Nirvana is a state of mind. My very western very modern philosophy has an equivalent of it. It’s also the equivalent of a noncognitivist conception of God. Nothing about that is contra rationalism or physicalism or anything like that.

in natural language "A is B" can mean different things, depending on context. It can indicate class membership (people are animals), it serve as a reduction (people are [nothing other than] animals), and so on. In the case of this Spir fellow, what he has in mind would be more precisely called permanence, or more generally, invariance. That is not the same as the simple equality/identity used in logic and math. Such sloppy use of language has occasioned a lot of miserable sophistry (cf. Ayn Rand's abuse of the "principle of identity"). — SophistiCat

Yeah, exactly. That's why the idea self-identity speaks to anything at all without further specification is so silly. That it has some kind of univocal extension, ranging from math to biology as if some kind of meme, is so egregiously bunkum as to not warrant serious response. As if one could simply say "a thing is identical to itself" and think one has said anything meaningful at all. Those who talk of 'proving' or 'disproving' that x=x simply know not of what they talk.

"an apple is an apple", but why? I do not get why any certain thing called 'x', should be 'x'. — Monist

One needs first to clarify what 'x=x' means.

What the claim that x=x means is that in a strictly logical system the symbol 'x' can be 'replaced with the symbol 'x' without altering the truth value of the system ( ie whether the sequence of steps is 'true' within the system or 'false' within the system.)

Since the two symbols are in fact the same, it is unlikely, if not impossible for the truth value if the system to be altered.

In the same way, the claim that 'x=y' is the claim that the symbol 'x' can be replaced with the symbol 'y' in a particular logical system without altering the truth value of the sequence of logical steps.

Hope this helps.

Nirvana is a state of mind. — Pfhorrest

Nowhere in Buddhism itself is Nirvāṇa described as 'a state of mind' but a psychologized and subjective interpretation is popular in the West.

I think the point of 'self-identity' is not the obvious truism that something is 'equal to itself'. I take it to be a reference to 'what truly is'. I think, in Greek philosophy since Parmenides, it has been understood that individual particulars - the inhabitants of the sensory domain - are a combination of 'is' and 'is not', an admixture of what is real (changeless, enduring) and what is corruptible. But I will need to do some more reading on that point.

See. This is what happens when one hews to the principle of identity as some kind of metaphysical postulate. You have to leave the world behind. — StreetlightX

Actually, this is the reverse of what is the case. Aristotle formulated the law of identity so as to put the identity of a thing within the thing itself. This was done to fight against logical sophism which proceeded from the premise that a thing is what we say it is, how we identify it. So the law of identity, when properly formulated, is meant to produce a healthy respect for the difference between what we say about the world, and the way that the world actually is, by emphasizing that the real identity of a thing is within the thing itself, rather than in our identification of the thing.

Accordingly, "x=x" is a poor representation of the law of identity. If "x=x"is meant to represent "a thing is the same as itself", it only brings us further from the real world, by adding an extra layer of representation. Even the saying "a thing is the same as itself" cannot properly represent the law of identity, because to make the law of identity a representation like this, is to say something about the thing, implying that a thing's identity is in something that we say about the thing. But this is exactly what the law of identity is intended to avoid.

Therefore we cannot take the law of identity literally. We must look at what it means, what it is intended to tell us, rather than what it literally says or represents. If we look at it in the latter way we will tend to laugh at it and make fun of it. "A thing is the same as itself" doesn't say anything about anything, so it must be a useless statement and therefore the basis for a joke. But it's not meant to say anything about anything, it's meant to be a general statement, saying that no matter what the identity is that we hand to a thing, it's not the thing's true identity.

However, we can see that the law of identity provides us with a separation between the metaphysical (true) way of looking at things and the epistemological (representative) way of looking at things, described by Plato in the cave allegory. Truth is found in the way that things really are, not in representations (what human beings say about things).

So, such things as logical principles, scientific laws, mathematical objects, are all essential to empirical science, but they don't necessarily exist in time and space either.

