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Vic_Taltrees_UK
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Yes. They waste it! So do most of us on a bad day!
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fisherman_carl
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I hope you realize that statement contradicts itself. And therefore leads nowhere.
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Vic_Taltrees_UK
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Up to a point!
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rossum
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You are not the first to notice my sig. The original source is Mark Siderits, “Thinking on Empty: Madhyamika Anti-Realism and Canons of Rationality” in S Biderman and B.A. Schaufstein, eds, Rationality In Question (1989). Dordrecht: Brill.
I have not read Siderits but saw the quote in a piece on Nagarjuna. The “Madhyamika” in Siderits’ title refers to the religious and philosophical school of Buddhism that Nagarjuna founded. I have seen the same quote again in other places in reference to the Madhyamika and Nagarjuna - it seems quite popular. The quote is intentionally paradoxical; paradox is necessary to remind us that words are insufficient when trying to describe the fundamental nature of reality.
For a philosophical discussion of Nagarjuna and reality see the web article Nagarjuna and the Limits of Thought. The Siderits quote is at the end of section four of the article:
There is, then, no escape. Nagarjuna’s view is contradictory. The contradiction is, clearly a paradox of expressibility. Nagarjuna succeeds in saying the unsayable, just as much as the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus. We can think (and characterize) reality only subject to language, which is conventional, so the ontology of that reality is all conventional. It follows that the conventional objects of reality do not ultimately (non-conventionally) exist. It also follows that nothing we say of them is ultimately true. That is, all things are empty of ultimate existence; and this is their ultimate nature, and is an ultimate truth about them. They hence cannot be thought to have that nature; nor can we say that they do. But we have just done so. As Mark Siderits (1989) has put it, “the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth.”
rossum
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Vic_Taltrees_UK
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More like: it follows that they do not necessarily exist, and do not necessarily not exist. What we say may be true, and may not (subject to observation anyway). It may be ultimate (subject to limitations of allusion), and may not. It doesn’t prove that they are or aren’t empty or that they can’t or can be thought ultimate or true.
The whole thing is twin-track from a far earlier stage. Language isn’t only conventional - it alludes.
Hence my remark, up to a point! I’ve reached a further point than you have in this particular explanation.
Speaking personally I think visually and in three dimensions (or so), and my language alludes to what I see. There’s no reason why anyone can’t cultivate that gift. Even the term “object” suggests as much!
Another thing: everything is what it is, to be getting on with! Why insist on having a full answer in one sentence (though I think I’m doing better at it than the line of arguing that you have referred to here does
)? That’s not what memory and other faculties are for!
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fisherman_carl
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Pretty much everything you said contradicts itself and makes no sense. If nothing we say about objects in reality is true then neither would that statement be true. Not only that but reality could not be known. Thus the end of such philosphy is self destruction. Not enlightenment.
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rossum
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Nothing we say can be ultimately true, because words are contingent, not ultimate.
Of course it cannot. Our senses are imperfect, so all our senses can give us is an imperfect picture of the reality that exists outside our heads. Can you smell scents as well as a dog can smell them? Our knowledge of the smell of reality is grossly lacking.
We cannot know reality because we are blocked by the imperfections of our senses.
So, tell me, can you smell scents better than a bloodhound or a moth? Can you see better than an eagle? Can you see polarized light like a bee?
You are asking for the impossible if you want to know reality as it really is. At best you have an approximation of reality to work with. Failure to realise this will lead you into error. Do you see water in a mirage? Is there any water there in reality? Our senses are inaccurate, and you need to be aware of that fact.
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thinkandmull
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If I am understanding them correctly, the concept “there is no truth” is true but it has no substance, it is empty, hence they feel they are not contradicting themselves in their own minds. Thomas Aquinas felt that the more truth something was, the more reality it had. This must be true in a certain sense, in the sense that meaning has more reality than shear emptiness. Buddhism has played around with the idea that the reality of the world is really not there, and true reality has even less of the reality you thought truly existed in the world. It’s weird, but at least it is a little interesting.
Buddhist fans out there: can you answer this question for me?: is it possible for there to be thought without something thinking, or for something to act contrary totally from what it is (not in the sense of sin, but without a substance contributing to the acting)?
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Thomas_White
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Being and Nothingness (no-thingness) are ultimately equivalent. As I understand Hegel, he is saying the same of his dialectic.
I’d say it depends on the definition of ‘thought’ (as dualistic thought or as meaning ‘awareness’) but also that it is relative to the person. I would think something (some thing) could act contrary to what it is. Things have substance but thinking does not, but this itself is a concept.
