Metaphysical Realism and Matilal’s Theories on the Connection Between Words and Things :: Philosophy

Metaphysical Realism and Matilals Theories on the Connection among Words and ThingsABSTRACT The vexed reduce of the precise affiliation in the midst of words and things (or objects) has been a major immersion over the centuries summoning the resources of metaphysics, philosophical system of language, linguistics, ontology and increasingly semiological analysis. Philosophy in India produced a number of different and oft conflicting solutions, only to be rivalled by an equally bewildering variety witnessed in the ancient and modern West. I want to bring to the foreground the after-hours Professor Bimal K. Matilals development of Nyaya-Vaisesika realist approach to the aporia, and interject the analysis with dissenting(a) voices, especially of Mimamsakas and Buddhists. Significantly, it will be the living ghosts of Putnam and Dummett that I will mention to haunt Matilals variation on metaphysical realism (after Davidson). Matilal veered circumferent to a realist metaphysic, which is inflected in his own formulation of a speculation of language appropriate to this ontology, this despite his idealized attraction to phenomenalist-constructivism (especially Buddhist) his flirtations with Bhartrharian holism (even Saussurean semiology) and recently with Derridean deconstruction (after G. C. Spivak) in his epiloquia. But my critique focuses on his famous ahead analysis of Jnana or cognition and his defence of a particular linguistic-ontology inside a narrowly circumscribed naturalized epistemology (after Navya-nyaya). The ProblemThe vexed issue of the precise connection between words and things (or objects) has been a major preoccupation over the centuries, summoning the resources of metaphysics, philosophy of language, linguistics, ontology and increasingly semiological analysis, to solve this problem. Indian philosophy produced a number of different and often conflicting solutions, only to be rivalled by the even more bewildering variety of approaches a nd theories witnessed in the West, traditional and modern, relying mostly on various model of the word (natural, ideal, scriptural, semiotic, etc.). In this paper I want to suggest that there is an even more intricate race between the model of the word or language and the background view of the world. In other words, it is not at all as mere(a) as sitting down one fine morning and asking, Well, ol boy, what is the connection between the word and the world? as though it is a marvel simpliciter about some given or givens in our environment. Many theories go bad on the basis of this assumed dualism, if not a complete imbalance between language and the world that it is supposed