Ideas are not real, precisely because they don't exist in time. That's what it means to be real, to exist in space and time.

For something to exist or be real does necessarily mean it is manifested in time and space. To exist out of time is to exist never. To exist out of space is to exist nowhere. To exist nowhere or never means not existing at all. Ok?

Unicorn and number 3 do exists in my mind and they are real as electrochemical dynamics of my brain. Pacman exists and is real, both abstractly or virtually as electrodynamics in electronic components of its arcade machine, and actually in its physical form on the display screen.

For something to be real or to exist means it is causally relevant, or measurable. In other words, it exists if it matters. Virtual existence is material existence as well, and thus causally relevant. Only virtual things do not exist materially in their actual form, but virtually like any other form of information, indirectly embedded in the physical morphology of the material world, within space and time.

extra

That’s funny, cause the western interpretation of nirvana I was exposed to before studying Buddhism was that it was a place, like heaven, and the state-of-mind interpretation is what I came away with after actually studying it for myself.

To exist out of space is to exist nowhere. To exist nowhere or never means not existing at all. Ok?

Unicorn and number 3 do exists in my mind and they are real as electrochemical dynamics of my brain. — Zelebg

Not at all. Numbers are not real as ‘electrochemical dynamics’. Here you’re mistaking an event for a representation. Neural dynamics don’t ‘represent’ anything, they’re not signs. Science has sought to understand the neural events triggered by simple leaning tasks through scans, and no regularities or patterns can be found at all. It’s not as if some pattern of neural events ‘stands for’ a number or other kind of concept. This idea that concepts are neural events is the myth that underlies materialism, but it’s not true.

All you’re expressing is the belief that ‘everything exists in time and space’. But you’re not seeing that time and space themselves are co-created by the observing mind, they don’t have a reality independent of cognition. This is one of the cardinal points of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

The Buddha is (among other things) ‘lokuttara’, meaning ‘above the world’. I think, to be candid, that is a synonym for ‘supernatural’, although that word is a taboo in modern culture, isn’t it? (This is something that ‘secular Buddhists’ struggle with.) In any case, in the Tibetan depictions of the wheel of life and death, the Buddha and bodhisattvas are represented as being outside the cycle of transmigration, indicating transcendence. Whereas for naturalism ‘the cycle’ is all that is real, there is no conceptual equivalent to ‘outside’ it. The import being that Nirvāṇa is a soteriological concept - the ending of all suffering (not in a state of non-existence.)

Not at all. Numbers are not real as ‘electrochemical dynamics’. Here you’re mistaking an event for a representation.

Your English dictionary module seems to be broken. That is not an event, but process, and also collection of states it produces. Namely the process of thinking and states of mind with content such as ideas or mental pictures.

Neural dynamics don’t ‘represent’ anything, they’re not signs. Science has sought to understand the neural events triggered by simple leaning tasks through scans, and no regularities or patterns can be found at all. It’s not as if some pattern of neural events ‘stands for’ a number or other kind of concept. This idea that concepts are neural events is the myth that underlies materialism, but it’s not true.

What in the world are you even trying to say? You asserted a lot of “it is not true”, but forgot to explain any, and also never mentioned what do you believe is true instead.

All you’re expressing is the belief that ‘everything exists in time and space’. But you’re not seeing that time and space themselves are co-created by the observing mind, they don’t have a reality independent of cognition. This is one of the cardinal points of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

Ughh. I’m simply unpacking the meaning of the words defined in English dictionary, and you can not continue this argument without redefining those terms first or you will end up contradicting yourself and basically not really speaking English language but gibberish.


1. To exist out of time is to exist never.
2. To exist out of space is to exist nowhere.
3. To exist nowhere or never means not existing at all.

Where exactly and why do you believe to see a fallacy?

Your English dictionary module seems to be broken — Zelebg

I'm not going to engage with you if you keep slinging schoolyard insults.

