Akshayjha at 19:41, 14 July 2024

2024-07-14T19:41:20Z

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	Authored by Amritanshu Pandey.		Authored by Amritanshu Pandey.
	Published by Brhat.		Published by Brhat.[[Category:Philosophy]]

Akshayjha: Created page with "There is a fair bit of cognitive fatigue around these words¹, but they denote things of root importance to how we make sense of the world. They act upon us even without our knowledge or conscious perception, and it can be said that they contain the ‘metadata’ to reality. Simply put, they refer to What Exists, How we Know it Exists, and Why it Exists (or What For). These aren’t things most of us spend our time worrying too much about. After all, things do..."

2024-07-14T19:41:16Z

Created page with "There is a fair bit of cognitive fatigue around these words<sup>1</sup>, but they denote things of root importance to how we make sense of the world. They act upon us even without our knowledge or conscious perception, and it can be said that they contain the ‘metadata’ to reality. Simply put, they refer to What Exists, How we Know it Exists, and Why it Exists (or What For). These aren’t things most of us spend our time worrying too much about. After all, things do..."

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There is a fair bit of cognitive fatigue around these words<sup>1</sup>, but they denote things of root importance to how we make sense of the world. They act upon us even without our knowledge or conscious perception, and it can be said that they contain the ‘metadata’ to reality. Simply put, they refer to What Exists, How we Know it Exists, and Why it Exists (or What For). These aren’t things most of us spend our time worrying too much about. After all, things do exist, we seem to have ways of knowing this to certitudes, and as for why- explanations galore and we keep chugging along anyway.

But quite like there are several biological processes constantly rolling inside us, below the level of our conscious perception and without our deliberation, our neurology draws from an accumulated base of impressions, biases, assumptions, acculturations and more that we are not always aware of. This is why lists abound for things like ‘logical fallacies’ and ‘unconscious biases.’ The metadata to meaning making is therefore of supreme salience in understanding the human mind– both as a discrete unit and as a grouping of culture. And to investigate this metadata is a uniquely human privilege. We are the only species (that we know of) that can look into the mirror of consciousness and recognize our own reflection staring back at us. And across time and place, when humans have done so they have hit upon an almost inexplicable intuition.

Reality is made of language.

This is why ‘decolonization’ is a shedding of the acquired syntactic-semiotic-semantic memeplex of a foreign civilization. And it is why the consequent memeplex to imbibe is one rooted in Sanskrit. What we are attempting in this series is a kind of ‘bootstrapping through language.’ But bootstrapping to what, one may well ask. That is the latter part of our title- reconnection to civilizational consciousness. The argument implicit in our approach is that we can use Sanskrit as a cognitive and self-initiatory tool to claw our way back from deracination, however far on that styx each of us may well be.

To recapitulate [[Design Principles of Indian Civilization]] then, we are building a preliminary schema to structure mental recalibration and deliberation- a design for redesign, if you will. Here are some summary recapitulations:

'''consonance of ṛta and smṛta'''

preceding and originator realm of emergence. L1 is emergence-realm of brahma, L2 is emergence realm of ātman

'''consonance of kṛta and cṛta'''

created things/ideas/forms that emerge from the previous category but are manifested physically. Are deliberate and done by ātman. L1 by humanity as a species, L2 by human being as an individual

'''consonance of dhṛta and dṛta'''

emergent stuff that gets established, entrenched, becomes natural and innate

'''consonance of ghṛta and śṛta'''

the best, most refined, most deliberated and produced through pariśrama creations. L1 of humanity, or a group of people. L2 of human being, an individual. In both cases, the output of yajña

'''consonance of bhṛta and pṛta'''

things that guide shape, inspire, fulfill, lead. consonance here is not on meaning of the categories but on the spectrum implied. objective of bhṛta is to provide pṛta- to bear and lead is to be steward of fulfillment and purpose

'''consonance of mṛta and vṛta'''

stuff that kills- group or individual, body or soul. dangerous and undesirable things, stuff we should be wary of

'''consonance of nṛt and sṛta'''

Confounding, slippery, resistant to complete cogitation or simply ṛta/smṛta hampering/discordant things

It should not unsettle us overmuch if the point to all this isn’t quite apparent yet. Even Bhartṛhari claimed, after all, that true meaning is revealed not with the words or constituent parts of speech, but after the end of a complete sentence in a flash of insight called sphoṭa. It makes sense then that looking at the schema through technical tables will not suffice just yet. But there is a way we can experience insight, in this case not with a flash but with a slow bloom. Not with sphoṭa, but with ucchvas– a word we’re using here to mean ‘a gradual mushrooming of meaning and revelation in the mind.’

