Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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RobertGreenSky
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by RobertGreenSky »

'What is incoherent to one is reasonable to another. 18:8, 'Everything is real, not real; both real and not real; neither not real nor real: this is the teaching of the Buddha.' (- Stephen Batchelor online translation, http://www.stephenbatchelor.org/nagarju ... entre.html ) The certainty which does well for you, Dan, did not do well for those individuals and for their Buddhist and Daoist positions.' - Larkin

'Stephen's quote has nothing to do with A=A. It pertains (holds) in any possible metaphysic or ontology.' - Dan
A = A seems the simplest thing but it isn't, the Diamond Sutra noting, 'This is not fire, therefore it is fire'. I know you guys supposedly end up with pratitya samutpada - I'm remembering something Thomas Knierem once wrote - but how through A = A? In 'the field of sunyata' A's relationship to B, C, D, and on ...
... amounts ... to an absolute negation of the standpoint of A as master, along with its uniqueness and so, too, its "being." In other words, it means that A possesses no substantiality in the ordinary sense, that it is a non-self-nature. Its being is a being in unison with emptiness, a being possessed of the character of an illusion.

- Keiji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, p. 148, emphasis his.
Nishitani is famously of the famous Kyoto School. I might well be misunderstanding the thing and as we know I have approached these matters differently. Nagarjuna is profoundly radical although I believe we have previously disagreed on how radical he actually is. :)

No time tonight to really answer Ms. Jones' post but I do note she seems to hold A = A in an almost mystical position - I assume she has no interest in Nagarjuna and Zhuangzi - could either of them have countenanced Weininger's conclusions or his lack of humanity? Kellums wrote, 'A=A is not a proposition, it is a law underlying every concept, every logical proposition, and the syllogistic form [her italics].'

The propositions of logic are not conditioned by the existence of memory, but only the power to use them. The proposition A = A must have a psychological relation to time, otherwise it would be At1 = At2 . Of course this is not the case in pure logic, but man has no special faculty of pure logic, and must act as a psychological being.

- Guess who, p. 89
Alas, sweetie, A = A is itself a proposition - the whole world knows it - and so also is A [~=] B, forgive the absence of the appropriate key. The law of identity - that's an awfully Western concept, isn't it? - falls to sunyata or Daoism's Dao producing 'the ten thousand things' in my book, but that need not concern you since Buddhism and Daoism are apparently not your interests.
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RobertGreenSky
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by RobertGreenSky »

One last post for the evening - I'm sure you can do quite well without me. :)


Dan wrote, 'I think there's a distinction to be made between belief and prediction based on heuristic dynamics. When I cross a busy street I do not so much "believe" that I'll be safe as predict it based on experience.'


Now Laird will be claiming horses can make predictions based on 'heuristic dynamics'.


David wrote, 'The very motivation to add 2 and 2 together as an academic exercise implies an assumption that the world will be relatively unchanged in the next few moments. It assumes, for example, that one is not in immediate danger.'


But we can simply add 2 + 2 and we do it all the time, and without thought about it! Both of you are playing, as did Laird, with assumptions about unconscious content and I'm not going to argue it anymore - what would be the point since you can't prove it and I'm not looking for material disproving it, if there should be any anyway.
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David Quinn
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

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RobertGreenSky wrote: A = A seems the simplest thing but it isn't, the Diamond Sutra noting, 'This is not fire, therefore it is fire'. I know you guys supposedly end up with pratitya samutpada - I'm remembering something Thomas Knierem once wrote - but how through A = A? In 'the field of sunyata' A's relationship to B, C, D, and on ...
... amounts ... to an absolute negation of the standpoint of A as master, along with its uniqueness and so, too, its "being." In other words, it means that A possesses no substantiality in the ordinary sense, that it is a non-self-nature. Its being is a being in unison with emptiness, a being possessed of the character of an illusion.

- Keiji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, p. 148, emphasis his.
You (and Nishitani) are confusing separate issues here. The separate issues are (a) the appearance of A (where A represents any experience at all), (b) the form and identity of this appearance (A=A), and (c) the "emptiness" of A.

In other words, the totality of our lives consists of things appearing to us. Each appearance has a form and identity (e.g. the appearance of a tree in a particular moment is nothing other than the appearance of the tree in that particular moment). And at the same time, each appearance is void of self-nature (i.e. doesn't objectively exist).

To use (c) to try and negate (a) or (b) is irrational. The emptiness of a particular phenomenon doesn't mean the complete non-existence of that phenomenon as an appearance. That is, emptiness doesn't mean nothingness. And it also doesn't mean that the phenomenon loses its identity as an appearance. That is, emptiness doesn't mean incoherence.

The propositions of logic are not conditioned by the existence of memory, but only the power to use them. The proposition A = A must have a psychological relation to time, otherwise it would be At1 = At2 . Of course this is not the case in pure logic, but man has no special faculty of pure logic, and must act as a psychological being.

