Credulity

[Upeksha]

Yes Saengnapha - that is indeed the soteriological implication, perhaps reaching its fullest/most refined expression via Nagarjuna. I think it is really important to consider what role logic is playing in this case: it's basically to deconstruct false views of the self.

However, when I said implication, I meant with respect to some earlier posts, which proposed that it is somehow easy or simple to combine inference with empirical data, and that this provides adequate knowledge. What I think we have both have been alluding to, is that from a Buddhist pov, this is not the case.

It's also worth thinking about how the Buddhists treat ordinary perception: the sanjaskandha, by definition, does not offer reliable perceptions of the external world.

[Saengnapha]

It's also worth thinking about how the Buddhists treat ordinary perception: the sanjaskandha, by definition, does not offer reliable perceptions of the external world.

You would have to explain this better for me to understand what you are referring to.

[binocular]

The argument is valid, but it is not sound, because the premises are false. That was her point, i.e. the argument is logical but perfectly useless because it rests on false premises.

In order for a logical argument to be sound its premises must be true and its operation must be valid.

True premises don't come from logic they come from elsewhere.

But what is the point ? This is something even a 3 year old knows. I am pretty sure even my pet jackdaw figured this out.

You said:

What would that "ultra-rigorous manner" even be? A type of scientific investigation? And if yes, on the grounds of what are we to take for granted that that type of scientific investigation is the right way to discover the truth?

On the gronds of logic.

and I pointed out that logic alone is useless.

How can one know whether a premise is true or not?
Logic can't help in that.

[Saengnapha]

How can one know whether a premise is true or not?
Logic can't help in that.

Of course logic can help. It can't help if we are talking about things that are not known. If something is not known, there is no question of logic. Logic only applies to cognition. Cognition is what the body and mind are engaged in automatically. If you want to know something outside of cognition, logic can't help.

[Upeksha]

It's also worth thinking about how the Buddhists treat ordinary perception: the sanjaskandha, by definition, does not offer reliable perceptions of the external world.

You would have to explain this better for me to understand what you are referring to.

Well, I suppose it is a big topic. But quite simply, the very processes (i.e. the aggregates) of (ordinary) subjective perceptions and interpretations of the external world are deluded/not capable of giving 'truth'. The sanjnaskandha in particular is connected with desire and aversion - we 'see' the world through this lens of distortion.

So the epistemic point is that whoever is making inferences based on what they 'see' is likely to mislead who they are giving inferences to, rather than offering them something true......unless that person develops of panna. Does that make sense?

[Saengnapha]

It's also worth thinking about how the Buddhists treat ordinary perception: the sanjaskandha, by definition, does not offer reliable perceptions of the external world.

You would have to explain this better for me to understand what you are referring to.

Well, I suppose it is a big topic. But quite simply, the very processes (i.e. the aggregates) of (ordinary) subjective perceptions and interpretations of the external world are deluded/not capable of giving 'truth'. The sanjnaskandha in particular is connected with desire and aversion - we 'see' the world through this lens of distortion.

So the epistemic point is that whoever is making inferences based on what they 'see' is likely to mislead who they are giving inferences to, rather than offering them something true......unless that person develops of panna. Does that make sense?

Of course. I would like to take this one step further. It is very possible that all religious experience is conditioned in the sense that it operates in the realm of relative truth and through an 'entity' who he/she thinks has some continuity based on stored perceptions that re-organize all phenomenon associated with current sense perceptions as something that is experienced by this entity and creates the illusion of time and space with the entity at its center. The whole notion of Buddhist cosmology or any other cosmology is built the same way through an erroneous belief in self, a being with inherent existence. We don't live as the creative energy that the universe actually is. We seemed to have made a dreadful mistake in interpretation of what experience actually is.

[Circle5]

Without logic, understanding non existence of a self is impossible. If we look at the suttas and hundreds of cases where people have attained stream entry, we see that all did it though contemplating the higher dhamma. And what is the higher dhamma ? It's the technical explanation about how a being actually functions. When Buddha explained it to people, he first explained conditionality, then how the 5 aggregates work, sense bases, etc. and only at the end he explained no self.