First we do have to traverse technical terrain once again- some basic working definitions we need to internalize. It does get steep, but the ride isn’t a bumpy one:

==== Ontical, Ontological, Onomatopoeic ====
Earlier we spoke of ontical and ontological as two separate categories- known as the “ontological difference.” We lean on side of reductiveness, but in any case we speak of these not so much to understand them as Heidegger meant it but to use them as supplementary scaffolding in our own build.

Ontic describes what is there, as opposed to the nature or properties of that being. For Heidegger, “ontical” signifies concrete, specific realities, whereas “ontological” signifies deeper underlying structures of reality.

The science that studies a being is, for Heidegger, ontic (ontique), and it is necessary to distinguish it from the science of the being of a being which alone is ontological. Ontological is like a level up in relation to “ontic”. Ontological being is not only being, but also being who understands being.

The third sample here articulates the ‘ontological difference’ as salient to our schema. It divides existence into ‘that which exists/comes into existence’ and that ‘which is aware of its existence,’ with the added complexity of whether ‘awareness of existence’ is the true ontological- all else being ontical forms it descends into. Our posited unentangling of the ontological difference is by bringing in a tangential notion- that of onomatopoeia.

What distinguishes the ontological is its self-awareness. It is not just something that exists, it is something that knows what existence feels like. It possesses what the ancients knew as ‘cit’ (चित्) and Pāṇini described as sañcetanā, smṛtyām, saṃjñāna- consciousness, in-descent of thinking, consonance (of awareness, ie., existence)7. It is Being, Heidegger’s Dasien- that which awareness/existence itself is. Luminous such, when Being reflects on its own existence, the same reflects back at it- cit becomes cint, cetana’s ping receives the pingback of cintana. This self-reflected glint is characterized by what we call semantic onomatopoeia. The dictionary meaning and standard usage of this word are straightforward:
'''The fact of words containing sounds similar to the noises they describe, for example ‘hiss’ or ‘thud’; the use of words like this in a piece of writing.'''

'''शब्‍दों का ध्वनि-विन्‍यास संबंधित (वास्‍तविक) ध्वनियों के अनुसार होना, ध्वनि-अनुकरण; ध्वनि-अनुकरणात्‍मक शब्‍द'''
Onomatopoeia therefore can be understood as a kind of ‘consonance’ between sound and meaning- the level at which language brushes against being a reflected shard of reality. Common examples- such as oink and buzz– do not do justice to this critical shard. Some better examples are found in Indian lore. The ancient ṛṣi, Bhṛgu, is credited in the Ṛgveda as having introduced the Bharata Āryas to fire. There is obviously a range of interpretation here, but what need not be doubted is the credit accorded to him in the primeval layer of Vaidika association to/with Agni. The name is built from the root √bhṛ- which is category L1-5 in our schema and also root to ‘Bhārata’: a level of consonance already.

But linguistically, Bhṛgu is built atop ‘bhṛg,’ which is ‘an onomatopoeic word expressive of the crackling sound of fire.’ Bhṛgu literally translates to that which/he who is ‘for the purpose of’ or the ‘doer’ of ‘bhṛg,’ just as dhātu is for the purpose of/ doer of ‘dhā.’

What we are seeing between the Vaidika story and the linguistic derivation is a consonance of meaning- a semantic onomatopoeia. It is the type of consonance that arises through self-awareness, √cit pingbacked as √cint. And the consonance is semantic, which means the reflection is not of arbitrary sound but of deliberately encoded meaning. Owed to the Bhṛgu-onomatopoeia, and a host of other such cases, we find additional support for the sentiment expressed by Prof. Adluri when he says:<blockquote>Itihāsa represents the empirical world aesthetically to problematize both being-in-the-world and the relationship of ontology, text, and the world. In other words, itihāsa is history that has overcome historicism: history that has become critical and self-conscious.</blockquote>What we are trying to establish here is that semantic onomatopoeia gives evidence to a thing’s ontological nature- it hints that the thing is a Being for itself- possessed of self-awareness, and not merely an ontical form. The onomatopoeia evidenced by Indian civilization asserts that it is ontological, not ontical- that Bhāratīya sāṃskṛtika cetanā is a real thing (thus making itihāsa, as Adluri describes it, the cintana pingback.) The civilization is self-aware, has agency, and its consciousness impacts its constituents- be they colonized or not. And this onomatopoeia gives us an immensely helpful ramp- we can follow the consonance ripples as if a trail of breadcrumbs and reconnect to the civilizational mind. The vyaṣṭi reintegrating with the samaṣṭi. A ghar-vāaapasi of a different kind. Let us do this now through ucchvas– also called an ontic bloom-a gradual mushrooming of meaning-realization (or consonance dawning).

Authored by Amritanshu Pandey.
Published by Brhat.

Ontology, Epistemology and Teleology - Revision history

Akshayjha at 19:41, 14 July 2024