In Jain दर्शन, the objections you raise come from reading Jain terms through a purely materialist lens. That lens is not the Jain one.

1) On pradeśa and the soul In Jain philosophy, jīva is amūrta—non-material, non-tangible, and not composed like physical matter. When Jain texts speak of pradeśas of the soul, they are not saying the soul is a gross physical object like clay or gas. They mean the soul has numerical spatial co-existence with the body it occupies, without becoming material substance.

So the Jain position is not:

• soul = material extension,

• soul = conscious substance whose manifestation is coextensive with the body due to its own inherent capacity.

When the soul is in a small body or large body, Jainism says its vivid manifestation in that embodied condition corresponds to that body. This is not presented as mechanical deformation of a physical object. It is a doctrine about relation between consciousness and embodiment, not a claim that the soul is a lump of matter.

2) On karma and yoga Jainism does not say that karma binds through gross physical contact. Karma is a subtle pudgala—matter in an extremely subtle state.

The causal chain in Jainism is:

• upayoga / consciousness
• influenced by kaṣāya like anger, pride, deceit, greed
• expressed through yoga of mind, speech, and body
• which creates the condition for āsrava and bandha

This is not “magic” in Jain terms. It is a strict doctrine of conditioned bondage: the soul’s impure modes create the circumstances for karmic influx. Jainism does not need a third “bridge substance” in the way materialist systems do, because it already recognizes two distinct categories of reality: jīva and ajīva, with karma as a kind of ajīva.

Your criticism assumes that only gross physical causation is real. Jainism rejects that assumption.

3) On Syādvāda Syādvāda does not mean “nothing is true.” It means:

• reality is many-sided,
• each statement is true from a particular standpoint,
• no single partial statement exhausts the whole truth.

So when Jainism says the guṇasthānas are valid from the Jain standpoint, it is not saying they are merely arbitrary opinions. It is saying they describe the soul’s condition within a particular ontological framework.

That is not relativism in the lazy sense. It is non-one-sidedness. Jainism still makes strong truth-claims; it simply refuses to pretend that one angle is the whole.

4) On mokṣa and the present era Jainism does teach that the present age is not favorable for spontaneous universal liberation for most beings. But this is not “cosmic anxiety.” It is a diagnosis of condition, much like a physician recognizing that a disease requires long treatment.

The path is not about earning points. It is about:

• stopping influx,
• shedding bondage,
• purifying consciousness,
• and realizing the soul’s own nature.

Ascetic discipline is not arbitrary institutional control in Jain thought; it is a practical method for weakening karma.

5) On Tīrthaṅkaras and knowledge Jain epistemology does not rest on “they are right because they are coherent.” Rather, the claim is:

• the Tīrthaṅkaras attained kevala jñāna,
• therefore their teaching is free from delusion,
• and its internal coherence reflects that direct knowledge.

You may reject the premise of kevala jñāna, but within Jainism this is not circular in the crude sense. It is a tradition grounded in:

• scriptural transmission,
• teacher-student lineage,
• ethical verification in practice,
• and the philosophical consistency of the doctrine.

Bottom line Your critique treats Jain categories as if they were crude physical claims. Jainism is not doing that. It is offering a multi-level metaphysics in which:

• the soul is real but non-material,
• karma is real but subtle,
• bondage is causal but not grossly mechanical,
• and truth is many-sided but not meaningless.

So from the Jain standpoint, the position is not self-contradictory. It is simply operating with different ontological assumptions than materialist critique.

If you want, I can also give a point-by-point Jain rebuttal in short bullet form.