Arthapatti

(“presumption”) All Indian philosophical
schools concern themselves with codifying the pramanas, that is, the means by
which human beings can gain true and
accurate knowledge. Almost all schools
consider perception (pratyaksha), inference (anumana), and authoritative testimony (shabda) as pramanas; the Purva
Mimamsa school, one of the six schools
of traditional Hindu philosophy, posited
two others: abhava (“knowledge from
absence”) and arthapatti.
Arthapatti is an inference from circumstance in which a judgment is
made about one case based solely on
similarities to related cases. An
example would be when a traveler is
presumed to have reached her destination, since the train’s arrival time has
passed. According to Indian philosophy, this is not a true inference since
the judgment must always be confirmed by direct perception, in this
case that the train had actually
reached its destination. The Purva
Mimamsas justified this new pramana
by arguing that this knowledge could
not be accounted for by any of the
existing pramanas and thus required
this new one to explain it. The other
schools were not inclined to accept it,
since its presumptive nature could
often lead to error.