Getting to know people?

[Dawid Dahl]

Hello, everyone! Thanks Bruce for inviting me.

 

I'm Dawid, from Sweden, with a passion for abstruse truth, pensive art, well-rounded morality, daring transhumanism, and integral cognition.

 

It would be awesome to get to know a few of you people here. (James, e, Bruce and Irmeli I am fortunate enough to know a little already, even back from the ol' Zaads days.) So I thought that perhaps the easiest way of making that happen would be to start with a premeditatedly terse - perhaps annoyingly so? - question! I'd really appreciate any answers, be they elaborate or concise, 0-tier or 4th-tier. So here goes:

 

Does God exist?

 

Kindly,

Dawid

 

:)

[Dawid Dahl]

"Is your argument affirming the consequence?

 

If causality (and not chaos), then rocks fall.

Rocks fall.

Causality."

 

That's not how my argument is constructed. What I'm saying is that if you have two options to choose from, one of them will be much more feasible. (You've accepted this.) And that therefore, both options aren't equally feasible. And if they aren't equally feasible, then chaos can not be the case. (If you can predict something, I think chaos can't be the case by definition.) And if chaos is not the case, non-chaos in the digitally chopped up world of conceptual imputations, is the case.

 

---

 

I could add as a disclaimer that I am hoping to do away with this kind of causality. It would be great! I'm currently reading this book, for example: http://www.amazon.com/Skeptic-Way-Empiricuss-Outlines-Pyrrhonism/dp...

 

It's just that I need to find a good reason for how to do away with it, like I've found good reason - and realized practically - to do away the self-nature of dualistic phenomena. I can't just accept it because some people say it, even if I'd want to.

[e]

Dawid: What I'm saying is that if you have two options to choose from, one of them will be much more feasible. (You've accepted this.)

No, I’ve suggested there is a middle position between belief in causality or chaos theories. That conditionality is what I see Nagarjuna proffering in the 1st chapter of the MMK. He is establishing how conditionality should be understood i.e. not in any of the four fold ways as causality. He is clarifying what Buddha meant when he often described paticca-sumapada (dependent origination) as idappaccayata-paticca-sumapada (conditioned-dependent-origination). Only with a clear understanding of the pacaya (conditions) of idappacayyata can he later make the claim that dependent origination is emptiness. Now I know many people say Dependent Origination is Buddhist causality i.e. ignorance causes suffering or the cause of suffering is clinging, etc. But dependent origination is governed by idappacayyata (conditionality).

Idappaccayata - this/that conditionality

 

When this is, that is. From the arising of this, that arises.
When this is not, that is not. From the ceasing of this, that ceases.

At first it does not make much sense because we are acculturated to belief in causality of substantial things i.e. this causes or has the power to produce that. Here is a simple sutra making it clear.

"When birth is, death is. From the arising of birth, death arises."

Birth does not cause or have the power to produce death. They dependently originate. So there is not this substantial thing called ignorance over here that causes or produces suffering over there. But when there is ignorance there is suffering i.e. an ignorantly conditioned mind/body suffers. Simply stop (cease) the ignorant conditioning... no suffering. (That is all any Buddhist practice or analysis is meant to accomplish.)

 

--

Dawid: It's just that I need to find a good reason for how to do away with it, ...

This is worth a look.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

 

 

[Dawid Dahl]

Hello, e. Thanks for your explanation.

 

"Birth does not cause or have the power to produce death. They dependently originate. So there is not this substantial thing called ignorance over here that causes or produces suffering over there. But when there is ignorance there is suffering i.e. an ignorantly conditioned mind/body suffers. Simply stop (cease) the ignorant conditioning... no suffering. (That is all any Buddhist practice or analysis is meant to accomplish.)"

 

So it seems to me there are two ways to think about this:

 

1) substantial, reified causation. An inherently existent X causes (by a power which is inherent in X) Y.

Or 2) conditionality, regularity. Illusory (verbally designated) phenomena seems to appear when certain conditions are present. The difference being that conditionality doesn't imply substantial, reified causation, in the sense of things are causing other things by their own power.

 

Is this a meaningful differentiation? Am I misunderstanding your use of conditionality?

 

I read this article by Jay L. Garfield the other day. He also seems to make the case that 1) is what Nagarjuna refutes, but not 2), namely regularity or conditionality. This is my view as well. I will copy & paste and highlight the parts pertaining to the topic at hand:

 

---

 

"I will begin by offering a philosophical reading of chapter 1. I will argue that Nagarjuna distinguishes two possible views of dependent origination or the causal process--one according to which causes bring about their effects in virtue of causal powers and one according to which causal relations simply amount to explanatorily useful regularities--and defends the latter. This, I will argue, when suitably fleshed out, amounts to Nagarjuna's doctrine of the emptiness of causation."

