Talk:Anekantavada

Blind men / elephant in the Tattvārthaślokavārttika
I searched for a references to the parable in an edition of the Tattvārthaślokavārttika but could not find it. I very much doubt that it is there.

Ambiguity
As of December 3, 203, the first sentence of this otherwise-excellent article reads, "Anekantavada is the Jain doctrine about metaphysical truths that emerged in ancient India." What do those last five words modify? What, in other words, "emerged in ancient India"? It could be "the Jain doctrine," but it also could be the "metaphysical truths." A would-be editor has no way of knowing which.

By the bye, doesn't that same first sentence assume, in a way that is not consistent with Wikipedia's aspiration to objectivity, that those supposed "metaphysical truths" really are true? Shouldn't it speak, instead, of "metaphysical beliefs" or "alleged metaphysical truths"? 2603:6010:100:6E85:F5BE:80DD:5F4A:2B26 (talk) 16:10, 3 December 2023 (UTC)


 * I think you're not understanding what "metaphysical truths" actually means in this topic. Which is fine -- terms in philosophy are grotesquely overloaded. If you read the article a bit more then the first sentence of the lead is unambiguous and neutra; all the necessary information to convince you of that should ideally be in the lead itself, but this is a very broad subject that gets deep into facets of Vedic epistemology, so a thoroughly descriptive lead may not be manageable.
 * "Metaphysical truths" is not a value judgement here any more than it would be in describing Plato's Allegory of the Cave or Zhuangzi's White Horse dialogue. It's more like just saying this is a doctrine of epistemology without using the word "epistemology". SamuelRiv (talk) 22:59, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
 * To be clear, your criticism is valid in that the lead is not adequately descriptive -- I have no idea what anekantavada is, even a little, after reading the lead -- but I'm not sure of a brief way to introduce some of the meat of it. So if you have any ideas you should by all means give it a try. SamuelRiv (talk) 10:51, 5 December 2023 (UTC)