Knowledge

If you insist that without situating Gita in the massive text that Mahabharata is, we cannot understand or interpret Gita, then you provide such a gigantic con-text to the 18 chapters that the Gita is, and because a move like this can only give interpretations of a small text by situating in such a huge con-text, any and almost every interpretation can become valid or acceptable or permissible. …

You raise the question whether using earlier theories, which are superseded by newer theories, one can (or even could ever) access knowledge? (I am not a physicist, but I do not think that physicists have junked Newtonian theories. I think that Newtonian physics retains its validity in the macroworld we live in and is not considered false. As far as I remember, I have not come across writings that …

In the examples you refer to, you touch on an approach to situations and problems that are Indian (in the sense of culture) contrasted to which stands another culture’s way of dealing with situations. The simplest way to explicate this difference in a general way, using your examples as a reference point, would be this: when we speak of problems and solutions, there are two ways of looking at …

Assume that you get a Ph.D student who wants to do medical research. He comes to you and tells you that he wants to find out an answer to the burning question about why people get sick. Would you be able to guide this student in answering his question or give one answer to it? Your answer would be: it depends. You would also further say to him, ‘choose a particular disease, choose a particular …

To help you think through the problem you “whether Christians can get enlightened”, try using this analogy. Something, let us call it ‘daffodil’, fascinates us. Let us also assume that a great deal of concern and interest is expressed about it. Consider two scenarios now, each of which testifies to our fascination. The first scenario is this. There is versification (call it ‘poetry’) and …

This post will use an imagery as its organising thread, which tracks the search for enlightenment in terms of notions known to us from our secondary and higher education. If we consider the search for happiness in these terms, then the ideas expressed there could be reformulated thus: as human beings, almost all of us would like to be literates or would like to have a primary education. This is …

Why understanding bullshit is important? Three reasons: (a) there is a very frequent use of the word ‘bullshit’ (mostly in my posts); (b) bullshit has been tied directly to truth in the literature on the subject, (c) far more important is the fact that it is much more connected to knowledge than has so far been acknowledged. In this post, the focus is on the third reason. I First, an …

The Ancient (and modern) philosophers make the distinction between beliefs that are merely opinions of individuals and beliefs that are knowledge claims. Today, when modern philosophers speak of ‘doxastic coherence’ about the Greek thinkers, they do not merely mean that there should be a coherence in beliefs but also that Ancient philosophers have not produced knowledge but merely express …

About the relationship between scientific knowledge and enlightenment: If every human being can become enlightened (at any time, place or culture), it logically follows that some or another hypothesis about the world cannot be a requirement to become enlightened. People were enlightened (in the past) without possessing knowledge that humankind has today; one can become enlightened without being a …

Editor’s note: This article appeared in the Journal of American Academy of Religion Abstract The paper attempts a contrast between the process and the structure of the Christian and the Indian spirituality. Drawing attention to their dissimilarities, it attempts to reformulate the differences among the Indian traditions in a novel way. It argues that cultures and traditions are not just different; …

As I have often said, the most intriguing aspect of the Indian culture is the kind of knowledge it produced and encouraged people to produce: experiential knowledge which emerges by systematically reflecting on our (human) experiences in the world. As human beings, our experiences are many: no one set, no one kind of experience exhausts what we go through. From the purely personal experiences of …

Paraphrasing Feynman: “the answers proposed like counting angels that can dance on the head of a pin are trivial.” I am not in the least impressed by (in fact, I am disgusted by and contemptuous about) the attitude of the likes of Feynman. Here is one reason why: I too have a criticism of (some) social sciences and (some) aspects of the western philosophy. I too consider that some of these social …

You do not want to call our natural sciences as ‘knowledge’. I do not even mind that. (For instance, you might want to define ‘knowledge’ as ’true and justified belief’. You might show me that our theories in natural sciences are only believed to be true and are not proved to be true. Therefore, you might want to say that our natural sciences are not ‘knowledge’ according to your definition. Fair …

The first striking thing is their presumption of knowledge at several levels. Yet, they display abysmal ignorance. (a) Christianity has not just had a two thousand years’ history. It has also had two thousand years of doctrinal development. In the latter, every notion that has been employed here has been continuously discussed, refined, contested and so on. Their meanings, as they apply to …

Imagine that I were to say the following: Christ and Ganesha are manifestations of the same divinity; Christ came about 2000 years ago in the Middle East, whereas Ganesha is how he has appeared in India some 4000 years ago. Now no one can forbid me from saying this and calling myself a Christian. Question: what should a theory about Christianity do? Show how anyone who decides to call himself a …

Assuming that our theories in Physics are not false, would there be gravitational force in the Cosmos (or on our planet) whether or not there was a theory about it? This is the question about the ’truth’ and ‘objectivity’ of our theories. If we say ‘yes’, I do not see how one can say the opposite, then the truth or falsity of, say, Aristotelian theory is not dependent on the ‘consumer’ of that …

Let us call the descriptions of what you see ‘facts’. Are your ‘facts’ a contribution to human knowledge? In one sense they are; the way any description of anything by anybody is a ‘fact’ and thus knowledge. One needs, and one has, a way of not wanting to call every piece of ‘fact’ as knowledge. Hence, we can reformulate the issue: does it contribute towards building a scientific theory of …

Some consider it to be a “superstitious practice”, the implication being that it is irrational to believe that dancing causes the rain to fall: no reasonable people on earth can buy the story that dancing actually causes rain to fall. I am not willing to buy it. However, it is a fact that in some cultures people do perform ‘rain dances’. However, to explain the ‘rain dance’ by attributing a …

Let us begin in a very intuitive way and ask ourselves this question: where do we encounter ‘cultural differences’? In human contacts, of course. What kind of human contacts? In inter-individual contacts. That is, we see (or sense, or intuit or whatever) cultural differences in our contacts with individual human beings. You do not meet ’the western culture’ but individual Americans, Germans, …