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rossum
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Look again at my sig. It is not talking about truth, but about ultimate truth. The problems overwhelmingly arise from the “ultimate” part of that concept.
For example, 1 + 1 = 2 is true for most ordinary purposes. However, a Mathematician will tell you that in binary 1 + 1 = 10 is true, while 1 + 1 = 2 is meaningless. The original “1 + 1 = 2” is not an ultimate truth because it depends on something external to itself: the number base in which it is expressed.
The search for ultimate truth is fruitless, for many reasons.
It is probably better to express it as “the reality of the world is not what you think it is”. Our brains build internal models of the external world, using the data from our imperfect senses. Inevitably, those models do not precisely match the external reality. It is a very common error to mistake our imperfect internal model of reality for the real thing. It isn’t. Reality does really exist; what does not exist is a different reality that matches our internal model. Our internal model sees water in a mirage. Does that water really exist?
The emptiness of emptiness is the fact that not even emptiness exists ultimately, that it is also dependent, conventional, nominal, and in the end it is just the everydayness of the everyday. Penetrating to the depths of being, we find ourselves back on the surface of things and so discover that there is nothing, after all, beneath those deceptive surfaces. Moreover, what is deceptive about them is simply the fact that we assume ontological depth lurking just beneath.
– Jay Garfield, “Empty words, Buddhist philosophy and cross-cultural interpretation.” OUP 2002.
In Catholic terms, Buddhist emptiness can perhaps be seen as the emptiness of Thomist Substance. There is only Accident, without Substance.
rossum
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fisherman_carl
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Your example doesn’t show there is no ultimate truth, just that you don’t understand binary numbers. In binary there is just a combination of 0 and 1 for numbers. There is no number ten. 1 + 1 = one zero ie. 10, not ten. and 10 is equivalent to 2. So 1 + 1 still equals 2. This is denoted as 10 in binary because you can not use anything other than 1s and 0s to denote your numbers. But 10, one zero, is still equivalent to 2.
**** The search for the ultimate truth is not fruitless if there is an ultimate God who defines ultimate truth. *****
This view that our brains build little approximate pictures of the world through our senses is a modern idea. Aquinas’s philosophy is something else entirely. Yes, we can observe an object in reality through our senses, but it is not an approximation of it that we see, but the thing itself. Just like if you need glasses, the glasses do not recreate a little image for your eyes to see. You are seeing the actual image. The image passes through the glasses to your eyes so that your eyes see the actual image. Just as it passes through your visual center. Your visual center does not recreate the image. In any case what you see is the actual object. But, your intellect can have within it the form of the thing that you are seeing, such that the form exists in two ways, in the object itself, and in your mind. If your intellect truly grasps the form of it then the form in your mind is the same as the object. It is the same form.
For example, if you see a triangle, your intellect grasps the form of the triangle, but not just the form of this particular triangle, but of all triangles. You can recognize that it is always true that a triangle has 3 sides only. Your intellect grasps this truth regardless of any particular implementation of the triangle, for instance how well it is drawn or what color it is. Thus, your intellect grasps forms and universals. These would be non-subjective but always true.
Substance is not empty. The substance of thing would be the matter tha it is composed of. The accident of a thing is its appearance like its color.
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annem
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fisherman carl
God bless, Annem
Hi - thought this was brilliant.
God bless, Annem
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annem
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rossum
You say that the model of a chair in our heads can never precisely match the reality. Why not?
God bless, Annem
Hi Rossum - Buddhism says everything is impermanent and changing. All that I see and touch, and all that is me, is but an illusion. But how do Buddhists know these things if everything is an illusion? And what is it that is an illusion? If the chair is not a chair but an illusion of a chair how do we even know what a chair is? Somewhere, there must have been an original chair. Which was not an illusion.
You say that the model of a chair in our heads can never precisely match the reality. Why not?
God bless, Annem
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Thomas_White
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The image of an object is the perception of it, but it is not the actual object. It would appear quite differently if viewed through an electron microscope. Heidegger’s Phenomenological conception of Being is far more advanced than that of Aquinas. It involves the perception of the observer as well as the object. Both are necessary.
It is true as a universal concept but not of the perception of a particular object.
Form in the Platonic understanding is not a substance.
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rossum
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You are confusing the idea of the number S(S(0)) (in terms of Peano’s axioms), the digit ‘2’ and the binary ‘10’. Any written expression depends on the meanings assigned to the symbols. Moving away from numbers, what does “elf” mean? In English it means a mythical humanoid. In German it means the number eleven. There is no ultimate meaning of “elf”, the meaning is dependent on the context, something external to the symbols used.