- Guess who, p. 89
It looks like Guess Who is a bit muddled here. If At1 doesn't equal At2 it is because they are different. That is to say, because of the timelessness and universality of A=A.

Alas, sweetie, A = A is itself a proposition - the whole world knows it - and so also is A [~=] B, forgive the absence of the appropriate key. The law of identity - that's an awfully Western concept, isn't it? - falls to sunyata or Daoism's Dao producing 'the ten thousand things' in my book, but that need not concern you since Buddhism and Daoism are apparently not your interests.
All of the wisdom in Buddhism and Taoism rests on A=A, since both are about identifying what nirvana/Tao is and making it more visible to others.

That A=A is a Western concept doesn't mean anything. If it is profound and wise, then it is perfectly compatible with the great wisdom of Buddhism and Taoism. You shouldn't allow yourself to get tied up in catagories. Wisdom belongs to neither the East nor the West.

David wrote, 'The very motivation to add 2 and 2 together as an academic exercise implies an assumption that the world will be relatively unchanged in the next few moments. It assumes, for example, that one is not in immediate danger.'

But we can simply add 2 + 2 and we do it all the time, and without thought about it! Both of you are playing, as did Laird, with assumptions about unconscious content and I'm not going to argue it anymore - what would be the point since you can't prove it and I'm not looking for material disproving it, if there should be any anyway.
This reminds me of Patrick, a character in the British comedy, Coupling, who went around believing that he didn't have a subconscious. "I am not of those who have a ... [lifts his nose] ... subconscious".

-
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jupiviv
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

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Dan Rowden wrote:No, it(A = not-A) absolutely cannot. Any person must necessarily use it to construct any such imagining. Even illogical thoughts are built on A=A. It doesn't matter that people don't understand. Their imaginings are necessarily incoherent. But then, of course, even incoherence is built out of A=A.
I agree with you that it cannot, but if someone says that it can, how will you prove him wrong?
jupiviv wrote:Let's say someone tells you that A=A is not true. How would you prove him wrong?
By showing him that his statement is necessarily built on A=A. If he can't grasp that, then that's really his problem.
You are proving the truth of A=A to him using A=A itself. Therefore, you believe in A=A, and don't know or understand it(in the normal senses of the words). If you knew that A=A, you could prove it using something outside the relation between yourself and it. A=A is the standard of truth, the standard of knowing, and therefore cannot be posited as truth, cannot be known itself. It must be believed.
Is gravity untrue because some people don't grasp it?
It is untrue to those who cannot grasp it, or who say it is false. And to absolutely unconscious things it is neither true nor false.
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

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skipair wrote:As for the notion of having no explanation for why things are A and not B, I have no idea.
Thank you, Skip, for being the only person so far to acknowledge that I have raised a legitimate problem, and for acknowledging what I consider to be - given the absence of a comprehensive one - the only sane answer to that problem: "I have no idea".
skipair wrote:I wonder why Laird is spending so much time trying to tear this point down instead of being open about his own views...
It's all part of the (seemingly endless) struggle. We choose where and how to fight our battles... at least when we have the choice.
David Quinn wrote:A belief involves a personal investment, such that one comes to emotionally depend on the belief being true, which in turn leads to the habitual distortion of new information and the unrelenting blocking out of all alternative points of view. It is a form of close-mindedness.
I'll notify the Oxford English Dictionary. I'm sure they'll be delighted with that addition to their definition.

In all seriousness, I think that what you said applies to some beliefs, but not all, and that the "personal investment" to which you refer comes about because of the extent to which beliefs are part of the model by which we navigate reality - it's difficult to have to change one's relationship with reality. I don't, however, maintain, as you do above, that beliefs necessarily distort or block out or are closed-minded. Again, you fall prey to the extremism that characterises so much of the house philosophy.
David Quinn wrote:You still don't get it. It is impossible to discuss any of this with you because of this limitation. All deeper explanation of the emotions, together with the egotism underlying them, is automatically shut out of your mind as a matter of course. This has the effect of making your essays very shallow and your approach to the whole matter very feeble, bordering on the comical.

There is no point in throwing detailed critiques at us if you're not going to tackle this barrier in your mind. It's a waste of everyone's time.
There is no barrier in my mind: I simply have a different perspective to you. Emotions occur to and within a subjective consciousness: in this sense, of course they are related to the ego (sense of self). I don't deny that at all. What I do deny is that this is somehow delusional, or that it necessarily has the negative implications that you associate with it, and I presented arguments for this perspective in my essay. That you are loath to grapple with them speaks only to your own contentment to sit in the lofty throne that you have constructed for yourself, considering yourself immune from all challenges: in your own mind, all challenges are of necessity based in misunderstanding; you are the Enlightened Master, and any who disagree are simply deluded or "mentally blocked". If anything borders on the comical, it is this position which you assume for yourself.
RobertGreenSky wrote:You should support with veterinary (and pediatric) science your assertions that instinctual behavior in horses and cats (and children) actually represent the kinds of adult human mentation you suggest they do - you're anthropomorphizing!
Ah well, Robert, I know that you've bowed out of this particular part of the debate, so I'll be brief in my reply: perhaps I simply view animals as more complex than they are typically given credit for - and it seems to me that the more complex they are, the more complex are the models that they construct of reality in their minds, which models could reasonably be referred to as belief structures. You take a negative stance against belief, and I would, somewhat ironically, describe this as a "belief against belief". Personally, I maintain that it's wise to avoid unnecessary beliefs, so I'm not totally opposed to your position. I just don't maintain, as you seem to, that all beliefs are avoidable if we are to function in this world. Call them "provisional assumptions", or "heuristic dynamics", or "predictions", or whatever you like: as I said, a rose by any other name...
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

