World of objects

[Guest guest]

"For Galileo, the secondary qualities are not merely

functions

> of the primary and thus derivative and dependent on

them, they are

> actually devoid of objective existence; they are

mere appearances."

> ('Idea of Nature' Clarendon Press 1945)

 

What constitutes the primary and the secondary

qualifications? Is there

a specific criterion to separate the two. Is the

above statement 'they

are devoid of objective existence' is it true for the

primary

qualifications too?.

 

So is the relation between universal and

> particular, between action and substance. The two

are

> distinguishable in thought but inseperable in fact.

 

Michael, I am lost in the above statement. Can you

explain to me a

little more detail? It sounds now more like

vishishhTadvaita. The

individuals or particular that you mentioned and

universal, meaning the

totality is the relation between the substantive and

its qualities - Is

that the meaning of the sentence. I am not sure the

second part 'between

action and substance' - Does it mean substantive

cannot but act and they

are inseparable - I am unable to grasp the meaning as

well as

implication. The last statement is even more puzzle.

What in thought and

in fact means -what constitutes 'fact'? Need little

bit more explanation

for me to understand.

 

>

> Are dravyas, elements (4 or 5), humours, pranas only

the relics of

> proto-science and like the atom which was supposed

to be the ultimate

> constituent of matter, now exploded and rendered

curiosities of the

> history of ideas?

 

Question is how does one establish the independent

existence of the

matter since senses can only perceive the qualities

and not

substantives. Is it an inference of the mind based on

the vyaapti

j~naana that there cannot be qualities without a

locus, object? Since

the world is nothing but objects, we are faced with a

question of how to

prove the independent the existence of the world

without the mind

present? Or is it just a mental notion?

Thanks.

 

Hari OM!

Sadananda

 

Namaste Sri Sadananda,

In the work of Locke secondary qualities are due to

the powers of bodies to produce certain sensations in

us. (colours, smells, tastes, sounds and the like)

Solidity, extension, motion, rest, figure and number

are simple ideas and thus are called the primary

qualities of things. This would be the stuff of

Newtonian science.

 

What Sw.Satprakashananda says about 'distinguishable

in thought but insepearable in fact' would be the

summation of Sankara's thoughts on sense experience

and concepts in B.S.B. II.ii.28. pass. He himself

says 'Therefore an object and its knowledge differ'

 

There appears to be in internal contradiction in the

idea that our empirical data is got from sense

experience but the basis of this sense experience the

matter which is blue etc is itself a postulate which

is beyond the senses or strictly insensible

(Berkeley's judgment).

 

As to the existence of the world without the mind

present. I have the idea that this violates a

principle of ontological priority. This is an obscure

notion of my own which is still on the workbench so

to speak so bear with me and see what you think of

it. I begin with the rebuttal in B.S.B. II.ii.28:

just as much as a man while eating and himself

experiencing the satisfaction arising from that act

might say, "Neither do I eat nor do I get any

satisfaction".

 

This is the situation we are in - having eaten the

world we now examine ourselves to see whether in fact

we have eaten. We are already there in a world and

then we start again and examine what we have to try

to establish our right to have it. When we seek to

re-establish what we already have we go astray. There

is a given, a totality. Mind is already there.

Subject and Object are not one on the level of Mind.

In a sense Subject and Object are Mind.

 

The situation of superimposition is a fundamental one.

We do not superimpose after we have decided that the

world is one of Subject and Object - me in here, that

out there. Superimposition has already taken place

not in a temporal but in an ontological sense. That

being so the out there is a reality in the direct

sense of the word 'real'.

 

However then we have to consider how 'the object and

its knowledge differ'. This level of

conceptualisation occurs after, in the ontlogical

sense, superimposition has made mind possible. That

does not mean that the object has become somehow

derealised or that there are primary qualities which

are real or that the secondary qualities (mind

dependent) hang on material substance. The object

does not dissapear into the subject. Because it can

be superimposed it is other than the subject. How

this otherness came to pass when in fact being is

indivisible is a question that is inscrutable

(anirvacanaya?).

 

Another thing Locke claimed was that Morality could be

demonstrated like Mathematics. He did not carry out

that programme. Are there simple ideas drawn from the

raw empirical data of behaviour which enable us to

say whether some action is good or bad. Can we move

from the 'is' to the 'ought'?

 

Or is there innate Dharma that arises out of the

structure we are conscious in? Speak the truth,

follow Dharma. Meditation on the truth of unity

('unity is the answer' says Sankara in Brh.Up.) is

what brings out the Dharma in each situation. We do

not examine events to find in them guides to action.

It is only in action based in unity that we create

ethical guidelines.

 

Best Wishes, Michael.