My question is if dualism isn't correct, would there be a need for two problems of consciousness? — Wheatley

I can see where you're coming from. The fact of the matter is that Dualism implies and is implied by The Hard Problem Of Consciousness. It's, in logical terms, a double implication or a biconditional: Dualism <--> The Hard Problem Of Consciousness.. Another way of expressing this biconditional relationship would be Dualism is true if and only if there's The Hard Problem Of Consciousness

Suppose D = Dualism and H = The Hard Problem Of Consciousness

D <--> H = (D --> H) & (H --> D)

We know, for certain, that D --> H (This is why you're saying dualism presupposes the hard problem of consciousness and you're correct). When we assume dualism, the hard problem of consciousness is true. However, we can't prove dualism with D --> H. All we can do with the statement D --> H is to falsify dualism when ~H is true using modus tollens.

However, we can prove dualism using the other half of the biconditional relationship viz. H --> D and applying modus ponens. If The Hard Problem Of Consciousness is true then Dualism must be true and that's what David Chalmer's is up to.

My two cents...

The point of the Ananda Sutta is not a comment on logic as such. The question was 'does the self exist'? And the response indicates it's not a Y/N question.

So the proposition 'the self exists' is neither true nor false. It depends on what you mean when you say 'the self exists'. To say 'it exists' simpliciter is to arrive at a wrong view. To say it doesn't exist is another wrong view.

You can't shove everything into the procrustean bed of logical propositions. But that's really not a comment on logic per se. The Buddha's discourses are generally a model of rationality. — Wayfarer

Well, for sure, we see eye to eye on what the Buddha's position was/is - neither is nor is not is the Madhyamaka mantra. The question that remains unanswered is, why the Buddha adopted such an attitude/stance/point of view?

There are a couple of possibilities which I will lay down below for your study:

1. Facts about logic and epistemology both treated as subjects in their own right imply Madhyamaka or the Middle Path. What I mean is that there are certain known facts about epistemology and logic that entail the attitude the Buddha espoused. In this case there are truths about logic and epistemology that necessitate Buddha's noble silence, his refusal to commit to available choices and forge his own path right down the "middle". The question, what do we know about the world? is either not or of less importance.

2. Facts about the world imply Madhyamaka or the Middle Path. In this case logic is simply a tool and epistemology, as a subject, is irrelevant. Everything hinges on what is known and also what is unknown about the world. The question, what do we know about the world? is first and foremost.

3. A little bit of both 1 and 2

Any ideas?

Symbolic logic, as the name suggests, has to do with symbols and their manipulation and that's probably the aspect of logic you're not familiar with. However, conceptually, the ideas are simple. I'll try and explain it to you here if that's alright with you.

1. The law of the excluded "middle" states that for any proposition/claim, that claim can be true or its contradictory can be true. So, if the claim is "the Buddha exists after death", either "the Buddha exists after death" is true or "the Buddha doesn't exist after death" is true. There is no "middle" i.e. there's no third option between 1. "the Buddha exists after death" and 2. "the Buddha doesn't exist after death"

2. When the Buddha claims that neither it's true that "the Buddha exists after death" nor it's true that "the Buddha doesn't exist after death", the Buddha violates the law of the excluded "middle" because he denies both of what are allegedly only two possibilities viz. 1. "the Buddha exists after death" and 2. "the Buddha doesn't exist after death". In other words, the Buddha envisions a "middle" between these two, as he put it, extremes - for the Buddha there's a third option - this option is the so-called Middle-Path.

3. In the logic we use everyday - classical logic - the "middle" in the law of the excluded "middle" is a contradiction. If you violate the law of the "excluded" middle as the Buddha is doing (described above in 2) the end result should be a contradiction. In other words, the Middle-Path of the Buddha amounts to claiming contradictions are true. Thus, as I mentioned earlier, Zen koans are either full-fledged contradictions or evolving contradictions - Madhyamaka or the Middle-Path manifests in classical logic as contradictions.

In addition, if you're interested, the Buddha's method of denying something and further denying that something's contradictory is reminiscent of apophatic theology's conceptualization of God via negativa using Double Negation. There are snippets of it here and here

Therefore, Abu Yaqub Al-Sijistani, a renowned Ismaili thinker, suggested the method of double negation; for example: “God is not existent” followed by “God is not non-existent”. This glorifies God from any understanding or human comprehension — Wikipedia

Neither is it that God is existent nor is it that God is non-existent...

Neither is it that the Buddha exists after death nor is it that the Buddha doesn't exist after death...

This is not ‘objective’ in the normal sense, but it’s also not ‘subjective’ in that it doesn’t only pertain to one person or another, as these processes are universal, they're the same for everyone — Wayfarer

The logico-epistemological format of this sentence which you employ often, almost all the time, is intriguing to say the least.

You said, "this is not objective...but it's also not subjective..." Subjective is the opposite of objective, in fact they're contradictory. Suppose that O = it's objective; then ~O = it's not objective= it's subjective

The trademark logico-epistemological format of Buddhism is expressed in the statement ~O & ~~O = Neither O Nor Not O = Neither is it objective Nor is it Not objective = "this is not objective...but it's also not subjective..." [your words]. This is the so-called Middle-Path or in Sanskrit, Madhyamaka achieved by what is known as double refutation; as you can see O has been refuted and ~O too has been refuted in ~O & ~~O. It must take constant training and mindfulness to maintain this logico-epistemological stance and I commend you on it. As far as I can tell, it's become somewhat of a habit with your good self. Congratulations if you treat that as an achievement.

