Tatparya, nirnay & upadhi

Prof. Payal Doctor, whose supervisor was Ganeri, writes-

In the acquisition of verbal knowledge, the Nyāya school outlines four conditions of a linguistic utterance that must be met: āsatti (temporal proximity), ākāṅkṣā (syntactic expectancy), tātparya (speaker intention), and yogyatā (semantic fitness).

This is false. There is no way to specify any necessary or sufficient conditions for the acquisition of knowledge of any kind. The Nyaya school wasn't composed of utter imbeciles. 

However, for juristic purposes, some types of verbal testimony may be certified on the basis that the thing wasn't hearsay, it coincided with one would reasonably expect, the intention (tatparya) of the speaker must have been such, the statement was grammatical and excluded ambiguity. 

Nevertheless, any or all these conditions could be relaxed so a proper decision (nirnay) might be made.

The cottage industry of imbecility which Prof. Payal is contributing to here is mischievous and arbitrary.

The fact is, it is right and proper to accept as verbal testimony the following statement by my father- 'as a matter of abundant caution, all statements by my cretinous son Vivek must be wholly disregarded or else interpreted as a piteous demand to be fed butterscotch ice-cream. This is the case even if he loudly demands Whisky. The fact is that Mama's boy is too much of a pussy to drink anything stronger than Babycham.'

True, Dad doesn't actually say any of this. He just gives the waiter a look of a certain sort. Indeed, this remains the case even when he is not present. Provided I have been seen in a dining establishment with my Dad, it will always be the case that my demand for Whiskey will be met with a nice bowl of butterscotch ice-cream. This would still be the case if Dad's intention towards me had really changed and he wanted to abandon his Vivek to yad bhavam tad bhavathi- that conatus which language only exists to avert or variegate with ludic irony. 

I will follow the traditional Nyāya view that is it one of the four necessary conditions that enable a hearer to gain verbal knowledge.

Yet, we understand signs and, if familiar with the relevant idiolect, can supply a verbal statement that the person in question would certify. Speech writers and people who run the twitter accounts of prominent people may better communicate the verbal knowledge that is sought to be communicated.

It not a defense in law to blame the speech writer or other agent for defamation intended and certifed by the accused. 

The reasoning behind retaining tātparya as a condition (or cause) of verbal knowledge, is that it provides a resource with which to clarify ambiguity when contextual factors cannot.

No. The tatparya is the essence of the communication- or its absence. The 'nirnaya'- judgment- may involve constructively supplying it. The dog and the cat- or Skippy the kangaroo- can communicate verbal knowledge which has 'yogyata' though they can't speak human language.  

It also provides a context for a hearer so that the primary (abhidhā) or secondary (lakṣaṇā) meaning of the word, or sentence is understood.

This is only the case where protocol bound or aesthetic discourse is concerned. Otherwise, nothing needs to be heard or read. The context and the motivation are enough to decide what we should deem as having been said. 

In this sense, tātparya imparts the meaning of a work.

No. The context and motivation do so. Suppose a tyrant orders the Archpoet to write a eulogy for him while watching innocents being tortured and killed. The Archpoet's intention may be to save his own life. But we can still distinguish a different 'lakshana'- e.g. a technical innovation or new aesthetic doctrine of a particular sort. 

Examples such as “Bring saindhava” or “Hari” make the case for the importance of tātparya in that the meanings of these terms are ambiguous unless the context is provided or the speaker intends to mean one referent rather than another.

But such examples could just as easily make the case for not swimming on a full stomach. The claim is wholly arbitrary.  

In this paper, I present the case that tātparya is the most important component of an accurate paraphrase,

Nonsense! An accurate paraphrase merely pads out a statement in a harmonious manner. No knowledge of intention is required. Thus, if my boss says to me 'if X rings up, tell him to fuck off' I don't need to know my boss's full intention. I paraphrase 'fuck off' as 'My employer is not reachable by you at this time'.  If pressed for an explanation, I may use a lengthier paraphrase but am careful not to speculate on my boss's intentions or motivations. 

Accurate interpretation is not the same thing as accurate paraphrase. 

and it must be retained in order to preserve the original intention of the work.

But a paraphrase is not accurate if it is based on an interpretation. You can substitute more harmonious or more idiomatic phrases which are longer than the original but you have gone too far if you supply an interpretation of your own. In certain professions- e.g. journalism- you are trained to provide an accurate precis- this allows you to omit repetitive or verbose passages- whereas in diplomacy, you may be required to provide a paraphrase. Any interpretation or hypothesis about intention must be separate and identified as such.  

In other words, tātparya should be the primary constraint of an acceptable paraphrase.

No. A paraphrase is not a translation. It is the padding out of a statement in the same language which must add nothing informative as opposed to idiomatic or ornamental and which involve no imposed interpretation.  

As a side comment to my aim, I discuss the notion of why paraphrase only needs to be sufficiently similar to the original work.

There is no such requirement. The boss says 'tell him to fuck off'. But he doesn't want you to use foul language. Your paraphrase should be couched in polite language but it must express unambiguously that the boss will not entertain any conversation with the person in question. 

The information content of a precis or paraphrase is the same as the original. Questions of interpretation involve a decision (nirnay) and this may be on the basis of 'tatparya' but, equally, it may not. One may deem such and such to have been the intention- because that is what ought to have happened- and proceed with your interpretation on that basis. Sadly, there is an availability cascade about 'upadhi' which has given rise to foolishness of the above sort. Briefly, a condition which is imposed to prevent a sequent calculus from being empty or yielding absurdity is 'upadhi'. It serves a purpose where there is a 'nirnay' decision which, though based on an interpretation, is not itself interpretative or capable of further interpretation. 'Buck-stopping' has occurred.  There is no 'under-cutting condition' because there is nothing to undercut. Judgment has been pronounced. Failure to understand that Indian logic wasn't analytic but concerned with Gentzen type 'natural deduction' misled post-War toilers in this field- who, truth be told, were all as stupid as shit.