Your post boils down to 'the problem of universals'. The issue is in 'naming'.
As another poster mentioned, it is in our limited way in which we describe our world and existence via language. We must remember that definitions of words change over time. Words are an extension of life, so there is variance. Just as there is variance in things. We have to be careful not to attribute so much value to 'naming' (nominalism), because in doing so, we discard our understanding of how things are only recognized to by way of their 'relation' to other things. This is the core concept of 'Logos'. Naming should only be a survival tool to help us differentiate. When we apply nominalism as a scientific tool, we are disregarding essential components. (Do a search for what Charles S. Peirce said about Ockham and a ship wreck.) X is only X when you are talking about one thing, and even then you are identifying it in relation to what it is not.

It would be interesting to hear if there are any non-self-evident axioms outside abstractions in the field of mathematics. — Zelebg

I think that all axioms are non-self-evident, especially in mathematics.

The idea that axioms would have to be self-evident stems from classical Greek geometry, of which the axioms were eminently visible objects, i.e. points, lines, triangles, circles, and so on.

Of course, that kind of axioms were "self-evident": Just "have a look" by yourself.

This approach did not keep flying, however.

First, Euclid's Elements started getting competition from language-only mathematics in the Algorithmi's Liber Algebrae (12th century). Algorithmi did not draw anything at all. There was absolutely nothing to "see". At the same time, algebra was much, much more powerful than classical Greek geometry.

The final blow to classical Greek geometry and its straightedge and compass constructions came when Gauss algebraically expounded its fundamental limitations:

The Greeks were very adept at constructing polygons, but it took the genius of Gauss to mathematically determine which constructions were possible and which were not. As a result, Gauss determined that a series of polygons (the smallest of which has 17 sides; the heptadecagon) had constructions unknown to the Greeks. Gauss showed that the constructible polygons (several of which are illustrated above) were closely related to numbers called the Fermat primes. — Wolfram

It wasn't just Gauss' genius but especially Gauss algebra tools that allowed him to run circles around the ancient Greek. If everything you do, has to be "self-evident" -- like the ancient Greek wanted -- then you are not going to get particularly far ...

You are pretty much correct but why is x=x a problem? Sure x = a number of combined variables. But that also means that x is a particular thing. And no other thing is that particular thing so in making this distinction we must also accept that x is unique; x is itself. — Mac

Sure. X is your name. But then what if someone else is named Mac? The differences between the two Macs is their differing combined variables, not their names. Which Mac are we talking about? The one with X, Y and Z as opposed to X, Y, and B. What makes you unique isn't your name, it is your combined variables.

My biggest question to you is "why should x=x be something you don't already know?" That's the point. I brought biology into the conversation because of its relevance to corresponding mathematical models. x=x is obvious to us because we evolved for it to be. Otherwise we would not have survived in the same way. — Mac

If I know x, or if I know your name is Mac, then why would I need to know x, or your name again? I need to know what x, or Mac, entails to know what is unique about x, or Mac.

I'm not sure there's an explanans to this explanandum.

If x is not x, then it's a contradiction.

X is x because I perceive it to be.

Because Mac is my name, not me. I am me. Me is me. Me=me

well IDK why x is x. But that is how I perceive reality to be. You are probably the closest so far to understanding where I am coming from lol.

Right, so x wouldn't be your name in this case. X would be your physical self and your name would just be one of the combined variables. You = human + English speaker + named Mac + x + y + etc.,

We are conditioned into naturalism and scientific realism by consensus, and it's often hard to question. — Wayfarer

Empirical theories need to be validated against observational evidence - although even that is now being disputed - but metaphysical postulates cannot. — Wayfarer

So, such things as logical principles, scientific laws, mathematical objects, are all essential to empirical science, but they don't necessarily exist in time and space either. Rather, they form part of the architecture of reason, by means of which judgements about time and space are arrived at. — Wayfarer

I'm a bit hesitant to reply to this, because you touch on a lot of things, and I'm not sure I can do justice to the all issues being raised. But anyway, with that caveat out of the way...

My first general remark would be, aren't we always conditioned into something? I get that you are not a big fan of scientific realism and naturalism, but it's not as if past times were free of conditioning, to put it mildly. At least the scientific method comes with the tools to question itself. And for me that is important, because, what can I say... I like clear skies.