The Madhyamaka or the Middle-Path is reportedly achieved through Nagarjuna's Tetralemma aka Fourfold Indeterminacy (Pyrrhonism) and it's here that I face difficulty because I couldn't arrive at the ~O & ~~O position [neither is nor not is, the essence of the Middle-Path] despite multiple attempts at logically manipulating the 4 propositions of Nagarjuna's tetralemma.

According to Pyrrhonism and Nagarjuna, given a proposition p, there are only 4 possibilities
1. p [p]
2. ~p [not p]
3. p & ~p [p and not p]
4. ~(p v ~p) [neither p nor not p]

Nagarjuna denies/rejects all 4 possibilities and so,

1. p.............................................................NO! So, ~p [not p]
2. ~p...........................................................NO! So, ~~p [not not p]
3. p & ~p.....................................................NO! So, ~p & ~~p [neither p nor not p]
4. ~p & ~~p = ~(p v ~p)..............................NO! So, p & ~p [p and not p]

By denying all 4 possibilities, Nagarjuna effectively renders both a proposition and its negation as errors. Given a proposition p, Nagarjuna's stance would be, neither p nor not p. In two-valued logic i.e. one in which there are only two truth-values T and F, neither p nor not p would violate the law of the excluded middle (p v ~p) because neither p nor not p is equivalent to [~(p v ~p)] and that is just another way of saying that there's a third option in addition to p and ~p which, as far as I can see, is what Madhyamaka means.

What is this third option? Well when we deny the the law of the excluded middle, in classical logic we get a contradiction like so, ~(p v ~p) = (~p & ~~p) = (p & ~p) and that's why, my intuition suggests, Zen Buddhism, koans and all, is about paradoxes which are, all things considered, contradictions or, at the very least, attempts at contradictions.

What say you?

Incels, from what I read in Wikipedia, are just a bunch of people trying to cope with what seems to be social isolation in general and sexual deprivation in particular. The Wikipedia entry describes a trend in the Incel movement from a harmless platform for sharing one's feelings, views, and experiences of being celibate to one that's become a dangerous breeding ground for misogyny, racism, hate, and extremism among other things.

As for how hedonism - the philosophy - fits into the Incel story, all I can say is sexual pleasure isn't on the list of pleasures that define happiness. J. S. Mill allegedly split pleasure into higher and lower categories and made it a point to assign carnal pleasures to the latter.

However, there's the other hedonism - mere pursuit of pleasure - that Incels will/should be more than familiar with. Sex is pleasurable and being celibate and involuntarily at that does diminish one's hedonistic expereience.

I don't understand the question. "WHO" is behind what? — Harry Hindu

It doesn't matter if you didn't understand the question.

Yes, causality = information = meaning. However, I don't understand your aversion to synonyms. Do you not use some words interchangeably? Also, I think "information" provides that sense of aboutness that "causality" does not seem to imply. — Harry Hindu

I get synonyms but information, last I checked, isn't synonymous with causality. They're treated as distinct concepts. To add, you said

all effects carry information about all prior cause — Harry Hindu

and that threw me off. In what sense would effects "carry information" if not in ways distinct and separate from causation itself? For instance, running with my detective example, if Sherlock Holmes sees the tables and chairs overturned in a room, he concludes that there had been a scuffle in the room. The information that there was a scuffle in the room is distinct from the scuffle itself right? is the inference of a scuffle identical to the scuffle itself? if it is then every time I gather causal information, whatever it is that I inferred should actualize in reality too, no?

Yes, that is an example that I like to use, too. I also like to use the example of a tree stump with tree rings. The tree rings carry information about the age of the tree. The tree rings were caused by how the tree grows throughout the year. The meaning of the tree rings is not in the mind of an observer. It is in the process that created the tree rings. This implies that meaning and information exists independent of observers and their minds. — Harry Hindu

Nothing to add/subtract although the most pressing concern regarding information being sought, given the teleological slant of many of our predecessors, seems to be WHO...is...behind...all...this? [the questioner takes his last breath, his eyes glaze over, and then his body goes limp]

information is that relationship between cause and effect. — Harry Hindu

Well, that doesn't seem to be all that helpful if you don't mind me saying so. Why have a word "information" supposedly an attempt to invent an entirely new concept category if it ultimately boils down cause and effect? We already have the notion of causality, right? If information is simply the relationship between cause and effect, then why all the hullabaloo?

Too, what exactly do you mean by "relationship" between cause and effect. The only relationship that exists between these two is causality. Are you suggesting information = causality? If you are then that brings us back to the question I asked, what's the point of the whole exercise of inventing the word "information"?

Here's another angle to information. In information space there are six dimensions:

1. What?
2. Where?
3. When?
4. Who?
5. Which?
6. How?
7. Why?

Each object/phenomenon/event is a point in this information space defined by the values of these six dimensions.

