Is Sat explainable?
[Note: sat, सत् = Real ] No, I cannot explain the real; nor has anybody else in the world. Even more radically: the Real can never be ‘explained’, nor will there be an explanatory theory, ever (that is what is meant by ‘providing an explanation’ or speak of explaining) about the real.
Well, if the ‘Real’ comprises of “all these doctrines” then the Real is the world of ideas as distinct from the material and the mental world. Popper believed this to be the case, and called it the ‘third world’. You are, therefore, right on the spot when you call me ignorant. Yes, indeed, I did not know that Indians were Popperians avant la letter: avant la letter, because Popper did it with a clarity and verve that Indians never attained. This is the second reason I do not want to wake up. ‘Awakening’ of the type you propagate is terribly depressing because the resultant ‘gyaanodaya’ is this: Buddha, Shankara, Ramanuja, Madva (to mention only a few names) merely “prepared” the advent of Sir Karl Popper, in exactly the same way all cultures in the world before Christ were merely ‘Praeparatione Evangelica’. I wish you, who appears to be a disciple of this new ‘praeparatione’ (the famous ‘Second Coming’?), the best of luck.
II
‘Green’ is instanced by a ‘green object’; ‘stripes’ are instanced in a Zebra, etc. Here, these objects possess or exemplify these properties, i.e., they can be characterized as having these properties. This statement already requires an ontological commitment to the existence of ‘properties’ independent of them being instanced. Of course, with some modifications to the formulation, one can also express a nominalistic ontological commitment. We can also go further and see ‘existence’ itself as a property that requires an instantiation. (As you know, there is no consensus about this.) In this sense, an emergent property, if it exists, should also be instantiated in an object other than itself. If this is what you are saying, the answer is evident: human beings do not ‘possess’ the property of ‘self-consciousness’, i.e. they are not instances of a property called ‘self-consciousness’. A complex system manifests an emergent property that does not exist but is real. For it to be ‘instanced’ in the world, it needs to exist, which it does not. One is not bloating one’s ontology by postulating an entity that exists with weird properties. One is explaining the existence of the ‘I-ness’ by postulating something real, namely the ‘I’. ‘I-ness’ and ‘I-hood’ exist: these are facts about human beings. This is being explained by their access to the real. Their access is a fact, but that which they access is not. Thus we need to explain how we can access what does not exist. But that depends on future research. In fact, it is no less of a mystery how we can access anything at all, even if it exists. I do not think that this is the problem of universal vs singulars. That problem plays itself out entirely in the domain of existence.
If enlightenment were to be evidenced by psychological and behavioural patterns, it is possible to say whether or not someone is enlightened. However, if enlightenment is to be evidenced by one’s complete access to the real, there are no facts of the matter. We know we have a partial access to the ‘I’, the real. (This is a hypothesis.) One can think of a full access as well. The ‘I-ness’ and the ‘I-hood’ are facts. Question is: what explains them? One route is to postulate the ‘causes’ in the world. The other is to postulate human access to the real. The first has brought us nowhere so far; it has increased human misery on a gigantic scale. However, if and when such an explanation comes, it would be empirically ‘testable’ (in some senses). The other explanation is not ‘empirical’ (in the sense that it is not about ‘causal’ facts), but it helps human beings find happiness. What would one like to choose? The choice has to be made on pragmatic grounds.