The process is very similar to how a bushman would understand how a car works. When first seeing a car, he might believe it is an animal or that it's pushed by some form of spirit. But after a mechanic will show him how every piece of the engine and how the car works in general, he will understand the trickery about how a car actually functions, without the use of a tiger-spirit to push it and without being an animal, despite thing thing looking impossible to him at first.

Buddhism central notion is "the dhamma" - what does dhamma mean ? It means "things as they really are" or "how things really work". According to buddhism, things work in a specific way. And Buddha claims to have found out this specific way and claims to be able to show it to you, same as one could show you that cars work because of the engine, etc and not because of mysterious tiger forces pushing it.

More than this, postmodernism was the only one out of 64 philosophies of the time that Buddhism considers to be a product of sheer stupidity: viewtopic.php?t=29724

What proponents of posmodernism always forget is the very thing that makes it be so stupid. If no idea is correct, then how could postmodernism be correct ? How could things work in the way postmodernism says they do ?

[Circle5]

How can one know whether a premise is true or not?
Logic can't help in that.

Of course logic can help. It can't help if we are talking about things that are not known. If something is not known, there is no question of logic. Logic only applies to cognition. Cognition is what the body and mind are engaged in automatically. If you want to know something outside of cognition, logic can't help.

But I preffer the term "information" or "information gathered through the senses" instead of "cognition" because some people have a tendency to mystify such words. There is information + ability to process that information.

Logic only works if correct information is avaliable. If wrong information is avaliable, of course correct processing of that information will be useless. And this is something even a 3 year old kid knows. And as I said, I am pretty sure even my pet jackdaw figured this out. Such ideas are fighting a strawman, since not even a 3 year old or my pet jackdaw would claim otherwise. Therefore, towards whom was that argument directed against ?

[Saengnapha]

How can one know whether a premise is true or not?
Logic can't help in that.

Of course logic can help. It can't help if we are talking about things that are not known. If something is not known, there is no question of logic. Logic only applies to cognition. Cognition is what the body and mind are engaged in automatically. If you want to know something outside of cognition, logic can't help.

But I preffer the term "information" or "information gathered through the senses" instead of "cognition" because some people have a tendency to mystify such words. There is information + ability to process that information.

Logic only works if correct information is avaliable. If wrong information is avaliable, of course correct processing of that information will be useless. And this is something even a 3 year old kid knows. And as I said, I am pretty sure even my pet jackdaw figured this out. Such ideas are fighting a strawman, since not even a 3 year old or my pet jackdaw would claim otherwise. Therefore, towards whom was that argument directed against ?

Information is different from cognition. Information is not interpreted until perception and cognition recognizes it and categorizes it. The raw information of the senses is not personalized at all. They have nothing to do with religious notions. Religious notions are conditioned, only collected and stored like any memory is. It has no significance at all in the way the Buddha or any other body/mind functions. Religion is man-made, not a universal law as some insist upon. Dhamma is not religious in any sense. How could it be?

[binocular]

Logic only works if correct information is avaliable. If wrong information is avaliable, of course correct processing of that information will be useless. And this is something even a 3 year old kid knows. And as I said, I am pretty sure even my pet jackdaw figured this out. Such ideas are fighting a strawman, since not even a 3 year old or my pet jackdaw would claim otherwise. Therefore, towards whom was that argument directed against ?

The question is, How can a person know they have correct information?

"Jesus is your Lord and Savior" -- is this correct information?
"The Buddha attained enlightenment" -- is this correct information?

[binocular]

Religion is man-made, not a universal law as some insist upon. Dhamma is not religious in any sense. How could it be?

How can you possibly know that?

[Upeksha]

More than this, postmodernism was the only one out of 64 philosophies of the time that Buddhism considers to be a product of sheer stupidity: viewtopic.php?t=29724

What proponents of posmodernism always forget is the very thing that makes it be so stupid. If no idea is correct, then how could postmodernism be correct ? How could things work in the way postmodernism says they do ?