What interests me is how effects are about their causes and how causes are about their effects. It is also interesting to note that every effect is also a cause of some subsequent effect and that all effects carry information about all prior causes. — Harry Hindu

Yes, I agree with you. To the extent that I'm aware, this comes from my acquaintance with detective work, the effect contains telltale signs of the cause. How else is a detective supposed to operate? Working backwards from the crime scene to the crime itself is how a detective earns his keep. Note, however, that you used information in a sense that suggests that it has to do with more than just causality. If the two were identical you wouldn't/shouldn't have said, "...all effects carry information about all prior causes", right? I would like you to expand on the non-causality aspect of information.

Silent enim lēgēs inter arma. — Ciceronianus the White

Let's add one more to the list of occasions when the laws are silent shall we?

All is fair in [love and] war — John Lyly's Euphues

.

Reminds me of the time when I was working on something. Halfway through the process I desperately needed a specific tool - I think it was a wrench or pliers I forget - for the job. Couldn't, for the life of me, find it.

Thanks for your input but the question is, if we're trying to come up with a model of the world, what model fits the bill, comes up with the goods so to speak? I'm probably referring to that "perfect model" you're talking about. Either there is such a model or there is not. I'm going to bet that there isn't for the simple reason that if there were, it should've been made available to us, the more than willing audience. So, there is no "perfect model" that describes the world or predicts the future of this, our, world. Why, may I ask?

Firstly, relevant here is the notion of a completed infinity. The infinite possible thoughts must all at once be held in consciousness i.e. we've to be aware of all of them at the same time. Only then would there be a difficulty with finite physical systems like brains - these presumably being incapable of managing such a feat. Thinking one or a couple of thoughts at a time isn't going to undermine physicalism even if there are infinite thoughts.

The second, more important (in my opinion), issue is that even in a immaterial setting, infinity is still problematic. By definition, infinity can't be completed and this property stands intact even if the mind is non-physical or immaterial. Infinite thoughts - to hold them all at once in our conscsiousness - isn't possible even if the mind were immaterial.

delete

I am not currently enrolled in or formally practicing Zen meditation under a teacher, which is the only context within which koan practice is meaningful. — Wayfarer

Oh, I see. A teacher must earn faer keep too. Is there no possibility of doing koan practice one one's own - go solo with koans so to speak?

Why don't we two, if you're up to it, analyze the notion of Satori (sudden enlightenment) against the backdrop of koans (paradoxes) and epiphanies (Eureka moments)?

For my money, Satori is - bottom line - an epiphany but it differs from other epiphanies in scale and thus grandeur. Archimdes' Eureka moment, though a great scientific feat, is restricted to a particular area of knowing which is, if you'd like to know, buoyancy. Satori, on the other hand, is the mother of all Eureka moments in that once one experiences that aha moment, everything, and I mean everything, will begin to make sense. Whatever truth or theory that Satori emobodies is the fountainhead of all knowledge and explanations. Up to this point it's been about the enlightenment aspect of Satori.

Satori also has to be sudden i.e. Satori shouldn't be attained by a long process involving chains of reasoning (sorites), each step carefully considered and reconsidered. Au contraire, Satori is supposed to be like a bolt from the blue, striking us, I gather, when we least expect it.

Given this is how Satori is conceived of, what role do koans play in all this? Koans, if Google is to be believed, are either paradoxical or are riddles sans solutions and therein, I suspect, lies the rub. Ask around and I bet you'll never find a person who has, in every sense of the word "figure", everything figured out. Why is this the case?

Firstly, what does it mean to figure things out? In the simplest sense, to figure things out means to comprehend things. Comprehension, insofar as current paradigms matter, has a lot to do with consistency and coherency. If anything is inconsistent/incoherent then, the received opinion is that it hasn't been understood. This is a big hint as to why a person, to quote myself, "...who has, in every sense of the word "figure", everything figured out." is nonexistent. The world is itself incoherent/inconsistent as indirectly evidenced by the absence of such a person.

Therefore, to my reckoning, if we are to aim for Satori, we should get to the heart of the matter - the underlying inconsistency/incoherency in our world - ASAP and that's what koans do. Koans, by, sometimes gently and other times cruelly, exposing us to incoherency and inconsistency, help us catch a glimpse of both the nature and magnitude of the problem on our hands - the problem of innate inconsistency or incoherency of the world.

Furthermore, it might even be true that koans are actually scaled-down models of our world, designed specifically to capture that one essential feature of the world that stands in the way of our efforts to comprehend (the world), that one essential feature being incoherency/inconsistency. That would mean that, ultimately, at the end of the day, all things considered, realizing this inherent inconsistency/incoherency is precisely what enlightenment is. The point of a koan then is not to kickoff a search among the students for a coherent answer but to make them realize the incoherent nature of our world. :chin:

I've never been through Koan training, and likely never will. — Wayfarer

Why? What's stopping you? In for the penny, in for a pound. Right?

Epiphanies are real. Of course there are also ‘false epiphanies’. And simply because one has an epiphany, doesn’t mean enlightenment.

One of the Zen teachers I follow, Meido-roshi, frequently comments that it’s not that difficult to have an initial experience of satori (which is a term for epiphany), but that it’s extraordinarily difficult to integrate it and develop it fully so that it becomes stable and deep. — Wayfarer

Which person who's ever gone to high school can forget reading about the great Greek mathematician Archimedes running stark-naked and dripping wet through the streets of Syracuse screaming "Eureka! Eureka!" after having had an epiphany on how to determine if king Hiero's golden crown had been debased (or not)?

