Abstract

This chapter describes the ‘basis for usage’ (_pravṛtti-nimitta_). It also reports the Nyāya account of natural kind terms. It then addresses the link between the two-component theory of the meaning relation and Fregean and neo-Fregean accounts of meaning. In addition, it explores what recent interpreters have said about the nature of the Nyāya modes. The Nyāya theory depends on the notion of ‘analogical identification’, and is specifically of the acquisition of natural kinds terms. Discriminatory capacities are indexed by the properties whose instances they discriminate. It is noted that a Nyāya mode, or rather an ordered pair of an object and a mode, fulfils the criterion for being the sense of a term, at least for anyone who regards the notion of sense as a theoretical one not tied to specifically _Fregean_ doctrines about it.