[Buddha-l] Withdrawal of the senses

[Richard Hayes]

On Saturday November 18 2006 11:16, Erik Hoogcarspel wrote:

> He also got famous by his contention that rituals have no meaning, it's
> a bit complicated, but the crux is that he defines meaning in the way of
> Wittgensteins Tractatus: rituals don't refer to matters of fact.
  
Yes, Staal's work on rituals also draws heavily on Chomsky's work on deep 
structure. As you say, his thesis is complex, but it involves the claim that 
rituals have a syntax and recursion rules that one can discern. The structure 
of the ritual has no intrinsic meaning, but a ritual can be made meaningful 
through the addition of meaning-bearing elements, just as a 
sentence-structure has no intrinsic meaning but can be used as a vehicle for 
meaning-bearing words.

What led Staal to this study was his observation that Brahmin priests could 
perform sacrifices that took days or even weeks to perform. He marvelled that 
anyone could memorize so much. But then he analysed what the priest did and 
discovered that there were small units of ritualistic structure that they 
arranged in different ways. So he concludes that with a finite number of 
basic structures and rules of transformation, a priest can generate 
innumerable rituals, just as a person with a finite number of structures, 
rules and lexical items can generate an infinite number of well-formed 
sentences. (Although I have quite a few students who apparently cannot 
generate even one well-formed sentence in any language.)

>Never heard of him since.

I heard a rumour that he is now living in Thailand, but I have no idea whether 
it is true. Anyway, thanks for all the information on Staal, much of which 
was new to me.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico