhile, and the non-while through the while. (Stcherbatsky 1999: 460)

In general, language can be construed as an indirect cognition of reality. While being negative, conditioned, inferential, relative, and dialectical, language is considered as the means to identify or express partly a genuine reality, which is pure affirmation, ultimate, unconditioned, neither negative nor is it dialectical. Although the position of the Early Buddhism is interesting in this regard as it contended that definitions, conceptual knowledge or language are all names, and hence dialectical which can at best only reproduce or be a counterpart of the reality, but the role of language in process of cognition highly significant. Language, in this sense, is a part of cognition. Its business is to construct the manifold empirical world out of that pure reality. Moreover, humans cannot deal with the thought-process without expressing it in some linguistic ways. Thus, language and cognition are not only related as the indirect and the direct source of knowledge, but also related as negation and affirmation, as intellect and senses, as a dialectical and a non-dialectical source.