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The logic of Buddhist philosophy

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Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#81

Post by javert »

kfnn wrote: post #58
javert wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For 2, yes, the LNC is an axiom. What that properly means is that to deny it is a contradiction, because it must be assumed to deny it. In other words, you can't say "The truth is, there is no truth." Which is what Graham Priest is doing. 1 is an interesting observation, but has no bearing on the facts of the case: he is a fraud. 3: You should be ashamed to make a statement like this in an intellectual conversation.…

The author himself wrote: The constructions I have described show how to make precise mathematical sense of the Buddhist views. This does not, of course, show that they are true.

> How can contradictions be true? What’s all this talk of ineffability? This is all nonsense. The constructions I have described show how to make precise mathematical sense of the Buddhist views. This does not, of course, show that they are true. That’s a different matter. But it does show that these ideas can be made as logically rigorous and coherent as ideas can be.

No, they are nonsense. Nothing that claims that something can be true and false can be logically rigorous. To be logically rigorous means to be logical---and to be logical means to obey the law of non-contradiction.

Anyway, it's at least gross negligence for the author to write an article like this and then not explicitly declare that these ideas are nonsensical.

I think I have made my point, I don't want to continue the discussion, though I will be interested to read any further follow-ups.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#82

Post by javert »

mcguire wrote: post #60
javert wrote: post #6

But the Law of Non-Contradiction does hold. And it's very easy to save the PEM if you distinguish the value of a proposition (true or false) and the cognitive status of the proposition (certain, probable, possible, or arbitrary). Moreover, to exist is to have a particular identity, to have a nature, to be something. Thus, all of this work is utter hogwash. The professor who wrote this IS practicing mysticism and irra…

" Moreover, to exist is to have a particular identity, to have a nature, to be something. " Tweet! Assuming the conclusion! 10 yard penalty, return the sliotar to first base.

Not assuming the conclusion, but stating a conclusion.

You might as well make the same comment in response to the statment, "Python is an interpreted language."

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#83

Post by tel »

wfn wrote: post #77
tel wrote: post #37

Central to his teachings is the view that things are ‘empty’ (sunya). This does not mean that they are non-existent; only that they are what they are because of how they relate to other things. Immediately I thought of Category Theory as this statement is a not terrible expression of what CT tries to teach. I'll immediately recommend the paper Numbers Can Be Just What They Have To ( http://www.cwru.edu/artsci/phil/Nu…

Ahh, very nice. While at it: here's a very nice etymological explanation of why the Ubuntu-Yoneda lemma is called the Ubuntu-Yoneda lemma: https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2013/03/spivak_on_categ...

Haha! That's great! I'm going to keep that in mind from now on.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#84

Post by tel »

elbenshira wrote: post #41
throwaway13qf85 wrote: post #5

In case anyone is turned off by the expectation of wishy-washy flim-flam, it's worth noting that Graham Priest may be a professor of philosophy, but is most well known for his work in logic, particularly in non-standard logics (i.e. not propositional or predicate logic) that allow non-boolean truth values, or weaken or remove some of the axioms of classical logic. I assume that what's relevant here will be his work o…

Don't immutable data structures give us most of the benefits? Clojure, for example, approaches this by preferring values over hidden, mutable state (e.g. classes). We see libraries like Om take advantage of the fact that comparing two complex structures (e.g. a hash map) is simply a reference equality test. http://clojure.org/state http://swannodette.github.io/2013/12/17/the-future-of-javasc...

Not at all. Linear types ensure that types are "used" exactly once. Mutability would correspond to type creation while reading would be a use.

For a fun little example of thinking in linear types, take a look at Brent Yorgey's blog post: http://byorgey.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/enumerating-linear-i...

(Edit: The Yorgey post listed links to the whole cycle, but it begins here: http://byorgey.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/counting-linear-lamb...)

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#85

Post by phreeza »

livingparadox wrote: post #80
joelmichael wrote: post #7

Paradox is not really so alien to Western philosophy, as this article initially suggests. It does end up referencing a number of modern Western philosophers, but the idea is older than that. It's ironic he refers to "Western orthodoxy" as being strictly anti-paradox, as traditional Christian theology is full of official paradoxes; a major example would be the doctrine that Jesus is simultaneously fully human and full…

I would clarify that the "paradox" of being fully human and fully divine is an apparent paradox, not an actual paradox. Most theologians I've come into contact with hold to Jesus' nature being the intersection of all divine traits and all human traits, allowing him to be both God and Man without contradiction. The confusion I think lies in the ambiguity of the word "fully". Its a paradox if we take it to mean "100% o…

Not to start a theological debate here, but doesn't that imply none of the traits are mutually exclusive? Fallible and infallible comes to mind as a counterexample.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#86

Post by septerr »

livingparadox wrote: post #80
joelmichael wrote: post #7

Paradox is not really so alien to Western philosophy, as this article initially suggests. It does end up referencing a number of modern Western philosophers, but the idea is older than that. It's ironic he refers to "Western orthodoxy" as being strictly anti-paradox, as traditional Christian theology is full of official paradoxes; a major example would be the doctrine that Jesus is simultaneously fully human and full…

I would clarify that the "paradox" of being fully human and fully divine is an apparent paradox, not an actual paradox. Most theologians I've come into contact with hold to Jesus' nature being the intersection of all divine traits and all human traits, allowing him to be both God and Man without contradiction. The confusion I think lies in the ambiguity of the word "fully". Its a paradox if we take it to mean "100% o…

Is there any statement/belief in Christian philosophy that

Human cannot be divine

or

Divine cannot be human?

