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Christian Thomas Kohl The Metaphysical Foundations of Buddhism and Modern Science

Christian Thomas Kohl The Metaphysical Foundations of Buddhism and Modern Science

Christian Thomas Kohl The Metaphysical Foundations of Buddhism and Modern Science

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To speak <strong>of</strong> anything, is to speak <strong>of</strong> something which, by reason <strong>of</strong> that<br />

very speech, is in some way a component in that act <strong>of</strong> experience. In<br />

some sense or other, it is thereby known to exist. This is what Plato<br />

pointed out when he wrote, Not-being is itself a sort <strong>of</strong> being.<br />

Speech consists <strong>of</strong> noises, or visible shapes, which elicit an experience <strong>of</strong><br />

things other than themselves. In so far as vocables fail to elicit a stable<br />

coordination <strong>of</strong> sound-character, or shape-character, to meaning, those<br />

vocables fail to function as speech. And in so far as some meaning is not<br />

in some sense directly experienced, there is no meaning conveyed. To<br />

point at nothing is not to point.<br />

To speak <strong>of</strong> the same thing twice is to demonstrate that the being <strong>of</strong><br />

that thing is independent <strong>of</strong> either singular act <strong>of</strong> speech, unless we<br />

believe that the two acts presuppose each other or are both presupposed<br />

by the thing spoken <strong>of</strong>. If we cannot speak <strong>of</strong> the same thing twice,<br />

knowledge vanishes taking philosophy with it. Thus, since speech can be<br />

repeated, things spoken <strong>of</strong> have a determined being in abstraction from<br />

the occasion <strong>of</strong> experience which includes that act <strong>of</strong> speech.<br />

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