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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