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The logic of Buddhist philosophy

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Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#21

Post by pera »

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…

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

May I ask you why? Personally I enjoy reading about the origin of some particular idea/philosophy, even when it's purely anecdotal.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#22

Post by andreasvc »

kirab wrote: 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?

The article doesn't make such a statement, and it would be quite a stretch. Although reasoning in science and mathematics is to some sense restricted to logic with binary truth values, this doesn't mean that we are also restricted to such a logic in everyday life.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#23

Post by andreasvc »

joelmichael wrote: post #7

Paradox 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 full…

I don't think Christian theology makes the Western tradition any less anti-paradox, because the paradoxes of Christian orthodoxy are dogma, they do not give rise to a systematic treatment of paradoxes as described in the article.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#24

Post by nabla9 »

Henk Barendregt (known for his work in lambda calculus and type theory) has good explanation of the apparent contradictions in tetra lemma.

Buddhist Phenomenology - 1.7 Explaining apparent contradictions:

http://www.cs.ru.nl/~henk/BP/bp1.html#SECTION000270000000000...

In other words: And Now for Something Completely Different...

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#25

Post by tremols »

Much of the mysticism and misunderstandings about indian philosophy comes from a very bad habit in the translation of indian works where some words are left untranslated as to give them a magical-religious cool sounding sanskrit aura.

If koti means corner, there is no reason that 'koti' should appear in a translation instead of corner otherwise you are giving it a special importance that distracts from the text's true meaning. Almost every translation of indian philosophy suffers from this fetish for the sanskrit language and as beautiful as sanskrit is, it shouldn't contaminate the purpose of a translation.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#27

Post by 1stop »

tremols wrote: post #25

Much of the mysticism and misunderstandings about indian philosophy comes from a very bad habit in the translation of indian works where some words are left untranslated as to give them a magical-religious cool sounding sanskrit aura. If koti means corner, there is no reason that 'koti' should appear in a translation instead of corner otherwise you are giving it a special importance that distracts from the text's tru…

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 (for example) nirvana, has a bunch of translations: awakening, calmness, relief, void/voidless, the light, nothingness, or (my favourite) phew. Because we don't have the context to properly describe that in the west (latin-germanic based languages), so we need a bunch of other concepts that kind of point at it.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#28

Post by arkaeologic »

pera wrote: post #21
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…

> I would have enjoyed this article if it dropped the Buddhism and kept the math. May I ask you why? Personally I enjoy reading about the origin of some particular idea/philosophy, even when it's purely anecdotal.

Also, it's rather eye-opening to note how other cultures thought. This is best done by examining their religion or some other foundation ideology like Buddhism.

Re: The logic of Buddhist philosophy

#29

Post by Strilanc »

pera wrote: post #21
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…

> I would have enjoyed this article if it dropped the Buddhism and kept the math. May I ask you why? Personally I enjoy reading about the origin of some particular idea/philosophy, even when it's purely anecdotal.

I subjectively don't find those philosophies interesting, and have a distaste for assigning single ideas to heterogeneous groups like "the west". Your mileage may vary.

For example, I would consider myself western but I don't have any problem imagining systems with true, false, both and neither. You just treat them as anonymous values with particular operations, instead of getting stuck on "but if we were in this other system that we're not in, this would violate an axiom!".

(If I thought this was a flaw in the article, instead of my opinion of it, I would have just said it was terrible instead of saying I didn't enjoy it. Its style just grates me sometimes.)

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