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guest_of_logic wrote:Thank you, Skip, for being the only person so far to acknowledge that I have raised a legitimate problem, and for acknowledging what I consider to be - given the absence of a comprehensive one - the only sane answer to that problem: "I have no idea".
Laird, if you seriously think that by evoking the eternal mystery of existence itself - or by simply acknowledging it as an actual bona fide mystery - is somehow challenging the 'house philosophy', you've got some serious foundational problems you need to attend to before starting to build what are turning out to be straw man arguments.
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

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Arguing with Laird is like arguing with a woman - you can never win and all dignity goes out the window.

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RobertGreenSky
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

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'... perhaps I simply view animals as more complex than they are typically given credit for - and it seems to me that the more complex they are, the more complex are the models that they construct of reality in their minds, which models could reasonably be referred to as belief structures. You take a negative stance against belief, and I would, somewhat ironically, describe this as a "belief against belief".'

- Laird

I think well of the animals, fellow sentient beings, but if 'belief' is linear thinking then they don't engage in belief, given that as far as we know linear thinking is a characteristic only of humans. There is no necessity for me to believe I don't need beliefs; it's an observation I made quite some time ago. Having drawn what was for me a reasonable conclusion I was freed to go on without even the smallest belief, free to better use thinking appropriately and without losing myself in fantasies. You, Dan, and David are fantasizing out your behinds.
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

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I've been reading the debate about A=A & how some people want to describe it as a theorem that must be proved or a belief that is irrationally held in the absence of this proof. It is neither. It is a fundamental truth because it cannot be otherwise.

A=B is an incoherent idea because the basis of all thought, including the concepts of 'identity', 'using letters as symbols', human language, & logic is the necessity that a thing be equal to itself. You can't even come up with the concept that A=B without the underlying assumption that A=A. Without this assumption you would actually be saying something on the order of bananas=Victorian poetry or any randomly selected pair.

But this theoretical example is only to make a point about incoherence: in actuality without A=A you couldn't think at all. It would be as chaotic as if the appearances of the physical world had no rules & you could just as easily open your fridge to find it filled with baboons or hydrogen bombs rather than the groceries you put in it the day before.

But this too is only an image of incoherence: there could be no concept of 'fridge', 'baboon', 'hydrogen bomb' or 'groceries' without these concepts being none other than themselves.

If A=A is not a truth -- in fact the fundamental truth that underlies coherence itself -- it is not even possible to say 'A'. There is no starting place from which to build knowledge & understanding. A=A can't be proven without making use of the concept of A=A. A=A can't be argued against without making use of the concept A=A ('the idea that A=A is a belief'='the idea that A=A is a belief'). You cannot even come up with the idea that A=B without the underlying assumption of A=A, i.e. [the idea that A=B]=[the idea that A=B], incoherent as it is.

It is a truth because it cannot be otherwise.
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

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... The emptiness of a particular phenomenon doesn't mean the complete non-existence of that phenomenon as an appearance. That is, emptiness doesn't mean nothingness. And it also doesn't mean that the phenomenon loses its identity as an appearance. That is, emptiness doesn't mean incoherence.

- David

Emptiness doesn't mean 'nothingness' but it does mean, in a sense, that things and concepts are actually incoherent. As Nishitani notes, what we are dealing with in the observed A is a 'non-self-nature', 'a being possessed of the character of an illusion.' Are you going to argue that an illusion is coherent?


In Nagarjuna, and as illustrated in Fundamental Wisdom 18:8, there is no A which is coherent. Interestingly, in a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophia article on Contradiction, we find, and for Dan also:
5. LNC and the Buddhist Tetralemma

Outside the Western canon, the brunt of the battle over LNC has been largely borne by the Buddhists, particularly in the exposition by Nâgârjuna of the catuskoti or tetralemma (c. 200 A.D.; cf. Bochenski 1961: Part VI, Raju 1954, Garfield 1995, Tillemans 1999, Garfield & Priest 2002), also known as the four-cornered or fourfold negation. Consider the following four possible truth outcomes for any statement and its (apparent) contradictory:

(9) (i) S is P
(ii) S is not P
(iii) S is both P and not-P
(iv) S is neither P nor not-P

For instances of the positive tetralemma, all four statement types can or must be accepted, e.g.:

Everything is real and not real.
Both real and not real.
Neither real nor not real.
That is Lord Buddha's teaching.
—Mûla-madhyamaka-kârikâ 18:8, quoted in Garfield (1995: 102)

Such cases arise only when we are beyond the realm to which ordinary logic applies, when “the sphere of thought has ceased.” On the other hand, much more use is made of the negative tetralemma, in which all four of the statements in (9) can or must be rejected. Is this tantamount, as it appears, to the renunciation of LEM and LNC, the countenancing of both gaps and gluts, and thus—in Aristotle's view—the overthrow of all bounds of rational argument?

