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

Metaphysical Realism and Matilals Theories on the Connection Between Words and ThingsABSTRACT The vexed put under of the precise connecter between words and things (or objects) has been a major preoccupation over the centuries summoning the resources of metaphysics, philosophy of talking to, linguistics, ontology and increasingly semiological analysis. Philosophy in India produced a turning of different and much conflicting solutions, only to be rivalled by an equally bewildering variety witnessed in the ancient and modern West. I want to bring to the set off the late Professor Bimal K. Matilals development of Nyaya-Vaisesika realist approach to the aporia, and interject the analysis with dissident voices, especially of Mimamsakas and Buddhists. Significantly, it will be the living ghosts of Putnam and Dummett that I will supplicate to haunt Matilals variation on metaphysical realism (after Davidson). Matilal veered closer to a realist metaphysic, which is inflected in his own formulation of a theory 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 lately with Derridean deconstruction (after G. C. Spivak) in his epiloquia. But my critique focuses on his famous earlier analysis of Jnana or cognition and his defence of a particular linguistic-ontology within 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 and theories witnessed in the West, tr aditional and modern, relying largely 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 relationship between the model of the word or language and the backdrop view of the world. In other words, it is not at all as simple 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 question simpliciter about some given or givens in our environment. Many theories proceed on the basis of this assumed dualism, if not a complete asymmetry between language and the world that it is supposed