How convincing is Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika’s analysis of reality as an ontology of seven ‘categories of things that exist’? [Feel free to address what you wish of this theory, e.g. their theory of substances and qualities/actions, their theory of universals and particularities, their theory of the relation of inherence, viz. identity-in-difference,.
• Examine and assess Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika’s theory of the self and of what constitutes liberation .
• Examine and assess Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika’s doctrine that the effect does not exist in its cause . You may wish to consider here their mereological arguments claiming that wholes are ontologically distinct from their parts.
• Examine and assess Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika’s theory of the realism of universals and/or their theory of the realism of nonexistences.
• Assess Nyāya’s theory of valid inference , including whether their doctrine of the invariable concomitance/pervasion of properties solves the problem of induction.
• Assess the debate between Nyāya’s doctrine of four valid means of knowledge and the Materialist School’s doctrine that perception is the only valid means of knowledge .
• Does Nyāya theory of the valid means of knowledge give a satisfactory account of what knowledge is, of what establishes what knowledge is, and of. how we know that we know?