Too, I recall reading about other people from all walks of life - mathematicians, writers, artists, etc. - having their own Eureka moments, these then either solving the main problem itself or a sub-problem that's critical to finding a solution to the main problem. I'm sorry I don't have any specific names I can cite but that's a [personal] memory issue, nothing to do with the facticity of my claims.

In a Zen context, the idea behind koans, all paradoxes in their own right, is to bring the student into immediate contact with the heart/crux of the issue which is that the world doesn't make sense or that if one thought it did, that's an illusion. Thus, by constantly assaulting the student's understanding or what fae thinks is understanding with puzzles/conundrums in the form of koans, the teacher forces the student's mind to rethink/reassess the entire situation and that too without the aid of faer much-trusted aide, rationality/common sense. In essence, the koan is a simulation of the worst-case scenario - you're stripped of all your familiar tools of analysis, unceremoniously kicked out of your comfort zone, and plopped down in unfamiliar territory; it's like being lost in rough seas without a compass. Is this an environment conducive to epiphanies?

To me, the comparison seems preposterous, pardon me for so saying. Completely different. The 'Day of Reckoning' is apocalyptic and cosmic, 'the end days', the end of the world or of an epoch.

As I said, the Parable of the Raft is much more prosaic, and in my mind, much more believable, on that account. It's saying 'don't get attached to the idea of Buddhism'. Don't make an idol - which is ironic, as it certainly has happened, in my view. It's concerned with liberating insight. Really, there is no direct equivalent for 'liberating insight' in current Western religious culture, although some of the more mystically-inclined have it. There are some analogies for it in Western religious culture, but it's practical advice about unbinding the self from its attachments and projections. It's very down-to-earth, not apocalyptic and visionary. — Wayfarer

A couple of things:

1. I have this suspicion that when the Buddha compared the dhamma to a raft to be gotten rid of after Buddhahood he didn't mean it just as a warning against getting "...[too] attached to the idea of Buddhism" as you say. I guess this/your interpretation is meant to align the Buddha's raft analogy with the Buddhist principle of avoiding attachments of all kinds. However, the way I see it, the Buddha, by advising us to do away with the dhamma (raft), after it's done its job of enlightening us, is actually diminishing or even nullifying the value of the dhamma and everything that goes into it. If this is the correct interpretation what bothers me the most is that morality, a vital element of the dhamma, is too thus diminished or nullified. This is too hard a pill for me to swallow because there's nothing keeping a Buddha from being a morally depraved asshole. If this condition - immorality in a Buddha - is impossible then it must be that the dhamma, especially its moral facet, still lives on in a Buddha. How then can the Buddha get rid of the dhamma, get rid of the raft as it were, after nirvana? In some sense, nirvana is the raft or, if you prefer, the dhamma. :chin:

2. When I compared the Buddha's raft to the the Apocalypse I meant to draw a comparison between how these religions treat morality - not as an end itself but only as a means; in Buddhism, goodness is the raft, just there to ferry you across samsara and in the Abrahamic triad, goodness is your boarding pass for the scheduled flight to paradise which should be anytime soon going by what some self-proclaimed prophets have been saying. This is what bothers me but I suppose it's a naive way to look at the world. We are, if one really gives it some thought, only concerned about [our] happiness - everything else is simply a tool in the shed, to be used and, according to the Buddha and other religions, once their purpose is served (nirvana attained, heaven reached), to be, without a second thought, flung into the rubbish heap of the no-longer-necessary. If this is incorrect, I'd like some information on what religions have to say about morality in heaven and after nirvana.

It's nothing like that. It's not 'only' anything. The ultimate importance of realising the goal of Nirvāṇa is never deprecated or downplayed in Buddhism, not for a minute. The early Buddhist texts are full of exhortations, of warnings. 'Hasten and strive'. The consequences of not hearing, or not heeding, are dire in the extreme. Buddhist texts have voluminous and excruciating depictions of hell realms. — Wayfarer

What you say doesn't help your cause here. If the dhamma, especially its moral dimension, is about avoiding hell then it is exactly what I said it is - just a means to an end, just a way of getting something done. However, to think of morality, as part of the dhamma, as something else - something of value in and of itself - is, on reflection, a naive point of view. For instance, I find it rather difficult to imagine goodness being sorrowful; that, as of now, seems self-defeating. Yes, there's the ethical entity known as sacrifice in which there's an element of loss/pain but even in this case, without the involvement of happiness, either to an individual or to a group, sacrifice would never in a million years be an act that people would label as good.

Recall that verse I quoted ends 'Understanding the Dhamma as taught compared to a raft, you should let go even of Dhammas, to say nothing of non-Dhammas.' To say nothing of non-Dhammas. So the hindrances - non-dhammas - are to be abandoned and overcome. It's almost like 'it goes without saying' that these have to be abandoned — Wayfarer

Surely if your best friend is going to cause problems for you, nothing need be said of your non-best friends. It makes sense.

That is gravely mistaken - 'instrumentalism' is one of the main attributes of modern materialistic culture, for which everything is a means to an end, but there is no real end! I think Buddhism would agree with the statement of Aristotelian virtue ethics, that virtue is its own reward. In any case, one does not practice compassion and cherish others for any instrumental reason or for another end, or to get somewhere or gain something. That attitude is always the diametrical opposite of the 'way-seeking mind'. One of the first Buddhist books I ever read, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, has many exhortations to 'abandon all ideas of gaining something'. That's what makes it a religious or spiritual practice. If it a strategy for getting something, even an imagined Nirvāṇa, then it's 'spiritual materialism'.