Concerning metaphysics, I kind of agree with Nietzsche's view on that, namely that most of it springs from the psychology and the moral views of people. Absent any way to verify it, what informs those metaphysical views really? Reason you might say, but reason doesn't inform us about anything absent empirical data, it needs something to work with. Take for instance quantum mechanics, one of the reasons why there are so many perfectly reasonable interpretations right now is because there is no empirical data to rule out any of them. Reason alone doesn't get you there if there is no data. And then there's a history of metaphysics being used to ground all kinds of moral theories. So yeah, metaphysics I try to stay away from as much as possible.

About the last quote, of course the language we use to describe the world doesn't exist in space and time. It's merely a description of world, not the world itself. The laws themselves do not exist, right? Take for instance the second law of thermodynamics, entropy never decreases over time. The universe doesn't behave like that because there exists a law that makes or causes the universe to behave that way. Rather the universe behaves that way because there are a lot more high entropy configurations of the universe then low entropy states, and statistically, given enough time, it will therefore naturally end up higher entropy. The law is an abstraction and description of that process, not the cause.

And finally, I don't think logical principles, scientific laws, mathematical objects, etc... have historically been developed apart from the empirical sciences, in a pure reason kind of way, so that we can use them. They have being developed in concert with each other, the one pushing the other and vice versa. They are tools, and people don't care about developing tools that have no use... usually.

My first general remark would be, aren't we always conditioned into something? I get that you are not a big fan of scientific realism and naturalism, but it's not as if past times were free of conditioning, to put it mildly. — ChatteringMonkey

What 'the unconditioned' is, is a very hard thing to articulate in the modern philosophical lexicon. But I think that whole question of what you're conditioned to believe or accept, and the meaning or significance of 'the unconditioned', is (or should be) central to philosophy. I think that originally, important elements from Greek philosophy that became absorbed into Christian theology were concerned with 'the unconditioned'. That appeared as the One ('to hen') in neoplatonism. Even materialism sought the unconditioned, which was the basis of atomism - that the atom, meaning 'indivisible' or 'uncuttable', represented the philosophical absolute, appearing in such a way as to give rise to phenomena. It's still a very influential idea, even if it's been undercut by later physics. But in neoplatonism, realising the nature of the unconditioned or the one, consisted of something very much like mystical union (henosis), which again is alien to modern thought. I'm not saying that therefore it's superior or that modernism is therefore wrong or inferior, but what's important to see is that modernism doesn't really understand the issue at all, the entire domain of discourse and the concept of 'the unconditioned' is no longer significant to it. (Note this vivid statement of 'the unborn', which I take to be analogous to 'the unconditioned', in the early Buddhist texts.)

get that you are not a big fan of scientific realism and naturalism, but it's not as if past times were free of conditioning, to put it mildly. At least the scientific method comes with the tools to question itself. — ChatteringMonkey

But, does it? First it makes some really basic metaphysical assumptions about the nature of reality, which is that what is real, or at least what might be considered, is that which is amenable to measurement and mathematical analysis. It takes a stance regarding what constitutes proper knowledge, and then forgets that it has taken that stance. This is how methodological naturalism, which is to bracket out the subjective, morphs into metaphysical naturalism, which then makes statements about the nature of reality beyond the scope of what is the proper subject of science. And that happens a lot.

Concerning metaphysics, I kind of agree with Nietzsche's view on that, namely that most of it springs from the psychology and the moral views of people. Absent any way to verify it, what informs those metaphysical views really? — ChatteringMonkey

I am highly sceptical about Nietzsche, although never having done a unit, I'm hesitant to comment on him directly. But consider some of the philosophical traditions which he saw fit to criticize (if not rubbish). Neo-thomism is situated within a domain of discourse within which critical analysis of metaphysical conceptions is alive and well. I'm thinking of recent analytical Thomist philosophers like Bernard Lonergan, John Haldane, Jacques Maritain, and others of that ilk. (See Philosophy lives, John Haldane, for a sample.)