It should first be noted that the axiomatic status of LNC and LEM is as well-established within the logical traditions of India as it is for the Greeks and their epigones. And indeed, Garfield (1995) and Tillemans (1999) convincingly refute the claim that Nâgârjuna was an “irrationalist”. ...

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contr ... #LNCBudTet

- text cleaned up a bit, and emphasis mine.
Don't you just love Nagarjuna? Don't you just love 'when we are beyond the realm to which ordinary logic applies, when "the sphere of thought has ceased"'!!! Reminds you of Larkin, doesn't it.

_____

'Guess who' was Weininger, and I was needling Kelly Jones.

_____
All of the wisdom in Buddhism and Taoism rests on A=A, since both are about identifying what nirvana/Tao is and making it more visible to others.
No, sir. We're dealing with something beyond the sphere of thought. As Tao te Ching observes:

In the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired.
In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped.

_____
Wisdom belongs to neither the East nor the West.
Wisdom doesn't, but concepts, including bonehead concepts, can be appropriately attributed. At Wikipedia, Law of Identity, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_identity , there is not a single direct reference to any source in Buddhism, Zen, Daoism, Hinduism, etc. One can find it in Eastern philo but as above, what use has it?

_____
This reminds me of Patrick, a character in the British comedy, Coupling, who went around believing that he didn't have a subconscious. "I am not of those who have a ... [lifts his nose] ... subconscious".


No one is disputing that there is an unconscious or a subconscious - I take exception to your divining what are the contents of it in order to cheaply back up your position. From now on I shall assert that there is a deeper level of the unconscious where the idea beliefs are necessary is entirely dismissed.
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by jupiviv »

RobertGreenSky wrote:Emptiness doesn't mean 'nothingness' but it does mean, in a sense, that things and concepts are actually incoherent.
That's meaningless. If things and concepts were incoherent then you couldn't make that very statement about them.
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by Kelly Jones »

Robert Larikin wrote:No time tonight to really answer Ms. Jones' post but I do note she seems to hold A = A in an almost mystical position - I assume she has no interest in Nagarjuna and Zhuangzi
I think, rather, you believe in these things. There's no evidence for them being the case, in other words. Anyone who understands how plain and down-to-earth A=A is, doesn't hold it in some mysterical godlike esteem - or projects that quality onto the usage of those who use it openly.

- could either of them have countenanced Weininger's conclusions or his lack of humanity? Kellums wrote, 'A=A is not a proposition, it is a law underlying every concept, every logical proposition, and the syllogistic form [her italics].'
The propositions of logic are not conditioned by the existence of memory, but only the power to use them. The proposition A = A must have a psychological relation to time, otherwise it would be At1 = At2 . Of course this is not the case in pure logic, but man has no special faculty of pure logic, and must act as a psychological being.

- Guess who, p. 89
Alas, sweetie,
Sweetie? Reminds me of Alex's sickly "little sister". It's a needless paternalism, laughably used to convey a sense of superiority. When I see such epithets, I realise the person has little faith in their own reasoning. They're nervous. For, if one's posts are substantial and logical, then they will be clearly superior to those that are not, as in QED.

A = A is itself a proposition - the whole world knows it - and so also is A [~=] B, forgive the absence of the appropriate key.
What you're missing here is that all logical propositions are tested as coherent based on the law of identity. That's what makes them propositions - statements proposed for examination of their coherence and validity. So, even if one wants to propose for examination the law of identity, one cannot actually do it. One cannot verify that A=A is true, because it is itself the basis of truth and all verification.

Weininger is not actually trying to prove the coherence of A=A. He's proposing it for examination, as if exploring it for the first time.

The law of identity - that's an awfully Western concept, isn't it? - falls to sunyata or Daoism's Dao producing 'the ten thousand things' in my book, but that need not concern you since Buddhism and Daoism are apparently not your interests.
Should you make assumptions based on no evidence whatsoever, or believe that the ten thousand things don't include the West, and the rest of the Universe?


...
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RobertGreenSky
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by RobertGreenSky »

Firstly, you don't understand the nature of the law of identity yet.

