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The logic of Buddhist philosophy (2014)

13 points by tomaskazemekas 11y ago

CaiGengYang 11y ago
There is no logic to religion. Religion is based on faith, not evidence. Christopher Hitchens has written some articles criticising religion as "putting the mind to sleep", dulling out logical faculties
- dang 11y ago
  Please don't conduct religious flamewars on HN.
- jal278 11y ago
  The parent comment reflects a common misconception about Buddhism. In reality, it's not at all a religion in the traditional sense -- there is no "god" of Buddhism to believe in, and there is no concept of "faith" as a virtue. It's easy to practice Buddhism from a purely scientific mindset. Basically, Buddhism is a personal experimental science, where through repeated introspection you attempt to probe the nature of consciousness -- i.e. meditation and reflection. As I understand it, Buddhism is about understanding reality as it is (not as we might like it to be, i.e. eternal life/soul/etc.) -- it's a very pragmatic approach. There is a certain amount of "woo woo" that sometimes gets mixed in with Buddhism, because it draws in a "new age" crowd -- but there is no conflict between being secular/atheist and practicing Buddhism. For example, Sam Harris is a vocal atheist but also a Buddhist -- see his very nice book "Waking Up."
  - snogglethorpe 11y ago
    ... but also remember that Buddhism mutated quite a bit as it spread around asia, and the term "Buddhism" encompasses quite a few different schools of thought...
    - x5n1 11y ago
      The Western form of Buddhism itself is mostly a mutation where usually a few ideas are borrowed and then espoused as something profound (I am not talking about Western Buddhist monks, which again are their own Western version of these ideas). It takes a lifetime to understand many of these things, and so monks spend a lifetime trying to come to grasp with the mindset of what is being said, to cultivate that mindset. The Western user of these ideas is usually a lay person who read maybe a few books and then starts pretending as if they are a monk who has spent a lifetime developing a certain mindset. Religions are just that, a mindset. To be a religious person is to adopt a certain set of ideas as an ideology and a mindset and to become that sort of person. And often that sort of person can only exist within a society that is conducive to those ideas. And so monks go off into the forest with other monks and then have rituals and practices to try to cultivate the right mindset to become that sort of person. This is a very personal thing, it has implications for society but its most profound affect is on the thinking and behavior of the individual. The monks then interact with lay society as some sort of role models for how people ought to act. And the society support them with supplications of food and money to aid in their journey. Because all society can't be a monk.
  - xlm1717 11y ago
    Sounds like an explanation designed to make Buddhism palatable to secular audiences to me. Also seems like a stretch to me calling yourself a Buddhist if all you do is meditate to try to find yourself. There have been plenty of religions in history without a "god". Many people believe in nature spirits or even in personal spirits; the latter is the kind of spiritualism that a great many Buddhists believe in. And Buddhism does have many concepts that have to be taken as an article of faith: Samsara, Karma, and Nirvana. Faith in a spirit that transcends death and lifetimes is not scientific, and if a so-called Buddhist does not believe these things, I have to wonder what kind of Buddhism they are following.
nabla9 11y ago
Explanation from Henk Barendregt (logician and Vipassana teacher) http://www.cs.ru.nl/~henk/BP/bp1.html http://www.cs.ru.nl/~henk/BP/bp1.html --- 1.7 Explaining apparent contradictions Now we will explain how contradictions, which happen to occur in some buddhist texts, are possible. Suppose some part of reality U is described using some language L. Some of the regularities observed in L are in fact physical laws, but may be confused with logical laws. If we extend the reality U to U+, but keep as the describing language L, then statements may result that contradict statements made about U. Although the contradictions are only apparent, because the statements are about different `worlds', it may seem that logical laws are violated. An example will be helpful. Consider a tribe living on an isolated island. Vision of the tribesman is such that they can only see the colors black and white. In their description of the world they say: ``Something is either black or white." Although we know that this is for them in fact an empirical law, the people of the island are tempted to consider this as a logical law. Sometimes they use the words `white' and `non-black' interchangeably. On some day someone has a mystical experience. In our language we can say that that person has seen the color green. In the language of the tribe she says: ``I have seen something very impressive. It was neither black nor white." For most of the people of her tribe she was saying: ``It was neither black, nor non-black." Therefore on the island one may think she is speaking nonsense. However, we know that she is not. There are, however, stronger contradictions. In his book Exploring Mysticism already mentioned, F. Staal discusses the following so called `tetra lemma' occurring in buddhist texts. It is not A; it is not non-A; it is both A and non-A; and it is neither A nor non-A. Even this contradiction may be explained. Simply consider again the tribe seeing only black and white. But now our mystic sees the color gray. Indeed gray is not white, not black. And it can be said that gray is both white and black. But also that it is neither white nor black. I hope that the examples show that contradictions occurring in texts of mystics are not a sign that something essential is wrong. Nevertheless it is preferable that descriptions of altered states of consciousness are free from contradictions in the sense of logic. I will try to fulfill this requirement in sections 2 and 3. --- Personal note: this "Buddhist logic" is useful in the context of phenomenology and how to communicate certain fundamental changes in viewpoint that come from meditation. It's not new better way to think.
xlm1717 11y ago
Seems to me that the catuskoti was already a concept in western philosophy, only we didn't give the group a name because we prioritised true and false above the other two possibilities: contradiction and indeterminacy. Also seems to me that ineffability falls under indeterminacy. The author seems to try to distinguish between the two by saying there are things we might be able to know, and things we will never be able to know. Being a layman and not studied in philosophy and logic, it seems to me that indeterminacy is enough to encapsulate ineffability. This is illustrated by the numerous examples the author gives on attempts to explain the ineffable: this immediately makes it indeterminate, going by the author's use of logic. The author then goes on to talk about ordinal numbers, and presents what is purported to be an ineffable phrase: the least ordinal that cannot be referred to There are more ordinals than ordinary language can refer to, and one of these must be the least. But, by using that phrase we are referring to it. This is an obvious contradiction, but we know there must be one such ordinal. The author uses this to say that since we cannot talk about it, but it exists, it is ineffable. I say that this is unnecessary, it is enough to say the ordinal is indeterminate precisely because we cannot refer to it (determine it). That it took us until the 20th century to imagine these ideas in mathematics and logic doesn't speak to any shortcomings of western logic with regards to contradiction and indeterminacy, in my opinion. It merely reflects the priorities of eastern and western thought. This is illustrated by the efforts of Bertrand Russell with his Principia. Through the centuries, western thinkers had made advances by considering what is true and what is false, and taking contradictions as dead ends that do not produce interesting areas of study. Russell tried to take this as far as he could with Principia, and in doing so inadvertently revealed the limitations of how far we can advance, limitations that were detailed by Kurt Godel and his incompleteness theorems. I say that, since we have advanced so far as to know the limits, now we are having more to say about contradiction and indeterminacy, and we are now saying it in a more precise way than Buddhist philosophers imagined in their day.

