Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The logic of Buddhist philosophy

aeon.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 210 posts

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#151

Post by snowwrestler »

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…

This reminds me of the holographic theory in physics which says (I am not a physicist, so layman's summary) that the information in a sphere of space can be completely represented on the surface of the sphere. If we think of that surface as its "interface" of relationship to the rest of the universe, it sounds very similar to:

> "the collection of all ways to relate an object to other objects is isomorphic to the object itself".

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#152

Post by dusklight »

andreasvc wrote: post #18
dusklight wrote: post #11

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 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 p…

There can be an infinite number of different rigorous conceptions of logic, while at the same time there are also an infinite number of modes of thought outside of logic .. we know the ones like instinct, superstition, and religion that are considered inferior to logic. Is it possible for there to exist a mode of thought yet to be found or invented that is better?

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#153

Post by marcblackbeard »

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…

>If this kind of thinking were to get "popular," Western civilization and science would collapse into skepticism and religion would take over again. Just as happened in the Middle Ages and at the end of the Islamic Golden Age (in the latter case, there never was a recovery).

argumentum ad consequentiam

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#154

Post by muhuk »

wyager wrote: post #116
wwweston wrote: post #114

> If something is ineffable, i, it is certainly neither true nor false. Wouldn't it instead be the case that it's simply not expressible inside a given formalism (or other form of expression)?

That is absolutely the case. If something is "ineffable", it's probably logically ill-defined, and we should treat anyone who tries to use something "ineffable" in formal argument as a mystic spouting hogwash.

This seems like a valid argument to me. Could one of the downvoters perhaps care to point out the errors in it. Or is it just because of the word 'hogwash'?

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#155

Post by 1stop »

kazagistar wrote: post #108
1stop wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the impression this was done because the english translation loses some meaning or context. The idea that every concept can be translated is probably a false one. Ideas are built on cultures, cultures are described by language you can't change one without changing another. So when describing an idea generated by a culture, using a secondary idea and secondary culture, you will lose things. That is why (fo…

If a concept cannot be translated between languages, it seems likely that it cannot be translated properly between people either. Or do you mean directly translated? The concept of nirvana is ill defined if you cannot directly describe it, and can only point at it.

ill defined in one language, doesn't mean ill defined in another.

I'm saying language and culture are inextricably linked. And not 100% compatible with all other languages and cultures.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#157

Post by gohrt »

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...

Clojure transients are linear types.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#158

Post by gohrt »

Retric wrote: post #95
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…

Fuzzy logic is a vary useful non boolean logic system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic In practice it's somewhat like neural net's but in a far more human readable format and vary useful for things like washing machines that have lot's of flakey sensors and little processing power. But the basic idea is statements truth is percentage based. For example "this statement is true" would be 50% true and there is…

That seems like Bayesian inference, which goes back farther.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#159

Post by dj-wonk »

Retric wrote: post #95
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…

Fuzzy logic is a vary useful non boolean logic system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic In practice it's somewhat like neural net's but in a far more human readable format and vary useful for things like washing machines that have lot's of flakey sensors and little processing power. But the basic idea is statements truth is percentage based. For example "this statement is true" would be 50% true and there is…

There would still be a contradiction if the sentence did not say "This sentence is 50% true."

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#160

Post by dj-wonk »

gohrt wrote: post #157
elbenshira wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Clojure transients are linear types.

How? Please refute this claim: "Transients have very little, if anything, to do with types."

Why would I claim this? Transients are about the internal nature of a function but have nothing to do with the return value or type. See "Transient data structures are a solution to this optimization problem that integrates with the Clojure model and provides the same thread safety guarantees you expect of Clojure." at http://clojure.org/transients

Post reply on HN