Date: Tue, 09 Jan 2001 19:00:53 +0000
Subject: Re: does ex-sistence ex-sist? [answers & questions--part 2]
From: "Michael Pennamacoor" <pennamacoor-AT-enterprise.net>


dear Jan, you wrote recently:

>dear Michael, you wrote:

>>But what of being?
>
>indeed, and that's why Bhakar is warning us not to commit the so-called
>*linguistic fallacy* viz. the analysis of being in terms of our discourse
>about being. If the rules of discourse are the limit(s) of our world, then
>any (search for or speculation about) ontology (being) will begin and
>end in platitude. (cf. PE 50-51)

I suppose, Jan, that I am making the point that Aristotle, in order to try to silence
certain kinds of difference amongst serious speakers, instituted a series of
language-rules (predicate logic, in the end) that create and maintain comm(on)unity of
speakers, by making being into a topic of discourse, and that, by making it over into the
common-nesses of beings (some thing like "substance" [presumably "ousia"] or better still
-- substantiality, under-lying whatness...): effectively, an other (albeit deepest, most
primary, universal, etc) being. Since the sciences make over and speak seriously of the
different kinds of beings, then the first science of metaphysics will speak similarly of
the kind of being that being (beingness) is: the difference, then, between the various
(secondary) sciences and the first science lies in the scope and generality of its
subjected subject matter -- it speaks of what the separate sciences ignore (in order to
carry on their sciencing), the whole (of being) of which the various topics and subjected
matter of the separate sciences are merely parts (of being). Of course, this (whole)
'being' is only the kind of being that can have parts of its wholeness (i.e., an other,
however inclusive and well-rounded, being). Since the sciences can and do speak seriously
of their subjected matter, so too can the first science of metaphysics speak seriously
(logically: bound by the rules of discourse, etc) of its matter -- being: and thus the
speech of metaphysics is bound by rules of good discourse too (since it is a good
science...). The "linguistic fallacy" is born.

Jan quotes:

>"Everything is real and is not real,
>
>Both real and not real,
>
>Neither real nor not real.
>
>This is the teaching of the Buddha."
>
>Nagarjuna

Supposing we leave out the "reals" in this an just suppose a vague notion of being to
underly Nagarjuna's statements, then we have the buddhist teaching about things:

"every thing is and is not; every thing neither is nor is not."

These are in the form of statements about the nature of things, let's say, beings...
re-phrased this now becomes:

"[it is true that] beings are and are not; beings neither are nor are not."

If we take this seriously, then the statement, being a statement, makes an assumption that
it can and does reflect a truth in the realm of beings; that truth is a property of the
statement, that it (the statement) reflects some valuable (for the states-men) state of
affairs in the realm of beings themselves. We can then further re-phrase:

"It is possible [even necessary] to truthfully state that beings are and are not; beings
neither are nor are not."

When Aristotle says:

"...it is not possible truthfully to assert and to deny the same thing."

he is speaking of the discourse-rules concerning beings quite explicitly... he speaks of
assertion and denial and their relation with truth, but, the hinge of his statement of the
excluded middle concerns the business of 'sameness' (with respect to beings)...

Let us assume the "same thing" is: "X is" (i.e., X exists, or, X is a being...)

Aristotle then says: "...it is not possible truthfully to assert and to deny that X is"
which trans-lates to: it is not true that X is AND X is not.

But I can say truthfully (for example) that the sea is blue [on a clear day] and not blue
[on a cloudy day]. Someone will object that the sea is not the same in each case mentioned
in the statement, and thus does not defy Aristotle's rule: Aristotle's rule must imply the
business of "at the same time" in the business of "same thing". What kind of time is this
"at the same time"? Or, because we can also provide a similar argument wrt 'space', "in
the same place"? Crudely speaking, the assumption is that the sea in each case is not the
*same* sea, but then, the "sea" in the statement is some thing eternally fixed (wrt time
and place), a being that remains permanently unchanging (un-moving) in itself. What kind
of "sea" is this? Are we not back to some linguistic bewitchment here? Perhaps, and only
perhaps, the buddhist statement tries within this bewitchment to dis-close the
bewitchment-as-bewitchment...

more later

best wishes

MichaelP


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