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The tradition of debate in India that this article is about (or dialogue, or dialectic, or whatever you want to call it) is very interesting, and unfortunately
by svat 7y ago
The tradition of debate in India that this article is about (or dialogue, or dialectic, or whatever you want to call it) is very interesting, and unfortunately not well-known because most of the sources on the topic quickly get into technicalities.
Two non-technical (somewhat accessible to the general public) sources I've found are:
1. The book “Religions, Reasons, and Gods” by the late John Clayton has many interesting essays that touch on the vāda tradition. One of his interesting points is that the goal of dialogue need not be consensus or establishing common ground, but simply the “clarification of defensible difference”: understanding the other party better, and coming to shared understanding of what our differences are. Some of it is also touched on in his lecture here: http://www.bu.edu/religion/mar25-98/ http://www.bu.edu/religion/mar25-98/
2. Elaborating on the jalpa/vitaṇḍa mentioned in this article, the nyāya tradition recognized a long list of logical fallacies and poor arguments that were grounds for losing a (formal) debate. A list I've found is in the paper “Twenty-Two Ways to Lose a Debate” (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-009-9083-y https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-009-9083-y) which also carries out some comparison with the ideas of Grice.
- pvelagal 7y agoEven today, in my language "Telugu" if some one is trolling we call it "vitanda vadam" - i.e. No point in continuing the discussion.
- cmonnow 7y agosame in Tamil. That's because it's a Sanskrit phrase, and all Indian languages borrow heavily from Sanskrit.
- ratmice 7y agoI guess a pet peeve of mine, the Di, in Dialectic refers specifically to two-valued logic, resolving to a truth or false. Which at least in the case of Jain philosophy, with 3 basic truth values true, false, and unassertable, so really these traditions are not necessarily dialectic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaina_seven-valued_logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaina_seven-valued_logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anekantavada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anekantavada
- svat 7y agoIt does not appear to be the case that the “di” in “dialectic” (unlike, say, the “di” in “dilemma”) refers to the number “two”. According to Etymonline and many other dictionaries (follow links from https://www.onelook.com/?w=dialectic https://www.onelook.com/?w=dialectic), the word comes via Latin ultimately from Greek dialektos, “discourse, conversation”. This in turn is formed with the prefix dia- (“across, between”), also found in words like diagonal, diameter, dialogue, diagnosis, adiabatic, diabetes, diarrhea, diacritic. This prefix dia- in turn may indeed be cognate with bi or di-, but at any rate the “di” in “dialectic” does not directly refer to “two”. What you've read may be a later re-analysis / false etymology.
- OJFord 7y agoThe prefix is dia-, not di-. My own pet peeve is people saying the same thing about 'dialogue', which is also 'dia-logue', not 'di-alogue'.
- WorldMaker 7y agoThe confusion seems rooted in the relatively common word "monologue" which etymology seems to imply was a 17th Century French "back formation". Interesting how much that bit of word play seems to confuse things centuries later.
- OJFord 7y agoWiktionary says it's ancient Greek. Which makes sense, it doesn't need to be a back formation or slight pun - it's already different from dia 'across'/'between' (like diameter) talking, it's specifically not that.