[Buddha-l] Views of Information & Knowledge (Culture & Religion)

[Barnaby Thieme]

Hi Erik,

If the statements of these yogis can have no relevance beyond their own 
cultuarlly-bound context, why should we look at them at all? In the 
perspective you advocate, they cannot have any relevance to our lives. 
Surely the existential and ethical conditions of classical India are even 
more different from our modern circumstances than basic aspects of 
perception.

And for that matter, if words are completely bound to their context and do 
not refer in any meaningful way to a shared world, then how is it possible 
that we can understand their words in any way whatsoever? If there is 
nothing to language beyond how it is used in the context of a language game, 
then there is no reference at all, and there is no common basis for 
intelligibility.

It seems so much easier and better to me to take the "middle way" and 
acknowledge that some aspects of mutual comprehension are culture-bound, but 
language also describes a state of affairs that we more or less all 
experience. Indeed, this is a common view in Indian Buddhism, and led to the 
doctrine of "collective karma" in the Yogacara system.

Barnaby

_________________________________

A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing
- Emo Philips




>From: Erik Hoogcarspel <jehms at xs4all.nl>
>Reply-To: Buddhist discussion forum <buddha-l at mailman.swcp.com>
>To: Buddhist discussion forum <buddha-l at mailman.swcp.com>
>Subject: Re: [Buddha-l] Views of Information & Knowledge (Culture & 
>Religion)
>Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2006 20:51:57 +0200
>
>Barnaby Thieme schreef:
>
>>Hello Erik,
>>
>>This problem of meaning that you describe has been considered for many 
>>centuries as the hermeneutic circle. My feeling is that you go too far 
>>here in the degree to which you say that meaning is bound to discourse. I 
>>prefer Gadamer's resolution: meaningful utterance is a "fusion of 
>>horizons", and a compromise between the parameters of intelligibility and 
>>the verbum interius. Speech says something beyond itself, or it says 
>>nothing at all.
>>
>Hi Barnaby, I'll try not to digress to much here. Gadamer meant in this 
>case the proces of hermeneutics itself, but in his 'Truth and method' he 
>does not seperate a discourse from it's pragmatics. On the contrary, he 
>mentions the jurisprudence as a hermeneutical tradition which he thinks is 
>a good example to show the relation between text and action. I think 
>Buddhist hermeneutics is not different because many texts are 
>incomprehensible without taking int o account the practise of meditation, 
>the struggle for power between different schools and the life of a 
>practitioner (beit a monk or a yogi or a lay person). My argument is based 
>on Wittgenstein who showed that the meaning of a word is the use and the 
>use is based on the life form. As far as I can understand the life form of 
>a Buddhist abbot in India during the first half of the first millenium AD 
>is very different from that of a scientist in the 20th century.
>
>Erik
>
>
>www.xs4all.nl/~jehms
>weblog http://www.volkskrantblog.nl/pub/blogs/blog.php?uid=2950
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>buddha-l mailing list
>buddha-l at mailman.swcp.com
>http://mailman.swcp.com/mailman/listinfo/buddha-l