[Advaita-l] meaning

[michael reidy]

Reasoning can be justified by experience as in the case of induction. 
Which comes first, the establishment of a general principle through the 
experience of many instances or the principle that one is capable of 
doing this? Do they not both emerge together?

Sri Rama wrote:

The phrase "based on" in phrases such as "based on tarka" or "based on
> anubhava" is extremely misleading. This is another place where the
> English cannot directly substitute for the Sanskrit. In some sense,
> the tarka is based on anubhava, because it uses anubhava. But the
> justification for using it comes from shruti only. We can't experience
> any tarka, so anubhava cannot justify any tarka. The situation is
> similar to the pratyakSha and anumAna. anumAna is completely "based
> on" pratyakSha, because you can't infer without observations. But it's
> validity is not obtained *from* pratyakSha, it is indeed a
> self-established means of knowing.
>
> Rama 



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Namaste Sri Rama,

Reasoning can be justified by experience as in the case of induction. 
Which comes first, the establishment of a general principle through the 
experience of many instances or the principle that one is capable of 
doing this? Do they not both emerge together?

The view that Sanskrit can isolate a nuance unavailable to English or 
Greek or Latin or Swahili is a questionable one. Meaning is short for 
speaker's meaning as the very same word eg. Reason, experience, 
anubhava, tarka can take on different shades of meaning depending on the 
speaker even if that is his native language. After all there are 6 major 
orthodox darshanas who use the same language Sanskrit. As the scholar 
reads in them he will be 'translating' the same word into different 
implications. Is 'memory' a pramana? Yes, no, maybe; whatever the view 
is then we will allow that shading to influence the meaning we give to 
the word 'memory'.