word

[Guest guest]

Namaste CNji,

Slight inversion in the verification principle

"The meaning of a statement is its method of verification".

I don't think the meaning is changed which was that if you said

'the sky is blue' you could show the meaning of that statement

by saying that 'there's a colour chart and

there's the sky' and they are sufficently similar to warrant

calling the sky blue. And that's what I mean by saying

'the sky is blue'. Naturally it was not long before it was

discovered that this principle was woefully inadequate for

the varied meaningful utterances of everyday life such as

counterfactual conditionals.

 

Checking this I came across a nice student paper

http://rideau.carleton.ca/philosophy/cusjp/v17/n2/kistler.html

 

The crane and the lotus are in II.i.25. Prior to that Shankara

says that milk (II.i.24) turns into curds on its own without

depending on any extraneous accessory. Not true. It requires

if its preparation is like yoghurt a small amount of starter,

carfully controlled temperature which stimulates the correct

bacteria (lactobillius something).

 

I am still thinking about your earlier post and may perhaps

offer some general observations,

 

Best Wishes,

Michael.

||||||||||||||||||||||||||

 

CNji wrote:

Dear Michaelji,

 

advaitin, ombhurbhuva <ombhurbhuva wrote:

> Worst still are the Logical Positivists who hold

> that 'the meaning of a statement is the method of

> its verification'.

 

This is not correct. What they said was that a proposition should

indicate the criterion for its own verification. (This position is due

to Wittgenstein.) The actual verfication is an external truth-judgment.

For example, the propositon that 'this chair is brown' indicates that

it may be verified by judging its correspondence to the colour of the

chair. The criterion here is the meaning indicated by 'colour of the

chair'. Without this meaning coferred by the statement, one might as

well check up on the height of an elephant. Now the statement (due to

Heidegger) that 'an object is nothing' does not convey any meaning that

can form a criterion for its verification.

 

> In B.S.B. you will find that Shankara thoughtthat Cranes conceived by

> hearing the soundsof clouds and that Lotuses

> travelled from lake to lake mysteriously.

 

I remember having reading this vaguely. Can you give me the reference

sutra no?

 

warm regards,

Chittaranjan

[Guest guest]

Dear Shri Michaelji,

 

I don't want to stretch this discussion, but there are two points

which I think may be relevant here:

 

1. I don't think it is compassion for the devotees that makes

Shankara use these analogies, but that it is the rules of Nyaya that

allows him to do so. In tarka-shastra, one is allowed to use a tenet

that is common to both parties without further analysis, especially

during aviroda.

 

2. When you say: "Now it takes very little research into the annals

of pre-scientific people to realise that such beliefs (about cranes)

are entirely possible", I detect a valuation that loads the term "pre-

scientific" with the idea of "human progress". This idea (which is

usually implicit in the term) needs to be critiqued through a logical

investigation. I am not saying that the idea is false per se; what I

am saying is that we need to hold our valuation in suspension till we

investigate the idea fully. I would say that the idea of space being

curved is a superstition promoted by scientific people, and that it

can, with as much justice, be taken as a sign of "human regress".

 

Warm regards,

Chittaranjan

 

 

advaitin, ombhurbhuva <ombhurbhuva wrote:

>

> Namaste CNji,

> I think it's well to attend to what I actually

> wrote.

>

> " The realised man does not become perfect in

> scientific knowledge. In B.S.B. you will find

> that Shankara thought that Cranes conceived by

> hearing the sounds of clouds and that Lotuses

> travelled from lake to lake mysteriously.

> Certain aspects of gnosis may become operative

> due to the demands of compassion but not in

> his own mind for himself to put it crudely."

> Now it takes very little research into the annals

> of pre-scientific people to realise that such

> beliefs(about cranes) are entirely possible.

[Guest guest]

Ref. post 30310 and 30314;

 

Namaste Chitta-ji and Michael-ji;

 

Pardon me for stepping in once again in the discussion, but after some

consideration, and after witnessing the direction the discussion has taken,

i understand what in your point regarding the failure of the realized ones

to achieve complete scientific wisdom i both agree and disagree.

 

For starters, i believe that the central issue being missed here is time.

Point me to a science beyond time and i shall be content. Even Einstein's

relativity theory isn't beyond time, because of the "c" in it. If we were to

regard vedanta as the science that deals with what's left after spacetime

has been removed, vedanta would have been put also beyond the rest of the

spacetime dependent sciences, rendering it unobjectionable from one of the

latters' points of view.

 

Now to what i agree and disagree. Taking our appearances of individuality as

roles played in the movie reel we call maya, it is obvious that some may

take different parts than others. Among those, are the roles of those who

play scientists, who study for some time how a scientist thinks, live around

scientists a while so that they can get their characters, walk, talk and

think like them. And in the end, what we get when we engage and are absorbed

in the plot, is that we take the scientist on the screen to be real, even

forgetting about the fact that all of his studies were conducted looking

through a plastic microscope with no lenses on...

 

Again, show me a scientist who is perfect with scientific knowledge (even

about his own object of studies) and i shall be content. Wouldn't this

account for the fact that even scientific theories are in the end

transitory, lasting only for the duration of time needed for the next

scientist to come and refute it all, or at least correct it?

 

Now, i agree that having taken enough time to get down the character of the

scientist type, would certainly amount to a difference within the movie plot

when we compare the scientist character with the police officer, say. The

actor playing the scientist knows more about science than the latter.

However, realizing that all that was studied and played along was a mere

exercise of acting, implies directly that from that point on the fake nature

of the microscope is known, along with the laboratory set and it's plywood

walls etc. And from that standpoint, a description of Cranes reproducing

through sexual contact is no more real than that of spontaneous reproduction

after hearing thunder.

 

Do not get me wrong, i am by far not against science, and i believe that its

self-destructive nature leads us closer to what i still understand to be

upon knowing which, everything else becomes known. Furthermore, how

believable is a movie in which all scientists say "nucular"?

 

Finally, if the actor is really into science, enough for him to want to be a

scientist for real, first he has to understand the nature of his acting etc,

otherwise he will only be stuck around a part that is only as real as the

rest of the movie is (and this statement is completely contradictory, as

part of the movie itself, and for which the only solution would be the

appearance of a scientist acharya...).

 

My warmest regards, and sorry for this last statement's non-sense...

 

 

 

_____

Acesso Grátis - Internet rápida e grátis. Instale o discador agora!

http://br.acesso.