And Nirvāṇa is not 'heaven', it's not a domain of ethereal delights. — Wayfarer

You do realize that this is, what I like to call, the Buddhist conundrum - it's impossible to solve to the extent that I'm aware. You can't have/make "...a strategy for getting something [nirvana]..." because that would be self-refuting - desiring nirvana is a sign of attachment a big no-no in Buddhism. How then are we to attain nirvana? By stumbling onto it? By not being a Buddhist for to be a Buddhist is to affirm nirvana as a goal? How? My friend, how? While this is technically a logical paradox, I do sense a childish silliness in insisting this puzzle be solved before we can get anything done in Buddhism. What say you?

'Avidya' (ignorance) is not the same as the Biblical notion of sin. It is a cognitive affliction rather than corruption of the will. There are overlaps and similarities but also crucial differences. It's a subject of study in Comparative Religion. In any case, in Zen, the factor of liberation is 'insight into the true nature'. Yes, there are parallels especially with (e.g.) Meister Eckhardt's sermons, but Eckhardt cannot be taken to typify Christian doctrine (in fact he was charged with heresy). — Wayfarer

I know you're familiar with this but I'll mention it here anyway. I'm particularly fascinated by Nagarjuna's tetralemma which basically denies all possible epistemic stances one can take given any proposition.

So, If I say there's such a thing as nirvana, Nagarjuna would deny it. If I say there's no such thing as nirvana, Nagarjuna would deny that too. If I say there's such a thing as nirvana and there's no such thing as nirvana, again, Nagarjuna would deny it. If I were to then say that neither is there such a thing as nirvana and nor that there's no such thing as nirvana, Nagarjuna would deny this too, vehemently I imagine.

Suppose N = There's such a thing as nirvana and ~N = There's no such thing as nirvana, Nagarjuna's tetralemma duly applied would look like below:

1. N....No! So ~N
2. ~N....No! So ~~N = N
3. N & ~N....No! So ~(N & ~N) = N v ~N
4. ~N & ~~N....No! So ~(~N & ~~N) = N v ~N

As you can see, applying Nagarjuna's technique to a proposition, any proposition, results in the tautology p v ~p [N v ~N above]. p v ~p is also known as the law of the excluded middle but for the purposes of this discussion the takeaway is this - we can't either affirm nor deny any given proposition, whether that proposition is about a fly in a bottle or the Buddha's enlightenment, and that's just another way of saying I don't know whether it's p or ~p. That, to my knowledge, is the quintessence of what you call Avidya or Ignorance. I have a vague feeling that ignorance is the only valid epistemic stance we can stake a claim to. All claims to knowledge are therefore empty and devoid of substance. Remember Socrates, "I know that I know nothing." and the Delphic Oracle's pronouncement, "Socrates is the wisest of them all".

The more complex something is, the more information there is. — Harry Hindu

That's what Richard Dawkins believes. Did you read his book, The Devil's Chaplain? In it he suggests a simple test for complexity - if the number of words required to describe X (information) is more than the number of words required to describe Y (again information) and provided the descriptions are at the same level of complexity/organization, X is more complex than Y.

f information only exists in minds and data exists everywhere else then meaning would be arbitrary and imaginary. If there are reasons some [sic] dara exists, then those reasons would be the meaning of the data. Those causal relationships are already there prior to some mind apprehending them. So information appears as data when the causal relationship is not apprehended, and it appears as information when it is apprehended. — Harry Hindu

You seem to have something going on with causality from what I've gathered from your posts. What is it about causality that interests you? Anyway, you mean to say that information is data understood (apprehended)? Pray tell, what is data then as information seems to supervene on data.

So the meaning of red contains its negation. — frank

If everything were red, its opposite wouldn't be something not-red but would be nothing. An intriguing implication of this would be the possibility that what we regard as things and whose opposite we consider is nothing may have opposites that are things themselves. Like red objects have non-red objects, things may have non-things but note, as non-red objects aren't nothing and are themselves [i[things[/i], these non-things aren't nothing.but are things too.

Imagine a universe A in which all things are red contained within a universe B that contains, in addition to the red things of universe A, blue things too. For a person living inside universe A, not-red is equivalent to nothing for all things are red but for a person in universe B, not-red isn't nothing, not-red is blue. Similarly, in our universe, what we treat as things may actually have opposite not-things in a universe that contains our own but aren't nothing. Just as the not-red in universe A is nothing for an inhabitant of universe A but the not-red is blue for a person living in universe B, what we treat as nothing in our universe may be something in another universe, one that contains our universe as a subset.

