An Examination of Multimodality in Gaṅgeśa's Philosophy

Multimodality refers to cognitions that are qualified with contents arising from multiple sense faculties. This paper locates and examines two perceptual forms of multimodal cognitions, mentally mediated perceptual cognitions (jñānalakṣaṇā pratyāsatti) and simultaneous cognitions (yugapajjñānā) in Gaṅgeśa’s Tattvacintāmaṇi. A mentally mediated perceptual cognition is one in which a substance, while being perceived experientially, has contents from the rational agent’s memory trace infused into their perceptive cognition. An opponent argues that recognition (pratyabhijñā) is composed of two cognitions, an experiential cognition (anubhava) followed by a recollection (smaraṇa/smṛti), while Gaṅgeśa argues that recognition takes recourse to mentally mediated perceptual cognition and appears in a single cognition. A simultaneous cognition is the ability to simultaneously experience qualities arising from multiple sense faculties in a single cognition. An opponent argues for the possibility of simultaneity and its occurance in a single cognition, while Gaṅgeśa argues that it is impossible to veridically experience simultaneity in a single cognitive state. I argue that Gaṅgeśa can theorise on both types of cognitions while upholding the Restriction Assumption: that the sense faculties are restricted to and can only generate cognitions related to their respective content.