I'm not usually one to defend postmodernism, but to propose that it was around at the time of the Buddha is absurd. To make that kind of bizarre leap, you have to condense a raft of very distinct thinkers (i.e. Lyotard, Derrida, Deleuze) into one 'position' and correlate that with some kind of view that was around in ancient India. That just fails on so many levels that it is hard to even engage with.

Interestingly though, there have been a few comparative studies which argue a theoretical commensurability between post-modern thinkers and Buddhist philosophy. And the link is between a nominalist theory of language + the notion that reality itself evades language - clearly there in both streams.

[Circle5]

Information is different from cognition. Information is not interpreted until perception and cognition recognizes it and categorizes it. The raw information of the senses is not personalized at all. They have nothing to do with religious notions. Religious notions are conditioned, only collected and stored like any memory is. It has no significance at all in the way the Buddha or any other body/mind functions. Religion is man-made, not a universal law as some insist upon. Dhamma is not religious in any sense. How could it be?

In computers, there is information + ability to process information. In humans, the situation is identical, only that there is the added dimension of awareness. There is awareness of that information and ability to process information but things work the same way. There is information and there is the processing of that information.

And I agree, the dhamma is not religious in any sense. But if one were to find the true dhamma, how could one spread and preseve such a valuable information, so that it can have as big of an impact as it could ? Though building a religion. Only through building a religion can one preserve and spread such a valuable information. If Buddha would not have done that, the dhamma discovered by him would have dissappeared long ago.

The question is, How can a person know they have correct information?

"Jesus is your Lord and Savior" -- is this correct information?
"The Buddha attained enlightenment" -- is this correct information?

Through information + ability to process. The more information is avaliable and the more correct the processing part is going, the bigger the chance of a correct conclusion. For more complex tasks, higher ability to process and bigger amounts of information are needed.

[Circle5]

I'm not usually one to defend postmodernism, but to propose that it was around at the time of the Buddha is absurd. To make that kind of bizarre leap, you have to condense a raft of very distinct thinkers (i.e. Lyotard, Derrida, Deleuze) into one 'position' and correlate that with some kind of view that was around in ancient India. That just fails on so many levels that it is hard to even engage with.

If they all believed in the "everything is relative except this statement" idea, then they all were postmodernist. They might have differed on some issues, but when your central thesis is refuted then such things do not matter. And yes, this philosophy was present in Buddha times and was called "Ajnana". There are only 4-5 main philosopihies about the world today, these same philosophies were present in Buddha time too. And postmodernism is one of them.

Interestingly though, there have been a few comparative studies which argue a theoretical commensurability between post-modern thinkers and Buddhist philosophy. And the link is between a nominalist theory of language + the notion that reality itself evades language - clearly there in both streams.

Both Buddhist and even the Jains refuted postmodern philosophy through the same methods that it is refuted today. (through showing that it's self-refuting and by pointing out that it's useless) Postmodern ideas can be found in Mahayana at Nagarjuna but not in early buddhist texts.

[Upeksha]

Circle, I have read a few so called post-modernist thinkers, and none of them have ever asserted "everything is relative except this statement." Have you ever actually engaged any of the thinkers you're so heavily invested in critiquing? Generally speaking, the best way to critique something is to examine it carefully - that way its problems can be exposed more easily.

It is true that relativism is often ascribed (fairly in my opinion) to some post-modern positions, but it is not true that they are simply synonyms i.e. post-modernism = relativism.

Further, I don't where you draw your idea that there have only ever been 4 or 5 main philosophies in the world both today and in ancient India - but it is frankly absurd and just plain wrong. If you look into the matter, you'll find endless different philosophies on just about every single conceivable philosophical topic. So much so that another relativist (of the pragmatic variety), Richard Rorty, argues that it is impossible for anyone to even know all of this. i.e. all we can do these days - even if spend a lifetime as a philosopher/scholar - is know a little bit about our particular area. I think this is quite true.

You might enjoy this:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/973 ... st_Thought