Data, if defined as a basic lack of uniformity is the beginnings of meaning, or it's at the core of meaning; it's the grain of sand in the meaning oyster. — frank

BUT, this is not philosophy, it’s data science, about transmission of data through electronic media. Out of his theory grew the algorithms for data compression. I’m sceptical of the way it’s been generalised as a general theory of meaning. At best it generates suggestive analogies. — Wayfarer

To both of you

Well, look at it this way. Suppose there are three people X, Y and Z. X has no information at all on both Sunday and Monday i.e. X's information = 0 bits on Sunday and 0 bits on Monday. Y has 5 bits of information on Sunday and 5 bits of information on Monday and Z has 5 bits of information on Sunday and 8 bits of information on Monday. X has no information i.e X has 0 bits of information from Sunday to Monday. Y has 5 bits of information on Sunday but on Monday Y still has only 5 bits of information. Y's information on Monday (5 bits) - Y's information on Sunday (5 bits) = 0 bits. X's information on Monday (0 bits) - X's information on Sunday (0 bits) = 0 bits. In other words, uniformity/constancy in information over time is equivalent to having no information at all. Z, on the other hand, because of a discontinuity in the general pattern, has a net information of 3 bits (8 bits on Monday - 5 bits on Sunday) over a time period of 2 days (Sunday to Monday).

Consider now the most common method of assigning meaning, genus-differentia definitions. First, a background pattern (uniformity) is established with the genus and then a specific set of differentia (breaks in the pattern) are chosen to pick out the class/object thus defined.

Thanks — Wayfarer

You're welcome.

Yang Yi' doesn't seem to appear when I search the text. — Wayfarer

This is most unfortunate. I tried searching for the PDF on Yang Yi (974 - 1020) sometimes written Yang I but no luck. I'm afraid you'll have to take my word for it but let's not let that get in the way of our discussion; as you correctly pointed out it's tangential.

Resuming where we left off. What similarities/differences do you see between The Day Of Reckoning in Abrahamic religions and Buddha's advice to let go of the dhamma after it's served its purpose, its purpose being nirvana?

As far as I can tell, if the dhamma is only a means to an end, the end being Buddhahood, and if morality is a major aspect of the dhamma then, morality, goodness, has no intrinsic value of its own; goodness has the same worth as the food and water monks eat and drink to sustain themselves in their quest for nirvana - they're both only of instrumental value to enlightenment

Likewise, the notion of The Day Of Reckoning or Judgment Day reduces morality to nothing more than the fee one has to pay for a ticket to paradise. In this case too, morality is simply a means to an end.

Prima facie there seems to be something off about this because people like myself have this belief that morality possesses/should possess a value of its own independent of all other considerations that may apply to it, especially considerations that have to do with the idea of reward and punishment, this very idea (reward/punishment) robbing morality of any intrinsic value. However, if we dig a little deeper, we come to the realization that morality's raison d'etre is happiness and heaven and nirvana are its idealizations; so, it's alright for morality/the dhamma to be just a means (of reaching heaven or attaining nirvana).

Yet, we can't ignore the fact that according to Buddhism and the Abrahamic triad the first and foremost obstacle on our path towards nirvana and heaven is bad karma and sin respectively and both are essentially defined in terms of morality. In other words, if we let go of the dhamma after enlightenment or if we don't be careful about our conduct in heaven, we could acquire bad karma or sin and descend back into samsara or find ourselves journeying to hell.

emotion comes first — afterthegame

Well, we're supposed to be the brand-new species, just 2 - 3 million years old and there's a reason I suppose why the primitive parts of our brains are labeled reptilian.

What determines that is an emotion, which is provoked by unconscious thought, which in turn is provoked by an external stimulus. — afterthegame

This doesn't seem to add up especially if you consider what you said above. If emotions precede reason, how can thought/reason be the link between emotions and external stimuli.

I have a theory though and it requires the notion of degrees of reason. This is a must if we're to accommodate the fact that emotions are essentially reactions to stimuli, whether physical or mental, and thus have to be reasoned to at some point along the process from stimulus to emotion. In most animals, there's just that amount of reason necessary to transform a stimulus into an emotion but in humans, there's a whole lot more of reason and that makes us susceptible to/capable of translating a greater variety of our experiences into emotions. In short, it appears that, contrary to what I've been saying, emotions in humans, due to how well we can reason, are more complex, or perhaps, more accurately, more complicated.

But then again we have the small matter of emotions being, till date, unprogrammable on a computer. Making a computer logical is, quite oddly I must say, the easy part. Is reason really the more advanced part of the human brain? If yes, why is it so easy to physically replicate on a machine? If no, then emotions can't be primitive or reptilian. All this assuming evolution is moving in a direction from the simple to the complex.

I like Claude Shannon's take on information and it gibes with what @unenlightened once edified me on. The intriguing coincidence of having invited a Buddhist Wayfarer and an unelightened to a conversation is unintended.

Shannon believed that information is anything that stands out - the more novel, the more unexpected, the more shocking something is, the more information there is. This understanding of information squares with what @unenlightened once said viz. that to make universal claims has a downside to it viz. the loss of meaning: if everthing is red then redness becomes meaningless - redundant and useless. A quality chosen must be able to bring out differences between things in the world and only then can meaning or use arise. Similarly, if everything is uniform, proceeding as per preset laws/plans, information content is very low. The moment plans go awry or laws are violated, there's a spike in information.

Hume also said that reason is a "slave of the passions" — afterthegame

With respect due to the great David Hume, what he said can only be the result of his reason putting 2 and 2 together regarding its relationship with the passions. Like someone once told me, the first step to solving a problem is to recognize it and Hume's succinct pronouncement marks this first step, as a Jedi once said, towards bringing balance to the force or, if all goes well, eradicating the Sith who feed off of passion.

