The Theory of Truth | Rāmānuja
The Theory of Truth | Rāmānuja
The Viśiṣṭādvaita theory of Truth holds that what exists (sat) is alone cognized and that there is no bare negation.
The Absolute is not Brahman versus māyā but is all Brahman(Brahmamaya), and since Brahman is real, the world rooted in it is also real.
Reality and value are one and the more real a thing is the more true it is:
The not-self (a-cit) is ever-changing and it is called unstable (a-sat). The self (cit or ātman) is eternal though its consciousness contracts and expands according to its karma and it is called stable or real (satya). But Brahman is eternal, pure and perfect and is the supreme reality (satyasya satyam).
Truth is true and becomes the more of itself till it expands into Truth which is Brahman itself as the only reality which sustains all things as the being of their being.
Viśiṣṭādvaita utilizes every theory of truth, pragmatic, realistic and idealistic, in so far as it satisfies its main thesis.
Truth is ordinarily defined as the knowledge of a thing as it is and as what satisfies the practical interests of life.
If the object as it is does not correspond to sense perception and the thing-hood of things in their structural unity in a realistic way it is rejected as false, as in the case of the shell mistaken for silver.
The pragmatic test is useful in cases like the mirage which is false owing to its failure to serve the practical purpose of satisfying thirst. Dreams are real psychic occurrences caused by the moral law of karma.
When jñāna is purified, it can intuit Brahman and thus become perfect.
But in the empirical state, knowledge is fragmentary as is evidenced in the three ways of knowing, namely, perception, inference and Scripture(pratyakṣa, anumāna and Śāstra) which are ascending stages and not stopping-places.
The knowledge given in sense-perception is partial and is trustworthy as far as it goes. Inference establishes the integrity of the causal relation, and it identifies the cause with the because and finally with the ground of knowledge philosophically, and it relies on the evidence of reason though particular reasoning may not come up to the mark.
Śāstra, as a body of spiritual truths verified and verifiable by the seekers after truth, furnishes the ultimate basis for valid knowledge.
In all these cases truth is a progress to the more of itself and is not based on non-contradiction and sublation.
Ignorance of nescience (avidya) is not an innate obscuration of Brahman, but it is karma. It is an imperfection of the finite self (jīva) and when one seeks to overcome it one becomes a seeker after Brahman (mumukṣu).