- Kelly Jones
I've understood it well enough to dispute it relying on sources in Buddhism and Daoism. For my purposes A = A is useless mentation. This banana is self-identical to this banana; how profitable it is to know it!
A=A is not a proposition, it is a law underlying every concept, every logical proposition, and the syllogistic form. Syllogisms aren't "A=A"'s, and don't attempt to be.
See above where no less an expert that Otto 'Self-loathing Anti-semite' Weininger holds that it certainly can be a proposition - I'm sure you mean it otherwise, as something engraved by God Himself onto a tablet held proudly aloft by Kevin Solway doing his best Moses impersonation. What you really mean anyway, if you'd like to get it correctly, is that the law of identity is one of the three classic laws of thought which also include law of noncontradiction and law of excluded middle, the three being fundamental in 'scholastic logic' and attributed not to that idiot Weininger but to Aristotle. I understand that these days the law of identity isn't what it used to be; see Hegel, predicate logic, etc.

... Descartes' proposition was "cogito", which was wrong. It should have simply been "cogitans" or the like. He made the assumption that the presence of thoughts necessitated a self. Invoking an external authority to endorse his proposition, because of his lack of faith in reason, is Pythonesque.

Seeing the limitations of reason is difficult and highly intelligent. If you had real understanding of the purports of Nagarjuna (Madhyamaka), Zen, Daoism, etc., you'd have a clue why faith in reason is serious error. For instance, if you knew the very famous Zhuangzi butterfly story you'd have a clue about what's been called variously 'don't know' (see Blue Cliff Record, Case 1), the wisdom of ignorance, 'the wisdom of insecurity' (Alan Watts), etc. In such terms your faith in reason is primitive.
Nagarjuna would be pointing to the nature of Reality, there. He was saying something very certain about it, which was verbally pointing to the truth that one cannot give a dualistic identity to Reality. He was actually relying on A=A in order to say this.

This is basically the syllogism he uses:

Every identity (every "A") is marked out as itself, by contrast to what it is not.
All identities make up the Totality of identities, there being no identity it is not.
Therefore, the Totality is without an identity, including the identity of having contrast to every identity (this also reveals the basic identity of every "A").
That's pure garbage. Nagarjuna was a critic of knowledge and thinking; see the SEP quote above. Nowhere, not in 18:8 nor anywhere in MMK, did Nagarjuna write anything like 'every A is marked out by itself by contrast to what it is not'. He would instead have denied A (real) and ~A (unreal), etc., and did so in 18:8. Nowhere is a 'Totality' affirmed - show it to us in 18:8 or anywhere in MMK. 'Totality' is instead a Genius Forum concept. Whether it's good for anything I don't yet know.
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by RobertGreenSky »

jupiviv wrote:
RobertGreenSky wrote:Emptiness doesn't mean 'nothingness' but it does mean, in a sense, that things and concepts are actually incoherent.
That's meaningless. If things and concepts were incoherent then you couldn't make that very statement about them.
If you pursue far enough your thoughts about things and concepts you find them ultimately incoherent. That's the point in Nagarjuna. It's a point in Buddhism that things don't exist as such nor do concepts. Perhaps none of that is any concern of yours but one does find the name Nagarjuna mentioned, e.g., here: http://www.theabsolute.net/dquinn/

The conventional is necessary in order to communicate. What can be said to exist by convention is not made absolutely extant by the mere reference, unless you'd like to pretend in magic; this is a highly magical forum, given the beliefs in the supposed power of reason to apprehend reality.
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by Kelly Jones »

Robert, say someone says "begin to reason, and you fall into error", and they're talking about understanding Reality/Tao. If they meant stop reasoning, then there would be no reference to making errors (which only reasoning can fathom).


...
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by RobertGreenSky »

Sweetie? Reminds me of Alex's sickly "little sister". It's a needless paternalism, laughably used to convey a sense of superiority. When I see such epithets, I realise the person has little faith in their own reasoning. They're nervous. For, if one's posts are substantial and logical, then they will be clearly superior to those that are not, as in QED.

- Kelly
I'm not trying to assert superiority - I'm needling you, and I'll quit it since it's self-indulgent. I do have fine 'faith' in my own thinking processes and I've successfully debated here and elsewhere. See the so-called Larkin debate in which Nagarjuna figured heavily in the consideration and there are Genius Forum threads in which I display some command of the material generally. I've argued to Dan, only somewhat tongue in cheek, that the debate rule against quotations should be called the RobertGreenSky Rule since I've used canonical material so well against QRS.
Should you make assumptions based on no evidence whatsoever, or believe that the ten thousand things don't include the West, and the rest of the Universe?
As above, the 'law of identity' has its history as a Western concept. I dispute its usefulness; I look into Zen, Dao, and whatnot and it has no purpose there that I can see. As to you having interest in Zen and whatnot, I know perfectly well you do - you certainly tout Solway's Poison For the Heart and you lately were writing about Quinn's Wisdom of the Infinite - but again the needle.