Hardly. It has been present in Buddhism since before Christianity. It may be a relatively new idea in the west, but it is not a new idea overall.
You are incorrect. We cannot directly observe anything. Light enters our eyes and is converted into electrical impulses in our optic nerves. Those electrical impulses pass into our brains, where the pattern of impulses is matched to a library of previously stored patterns. Our brains have good pattern-matching processes, which is how we classify what we see. One particular pattern of impulses matches “dog”, while another might match “car”. All our senses convert external (name removed by moderator)uts to electrical impulses in our sensory nerves. All our brain ever sees is those incoming electrical impulses.
No they do not. Our eyes cannot see infra-red or ultra-violet. They cannot distinguish light polarization and the image is nowhere near as sharp as in many birds – eagles have far better eyesight than humans for many purposes.
No. Only one actual external object exists. What is in your mind is different, a pattern of electrical impulses that has a reasonably close (but not perfect) correspondence to the external object. It is a fundamental error to confuse the two. That is one of the causes of suffering, when the external world does not match our internal image of it. Think of Karl Rove not believing the results from Ohio on election night 2012. Reality did not match his internal model of the result.
rossum
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rossum
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Correct.
The external world is not an illusion. The illusion is to assume that your internal model of the external world is actually the external world. It is an illusion to confuse the model with the real thing. That is the illusion that we must overcome.
A real chair is made of wood, plastic or metal. The model in our heads is made of electrical impulses and various organic chemicals. How can they be the same? Purely the size of a chair and the volume inside your head tells you that the two have to be different. In our heads, the model of the chair never collapses. Rarely in real life, a chair will collapse under us. The two are different.
rossum
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fisherman_carl
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I’m not confusing anything here. It is simply a fact. ‘10’ is equivalent to 2. Thus, the reality behind the numbers is the same. 1 + 1 is in fact 2. Except in binary it is denoted as ‘10’. Just as hello in French is denoted as Bonjour. But, it means the same thing. You can hang your hat on that.
If you don’t believe me check this out
binaryhexconverter.com/binary-to-decimal-converter
I’ll take your word for that. I was thinking more in terms of the modern scientific outlook.
Aaah. But, you are playing victim to this thing called reductionism. When you say we do not directly observe anything. We are not simply impulses in the brain. What about your mind? The form of the thing in your intellect? Not the image of it, but the form.
We have limitations to our vision. Sure. But what you are implying though is that we can’t really know anything because of these limitations? Aquinas would disagree with you and say the form of a thing is in the intellect and in the object recognized. And this form is identical. Of course the intellect is immaterial and different from the imagination. Which Aquinas would say is derived from the senses.
What you are talking about is sensory perception. I am talking about the forms of things existing in both the immaterial mind and the thing itself.
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fisherman_carl
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Thanks. Don’t know how brilliant it is though. Its just something you become very familiar with when studying the basics of computer science.
Here is an equivalency
0000 = 0
0001 = 1
0010 = 2
0011 = 3
0100 = 4
0101 = 5
0110 = 6
etc.
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rossum
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When Buddhist philosophers talk about “emptiness” they mean the absence of any Platonic “form”. It is a pure reification and has no real existence. We might think that it exists, but we are mistaken.
The emptiness of emptiness is the fact that not even emptiness exists ultimately, that it is also dependent, conventional, nominal, and in the end it is just the everydayness of the everyday. Penetrating to the depths of being, we find ourselves back on the surface of things and so discover that there is nothing, after all, beneath those deceptive surfaces. Moreover, what is deceptive about them is simply the fact that we assume ontological depth lurking just beneath.
– Jay Garfield, “Empty words, Buddhist philosophy and cross-cultural interpretation.” OUP 2002.
Our common assumption of “ontological depth” is an error.
We can easily know some things, but we should not assume that we can know everything accurately. Our senses are imperfect, hence our mental image of the external world is also imperfect. It is not completely inaccurate, but it is not completely accurate either. It is fuzzy. We need to remember that it is fuzzy, because that fuzziness is not always obvious too us.
We know the world through sensory perception, so sensory perception is important. Errors there are carried on further through the system. Things that exist in our mind are not part of external reality, they are inside our heads only. The error comes when we project those internal mental entities onto the external real world. In effect we reify them and treat them as if they had a real external existence. They do not. Reification is almost always an error.
rossum
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thinkandmull
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If one cannot see reality, than one cannot know that eagles see better than us. All you can say is from phenomenon it seems that they see better than us, but you cannot establish the truth of this
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