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

Metaphysical Realism and Matilal’s Theories on the Connection Between Words and Things ABSTRACT: The 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. Philosophy in India produced a number of different and often 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 late Professor Bimal K. Matilal’s 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 invoke to haunt Matilal’s 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 h is 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 Problem The 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, traditional 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 background 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 envi ronment. Many theories proceed on the basis of this assumed dualism, if not a complete asymmetry between language and the world that it is supposed