vidya and/or gyana

[Guest guest]

The debates on vidya/gyana never end thanks to our learned ways of

talking. To get to the core, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism have

stunted the growth of " experiential knowledge " , which is *not* a set

of propositions and is orthogonal to theoritical knowledge, a

theortical knowledge seen in Natural sciences. The way semites and

the cultures dominated by Christianity, Islam, Judaism, do see the

the problem this way: our experiences either of social, or of

natural world are founded on theories, or beliefs. This

presupposition was *crucial* to the religion that Christianity,

Islam, and Judaism are instances of: during the debates between

Roman Pagans and Christians(and Jews), when the latter were asked to

prove that they were following ancestral practices; and the jews to

some extent, and Christians remonstrated that their scriptures are

ancient, hence their practices. This semitic assumption got

secularised, and has become a truism in Modern Philosophy,

Psychology, Political theories. But this assumption is dead wrong.

 

Lets shift to theoritical knowledge, the knowledge produced by

Natural sciences. The way we experience this world is, somehow and

to some extent, dependent upon the theories we use to *say* what we

experience. (There is a huge debate about this issue, and it is not

yet settled one way or another. We do not, as yet, even have a

decent theory of perception. Research, for example, in Computer

Vision is trying to simulate some aspects of perception of objects

and motion etc). What's the upshot of the foregoing: theoretical

knowledge is subordinated to experiential knowledge. However,

western philosophy, and the westernized Indian philosophy don't

recognize *experiential knowledge*; most of these guys even don't

know that our experiences are *structured*(for example, the

structure of emotions like *happy*, *sad* is different from the

descriptions themselves, the descriptions that are *happy* and *sad*)

 

In this way, Indian `philosophy' is concerned about human actions--

actor, acting and action, and about our experience of ourselves,

whereas, for instance, a theory of heat is concerned about another

structured experience—we feel hot, when we touch a *hot pan*. Indian

traditions were addressing the question: Is one's experience in the

world (especially about oneself and the others) veridical (i.e.

true)? " What happens, when we map Western/Westernized Indian

philosophy to understand Indian traditions: incoherence; and

nonsense at the best. Western Philosophy is concerned about two

things: one about explanations about Natural world(because Natural

World is embodiment of the Will of Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, ad

Jacob); the other about meaning(how the Will of Lord God evolved;

debates about `meaning' and `reference').

 

Put this way, vidya/jyana that is spoken of in Indian traditions is

different from theoretical knowledge, and is experiential knowledge,

a species of knowledge concerned about human actions, and human

experience of oneself and the others. Indian traditions don't make

sense if looked at as theories(propositional knowledge or a theory

abt experience); but not interesting for what they say, but for what

they *do* and how they *do* it. See, it is concerned abt Acting. If

we dump the Semitic assumption in the thrash that the actions are

instantiations of beliefs, the modern education, whose object is

theoretical knowledge, is *not* necessary for *experiential

knowledge*: that's why one happens to see many illiterates among

yogis.

 

Atmavidya/atmagyana deals with this intentionality problem (in

western philosophy, it refers to the yet unsettled problem: Is

consciousness reducible?). This problem cannot be solved in the

world of propositions.

 

In Atmabodha, Shankara spoke of the difficulty regarding the

transition from Atmagyana to Brahmagyna: this is the problem of

induction, but at experiential level; to go from particular Atman,

or knowledge about intentionality, to universal brahamn(this is not

esoteric, but experiential). Here, Shankars says, one should use

yukti(tricks). In our terminology, one needs to use some cognitive

strategies: rules of thumb, heuristics, algorithms, and so on. One

of such yuktis, as He gave an example, is: neti, neti(not thus, not

thus). `karma' is another cognitive stratergy: this is not a

doctrine, nor a description of the world, but a cognitive strategy.

How, it works etc, for somewhen in the future.

 

If one looks from IIT towards MIT/Stanford/Berkeley, what is seen,

however, is: theoretical knowledge, alas, which does not help you to

either know of `eudemonia' that Aristotle spoke of and the western

philosophy couldn't comprehend but nonetheless understood it in

Christian way; nor aid in reflecting about our experiences of

ourselves and others!