[Advaita-l] Apoureshyatva - Faith or Logic?

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

> work written by Sri Madhvacharya called Vishnu Tattva Vinirnaya (the mUla can be accessed from here: http://www.dvaita.net/prerelease.html). 
.... ...
> 
> mUla: apauruSheya-vAkya-a~NgIkAre na ki~nchita kalpyam | apauruSheyatvam cha svataH eva siddham |

So, this argument is not a positive proof for apaurusheyatva, but rather one
that denies its opposite. It says that paurusheyatva cannot be established,
given the standards of proof and pramANa-s accepted in mImAMsA and/or
vedAnta. 
 

There is a reason that all arguments made about apaurusheyatva, from
the heyday of the pUrva mImAMsakas to that of the dvaita vedAntins, have
been structured in the opposite direction, so as to disprove paurusheyatva. The structure of this argument is exactly the same as the following. It is
easy to prove logically that the proposition "God does not exist" cannot be
established. This is not a positive proof for the opposite proposition, "God
does exist." Now, for standard vedAnta, we can always point to Sruti and
say, "here is the proof that God exists - Sruti says so." In order to make
this argument, we have to accept the prAmANya of Sruti first.
 
I fail to see why the prAmANya of Sruti needs to be further validated by
appealing to a logical proof that establishes its apaurusheyatva, especially
given the svataH-prAmANya-vAda. One can make an argument about
apaurusheyatva and be self-consistent, but to subordinate the prAmANya
of the veda to a logical proof of its apaurusheyatva is counter productive.
There is more to human life and aspirations (purushArtha-s) than logic
and science. Sruti addresses dharma and moksha, two topics that are
left unaddressed (or addressed very inadequately) by logic and science.
 
Best regards,
Vidyasankar