THE PSUEDO INTELLECTUAL AGENTS OF COLLONIALISM
Dr. Sumathy on many occasions has shown that she is ignorant of even the basics of any logic. For example in the fifth statement mentioned in the beginning of this article she articulates in the following manner. "Nalin de Silva's appraisal of the film is negatively critical: because he excludes the logic of the middle here". Now what does she mean by the logic of the middle? Most probably she is referring to the law of the excluded middle in the Aristotelian logic. She has the freedom to call it the logic of the middle or whatever she thinks fit but she has to explain what she means by these statements. She also says that my appraisal of the film is negatively critical. Now I have to mention for the umpteenth time that I never attempted at an appraisal of the film. I was only referring to the sociology of the film, of course from a Sinhala Buddhist point of view.
A word or two about this law of excluded middle in Aristotelian logic is in order at this stage. Aristotelian logic has the rule p or ~ p. Thus it excludes p and ~ p. In Aristotelian logic a proposition p is either true or not. If a proposition p is true then its negation ~ p is false. On the other hand if p is false then ~ p is true. In Aristotelian logic both p and ~ p cannot be true at the same time. This is usually referred to as the law of the excluded middle. In that logic an appraisal of a film can be either positive or negative. Dr. Sumathy trying to be smart says I exclude the logic of the middle. I did not use the law of the excluded middle simply because I did not have to do so. I was only considering the fact that the film was a western film, though with Sinhala dialogues, directed according to the western "standards". The claim by the director that his films have no boundaries with respect to countries only confirm that the film is western. As I have said earlier the western cultural hegemony has taught the pseudo intellectuals in the so called third world to consider western knowledge and western standards, norms etc., to be objective and independent of the cultures and countries and the director Handagama is only repeating this when he says his films have no boundaries.
Now a film can be either western or non western. One does not have to follow Aristotelian logic in order to come to such conclusion. The four fold logic or chatuskoti of Sinhala Buddhism as well as the three fold logic in Hinduism have three laws in common. They are (i) p is true, ~ p is false, (ii) p is false, ~ p is true, (iii) both p and ~ p are true. The first two can be included in p or ~ p and the third could be expressed as p and ~ p. While the first two are found in Aristotelian logic the third is not found and the absence of the third is referred to as the law of the excluded middle. Now the westerners have been very much concerned with this situation and from the time of Hereclitus through Hegel to Derrida have tried to get rid of p or ~ p that gives rise to the so called dichotomies. However all their so called "dialectics" have failed as they have no way of overcoming this deficiency within their formalisms. I have explained this in a booklet "Apohakaye Rupikaya" ( Formalism of Dialectics) which Dr. Sumathy can get translated into either English or Tamil by somebody competent to do so.
The westerners like Hegel, Marx and others are in a way obsessed with the idea of getting rid of opposites as isolated objects and would like to see the so called interpenetrations of the opposites. They could feel that something was not quite correct in the Aristotelian logic but they had no way of overcoming those problems. In the east we are not bogged down with the opposites and we know that though there may be relationships between the opposites, under certain circumstances the opposites could be considered as opposites. Those who use either the three valued logic or the four valued logic know when to use p or ~ p with the two options or ends (i) p is true and ~ p is false (ii) p is false and ~ p is true and also the third end (or kotika) both p and ~ p are true (p and ~ p). Since the easterners have been blessed with this third option they are not obsessed with the idea of getting rid of the opposites or the dichotomies. Dr. Sumathy who, in spite of her semi Tamil Buddhist upbringing, has been trained in the western Greek Judaic Christian tradition, wants to get rid of the dichotomies imitating some western "philosophers". As far as I am concerned wests exist geographically and culturally though the two do not coincide with each other, though not in an absolute sense. They exist just as much up and down or left and right exist. The easterners know when to use p or ~ p and when to use p and ~ p. They do not have to follow a Hegel or a Derrida and talk of dichotomies as something to be get rid of, always. They do not make a fuss out of dichotomies as they know that dichotomies like anything else, including so called deconstructions are constructions of the mind. Though western Mathematicians may not agree, in Calculus, one cannot differentiate at a point unless one assumes p and ~ p. I make it a point to tell my students that only the Easterners and probably the Buddhists, Hindus and the Chinese with their Ying Yang philosophy, who could differentiate! It should be mentioned that the Catholics unlike the other Christians use a three fold logic. They make use of the three fold logic when they claim that Jesus is the God as well as the son of the God.
In the last statement I have mentioned Dr. Sumathy claims that she is a performer performing pluralist logic. As I have said earlier there is no pluralist logic as such. There are different logics and one uses only one logic at a time. Could Dr. Sumathy starting from a set of data, information, premise or what not demonstrate how to use her pluralist logic to arrive at conclusions, inferences, deductions etc. She is only vomiting the jargon without understanding what she is talking. Apart from the rules I mentioned earlier Sinhala Buddhist logic has one more "kotika" or end. In Sinhala Buddhist logic the rule neither p nor ~ p is also valid and in that sense it is a richer logic than the western Aristotelian logic. It is with this rule that the Sinhala Buddhists explain that it is neither oneself nor somebody else that is "reborn" after death, as given in the famous answer by Ven. Nagasena Thero to king Milinda in the form "naca so naca anno". The Sinhala Buddhists know when to use which rule and they do not make a fuss about the dichotomies.