There is no logic to religion. Religion is based on faith, not evidence. Christopher Hitchens has written some articles criticising religion as "putting the mind to sleep", dulling out logical faculties

dang 11y ago
Please don't conduct religious flamewars on HN.
jal278 11y ago
The parent comment reflects a common misconception about Buddhism. In reality, it's not at all a religion in the traditional sense -- there is no "god" of Buddhism to believe in, and there is no concept of "faith" as a virtue. It's easy to practice Buddhism from a purely scientific mindset. Basically, Buddhism is a personal experimental science, where through repeated introspection you attempt to probe the nature of consciousness -- i.e. meditation and reflection. As I understand it, Buddhism is about understanding reality as it is (not as we might like it to be, i.e. eternal life/soul/etc.) -- it's a very pragmatic approach. There is a certain amount of "woo woo" that sometimes gets mixed in with Buddhism, because it draws in a "new age" crowd -- but there is no conflict between being secular/atheist and practicing Buddhism. For example, Sam Harris is a vocal atheist but also a Buddhist -- see his very nice book "Waking Up."
- snogglethorpe 11y ago
  ... but also remember that Buddhism mutated quite a bit as it spread around asia, and the term "Buddhism" encompasses quite a few different schools of thought...
  - x5n1 11y ago
    The Western form of Buddhism itself is mostly a mutation where usually a few ideas are borrowed and then espoused as something profound (I am not talking about Western Buddhist monks, which again are their own Western version of these ideas). It takes a lifetime to understand many of these things, and so monks spend a lifetime trying to come to grasp with the mindset of what is being said, to cultivate that mindset. The Western user of these ideas is usually a lay person who read maybe a few books and then starts pretending as if they are a monk who has spent a lifetime developing a certain mindset. Religions are just that, a mindset. To be a religious person is to adopt a certain set of ideas as an ideology and a mindset and to become that sort of person. And often that sort of person can only exist within a society that is conducive to those ideas. And so monks go off into the forest with other monks and then have rituals and practices to try to cultivate the right mindset to become that sort of person. This is a very personal thing, it has implications for society but its most profound affect is on the thinking and behavior of the individual. The monks then interact with lay society as some sort of role models for how people ought to act. And the society support them with supplications of food and money to aid in their journey. Because all society can't be a monk.
- xlm1717 11y ago
  Sounds like an explanation designed to make Buddhism palatable to secular audiences to me. Also seems like a stretch to me calling yourself a Buddhist if all you do is meditate to try to find yourself. There have been plenty of religions in history without a "god". Many people believe in nature spirits or even in personal spirits; the latter is the kind of spiritualism that a great many Buddhists believe in. And Buddhism does have many concepts that have to be taken as an article of faith: Samsara, Karma, and Nirvana. Faith in a spirit that transcends death and lifetimes is not scientific, and if a so-called Buddhist does not believe these things, I have to wonder what kind of Buddhism they are following.