Now, of course, you can say 'well they're all Catholic, and I don't accept the fundamental premise of their work, which is the existence of God', which is fair enough. I'm not myself Catholic, nor could ever consider converting to Catholicism, but I think their writing preserves elements of a perennial philosophy which are again generally absent from modern philosophical discourse. (See also Does reason know what it's missing.)

About the last quote, of course the language we use to describe the world doesn't exist in space and time. It's merely a description of world, not the world itself. The laws themselves do not exist, right? — ChatteringMonkey

Consider the expression 'not the world itself': per Kant, we don't know 'the world itself'. It's not as if the world exists objectively apart from us as subjects. Subject and object are co-arising or co-defining. Theories, language, number, mathematics, and so on, are all part of the way we bring order to experience, but they also enable us to discover many things we couldn't otherwise know (which is one of the reasons Kant's 'synthetic a priori' was considered by him to be so important.)

Switching registers a little, the objective or external world does not have the inherent reality we generally attribute to it. That's not to say that it's merely unreal or a fantasy, not at all. But all our judgements as to 'what is real' have a subjective pole or aspect which is not itself apparent to the workings of science (except for science has now been forced to recognise that through the 'observer problem' in physics, per the blind spot.)

I think, by way of summary, you're operating from an instinctive position of scientific naturalism - which is fine, I'm not saying that's inherently a problem. It only becomes a problem when it's taken to be something it's not, which is a critical philosophy, because philosophy is critical in a way that naturalism is not.

well we can argue what x consists of all year but x is still x

Right. There is at least no deductive, non-circular proof for x=x, because a deductive proof requires formal logic and all of formal logic rests on the assumption that x=x is true/valid. — Artemis

Methinks you got it!

well we can argue what x consists of all year but x is still x — Mac

And this is true of entities that defy the winds of time, like 2=2. But introducing a time gap when speaking of physical objects is different. X(t1)=X(t2) ? Is one PM today the same as one PM tomorrow? Is anything physical the same from day to day? One could argue that my car yesterday is the same as it is today, in a rough sense, but of course it isn't.

well we can argue what x consists of all year but x is still x — Mac

Like I said, that doesn't show us anything that we didn't already know. x = x is no different than just stating x.

Why do you think it needs to show us something we don't know? This misunderstanding you have is why I brought in the biological connection.

If x is not x, then all logical reasoning is undermined. It would be impossible to argue any conclusion from any premise.

"Is" and "is not" are exhaustive and comprehensive operators, there is no third option, which means that x must be x, since it cannot be not x because that undermine all syntactical reasoning.

Why do you think it needs to show us something we don't know? This misunderstanding you have is why I brought in the biological connection. — Mac

Showing something that we already know is redundant. Redundant information is not useful.

Harry Hindu: Hello, I'm Harry. Who are you?

Mac: Hello, Harry. I'm Mac.

Harry Hindu: What is it like to be Mac?

Mac: It's like being like Mac.

Harry Hindu: What is Mac?

Mac: Mac is Mac

that doesn't show us anything that we didn't already know. x = x is no different than just stating x. — Harry Hindu

They are different statements though. One is the statement of x, the other is describing something about x. It's the difference between saying dog and saying a dog is a dog.

It's not as if the world exists objectively apart from us as subjects. Subject and object are co-arising or co-defining. — Wayfarer

Merely declaring so is much like saying the Moon didn't exist until onlookers noticed it in the sky.
We differentiate perception and the perceived; always elevating their relation to existential dependency is poor philosophy.

Merely declaring so is much like saying the Moon didn't exist until onlookers noticed it in the sky. — jorndoe

You know that Albert Einstein famously asked that very question. The exact quote is:

We often discussed his notions on objective reality. I recall that during one walk Einstein suddenly stopped, turned to me and asked whether I really believed that the moon exists only when I look at it.

As recalled by his biographer Abraham Pais.

Why did Einstein, of all people, feel obliged to ask that question?