Just up:
Robert, say someone says "begin to reason, and you fall into error", and they're talking about understanding Reality/Tao. If they meant stop reasoning, then there would be no reference to making errors (which only reasoning can fathom).
Again, we must use conventions when we speak and write - see Nagarjuna MMK on conventional and absolute (when absolute must be intuited). Buddhism and Daoism are aiming at what is beyond thought. 'Stop! Stop! If you even think, you are wrong.' If Zen is trying to get you beyond the discursive intellect, why does Genius Forum constantly assert that the discursive intellect is the path to 'Ultimate Reality' while at the same time claiming to be in accord with Zen? Surely both are not true - law of the excluded middle?
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by Kelly Jones »

Robert, I know you've been around the Genius Forum for years. I recall you being similarly needling and exciteable in late 2003 or early 2004, to the point of being identified as having similar characteristics to a cocaine user - to which you freely responded that you had used cocaine. It was a funny moment that I haven't forgotten. Hope you've kicked the habit, for what that's worth. But let's move on.

RobertGreenSky wrote:For my purposes A = A is useless mentation. This banana is self-identical to this banana; how profitable it is to know it!
You actually do use it. And a lot. For instance, when you evaluate something. As in, recognising what a banana is, by way of differentiating its identity from what it isn't, like an orange, a kiwi, an extinct kakapo, or a Vogon constructor fleet.

Robert wrote:
Kelly wrote:A=A is not a proposition, it is a law underlying every concept, every logical proposition, and the syllogistic form. Syllogisms aren't "A=A"'s, and don't attempt to be.
See above where no less an expert that Otto 'Self-loathing Anti-semite' Weininger holds that it certainly can be a proposition - I'm sure you mean it otherwise, as something engraved by God Himself onto a tablet held proudly aloft by Kevin Solway doing his best Moses impersonation. What you really mean anyway, if you'd like to get it correctly, is that the law of identity is one of the three classic laws of thought which also include law of noncontradiction and law of excluded middle, the three being fundamental in 'scholastic logic' and attributed not to that idiot Weininger but to Aristotle. I understand that these days the law of identity isn't what it used to be; see Hegel, predicate logic, etc.
While babbling, nothing you said refuted my point at all, and had nothing at all to do with it.

Robert wrote:
Kelly wrote:... Descartes' proposition was "cogito", which was wrong. It should have simply been "cogitans" or the like. He made the assumption that the presence of thoughts necessitated a self. Invoking an external authority to endorse his proposition, because of his lack of faith in reason, is Pythonesque.

Seeing the limitations of reason is difficult and highly intelligent. If you had real understanding of the purports of Nagarjuna (Madhyamaka), Zen, Daoism, etc., you'd have a clue why faith in reason is serious error. For instance, if you knew the very famous Zhuangzi butterfly story you'd have a clue about what's been called variously 'don't know' (see Blue Cliff Record, Case 1), the wisdom of ignorance, 'the wisdom of insecurity' (Alan Watts), etc. In such terms your faith in reason is primitive.
Reasoning is a thing, included in the ten thousand things. It is a part of Reality, and shares the same essential nature as all other things. More to the point, only through reason can one detect error. This is not in contravention of the law of the excluded middle. What is meant by "stop! stop! stop!" is stop believing that one is actually constructing anything with one's concepts. It means stop holding to any concept, explanation, or thought as if it encapsulates Reality. It doesn't mean stop thinking, and judging, which is impossible for consciousness in any case. It means, recognise the true nature of all things, and see what has always been the case.

Nothing actually changes with such an understanding. Suchness remains as it has always been. So there is no need to actually stop thinking or reasoning.

Robert wrote:
Kelly wrote:Nagarjuna would be pointing to the nature of Reality, there. He was saying something very certain about it, which was verbally pointing to the truth that one cannot give a dualistic identity to Reality. He was actually relying on A=A in order to say this.

This is basically the syllogism he uses:

Every identity (every "A") is marked out as itself, by contrast to what it is not.
All identities make up the Totality of identities, there being no identity it is not.
Therefore, the Totality is without an identity, including the identity of having contrast to every identity (this also reveals the basic identity of every "A").
That's pure garbage. Nagarjuna was a critic of knowledge and thinking; see the SEP quote above. Nowhere, not in 18:8 nor anywhere in MMK, did Nagarjuna write anything like 'every A is marked out by itself by contrast to what it is not'.
He did, actually. He did exactly what I said he did, pointing out that the Totality is without relativity, whilst things are created interdependently (relative to other things):
Knowing the relativity of all,
The ultimate truth is always seen;
Dismissing the idea of beginning, middle and end
The flow is seen as Emptiness.
Those who impute origination to even very subtle entities are unwise and have not seen the meaning of conditioned origination.

— The Heart of Interdependent Origination
Those who treat the self and the world as independent entities are attracted to the views of permanence, impermanence and the like. Those who hold that dependent entities are like the moon's reflection in water, neither real nor unreal, are not attracted to any view at all.
Those whose intellects have gone well beyond existence and nonexistence and do not dwell anywhere, perfectly meditate upon the meaning of conditioned existence, which is profound and without a support.
Whoever imputes origination and destruction to compounded objects and events does not at all know the movement of the wheel of Interdependent Origination.
Whatever originates dependent upon "this" and "that" does not originate in its intrinsic being. How can what is not originated in its intrinsic being be called originated? Therefore, nothing at all originates and nothing at all ceases.
The Great Persons who see entities through the eye of knowledge to be like a reflection are not entangled in the mire of objects.
Those who are affected by erroneous cognition suffer affliction. Those who know the meaning of the conceptions of entities and non-entities will not suffer affliction.


