[Advaita-l] [advaitin] Asked of Chatgpt: "Are there any definitions or descriptions that depict a positive ignorance in Sankara's commentary on the Brahma Sutras or classic 10 Upanishads whether in context or otherwise?

[Michael Chandra Cohen]

AUM, Sudhanshu ji, I'm not sure you noticed my reply to an earlier message:

Sudhanshu ji, We have been through this dialogue more than once. You are
making distinctions in non-existence where none can exist. Hare's horn and
rope/snake are distinct not from the perspective of non-existence but from
the perspective of existence - one appears, the other not but both are
equally non-existent.

--

On Wed, Jul 3, 2024 at 4:28 PM <dwaite at advaita.org.uk> wrote:

> Dear Michael,
>
>
>
> My point was that ChatGPT is only retrieving and summarizing the views of
> others. It is not making any intelligent assessment of its own. (Although I
> guess we could all be accused of doing exactly that!) And it is not itself
> translating any Sanskrit, only taking the translations that it finds
> online. If, for example, the majority of the material that exists online on
> this subject has been written by followers of SSS, then it would not be
> surprising to find that its conclusions coincide with those of SSS. Another
> point is that many (most?) of the material written by sampradAya teachers
> exists only in book form, so will not be available to ChatGPT. Even if it
> has been (illegally?) programmed by scanning in all the books in print,
> many of the truly authoritative ones will only be in Sanskrit and I have
> grave doubts about its proficiency in that language!
>
>
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Dennis
>
>
>
> *From:* advaitin at googlegroups.com <advaitin at googlegroups.com> *On Behalf
> Of *Michael Chandra Cohen
> *Sent:* Wednesday, July 3, 2024 1:40 PM
> *To:* advaitin at googlegroups.com; A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta <
> advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>; Sudhanshu Shekhar <
> sudhanshu.iitk at gmail.com>; Bhaskar YR <bhaskar.yr at hitachienergy.com>; H S
> Chandramouli <hschandramouli at gmail.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [advaitin] Asked of Chatgpt: "Are there any definitions or
> descriptions that depict a positive ignorance in Sankara's commentary on
> the Brahma Sutras or classic 10 Upanishads whether in context or otherwise?
>
>
>
> Namaste Dennis, Perhaps our first proper interaction - a pleasure to make
> your acquaintance although I've read a bit from you online.
>
>
>
> I am not an expert in AI however I did notice Chatgpt relying on secondary
> source material which I was able to remedy by directing it instead to
> prathanatraya bhasya. As for its language limitations, I agree although it
> did produce some limited Sanskrit slokas, the translation of which may be
> open to question. However, my questions asked for analysis of the corpus of
> texts comparing uses of avidya as positive ignorance versus avidya as lack
> of knowledge. The latter came back decisively as Sankara's intention. This
> despite the fact that all historic translations would have to reflect a
> mulavidyavada bias. That said, Chat's evidence can always be recalled to
> explore the verse's original language though I feel confident the effort
> would yield the same result.
>
> As for your clever analysis of mithyAjnana, I wish to point to other uses
> of mithya in the same text that support mithya jnana as opposed to mithya
> ajnana, i.e.,  *mithyeti bhavitum yuktam, * *mithunīkṛtya, * *mithyāpratyayarūpaḥ.
> *Further, it seems to me, mithya ajnana, false ignorance, is a tautology
> and thus an absurd grammatical interpretation that our astute
> Bhasyakara would never intend. Surely there are other phrases that would
> better express his intention if indeed it were to imply a positive
> ignorance.
>
>
>
> Please excuse me if I do not respond further.  My language skills are
> limited and this conversation can easily go over my head.
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 3, 2024 at 2:04 PM Michael Chandra Cohen <
> michaelchandra108 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Sudhanshu ji, We have been through this dialogue more than once. You are
> making distinctions in non-existence where none can exist. Hare's horn and
> rope/snake are distinct not from the perspective of non-existence but from
> the perspective of existence - one appears, the other not but both are
> equally non-existent.
>
> --
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