nabla9 11y ago

Explanation from Henk Barendregt (logician and Vipassana teacher) http://www.cs.ru.nl/~henk/BP/bp1.html http://www.cs.ru.nl/~henk/BP/bp1.html --- 1.7 Explaining apparent contradictions Now we will explain how contradictions, which happen to occur in some buddhist texts, are possible. Suppose some part of reality U is described using some language L. Some of the regularities observed in L are in fact physical laws, but may be confused with logical laws. If we extend the reality U to U+, but keep as the describing language L, then statements may result that contradict statements made about U. Although the contradictions are only apparent, because the statements are about different `worlds', it may seem that logical laws are violated. An example will be helpful. Consider a tribe living on an isolated island. Vision of the tribesman is such that they can only see the colors black and white. In their description of the world they say: ``Something is either black or white." Although we know that this is for them in fact an empirical law, the people of the island are tempted to consider this as a logical law. Sometimes they use the words `white' and `non-black' interchangeably. On some day someone has a mystical experience. In our language we can say that that person has seen the color green. In the language of the tribe she says: ``I have seen something very impressive. It was neither black nor white." For most of the people of her tribe she was saying: ``It was neither black, nor non-black." Therefore on the island one may think she is speaking nonsense. However, we know that she is not. There are, however, stronger contradictions. In his book Exploring Mysticism already mentioned, F. Staal discusses the following so called `tetra lemma' occurring in buddhist texts. It is not A; it is not non-A; it is both A and non-A; and it is neither A nor non-A. Even this contradiction may be explained. Simply consider again the tribe seeing only black and white. But now our mystic sees the color gray. Indeed gray is not white, not black. And it can be said that gray is both white and black. But also that it is neither white nor black. I hope that the examples show that contradictions occurring in texts of mystics are not a sign that something essential is wrong. Nevertheless it is preferable that descriptions of altered states of consciousness are free from contradictions in the sense of logic. I will try to fulfill this requirement in sections 2 and 3. --- Personal note: this "Buddhist logic" is useful in the context of phenomenology and how to communicate certain fundamental changes in viewpoint that come from meditation. It's not new better way to think.

xlm1717 11y ago

Seems to me that the catuskoti was already a concept in western philosophy, only we didn't give the group a name because we prioritised true and false above the other two possibilities: contradiction and indeterminacy. Also seems to me that ineffability falls under indeterminacy. The author seems to try to distinguish between the two by saying there are things we might be able to know, and things we will never be able to know. Being a layman and not studied in philosophy and logic, it seems to me that indeterminacy is enough to encapsulate ineffability. This is illustrated by the numerous examples the author gives on attempts to explain the ineffable: this immediately makes it indeterminate, going by the author's use of logic. The author then goes on to talk about ordinal numbers, and presents what is purported to be an ineffable phrase: the least ordinal that cannot be referred to There are more ordinals than ordinary language can refer to, and one of these must be the least. But, by using that phrase we are referring to it. This is an obvious contradiction, but we know there must be one such ordinal. The author uses this to say that since we cannot talk about it, but it exists, it is ineffable. I say that this is unnecessary, it is enough to say the ordinal is indeterminate precisely because we cannot refer to it (determine it). That it took us until the 20th century to imagine these ideas in mathematics and logic doesn't speak to any shortcomings of western logic with regards to contradiction and indeterminacy, in my opinion. It merely reflects the priorities of eastern and western thought. This is illustrated by the efforts of Bertrand Russell with his Principia. Through the centuries, western thinkers had made advances by considering what is true and what is false, and taking contradictions as dead ends that do not produce interesting areas of study. Russell tried to take this as far as he could with Principia, and in doing so inadvertently revealed the limitations of how far we can advance, limitations that were detailed by Kurt Godel and his incompleteness theorems. I say that, since we have advanced so far as to know the limits, now we are having more to say about contradiction and indeterminacy, and we are now saying it in a more precise way than Buddhist philosophers imagined in their day.