If there is then the paradox does exist.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#87

Post by dpierce9 »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #70
dpierce9 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is simply not true that multi-valued logics collapse into two-valued logics. While it is true that you can assign indeterminate statements {true,false} and call it a third value, logic is more than assignments of truth-values to statements, it is also rules of inference for that formal system. The rules of inference are the driving force behind paraconsistent logics and the rules of inference are very different. O…

>In other words, contradictory beliefs imply anything and everything is true (and false). This is an odd result especially since anyone with an ounce of humility will admit that there is a reasonably high chance that there is a contradiction in their beliefs or in the logical consequences of their beliefs. Yeah, but we deal with this very simply: by using probability (conceived as a real-valued logic) instead of bool…

There are definitely other ways to handle this same problem, I was just pointing out one counterintuitive conclusion of classical inference rules as one motivation for non-classical logics.

And, since both of your examples also involve non-classical logics, I think we generally agree that there is motivation here (setting aside the viability of your solutions)

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#88

Post by dietrichepp »

tel wrote: post #37

Central to his teachings is the view that things are ‘empty’ (sunya). This does not mean that they are non-existent; only that they are what they are because of how they relate to other things. Immediately I thought of Category Theory as this statement is a not terrible expression of what CT tries to teach. I'll immediately recommend the paper Numbers Can Be Just What They Have To ( http://www.cwru.edu/artsci/phil/Nu…

Haskellers may recognize (a -> r) -> r as a way to represent "a"... you'll see that type signature in more than a few libraries.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#89

Post by muraiki »

Daishiman wrote: post #61
joelmichael wrote: post #7

Paradox is not really so alien to Western philosophy, as this article initially suggests. It does end up referencing a number of modern Western philosophers, but the idea is older than that. It's ironic he refers to "Western orthodoxy" as being strictly anti-paradox, as traditional Christian theology is full of official paradoxes; a major example would be the doctrine that Jesus is simultaneously fully human and full…

I think the difference between the Christian and Buddhist approaches to the paradoxes is the fact that Christian theologists have spent centuries devising new doctrine that accomodates the contradictory statements in a sort of logical superstructure, whereas no such thing happens in Buddhist contradictions. Part of the reason why I suspect this is because Christian dogma ultimately reflects on concrete precepts that…

The approach in Eastern Christianity (pre-Great Schism groups such as the Orthodox, Coptic, and others) is generally that of Apophatic or Negative theology.

"Leave behind the senses and the operations of the intellect, and all things sensible and intellectual, and all things in the world of being and non-being, that thou mayest arise by unknowing towards the union, as far as is attainable, with Him who transcends all knowledge." --St. Dionysius the Areopagite

A consequence of the Apophatic approach is that of an emphasis on knowledge of God through union with His uncreated Energy; that is, experiential knowledge. This is termed theosis or deification, to become by grace that which God is by nature (albeit while retaining the essential distinction between created human and uncreated God). As such, dogma is the accumulated experience of the Saints in this way of union, not arbitrary beliefs that must be adhered to. Salvation is not a destination with a ticket (believe X to get into Heaven) but rather the process of deification, a process which begins in this life and proceeds unceasingly in the eternal Kingdom.

It should also be noted that I'm not talking about some fringe group of Christianity, but rather the second largest group of Christians in the world. If these ideas interest you, a good book to pick up is "The Mountain of Silence," in which an anthropologist visits Orthodox monasteries in Greece to try and understand these things, under the tutelage of a monk. He presents the teachings from the standpoint of an outsider in a very readable way.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#90

Post by mortenjorck »

livingparadox wrote: post #80
joelmichael wrote: post #7

Paradox is not really so alien to Western philosophy, as this article initially suggests. It does end up referencing a number of modern Western philosophers, but the idea is older than that. It's ironic he refers to "Western orthodoxy" as being strictly anti-paradox, as traditional Christian theology is full of official paradoxes; a major example would be the doctrine that Jesus is simultaneously fully human and full…

I would clarify that the "paradox" of being fully human and fully divine is an apparent paradox, not an actual paradox. Most theologians I've come into contact with hold to Jesus' nature being the intersection of all divine traits and all human traits, allowing him to be both God and Man without contradiction. The confusion I think lies in the ambiguity of the word "fully". Its a paradox if we take it to mean "100% o…

A better example of paradox within Christian theology might be the concept of the Trinity.
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