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The logic of Buddhist philosophy

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121–130 of 210 posts

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#121
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not without the forall!

Haskell has implicit forall.

Sorry, not to imply you weren't aware of the fact but instead to be completely clear. Taken as an cutout of the code I wrote it might seem as though you intentionally removed the forall.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#122
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father.”

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#125
post #20
post #2

This 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. :)

Speaking of Descartes, I've always thought that the famous quote supposed to be by him, i.e. "I think, therefore I am":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito_ergo_sum

is (vaguely? :) wrong. Shouldn't it be: "I am, therefore I (can) think"?

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#126
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…

This reminds me of Alan Kay's assertion that messaging is more important than objects in OO. I know that when I design, I see the interactions first - they define the objects. If names from the domain fit - fine. Otherwise, invent new names.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#127
post #14

Can 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").

Thanks a lot!! It looked like interesting but I am way too busy for such a long text.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#128
post #78

Do you think the Buddha borrowed some of his philosophy from the Stoics?

Actually it would be the reverse, since Buddha predates stoicism.

Though it is possible Buddha was partially influenced by pre-Socratic Greek thought and, in turn, later Greek philosophers were influenced by Buddhism (to put it in perspective, Socrates was roughly contemporaneous with Buddha).

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#129

I 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-refer…

> I would have enjoyed this article if it dropped the Buddhism and kept the math.

People are different that way, aren't we. Something about not being able to please all demographics.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see that every violation of the principle of noncontradiction trivially leaves definitions meaningless. Suggesting that a principle shouldn't be taken to hold in general doesn't mean that you have to violate the principle at every opportunity, just that there is some place it is (in whatever sense) correct to violate the principle. Of course, under traditional logics, accepting a contradiction leaves everythi…

by ' every violation' do you mean ' any violation', ' no violation', ' blue violation'... by 'every violation ' do you mean 'every observance ', 'every miss-fire ', 'every monkey '... you see, apart from the law of non-contradiction language is impossible.

That's just being difficult. The real world does work that way. Take poltical labels for example, liberal, conservative, et al have totally different meanings for different people. Contradictions do exist, just externalizing them in a formal system is lazy.
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