[tamil] The Philosophy of Meykandar-10
10
Part III
3.0 Logic and Metaphysics
At the moment the scientific ethos throughout the world is constituted by the
positive sciences with physics providing
the model of a rigorous science. The closer a science approaches physics the
more rigorous it is deemed to be. The
onticals or physicals are singled out as the chief expression of
rationality, neglecting the ontological and hence the
metaphysical and hermeneutical. Thus it becomes imperative to work out the
essences of the hermeneutic sciences,
their logic and in what sense it is also an expression of rationality. For
within the ontological there can be the irrational
as much as it can be within the ontical. Just as the notion of positive
science makes the ontical rational, so would the
notion of hermeneutical science that of ontological. The LOGIC of Hermeneutic
Sciences constitutes the Logic of
genuine metaphysics.
The notion of scientific rigor in the positive sciences is strongly
associated with the notions of instruments, their
reliability and validity. Each time a hermeneutic science emerges, the
positivists bounce upon it with the questions:
What are the instruments? How reliable are they? How valid are the
measurements, the analysis? and so forth. There
is here a presumption, as already pointed out earlier, that anything
scientific would mean instrumental interventions and
quantitative analysis. The physical sciences are such sciences and when the
notion of scientific rigor available here is
extended to the human sciences, the same demands are made without realizing
that there is a shift in the seeing, from
ontical to ontological. When this shift is taken into account, it is clear
that it is NOT that there is no scientific rigor but
only that it takes a different form that needs to be worked out. It is in
working out this that we come to see the LOGIC of
not only hermeneutics sciences but metaphysics as such. We shall do this by
taking up samples of hermeneutic
sciences where the notion of scientific rigor emerges most clearly within the
framework of ontology and Temporal
Analytics from which it cannot be dissociated.
3.1 TEXTS and ontopretations or The Notion of Utti (as expounded in the
Marapiyal of Tolkaappiyam)
As we have already noted, the hermeneutic problems are problems already
constituted at the genesis itself as
onto-enigmas and which always presuppose the existence of TEXT and a
particular reading of it. This does not mean
only the verbal texts and such entities give rise to such enigmas. Every
element of experience holds the possibility of
being a TEXT or a brute factual data depending on whether the seeing is
ontological or ontical. Every ontological
seeing sees only TEXTS with their attendent duality of structure. TEXTUALITY
is not an objective quality of a
thing - it belongs to the seeing, where the seeing is ontological, that which
is seen is a TEXT. It may be verbal or
nonverbal productions of individuals or some kind of presentations made
available to an individual the origins of
which may be obscure (e.g. dreams). But all such TEXTS, by virtue of being
seen as a TEXT have a Surface
Structure that points beyond itself to a (or indicative of) Deep Structure
having elements in it that in fact constitutes the
textual character of the Surface Structure of the TEXT. The following are two
examples of such TEXTS one verbal,
the other nonverbal.
TEXT 1 : (Part of classroom instruction on Language in the primary school,
first grade. The text is excerpt of a
middle of an ongoing lesson, videotaped and transcribed)
1. Guru: Semua sebut [huu....] 1. T : All say
[huu....]
2. SM : huuu.... 2. A.C :
huu...
3. G : sekali lagii .... 3. T :
Once again ...
4. SM : huuu... 4. A.C:
huuu.....
5. G : Baik, Kumpulan A 5. T : Okay,
group A
6. K.A: huu .... 6. G.A:
huu ...
7. G : Semua dikumpulan B sebut 7. T : All in
group B, pronounce it
8. K.B: huu .... 8. G.B:
huu...
9. G : Baik,sekarang (sticks pictures 9. T : Okay
now ( .... ):
the board): Ini gambar apa?
What is this picture?
10. M : Pokok 10. C :
Tree
(G) Guru : Teacher (r): Semua murid (SM) All children (A.C), Murid (M) child.
The Text 2 is from Family Portrait Test, similar to New BAUM TEST, species of
ACCESS TESTS used in Agamic
Psychology (Yoshikawa, K. Loganathan Mutarayan, 1985). A four year old male
child who had problems in
quantitative competence was asked to draw his mother, his father, himself as
now and himself when big (or grown
up). The drawings as produced by the child are reproduced below (eye-copies)
Text 2 A. Mother , large with arms. B. Father small, without arms. C. Self
like father D. Self like father but bigger.
Both are Texts in the sense that they have a DUAL Structure, the surface and
the deep, the meaningless scratches or
scribbles and at the same time significatory or communicative of something.
But the onto-enigmas do not emerge just
by noting these features; the Texts have to be accessed appropriately so that
one is not trapped by the ontic-enigmas
(the phonological, syntactical; size, frequency, deletions and omissions
etc). In Text 1 the onto-enigma emerges when
the repeated occurrence of the discourse-marker `Baik, sekarang’ is noted and
we raise the question: Why the
repetition precisely in the manner it does in the TEXT? What is IN the
teacher that compels him to doso ? Similarly in
Text 2 . After noting that the drawn figure of mother is larger than father,
and that while the mother has arms the
father doesn’t, an onto-enigma emerges when we raise questions such as: What
is IN the child that makes him draw or
represent his mother and father in the above different ways?
Such questions are what we shall call ontological or metaphysical , questions
seeking to locate elements in the deep
structures that would account for the observable in the surface structure of
the Texts. There is a way of constituting the
enigma itself so that instead of ontical, ontological questions are raised.
For example in Text 1, when we note that
while the utterance pairs (1,2), (3,4), (5,6), (7,8) have a certain
completeness or saturatedness characteristic of them
and the movement from one pair to the following non-disruptive or connected,
at (9) however there is
BREAKDOWN or DISRUPTION along with the introduction of something DIFFERENT.
There is, in other words,
a RECONSTITUTION of the nature of the interactivity itself which once
recognized for what it is, gives rise to the
ontological questions: Why so? and along with it the emergence of
onto-enigmas.
In the smooth development of the interactivity this BREAK constitutes a
departure and which through that causes the
emergence of an onto-enigma. One who sees this and is caught by that
onto-enigma, seeks out the elements in the D.S
of the text, the elements that are there but hidden from view. Something in
the text remains covered up and which he
sees now as resisting his standing-under. He sees himself as having a
BLINDNESS on account of which something
remains unavailable to his SEEING. He initiates now what the hermeneuts have
called interpretive movements,
investigations into the implicative structures, semiological studies and so
forth. But we shall avoid these and use the
term onto-pretations (Tamil:utti, sk: ukti) instead for an important reasons.
The interpretive movements or translational
maneuvers above seem to be processes that do not affect the researcher as a
person but only his understanding, which
obviously is not the case. The onto-enigmas such as the above also disclose
an aspect of his Being, in this case his
Being as one who is IGNORANT, who has yet to SEE certain things that are
there in the TEXT but which are
covered up FROM him. The COVEREDUPNESS is NOT something DONE by the text; but
something is so only
because he has not yet that COMPETENCY that would enable him to SEE; provides
him with that VISION that
would allow him to SIGHT it immediately. The onto-pretations are maneuvers
that would in fact remove or destroy
this BLINDNESS or incompetence. They are, in other words, activities of
LEARNING in the authentic sense,
activities in which one’s IGNORANCE is reduced, incompetence destroyed. The
onto-pretations are educative and
pedagogical and hence something quite different from the interpretations.
(to continue)10
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