This article is kinda missing the point. The "empty" is the undefined. That which has yet to exist, or never will. There is that which is uncountable, for example the number of corners in a circle. Just because it is a contradiction doesn't mean it is wrong -- maybe your models are wrong. The usefulness of eastern philosophy is to free yourself of preconceived ideas. I think it is obviously clear to everyone today that there are modes of thought that are far inferior to logic. I think it would be supremely arrogant to presume that logic is the best mode of thought that humanity will ever come up with. To try to shoehorn everything to fit into a logical framework feels akin to epicycles to me.
The logic of Buddhist philosophy
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Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy
#12If you want to learn more about this catuskoti, meaning ‘four corners’ theories there are another one threekoti, meaning ‘three corners’ you need to check Prof. Nalin de silva's works.
http://kalaya.org/
Unfortunately foreigners most of his work is in sinhala. And only foreigners learn that language is germans,russians,chines and japanes diplomats.
Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy
#13"The only correct view is the absence of all views." - Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay)
Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy
#14Can some enlightened soul give me a TL;DR version of this text?? :D
Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy
#15I would have enjoyed this article if it dropped the Buddhism and kept the math.
Alternate logics are interesting, but you tend to be able to reduce them into each other in the same way that universal turing machines can simulate each other. They don't add new functionality, they add succinctness. So it's really strange to me to frame them as totally different philosophies.
For example, it is the case that self-referential statements don't always have well-defined truth values and that allowing them to have values like {} and {false,true} is a fruitful way to think about it. But this approach can be grounded in two-valued logic (and vice versa), and it doesn't solve the problem of self-reference (consider "This statement is not {}, is not {false}, is not {true}, is not {false,true}").
Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy
#16Can some enlightened soul give me a TL;DR version of this text?? :D
It is possible to give a rigorous mathematical definition of a logic that deals with contradictions and propositions that cannot be assigned a truth value. This has parallels with traditions in Buddhism and helps resolve paradoxes which are problematic for traditional Western logic (e.g., "this sentence is false").
Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy
#17This article is kinda missing the point. The "empty" is the undefined. That which has yet to exist, or never will. There is that which is uncountable, for example the number of corners in a circle. Just because it is a contradiction doesn't mean it is wrong -- maybe your models are wrong. The usefulness of eastern philosophy is to free yourself of preconceived ideas. I think it is obviously clear to everyone today th…
>>The "empty" is the undefined. That which has yet to exist, or never will.
The "empty" is the un-defined. Direct experience, that which can't be talked about, labeled or categorized. That (this) which has always existed, and always will.
The void is that which can't be named. It's all around you! You can never leave it because it is you, stretching from your center in all directions.
There are no contradiction here, because you need a logical layer over reality to have contradictions.
Tat twam asi!
Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy
#18This article is kinda missing the point. The "empty" is the undefined. That which has yet to exist, or never will. There is that which is uncountable, for example the number of corners in a circle. Just because it is a contradiction doesn't mean it is wrong -- maybe your models are wrong. The usefulness of eastern philosophy is to free yourself of preconceived ideas. I think it is obviously clear to everyone today th…
Maybe it is missing your pet theory, but the article has a definite point and Priest argues it at length. You seem not to have grasped the article because you refer to logic as something singular that should not be deemed superior to other modes of thought, while the article demonstrates there are many different, mathematically rigorous conceptions of logic.
Epicycles are a non-sequitur here, because there is not a particular proposition that you set out to prove with whatever explanation you can find. Rather the goal is to find a logic that does not break down when presented with paradoxes.
Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy
#19This article is kinda missing the point. The "empty" is the undefined. That which has yet to exist, or never will. There is that which is uncountable, for example the number of corners in a circle. Just because it is a contradiction doesn't mean it is wrong -- maybe your models are wrong. The usefulness of eastern philosophy is to free yourself of preconceived ideas. I think it is obviously clear to everyone today th…
Did you read the article?
> Just because it is a contradiction doesn't mean it is wrong
That's basically precisely one of the points of this article.
Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy
#20This is nice. I'm wondering how much our restricted thought environment (x can only be true or false) has hindered our development in the last thousands of years?
I'm wondering how much Aristotle's metaphysics of essence may have hindered certain paths of thought. :) You must admit, his base system is powerful and ever-penetrating (Descartes is probably a very good example, but it's only one of the more obvious ones...)
Of course it's easy to say things like that, and harder to come up with a consistent (pun intended) metaphysical system on your own self. :)