My favorite philosophers are

1. Pyrrho
2. Zeno of Elea
3. Epimenedes
4. Nagarjuna
5. Descartes
6. Hume
7. Graham Priest

I like where you're taking this but, to offer a slightly different perspective, I suggest you look at it from a dynamic as opposed to a static point of view. The fact that our lives are "least immoral" rather than "most moral" is because our minds have now left our bodies in the dust in an evolutionary sense. Surely you must've heard of the expression, "X was way ahead of his time" and these words perfectly describe how our bodies and the so-called reptilian parts of our brain are far behind our higher mental faculties with respect to morality. Yes, emotions have a major role in morality but it's our reason that actually discerns right from wrong and our reason, evident from our everyday experiences, doesn't have complete authority over the way we live our lives. It's reason that allows you to see the "most moral" but it's the other less-evolved side to us (our bodies and certain parts of the brain) that makes "least immoral" the only moral life we can muster. Give it time. Perhaps the parts of us that I referred to as less-evolved will catch up. Fingers crossed.

As far as I can tell, there seems to be a slight confusion regarding language implicit in the question. If I'm anywhere near the ballpark, the assumption seems to be that language has to be symbolic i.e. the symbol needn't or rather shouldn't be be a scaled-model replica of the referent. What I mean is the word "cow" doesn't, in any way, look like a cow and nor does the word "mouse" look like a mouse. However, I'm led to believe that language began as pictograms - the words actually looked like the object they represented. Only later, did what we now recognize as true symbolism in language evolve. I don't know what the future holds but retrospectively speaking it looks like language can be/must've been pictorial with sufficiently complex propositional (picture-based) content that could, at the very least, enable thoughts to form...beliefs would emerge from such thoughts.

To have a belief is to treat a statement as true. In other words, for a belief to exist, there must be a statement. No statement, no belief.

I’d need to see the reference. — Wayfarer

https://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/40b.5-Transmission-outside-the-scriptures.pdf

Let’s re-wind. Parable of the raft. What impresses me about this parable is its self-deprecating nature. The Buddha is, after all, teaching ‘a doctrine of salvation’ - release from all earthly sorrows. And yet, he compares ‘the dhamma’ that he teaches, to a makeshift raft, cobbled together from twigs and branches, and furthermore says that, once it’s served its purpose, it is to be let go, left behind. In some ways, it’s a very prosaic, even a homely, metaphor. — Wayfarer

I did comment on this take on the dhamma and how it parallels Judgement Day or The End Of Days - in both cases we arrive at our destination, no? But you only :scream:

As for Yang Yi - I’m not familiar with the name. I understand that a lot of Zen’s telling of its own story has been greatly embellished over history, in fact the IEP article I mentioned on Hui Neng describes this. But Zen history belongs in the domain of ‘sacred narrative’, and doesn’t pretend to be what we would call objective. Not that it’s ‘only myth’, either. — Wayfarer

Well then I'm privileged and honored to inform you that Yang Yi (947 AD - 1020 AD) was a court official in the Song Dynasty of China who, because of the Ch'an masters he rubbed shoulders with, insisted and ensured that Zen be treated as special transmissions outside of scripture and...wait for it...also made it a point to stress on sudden enlightenment, both defining features of Zen today. What's your opinion of this?

By the way, what do you know about this Yang Yi (born 947 AD - died 1020 AD) character, reportedly a Song Court official who, according to an article I read on the web, was instrumental in recasting Zen's image as so-called special transmissions [outside of scriptures] and this is, I believe, Koans and all, the current incarnation of Zen? Would appreciate your thoughts on this matter.

:scream: You don't see any similarities then?

That's not my interpretation, it's canonical. As I said before, I think it’s one of the most distinctive ideas in Buddhism, I can’t think of a parallel in the Biblical religions. — Wayfarer

What about the Abrahamic triad's notion of The End Of Days otherwise known as Judgment Day? There seems to be this sense of finality, closure, and completion in these ideas. Not an exact match for Zen's burn-the-holy-books nonetheless there's an overall agreement in spirit if not in letter.

Many similarities have been noted between Buddhist and process philosophy, of whom H. was an exponent. But that only goes so far. — Wayfarer

It appears that despite the many obstacles to information exchange during the ancient era, some civilizations did manage to share their culture and ideas with others. In short, the similarities between Heraclitus and thd Buddha weren't a coincidcence.

Pfhorrest asked about that recently. It’s a saying by Master Dōgen, a much later Buddhist master who was the originator of Sōtō Zen. It's a very pithy aphorism about the transformation of the understanding that the Zen practitioner goes through: first, naive realism (mountains are mountains); then the 'realisation of śūnyatā' (everything is inter-dependent, 'mountains' [i.e. anything] have no essential being); but then an integrated understanding, whereby mountains are seen as mountains again, albeit with subtle and mature insight. — Wayfarer

A very sagacious way to interpret Dogen's words. I recall being in an oppresively hot and humid city somewhere in the tropics and one day I had something to do at an office, a 20 minute walk from where I was putting up. I remember the trip to the office was one of the most unpleasant 20 minutes of my life - by the time I reached my destination I was panting like a dog and drenched in sweat. I swung open the glass doors at the entrance and was greeted by the coolness of the air-conditioned lobby. I felt an immediate sense of relief and once inside, I managed to recover from the ordeal of the walk. I got my work done in within an hour and once again I found myself at the glass doors of the entrance but on the opposite side of course. I exited...it was as hot and humid as it was when I had entered. :chin:

Thanks for the :up: You're very generous with your compliments :smile:

I like your interpretation of the dhamma as a raft, to be used to cross the ocean of samsara and then to be discarded. What Shoju did makes complete sense from that perspective. In the profession that I'm familiar with that's what we call a disposable syringe - the medication once delivered, the syringe is to be disposed immediately, coincidentally they're incinerated. Did Shoju prefigure disposable syringes? I don't know.