As far as the Sinhala Buddhists are concerned, the dichotomies like anything else are relative truths or "sammuthi sacca". They are all mental creations of those who are ignorant ("avidya") of "anicca", "dukkha" and "anatta". Until "one" (there is no "one" and even "one" is a relative truth.) attains Nibbana "one" goes on constructing these relative truths. Some of these mental constructions are "accepted" by sub sets of the society and in such cases they become social constructions in addition to being mental constructions. All social constructions are mental constructions though only some of the mental constructions would become social constructions. The mental constructions are due to "avidya" and are influenced by "samsaric" experience, sense organs, the state of the mind and the culture of the society in which one lives or the culture that has been imposed on oneself. On the other hand a mental construction is accepted as a social construction as a result of the social factors such as politics, economics and again culture.
The western sociologists, philosophers and the pseudo philosophers in literary criticism are concerned with the meaning, and especially the meaning of meaning. The so called post modernist works are tied up with this question and even Derrida's deconstruction is only a particular case of trying to understand the "meaning". The so called deconstructionist literary criticisms of Derrida or de Mann, the so called rhetoric readings, try to give meaning to "literary" works. Whether the reader gives (constructs) a meaning or the authour gives a meaning or whether there could be many meanings it is always a question of meaning. Some of the westerners may identify themselves as relativists. However, it is clear that even then they are concerned with the meaning of a text relative to the reader, they assume that the meaning of meaning is not relative. The meaning of meaning as far as the westerners are concerned, remains to be an absolute, in spite or perhaps because of the "discourse" on the meaning. In other words the meaning of the meaning has an absolute meaning. As far as the Sinhala Buddhists are concerned meaning is also another concept that has no meaning outside the system of relative truths. Meaning is a cyclic concept and it has meaning only within a particular system.
The western relativists cannot escape from their unilinear thinking and always get bogged down with the "final causes". The meaning of meaning is one such concept and a solution to this problem could be found only in systems of knowledge that employ cyclic thinking. How could one talk of meaning of meaning other than in a system of logic that makes use of cyclic thinking. The concept of a meaning of meaning is forbidden, by definition, in systems that employ unilinear thinking. In such systems one does not define or explain a term using the same term. The English Departments and the western Philosophy Departments all of a sudden found themselves to be poor relations of each other as a consequence of the "discourse" on meaning. In this connection one is reminded of Derrida's rhetoric that Philosophy has been "reduced" to "literature". Both English Departments as well as western Philosophy Departments could maintain their relative independence if they are prepared to accept that meaning has no meaning outside the particular system. Handagama's productions have meaning only within the western film productions that employ certain "standards" to which Handagama adhere.
The western Social scientists and Philosophers may not realise that their "limited relativities" are tied up with the relativity theories and quantum mechanics in western Physics. However, in none of these fields western Physics was able to completely break away from the absolutes. Einstein's relativity theories (special and general) are concerned with Physics of some absolute as seen or observed by different observers. In relativity theories independent of the observers, there is an absolute. The relativity theories describe how this absolute appears to different observers. It is a relativity of the absolute. In other words it is the meaning of the meaning as perceived by different observers. Quantum Physics went somewhat beyond relativity theories in the sense that it was assumed in the Copenhagen interpretation that there is no meaning for "properties" that are not "measured" by observers. For example a particle did not have a "velocity" if an observer measured (observed) the "velocity" of the particle. It was also said that an observer disturbs the system in his/her attempt to measure a "property" and what the observer measures is not something the system had independent of the observer, before the measurement. In a sense a meaning was given to the system by the observer in the process of the measurement and there was no meaning before the measurement was made. However westerners including Einstein were not happy with the "Copenhagen interpretation" given mainly by Bohr who had been influenced by the Chinese Ying Yang Philosophy, and at least some of them had been working to get it back within the mainstream western Physics. Their attempts have been successful and in the last five years or so they have succeeded in getting "results" that would give a meaning to the measurements without the observer. In this connection a paper published only last year is very significant. In this paper an Israeli Physicist Yakir Aharonov has come out with the concept of a weak measurement that does not disturb the system. In other words there is a meaning outside the observer or the text so to say. The ideas of early Quantum Physics got translated into western Sociology and Philosophy about twenty five years after they wee formulated in western Physics. The western Philosophers who cannot resolve the problem of the meaning of meaning would come back to a meaning outside the text may be in another twenty five years after the "discourse" on meaning picks up the recent ideas developed in Quantum Physics.
We do not have to be disturbed by these so called developments in the west on the disturbance or non disturbance of systems by observers. As far as we are concerned even weak measurement is a creation by the observers and as such it has meaning only within the particular systems referred to by Aharonov. We go on constructing knowledge without being disturbed by these developments. When I say I construct knowledge relative to Sinhala Buddhist culture Dr. Sumathy accuses me of indulging in absolutism. It is not me who does not want others to construct knowledge relative to other cultures. It is the westerners who want us not to create any knowledge but to imitate their knowledge created in a Greek Judaic Christian "chinthanaya". It is the westerners who foster absolutism not allowing others to create knowledge with respect to their relative cultures. Dr. Sumathy who has no idea of creating knowledge is only an agent of western cultural hegemony who could only imitate and propagate their knowledge. In particular she is against those who create knowledge in non Greek Judaic Christian "chinthanayas". Instead of being a pseudo intellectual agent of western colonialism she should begin at least now to create knowledge either in a Tamil Buddhist or Tamil Hindu culture or may be both.
Professor Nalin de Silva
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