The logic of Buddhist philosophy • Hacker News Board

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#161

Post by dj-wonk » Fri, May 09, 2014, 3:50 AM UTC

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…

Do you have personal, real-world examples of fuzzy logic being useful to you? I find Bayesian statistics useful regularly; fuzzy logic not so much. What am I missing?

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#162

Post by dj-wonk » Fri, May 09, 2014, 3:54 AM UTC

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.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#163

Post by novalis78 » Fri, May 09, 2014, 3:55 AM UTC

Its strange that he brings Nagarjuna in when discussion sunnyata as this was already clearly spelled out in the sutta's themselves. Two books that discuss this very well are http://www.amazon.com/Concept-Reality-Early-Buddhist-Thought... and http://www.amazon.com/The-Magic-Mind-Exposition-Kalakarama/d...

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#164

Post by dj-wonk » Fri, May 09, 2014, 3:58 AM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #65

This made me think of an interesting way I have heard some people answer the question "if God is omnipotent, then can he create a rock so heavy he wouldn't be able to lift it and then lift it? If yes, he is not omnipotent, if no, he is not omnipotent!" with a logical leap also hard to comprehend to western minds - he can do both, and that's why he is considered omnipotent. He doesn't need to follow human logic, hence…

This isn't as hard as some people make it out to be. If God has to obey logic and/or other laws, then of course, there are some limitations to his power.

Could a dictator decide to set up a Constitution and limit his own powers? Of course. Having absolute powers means having the ability to limit your future power.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#165

Post by wyager » Fri, May 09, 2014, 4:03 AM UTC

muhuk wrote: post #154

wyager wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'?

I'm very concerned at the number of people on HN who seem to have bought into this religious mysticism disguised as math. That's one of the oldest tricks in the book.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#166

Post by visarga » Fri, May 09, 2014, 4:05 AM UTC

jotux wrote: post #75

I'm going to go meta here and say the hn discussion here is just fantastic. This is the reason I frequent hn and I wish more submissions would spur discussions of this quality.

Yes, guys, where have you all come from? There is just tech and politics talk for months, and then suddenly, religion and philosophy pops out - and everyone is talking at a very high level. How come?

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#167

Post by muhuk » Fri, May 09, 2014, 4:08 AM UTC

wyager wrote: post #115

How the hell are there this many people here who buy this hogwash? >Nagarjuna often runs through the four cases of the catuskoti. In some places, moreover, he clearly states that there are situations in which none of the four applies. They don’t cover the status of an enlightened person after death, for example. Are you kidding me? This article isn't even about formalizing non-boolean logic. It's thinly veiled religi…

"The truth or falsehood of all of man’s conclusions, inferences, thought and knowledge rests on the truth or falsehood of his definitions." - Ayn Rand

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#168

Post by dj-wonk » Fri, May 09, 2014, 4:12 AM UTC

I can appreciate the depth of research behind the article. The many-valued notions of logic are quite helpful. Here's are two ways that I would distill the message for different audiences.

1. A computer science audience: Not all sentences have a computable boolean truth value. Here's why. To find the truth value of the sentence "This sentence is false.", you have to figure out the truth value of the following statement (call it X1): "Whether or not this sentence is false depends on if X1 is true or false." Put that way, you can immediately see the circularity in computation. From a computer science perspective, there is no terminating condition. The function will never complete, so there is no computable boolean truth value.

2. To an educated, but non-technical, audience: Just because a sentence asserts something doesn't mean there is any guarantee of the result being "truth" or "falsehood". The truth value of this "This sentence is false." is simply "undecidable" or "ineffable" -- pick a word. So, just live with the fact that not everything is true or false. Note: I'm not saying that the statement is really one or the other but we just can't figure out which (as in Schrödinger's cat); I'm saying that neither "true" or "false" makes any sense for that kind of self-referential sentence.

This really isn't mind-blowing. Many articles write up these "paradoxes" as if they are insurmountable. They aren't.

All of this said, I think many philosophical writings, especially Buddhist writings, use contradiction as way of promoting thinking and careful decomposition of the essence of things. In short, complex things consist of parts that vary over time. So their components or transient values can seem to change or stand in contradiction.

There is no contradiction in Dickens writing "It was the best of times and it was the worst of times." in my opinion. This is just a literary device to show contrast eloquently, because saying "In some regards, it was the best of times. In other regards, it was the worst of times." is not as memorable or striking.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#169

Post by muhuk » Fri, May 09, 2014, 4:17 AM UTC

wyager wrote: post #165

muhuk wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'?

I'm very concerned at the number of people on HN who seem to have bought into this religious mysticism disguised as math. That's one of the oldest tricks in the book.

But logic is subjective and reason is impotent. What is the purpose of philosophy other than to protect us from acquiring knowledge about reality? We'd be defenseless without faith and mysticism.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#170

Post by abandonliberty » Fri, May 09, 2014, 4:21 AM UTC

dj-wonk wrote: post #168

I can appreciate the depth of research behind the article. The many-valued notions of logic are quite helpful. Here's are two ways that I would distill the message for different audiences. 1. A computer science audience: Not all sentences have a computable boolean truth value. Here's why. To find the truth value of the sentence "This sentence is false.", you have to figure out the truth value of the following stateme…

They like to make things seem as complicated as possible.

It's like Aeon writers get paid by the word.