Subject: Re: [MD] The Intellectual Gauntlet
Mati, "Many have argued that the distinction between Eastern and Western schools of philosophy is arbitrary and purely geographic and to certain extent, Eurocentric. It crosses over three distinct philosophical traditions, Indian, Chinese and Persian philosophy which are as distinct from each other as they are from Western philosophy. It could be argued that the idea of some distinct "Eastern" philosophy as opposed to Western Philosophy is simplistic to the point of absurd inaccuracy. It may for example make more sense to include Islamic philosophy within the Western tradition, as it was influenced by Greek philosophy and Hellenistic philosophy, and in turn had a strong influence on Jewish philosophy, Christian philosophy and Western philosophy. The artificial distinction between Eastern and Western philosophy does not take into account the tremendous amount of interaction within Eurasian philosophical traditions, and that the distinction is more misleading than enlightening. For example, Indian and Western schools of thought, with their robust mind-body conceptual dualism, share consequent tendencies to subjective idealism or dualism. Formally, they share the rudiments of Western "folk psychology": a sentential psychology and semantics, for example, belief and (propositional) knowledge, subject-predicate grammar (and subject-object metaphysics) truth and falsity, and inference. These concepts underwrote the emergence (or perhaps spread) of logic in Greece and India (In contrast to pre-Buddhist China). Other noticeable similarities include structural features of related concepts of time, space, objecthood and causation-all concepts hard to isolate within ancient Chinese conceptual space." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_philosophy "It has been argued that in most Western philosophies, the same can be said of the individual: Many Western philosophers generally assume as a given that the individual is something distinct from the entire universe, and many Western philosophers attempt to describe and categorize the universe from a detached, objective viewpoint. Eastern philosophers, on the other hand, typically hold that people are an intrinsic and inseparable part of the universe, and that attempts to discuss the universe from an objective viewpoint as though the individual speaking was something separate and detached from the whole are inherently absurd." The ancient Greek origins of the words "true" and "truth" have some consistent definitions throughout great spans of history that were often associated with topics of logic, geometry, mathematics, deduction, induction, and natural philosophy. Socrates', Plato's and Aristotle's ideas about truth are commonly seen as consistent with correspondence theory. In his Metaphysics, Aristotle stated: "To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true".[31] The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy proceeds to say of Aristotle: Aristotle sounds much more like a genuine correspondence theorist in the Categories (12b11, 14b14), where he talks of "underlying things" that make statements true and implies that these "things" (pragmata) are logically structured situations or facts (viz., his sitting, his not sitting). Most influential is his claim in De Interpretatione (16a3) that thoughts are "likenessess" (homoiosis) of things. Although he nowhere defines truth in terms of a thought's likeness to a thing or fact, it is clear that such a definition would fit well into his overall philosophy of mind.[31] Very similar statements can also be found in Plato (Cratylus 385b2, Sophist 263b).[31] In ancient Indian philosophy and Buddhist philosophy, Gautama Buddha developed the theory of the Four Noble Truths, which are one of the most fundamental teachings of Buddhism and commonly appear in the earliest Buddhist texts, the Pali Canon.[32] In the Upanishads of ancient India, truth is Sat, the one reality and existence, which is directly experienced by the Rishi or sage (see also Gandhi section below). The Rishi discovers that which exists, Sat, as the truth of one's own being, the Atman or self, and as the truth of the being of God, Ishvara. Ron: I suggest reading about the many ways "truth" is defined. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