---

 
"What is it, then, about some sets of event pairs, but not others, that make them dependently related, if not some causal link present in some cases but not in others? Nagarjuna replies (1: 5) that it is the regularities that count. Flickings give rise to illuminations. So they are conditions of them. If they didn't, they wouldn't be. Period. Explanation relies on regularities. Regularities are explained by reference to further regularities. Adding active forces or potentials adds nothing of explanatory utility to the picture."
  
 ---
 
"Nagarjuna is replying here to the causal realist's inference from the reality of causal powers to their embodiment in real entities whose essences include those powers. He turns the tables on the realist, arguing that it is precisely because there is no such reality to things--and hence no entities to serve as the bearers of the causal powers the realist wants to posit--that the Buddhist formula expressing the truth of dependent arising can be asserted. It could not be asserted if in fact there were real entities. For if they were real in the sense important for the realist, they would be independent. So if the formula were interpreted in this context as pointing to any causal power, it would be false. It can only be interpreted, it would follow, as a formula expressing the regularity of nature."

---
 
"Substituting conditions for causes solves this problem. For, as we have seen, by shifting the account in this way we come to understand the relation between conditions and the conditioned as obtaining in virtue of regularity and explanatory utility. And both of these determinants of the relation are firmly rooted in convention rather than in any extraconventional facts. Regularity is always regularity-under-a-description, and descriptions are, as Nagarjuna puts it, "verbal designations." Explanatory utility is always relative to human purposes and theoretical frameworks. Dependent origination is thus on this model a thoroughly conventional and hence empty alternative to a reified causal model, which nonetheless permits all of the explanatory moves that a theory committed to causation can make. For every causal link one might posit, an equivalent conditional relation can be posited. But the otiose and ultimately incoherent posit of causal power is dispensed with on Nagarjuna's formulation."
 
  ---
 
Footnotes:
    
"There are two kinds of case to be made for attributing this distinction to Nagarjuna in this chapter. Most generally, there is the hermeneutical argument that this makes the best philosophical sense of the text. It gets Nagarjuna drawing a distinction that is clearly suggested by his philosophical outlook and that lines up nicely with the technical terms he deploys. But we can get more textually fine-grained as well: in the first verse, Nagarjuna explicitly rejects the existence of efficacy, and pointedly uses the word "cause." He denies that there are such things. Nowhere in chapter I is there a parallel denial of the existence of conditions. On the contrary, in verse 2 he positively asserts that there are four kinds of them. To be sure, this could be read as a mere partitioning of the class of effects that are described in Buddhist literature. But there are two reasons not to read it thus. First, Nagarjuna does not couch the assertion in one of his "It might be said" locutions. Second, he never takes it back. The positive tone the text takes regarding conditions is continued in verses 4 and 5, where Nagarjuna asserts that conditions are conceived without efficacy in contrast with the causes rejected in 1, and where he endorses a regularist view of conditions. So it seems that Nagarjuna does use the "cause"/"condition" distinction to mark a distinction between the kind of association he endorses as an analysis of dependent arising and one he rejects."

---

"The Madhyamika position implies that we should seek to explain regularities by reference to their embeddedness in other regularities, and so on. To ask why there are regularities at all, on such a view, would be to ask an incoherent question: the fact of explanatorily useful regularities in nature is what makes explanation and investigation possible in the first place, and is not something itself that can be explained. After all, there is only one universe, and truly singular phenomena, on such a view, are inexplicable in principle. This may connect deeply to the Buddha's insistence that questions concerning the beginning of the world are unanswerable."

 

---

 

Is this also what you mean by conditionality, or do you have another interpretation as for the middle way between inherent causality and inherent chaos?

 

Thanks again,

Dawid

[125ohqq5ixuhp]

depends on where your morality stands. belief always controls the way you think.

[e]

Hey Dawid,

Sorry for the long delay.

e: "Birth does not cause or have the power to produce death. They dependently originate. So there is not this substantial thing called ignorance over here that causes or produces suffering over there. But when there is ignorance there is suffering i.e. an ignorantly conditioned mind/body suffers. Simply stop (cease) the ignorant conditioning... no suffering. (That is all any Buddhist practice or analysis is meant to accomplish.)"

