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The logic of Buddhist philosophy

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Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#181

Post by dfc »

logicchains wrote: post #39

The logic of Buddhist philosophy: emotional attachment to and/or desire of impermanent things has the potential to result in dissatisfaction, as impermanent things are impermanent. It's hardly rocket science. Desire nothing, and you'll never never feel the dissatisfaction of not getting what you want. Be attached to nothing, and you'll never feel the pain of losing something. Some quotes by emperor Marcus Aurelius, o…

This is fortune cookie buddhism from a place that you think has a statue of Buddha out front but it is actually a statue of Budai. Buddhists desire peace. Buddhists desire enlightenment. Desire in itself is not bad and withdrawal is definitely not the reaction to the recognition of impermanence.

When you you get a new puppy everything is wonderful and playful and this lasts through puppyhood and changes into the love of an old lazy dog. One day that dog is going to get hit by a car or get cancer and have to be put down. Everyone says well it was bound to happen or of course that is life. If instead you get the puppy and accept from day one that the dog is already dead every day until then is that much more precious.

This is not silly word play. When Plato (my first dog) died I realized that Freedom (6months younger) was on borrowed time, realizing that only strengthened my emotional attachment to him. Instead of withdrawing I embraced my extra time with him and made an effort to throw the ball one more time or scratched his head just a little longer than I would have done before Plato died. Sure I was sad on that final trip to the vet but I was comforted by the knowledge that I had made the most of my extra time with him. When I get my next dog I will not have to wait till the last year to treasure my time with the dog, every moment from day one will be bonus time.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#182

Post by Chattered »

Strilanc wrote: post #15

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…

> 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.

When it comes to classical logic versus intuitionistic logic, I frame the difference in terms of totally different philosophies, for precisely this reason. Sufficiently expressive versions of either logic encode the other, but no-one runs the encoding. And in many cases, both groups want to express the same proposition using exactly the same symbols, but will disagree as to whether or not the proposition is a theorem (see the least upper bound property, for example).

There's a deeper disagreement going on when neither side acknowledges a possibility of translation. However, I suspect this disagreement is unique to classical versus intuitionistic logic. I doubt that trivial four or five-valued propositional logics, or Priest's paraconsistent logic, are pointing to any fundamental disagreement about how to get something done.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#183

Post by muhuk »

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.

Can something exist without identity?

Can something exist yet have no nature?

Can something exist without being (anything)?

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#184

Post by vram22 »

wfn wrote: post #131
vram22 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

Hmm. I don't think so, but, feel free to expand your opinion (why do you think it should be "I am, therefore I (can) think"? Maybe you have an interesting point to make?) Re: etymology, it's pretty much "think => exist." Re: conceptual level: well, one of the texts where this whole concept/causal-chain is introduced is in his "Meditations on First Philosophy"[1], in particular, in Meditation 2. Very (very) roughly (a…

>Hmm. I don't think so, but, feel free to expand your opinion (why do you think it should be "I am, therefore I (can) think"? Maybe you have an interesting point to make?)

I did say "vaguely". Let me think about it a bit and then reply later tonight.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#185

Post by andreasvc »

dusklight wrote: post #152
andreasvc wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I wouldn't say we "know the ones like instinct, superstition, and religion [...] are considered inferior to logic". They are not comparable, unless you formulate criteria for what is better, and then you can easily bias the comparison towards one or the other.

If there exist an infinite number of modes of thought as you posit, then yes it is possible that the best one is not among the ones we know of now.

I don't really think of it this way though, because logic is not supposed to give us something new, not supposed to give surprising conclusions. Logic formalizes the steps you can take to arrive at valid conclusions. However, what constitutes valid conclusions is ultimately based on our intuitions, it is what the logic is founded on (comparable to how mathematics is ultimately based on accepting axioms).

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#186

Post by tel »

gohrt wrote: post #172
dietrichepp wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

For what purpose? Surely the type checker doesn't recognize the equivalence. a1 :: a r1 :: r f :: a -> r f a1 = r1 b :: (a -> r) -> r b f = f a1 -- == r1 but `a f` is ill-typed. m :: a -> (a -> r) -> r m a1 f = f a1 -- m === (flip ($)) === (flip id) So it appears that `(a -> r) -> r` is a "co-value" that can be applied to a function (resulting in the application of the function to the underlying vale of type `a`, dua…

This is pretty much exactly correct. The common terminology is that `forall r . (a -> r) -> r` is the Continuation Passing Style transformed version of `a`. At the end of the day, `CPS a` is useful whenever CPS is, but also more often.

sometimes you see CPS (a.k.a. Church-encoded) forms of values in Haskell in really tight inner loops as the compiler can optimize them better.

You also see a variant of it occurring in Free monad structures because it allows you to re-associate the binds to make them much more efficient.

You also see it sometimes when making monads over categories other than Hask—it lets you pretend you're working with a Hask monad (and thus use do notation) for a while and only "pass through" the real category at fixed points in time. This lets you, for instance, write a monad for Set even though normally you couldn't due to the need for the Ord constraint.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#187

Post by tel »

Chattered wrote: post #179
dietrichepp wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I recognise it as the type of continuation returning something of type a. Also, if you instantiate r to Void then ((a -> Void) -> Void) a is just double negation elimination. Am I getting sidetracked or does this line go somewhere, tel?

You're totally correct that double-negation elimination is a specialization of the CPS transform which is a specialized form of Yoneda. Yoneda is more general and exists more often than CPS transforms do, though.

    cps : a -> (forall r . (a -> r) -> r)
    cps a = \f -> a f

    cps' : (forall r . (a -> r) -> r) -> a
    cps' f = f id
It's interesting to examine double negation elimination in constructivist logic since it doesn't hold there. In particular, we can easily write the backward direction

    bck : a -> ((a -> Void) -> Void)
    bck = cps a
but since we've now specialized `forall r` to `Void` we can no longer come back. This demonstrates (1) that the pure CPS'd version is more general than DNE and (2) proof by contradiction is non-constructive.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#188

Post by tel »

michaelfeathers wrote: post #126
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 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.

I like to notice it as well as being a concise statement of the heart of the relational model. Ultimately, the things stored in your database are evidence of connections between other things, not the things themselves.

Which is a good hint at the weight of the Object-Relational impedance problem, too.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#189

Post by wpietri »

dj-wonk wrote: post #162
wpietri wrote: post #40

Very interesting. It reminds me that I think an early start on programming made some Buddhist concepts easier for me to get. In particular for me there's a strong connection between using software to model the world and the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness, the notion that nothing exists in its own right: https://suite.io/matthew-bingley/1z8s2kx I started coding young, and over time I gradually came to see that any com…

In my experience, I have found that in some key Buddhist works that the apparent contradiction is a literary device for learning. I don't think that contradictions are intended to persist and represent a "finished" philosophy.

Hm. I've seen some of that, for sure. But for me the contradictions also point out the long-term weakness of taking conceptual frameworks too seriously. Our conceptual models of the world, like our software models, are temporary structures that we use for particular purposes. Eventually, we throw them all away. The map is not the territory, and there is no perfect map, just the right one for the moment.

Thus it is reasonable for Buddhists to advocate the end of Buddhism. E.g.: http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=content&task=vi...

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#190

Post by wpietri »

dfc wrote: post #181
logicchains wrote: post #39

The logic of Buddhist philosophy: emotional attachment to and/or desire of impermanent things has the potential to result in dissatisfaction, as impermanent things are impermanent. It's hardly rocket science. Desire nothing, and you'll never never feel the dissatisfaction of not getting what you want. Be attached to nothing, and you'll never feel the pain of losing something. Some quotes by emperor Marcus Aurelius, o…

This is fortune cookie buddhism from a place that you think has a statue of Buddha out front but it is actually a statue of Budai. Buddhists desire peace. Buddhists desire enlightenment. Desire in itself is not bad and withdrawal is definitely not the reaction to the recognition of impermanence. When you you get a new puppy everything is wonderful and playful and this lasts through puppyhood and changes into the love…

I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted here. This is exactly in line with the teachings of Ajahn Chah, a noted Thai Buddhist. In Thoughts Without a Thinker, he is quoted as saying:

“You see this goblet? For me, this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on a shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ But when I understand that this glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.”

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