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Any distinction made between metaphysics and speculative thought in an Indian context needs pondering over. Kant's distinction between a metaphysic of experience and the kind of thinking which beats its wings in empty space is too well known to need comment. On such a view speculative thinking remains unscientific, 'natural', but seductive. A more recent distinction, that between descriptive and revisionary metaphysics, takes its stand on linguistic considerations, incidentally, in the view of the present author, underestimating the subtlety of the texture of descriptive language. A further distinction, that between the phenomenological and the ontological, makes yet another type of demarcation, one which might dissolve if the phenomenological is itself found to have ontological weight.

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