He would instead have denied A (real) and ~A (unreal), etc., and did so in 18:8. Nowhere is a 'Totality' affirmed - show it to us in 18:8 or anywhere in MMK. 'Totality' is instead a Genius Forum concept. Whether it's good for anything I don't yet know.
Totality just means all things. It means the whole world.

"Knowing the relativity of all,
The ultimate truth is always seen;
Dismissing the idea of beginning, middle and end
The flow is seen as Emptiness."

"The whole world is cause and effect; excluding this, there is no sentient being."


...
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jupiviv
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by jupiviv »

RobertGreenSky wrote:If you pursue far enough your thoughts about things and concepts you find them ultimately incoherent.
Again, that is meaningless, since you have to cohere the fact that things and facts are ultimately incoherent.
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by RobertGreenSky »

jupiviv wrote:
RobertGreenSky wrote:If you pursue far enough your thoughts about things and concepts you find them ultimately incoherent.
Again, that is meaningless, since you have to cohere the fact that things and facts are ultimately incoherent.
We can try a different approach. We must deal with conventions in order to communicate, but that something can be said to be conventionally true or conventionally real does not make it actually true or real. Somewhat famously of emptiness, 'even "empty" is an empty word'. Language is just an evolutionary tool for human beings, as is the opposable thumb. Jay L. Garfield, Department of Philosophy, Smith College and School of Philosophy, University of Tasmania and translator of Nagarjuna's MMK, wrote:

Nagarjuna establishes that everything is empty, contingently dependent on other things—dependently co-arisen, as it is often put. We must take the ‘‘everything’’ here very seriously, though. When Nagarjuna claims that everything is empty, 'everything' includes emptiness itself. The emptiness of something is itself a dependently co-arisen property of that thing. The emptiness of emptiness is perhaps one of the most central claims of the MMK.


... ultimate reality is just as empty as conventional reality. Ultimate reality is hence only conventionally real!


To express anything in language is to express truth that depends on language, and so this cannot be an expression of the way things are ultimately. All truths, then, are merely conventional. Nagarjuna enunciates this conclusion in the following passages:

The Victorious ones have said
That Emptiness is the relinquishing of all views.
For whomever emptiness becomes a view
That one will accomplish nothing. (MMK XIII : 8)


- Garfield and Graham Priest, Nagarjuna and the Limits of Thought, in Philosophy East and West, available http://math.stanford.edu/~mkahle/Nagarjuna.pdf emphasis mine.
You can continue to hold fast to your views - including the view that there is anything that could be properly construed as 'ultimate reality' - or you can allow them to soften and so to unburden yourself, lighten, enlighten, your journey.
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

RobertGreenSky wrote:At Genius Forum absolute reality or 'ultimate reality' seems to be problematic since it is the province of only three individuals - I think that is part of the house philosophy, is it not?
The "Journal of Ultimate Reality", from Scranton University, describes it as "that to which human mind reduces and relates everything and that which one does not reduce or relate to anything else" or as "world views in the light of which humans understand whatever they understand" or as "supreme value, which someone would sacrifice everything and which one would not lose for anything".

My point being that it's rather silly to reduce the idea of "ultimate reality" to some local interest or claim. It seems rather self-serving to suggest something like that.
Descartes relied on God to answer the problem of 'hyperbolic doubt' - a characteristic of thinking and which we might also label, a la Zen, 'the monkey chattering' - as mentioned in a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/ . The monkey chattering is Descartes, I would think, but he does get credit for modern philosophy.
Yeah, you brought that monkey out here before in the past a few times I remember. Your totem mascot perhaps? A peg which fits all holes! Robert's own ultimate answer! But it appears as if you still seriously misinterpret the concept: the chatter is related to food, sex, hierarchy and anything passing, anything which excites the animal mind. There are larger more penetrating and self-deflating thoughts, more tuned to the infinite, which you and perhaps all the overly meditated appear so hostile against.

Anyway, Descartes relied on "ergo sum" to answer doubt and provide absolute certainty. That the context of this identity, "i am", must lie in the implicit existence of a totality, some sum of perfections, must be the story most told in history.
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by RobertGreenSky »

... the chatter is related to food, sex, hierarchy and anything passing, anything which excites the animal mind. There are larger more penetrating and self-deflating thoughts, more tuned to the infinite, which you and perhaps all the overly meditated appear so hostile against.

- Diebert
Diebert, you're chattering again. Concerns with words like 'Infinite' and 'Ultimate' and 'Big T Totality' are often just attempts by blowhards to in fact inflate themselves. Silence is naturally deflating and philosophy is often just the monkey chattering.

