Dvaita and Sophistry - Part 2(Reality and Unreality)

[Shrisha Rao]

On Wed, 12 Mar 2003, kalyan chakravarthy wrote:

Please excuse me for any irritation my response may cause; I really
would
not have, but for the fact that this gentleman mentions my website
explicitly:

 > The pseudo-logical web-site www.dvaita.org claims that the entities
being
 > real the differences are also real.

Please rest assured that I do not intend to carry this argument any
further.

 > QUESTION 1.
 > What if one of the entities in unreal and the other is real?
 >
 > ANSWER 1.
 > Why should I answer this question?

Before we get ahead of ourselves, do you have any rational or valid
basis
for these questions and answers?  How many classical scholars or texts
can you suggest which respond with a "why should I answer" to anything?

You are merely setting up a strawman, and have not cited anything from
the website correctly.  Your arguments merely expose your own lack of
understanding (or even lack of reading comprehension!).

 > QUESTION 2.
 > How else will you differentiate the real and unreal? If you cannot
answer
 > this question, then the difference between the real and unreal is not
 > addressed and so Dvaita can be thrown into the dustbin. And mind you,
this
 > difference is not just a difference in properties. No more boastings
of
 > Dvaita being a complete or logical philosophy.
 >
 > ANSWER 3.
 > OK. OK. I say the difference between the real entity and unreal
entity is
 > inherent to the entity.

Not so, and this has been clarified before.

 > QUESTION 4.
 > Which entity? The real one or the unreal one. In Part 1, we have seen
that
 > the difference between entity 1 and entity 2 being equivalent, if this
 > difference is inherent to the first entity, then it must be inherent
to the
 > second.
 >
 > REPLY 4.
 > OK. The difference between the real and unreal is inherent to both
the real
 > and unreal entities.

As was stated in the other forum, there is no single property called
"the
difference between the real and the unreal" that is inherent to both.
You have merely excellently demonstrated a logical fallacy in your own
understanding.  Rather, difference of a real object from everything else
(other reals, as well as unreals) is a property of that object only, not
a common property of the object and another it is different from.

As such, the following fails to apply:

 > QUESTION 5.
 > As this difference is inherent to the real entity, the difference is
real.
 > And as the difference is inherent to the unreal entity, the
difference is
 > unreal. So, is this difference real or unreal? Remember that Dvaita
does not
 > accept any stage of reality other than the real and the unreal. So,
even
 > according to Dvaita, what is this difference?
 > IS THE DIFFERENCE REAL OR UNREAL?
 >
 > NOW TO MY FELLOW ADVAITINS
 >
 > Now my friends, dont you think that the sophistry of Dvaita in
accepting
 > things to be only real or only unreal is exposed? Even by their own
 > pseudo-logic, they directly arrive at an entity, which is other than
real
 > and also other than the unreal. Thus, the Dvaitin is deceiving
himself when
 > he says that there is no such thing as "neither real nor unreal, nor
both,
 > nor neither".
 >
 >
 > THUS DVAITA CAN BE THROWN INTO THE DUSTBIN.

I might also add that it was rather unworthy on your part to beat a
hasty
retreat from the forum where this issue was previously discussed, and
import it into another one (which you assumed would not have anyone to
challenge your strawman attack).  Hardly shows mature thinking or
conviction.

Evidently, what rightly belong in the dustbin are your false pride and
lack of understanding.  Read, with much attention, what Sri Sankara
himself
says about the need for viveka in spirituality, and its prerequisites.

Regards,

Shrisha Rao

 > Kalyan