It also reminds me of Hercalitus who's supposed to have said that the road up is also the road down and indeed it is, right? To cling to the dhamma after having attained nirvana would be akin to maintaining the road to it but then there's the chance, no matter how small, that a Buddha might take the same road back to samsara. Enlightenment is supposed to be a one-way trip - the aim is to reach one's destination and stay put like an immigrant and not to sightsee and, at some point, return where you were like a tourist.

What do you make of the following Zen quote:

Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters. — Dogen

?

Thanks. G'day.

Maybe the physicalist is humbly asking how opposites interact? — Harry Hindu

Why can't opposites interact?

The assumption was never hidden. The assumption is the basis for dualism. If dualists are just going to start asserting that mind and body aren't so different after all, then what is the difference between a dualist and a monist? — Harry Hindu

Well, in my humble opinion, the question has its roots in the perceived difficulty in coming to terms with material-immaterial interaction but that's just another way of saying that the two don't/shouldn't interact and that's physicalism in disguise.

If one is a non-physicalist, there's the material body and the immaterial mind, and going by how things are, they do interact. How else does everybody get around?

I maybe a mile off the mark but that's how I fee.

@Wayfarer

Zen tries to free the mind from the slavery of words and the constriction of logic — jgill

I have this conception of the world of ideas being like houses in a quaint village. A person, if either as an honored guest or a passing beggar, gets the opportunity to visit these wonders of human ingenuity - fantastic designs evincing a delicate balance between efficiency and beauty, at once simple and complex and so on - and marvel at their form and figure but...there comes a time when fae must say faer goodbyes...and take to the streets, among others who too have left the comfort of their homes, and out in the open, in the cold air of winter or the blazing sun of summer, the houses no longer offer sanctuary. I suppose ideas are like oases in the desolate desert of reality, there only to offer brief respite, an occasion to smile and exchange pleasantries, but the greater part of the human journey is spent traversing the unforgiving, harsh, and dismal sands.

Like my father keeps reminding me, practice what you preach and were I there in their company when all this transpired I would've loved to point a finger at Shoju and scream at the top of my voice, "tu quoque fallacy!" but that would've been pointless, Zen being about breaking logic not fixing it! :up:

There's a lot of grey areas though...other deeper interpretations seem possible and likelier.

G = God exists
E = Evidence

P(A/B) = Probability of A given B

P(A) = Probability of A

P(G/E) = [P(E/G) * P(G)]/P(E) according to Bayes' theorem.

My first encounter with dualism was precisely with this question: how does an immaterial mind interact with the material? Frankly speaking, the question perplexed me then as it does now. I now know why. The question has a hidden assumption - the assumption that the immaterial can't/shouldn't interact with the material. Why else the question, right? But, from a physicalist's point of view, that's presupposing the very thing that they want to, perhaps desperately, prove. :chin:

I think it is too simple to classify life into good and evil, and any attempt to do so lacks philosophical imagination. — Jack Cummins

Now that you mention imagination, the creator of paraconsistent logic - Nicolai A. Vasiliyev - was supposed to have called his logic "imaginary". The wikipedia page doesn't, to my knowledge, contain an account of practical applications of paraconsistent logic but that's odd considering what I said before about the world having a paradoxical side to it which, every now and then, bubbles up to the surface, and catches us off guard and then it's back to the drawing board insofar as a consistent theory of reality is in our crosshairs.

Also, if it's all the same to you, I'd like to extend the boundaries of paradoxes to include the unexpected, the counter-intuitive, the ironic, and other similar notions for these are essentially either a frank contradiction or else evolving into one and either way we're in trouble.

I just went through the Wikipedia page on cognitive dissonance and I found a very relatable paradox - the meat paradox - which asserts the known truth that we do care about animals and yet we eat them without even a second thought. It's just a hunch of mine but I suspect there are other paradoxes - some harmless, others deadly - lurking away in the depths of our minds.

It appears, from my brief encounters with contradictions, that what I'm really interested are in dialetheia which are real contradictions and this reminds of Blaise Pascal's quote:

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't. — Blaise Pascal

However, read Pascal in the broadest sense possible. Reality isn't trying to deceive but we're deceived. That's another paradox if you're interested. We see/smell/hear/taste/feel the same reality but our beliefs strike a discordant note - the harmony that people are so quick to claim as their own is simply nonexistent.

Another point of interest in my theory is that Godel's Incompleteness Theorems, a major stumbling block for what seems to be the ultimate aim of science - mathematization of our understanding of reality - relies for their proof a variation of the Liar's paradox. Which person in faer right mind proves anything with the help of a liar? Something's wrong, right?

Come to think of it, by trying to get my point across to you, I'm contradicting myself. Ahhhh...the irony.