Brahma Sutras - A contemporary philosophical reconstruction
- Thread starter sravna
- Start date
Let me take a look.
I would need time to read everything.
Quite extensive.
OP
OP
Extended Ramanuja section. Organization sorted out. chatgpt properly acknowledged
Sravna, i have not used chatgpt.
Does it really help?
I usually just use free Gemini as a search engine but I dont 100% trust it either.
OP
OP
Renuka,
Credit when credit due. Ais especially chatgpt and Claude I believe have maxed in analytical ability. Surprisingly they are able to produce good creative output too.
Not only useful for assisting in day to day activities but also very useful as a serious collaborator in intellectual tasks.
Credit when credit due. Ais especially chatgpt and Claude I believe have maxed in analytical ability. Surprisingly they are able to produce good creative output too.
Not only useful for assisting in day to day activities but also very useful as a serious collaborator in intellectual tasks.
OP
OP
Renuka and others,
Two things I should have said with the attachment, and one revised question.
First, on how the book was made. It was developed through an extended collaboration with ChatGPT, and the collaboration was substantial rather than editorial — it extended to the architecture, the derivations and the expression. I am the author in the sense that matters: the positions are mine and I stand behind them.
Second, on what the derivations actually are. I want to be exact about this, because I think a loose claim here would deserve to be attacked. The everyday applications are not deduced from the sūtras. They are analogical — they take the *shape* of an argument and apply it elsewhere. The Īkṣatyadhikaraṇa argues that an unconscious Pradhāna cannot be the source of the world; nothing about how one attributes motives to a colleague follows from it logically. What carries across is a common movement: separating what is established from what is inferred. I think that is a legitimate basis for a companion of this kind. I do not think it is entailment, and the book should not be read as though it were.
The classical attributions also have not been checked line by line against the Sanskrit. Treat them as provisional.
Which changes the question I want to put to you. Not "is the reasoning sound" — asked that way it invites either endorsement or dismissal, and neither would teach me much. The better question is narrower:
1. Where does a derivation drift into general moral advice that could have been reached without the text? I suspect there are several, and I would rather you named them than that I defended them.
2. Does presenting the Sūtras this way encourage a reader to bypass the bhāṣya? This is the objection I find hardest to answer against myself.
3. And a practical one: if any of you would take a single distinction from the Map at the end — pleasure versus relief versus non-deficiency, say, or trigger versus enabling ground — and simply use it for a few weeks, I would value that report more than a reading. The claim the book makes is that these distinctions become available at the moment they are needed. That is testable, and I have not tested it.
Plain criticism will help me more than encouragement.
Regards,
Sravna
Prepared with assistance from Claude
Two things I should have said with the attachment, and one revised question.
First, on how the book was made. It was developed through an extended collaboration with ChatGPT, and the collaboration was substantial rather than editorial — it extended to the architecture, the derivations and the expression. I am the author in the sense that matters: the positions are mine and I stand behind them.
Second, on what the derivations actually are. I want to be exact about this, because I think a loose claim here would deserve to be attacked. The everyday applications are not deduced from the sūtras. They are analogical — they take the *shape* of an argument and apply it elsewhere. The Īkṣatyadhikaraṇa argues that an unconscious Pradhāna cannot be the source of the world; nothing about how one attributes motives to a colleague follows from it logically. What carries across is a common movement: separating what is established from what is inferred. I think that is a legitimate basis for a companion of this kind. I do not think it is entailment, and the book should not be read as though it were.
The classical attributions also have not been checked line by line against the Sanskrit. Treat them as provisional.
Which changes the question I want to put to you. Not "is the reasoning sound" — asked that way it invites either endorsement or dismissal, and neither would teach me much. The better question is narrower:
1. Where does a derivation drift into general moral advice that could have been reached without the text? I suspect there are several, and I would rather you named them than that I defended them.
2. Does presenting the Sūtras this way encourage a reader to bypass the bhāṣya? This is the objection I find hardest to answer against myself.
3. And a practical one: if any of you would take a single distinction from the Map at the end — pleasure versus relief versus non-deficiency, say, or trigger versus enabling ground — and simply use it for a few weeks, I would value that report more than a reading. The claim the book makes is that these distinctions become available at the moment they are needed. That is testable, and I have not tested it.
Plain criticism will help me more than encouragement.
Regards,
Sravna
Prepared with assistance from Claude
OP
OP
In plain language do you think the practical companion would be of real practical value? If so I would be excited because it was significantly developed by chatgpt. My reasoning is if machine can extract practical utility humans can atleast be made to see reason for right attitude and so atleast changes happen at the behavioural level.
Last edited:
