The logic of Buddhist philosophy
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Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy
#2This 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?
Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy
#3[deleted]
Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy
#4I think boolean logic was a skillful starting place for human society. Now that we have a good understanding of "conventional" logic, we can begin to explore a more sublime logical framework.
Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy
#5In 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 on paraconsistent logics (which allow contradictions) but I think an equally interesting line of work is linear logics. It's of interest to computer scientists because of its relationship to linear type theory (in the same way that the Curry-Howard correspondence links type theory and classical logic) and because it has close relationships with quantum computing.
In particular, you are not allowed to delete or duplicate elements/propositions/types (corresponding to physical processes that cannot arbitrarily create or destroy particles, the "no deletion theorem" and "no cloning theorem" of quantum information theory), so functions of the type
duplicate :: a -> (a, a)
delete :: a -> ()
Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy
#6But 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 irrationality. He ought to be shunned by all actual philosophers.
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).
Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy
#7Paradox 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 fully divine. Many were declared anathema for refusing this and other paradoxical doctrines. So rather than Western orthodoxy being unaware of paradox, it has insisted on it. The concept of the dialectic also touches on this idea of reconciling apparent contradictions, rather than defeating your opponent as one does in a debate, and this idea originates not truly with Hegel but spans all the way back to Socrates, and probably before.
I agree with the sentiment, however, that understanding paradox is extremely important to a person's capability for nuance and understanding. If you insist on a simplified internal consistency, you will end up sacrificing (and demonizing) whole parts of your thought process rather than trying to reconcile them as having some truth. It can be a process of self-indoctrination purely to avoid the pain of confusion. Another way to think of paradox is simply rejecting false dichotomies in favor of a more complex and uncertain reality. I don't think the lesson here is to "break the chains of Aristotelian logic" (God forbid) but rather, well, reconcile it with the idea of paradox.
Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy
#8But 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…
1) Graham Priest is one of the most famous logicians of this century.
2) The LNC is an axiom it doesnt "hold", its either built into what you mean by identity or it isnt. Either way there is no non-circular "hold"ing.
3) Im sure the notions of truth, falsity and consistency are far too technical here for the lay person to get a serious grasp of but i'd be careful of rationalizing your own ignorance by projecting stupidity onto others.
Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy
#9But 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…
Yes of course we can get away from defining any new systems of logic by simply taking working with different kinds of relations or functions in our classical logic. This doesn't show that non-classical logics are useless but that classical logic and classical mathematics are incredibly powerful and can describe practically anything.
Note that this article is very far from the wishy washy hippie claims like "Everything is connected! And you have your truth man and I have my truth". Instead it gives a popular-science description of some non-classical systems of logic, their historical background and how they relate to Buddhist philosophy and certain problems of reference. Personally I don't really think the logics presented solve these problems in a satisfactory way, but they are definitely of philosophical interest (o/w Cambridge University Press wouldn't have published his "An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic").
Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy
#10But 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…
Javert - protagonist in les miserable. Destroyed in the end by his own mental rigidity. I think you may be trolling :)