[edit: I shouldn't write that philo is itself monkey chatter, but that is let's face it what it often amounts to.]
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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by David Quinn »

Shardrol wrote:I've been reading the debate about A=A & how some people want to describe it as a theorem that must be proved or a belief that is irrationally held in the absence of this proof. It is neither. It is a fundamental truth because it cannot be otherwise.

A=B is an incoherent idea because the basis of all thought, including the concepts of 'identity', 'using letters as symbols', human language, & logic is the necessity that a thing be equal to itself. You can't even come up with the concept that A=B without the underlying assumption that A=A. Without this assumption you would actually be saying something on the order of bananas=Victorian poetry or any randomly selected pair.

But this theoretical example is only to make a point about incoherence: in actuality without A=A you couldn't think at all. It would be as chaotic as if the appearances of the physical world had no rules & you could just as easily open your fridge to find it filled with baboons or hydrogen bombs rather than the groceries you put in it the day before.

But this too is only an image of incoherence: there could be no concept of 'fridge', 'baboon', 'hydrogen bomb' or 'groceries' without these concepts being none other than themselves.

If A=A is not a truth -- in fact the fundamental truth that underlies coherence itself -- it is not even possible to say 'A'. There is no starting place from which to build knowledge & understanding. A=A can't be proven without making use of the concept of A=A. A=A can't be argued against without making use of the concept A=A ('the idea that A=A is a belief'='the idea that A=A is a belief'). You cannot even come up with the idea that A=B without the underlying assumption of A=A, i.e. [the idea that A=B]=[the idea that A=B], incoherent as it is.

It is a truth because it cannot be otherwise.
Spot on. Excellent post.

I would be interested to see where you place this understanding in the grander scheme of things. How does A=A relate to the deepest wisdom?

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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by David Quinn »

RobertGreenSky wrote:
David Quinn wrote:... The emptiness of a particular phenomenon doesn't mean the complete non-existence of that phenomenon as an appearance. That is, emptiness doesn't mean nothingness. And it also doesn't mean that the phenomenon loses its identity as an appearance. That is, emptiness doesn't mean incoherence.
Emptiness doesn't mean 'nothingness' but it does mean, in a sense, that things and concepts are actually incoherent. As Nishitani notes, what we are dealing with in the observed A is a 'non-self-nature', 'a being possessed of the character of an illusion.' Are you going to argue that an illusion is coherent?

Robert, it's clear that you are still way out of your depth in these matters and that you continue to cling to Nagarjuna and Lao Tzu (and incredibly, to encyclopedia entries about them) like a hysterical man clinging to his mother. As such, there is really no point in having a conversation with you. But what the hell ... I'll just pretend otherwise. For the time being.

I'll give you one chance to redeem yourself.

So what exactly does "coherent" mean in this context? What makes one thing coherent and another incoherent?

RobertGreenSky wrote:
All of the wisdom in Buddhism and Taoism rests on A=A, since both are about identifying what nirvana/Tao is and making it more visible to others.
No, sir. We're dealing with something beyond the sphere of thought. As Tao te Ching observes:

In the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired.
In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped.

Are you seriously saying that Lao Tzu never thought about the Tao, never identified what it is, never distingished it from what it is not, never developed any knowledge about it? That the urge to write the Tao Te Ching just popped into his brain without him even understanding why?

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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by David Quinn »

Incidentally, for those who are interested, this is the same Robert Larkin with whom I had a formal debate a few years ago on another forum, the full text of which can be read here. You can witness the madness in full, technicolor glory.

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Re: Arbitrary absolutism: the values of the house philosophy

Post by guest_of_logic »

Robert wrote:Laird, if you seriously think that by evoking the eternal mystery of existence itself - or by simply acknowledging it as an actual bona fide mystery - is somehow challenging the 'house philosophy', you've got some serious foundational problems you need to attend to before starting to build what are turning out to be straw man arguments.
Robert, perhaps it's simply been too long since you've read Wisdom of the Infinite and pondered its implications, in particular Chapter 6, where David asserts that the Hidden Void is a mystery not in the sense of one that has a potential solution, but of one in the sense of "What does a married bachelor look like?" - in other words, he essentially denies any "real" mystery to reality, concluding that section of the chapter with this bold assertion: "As such, our understanding of what lies beyond consciousness is now complete."

In other words, the house philosophy denies any ultimate mystery to reality, claiming to have achieved an Ultimate Truth which answers all meaningful questions about the Ultimate.

My point is that this is simply not the case: the Ultimate Truth of the house philosophy, even taking into account the Hidden Void, can only explain why any finite phenomenon is as it is by claiming that it was "caused by all that is not it", but this can't explain why the Totality of all that is, is the way that it is, and is not some other way. I am not constructing a strawman argument: I'm directly challenging the claim of the house philosophers to have answered all meaningful ultimate questions, and solved all meaningful ultimate mysteries.
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