Dawid: So it seems to me there are two ways to think about this:
1) substantial, reified causation. An inherently existent X causes (by a power which is inherent in X) Y.
Or 2) conditionality, regularity. Illusory (verbally designated) phenomena seems to appear when certain conditions are present. The difference being that conditionality doesn't imply substantial, reified causation, in the sense of things are causing other things by their own power.
Is this a meaningful differentiation?

I guess it depends on who is looking at what. Most modern scientists are looking for atomistic causal agents. Many can't find or synthesize them i.e. graviton, fire, autism, cancer, etc. In regards to Buddhism it’s said Buddha awoke to conditionality on the eve of his enlightenment. At the first sermon Kondana was the first to understand and when asked said whatever arises passes away. Buddha said whoever sees dependent origination sees the dhamma and whoever sees the dhamma sees dependent origination. If there were inherent existence with causal power, how could suffering cease?

Am I misunderstanding your use of conditionality?

Sans the "illusory" addition as the real/illusion distinction does not apply i.e. whatever one thinks is real or illusory is dependently originated. Also, there are aspects of dependent origination that are not verbal. For instance, at contact sensations and desire can arise at any of the 6 sense doors, not just thought with thought consciousness. With this in mind it seems Garfield spent a lot of time in a library and not much time looking within his own mind/body. That is, as much as I also enjoy Buddhist philosophy, more benefit comes from putting the ideas into practice. If you do that, I don't see how you can maintain that Regularity is always regularity-under-a-description, and descriptions are, as Nagarjuna puts it, "verbal designations." If you sat down just one time and tried to be still for 30 minutes, you would realize pretty quickly the regular reoccurring pain at your knee aint a "verbal designation". With modest concentrative effort you can put thought down but that pain will still arise. Or looking at animals, they don't "verbalize" and yet they suffer. So it seems Dependent Origination has a little more universality than mere verbal distinction. So I would reverse it, the description (DO) is explaining a regular occurrence i.e. how suffering arises.

I read this article by Jay L. Garfield the other day. He also seems to make the case that 1) is what Nagarjuna refutes, but not 2), namely regularity or conditionality. This is my view as well. I will copy & paste and highlight the parts pertaining to the topic at hand:...

You seemed to be arguing pretty strongly for causation in the posts above. You finally come around? :-)

Is this also what you mean by conditionality, or do you have another interpretation as for the middle way between inherent causality and inherent chaos?

As long as regularity in terms of arising is also seen to be regularity in terms of passing away. BTW The middle can be found between other fixed dualistic extremes i.e. between skepticism and credulity, between black and white (there is only lighter and darker gray). :-)

[Dawid Dahl]

e: "If you sat down just one time and tried to be still for 30 minutes, you would realize pretty quickly the regular reoccurring pain at your knee aint a "verbal designation"."

 

I agree, the sensation of physical pain, so to speak, doesn't seem to me to be a verbal designation. That's why I find it valuable to speak about suchness. But that doesn't mean that pain has an essence, in the sense people who affirm "pain" usually reason conceptually. Because, as you said ["If there were inherent existence with causal power, how could suffering cease?"], if it had an essence, pain couldn't arise or cease.

 

"You seemed to be arguing pretty strongly for causation in the posts above. You finally come around? :-)"

 

I hope so! I don't think I have argued for 1, that is, for causal powers that are inherent in things. I'm sorry if it has seemed that way. What I have said is that when one verbally designates things, that is, when one, in an arbitrary manner, chops up experience into digital and manageable chunks, then a kind of regularity seems to appear. But then if one stops to verbally designate in that way, it it becomes senseless to speak about a regularity.

 

Like, if you sit and meditate and you have a pain in your knee, if there are no verbal designations, then it doesn't make any sense to say that X causes pain; there is simply a river-like flow of impressions (so to speak). And because "pain" isn't chopped up into a digital chunk, it can't be identified in time and space, and therefore not in any causal nexus. (Experientially, it's more like the pain is undifferentiated, it's not more this than that. In Hua Yen they talk about a kind of infinite inter-penetration. Furthermore, this is why a buddha's omniscience is possible, insofar as one likes to play with such concepts. Nothing has an own-essence, therefore, looking at or hearing one thing, you literally simultaneously hear/smell/feel/know/taste/see everything.)

 

"As long as regularity in terms of arising is also seen to be regularity in terms of passing away."

 

Well, yes. Of course. For me, because of regularity, our verbally designated things always seem to arise and pass away. Arising inevitably implies passing away, and vice versa.

 

Peace,

Dawid

[e]

Hey Dawid,
Thanks for the reply...I figured we would not be so far off once we chatted long enough.

In Hua Yen they talk about a kind of infinite inter-penetration. Furthermore, this is why a buddha's omniscience is possible, insofar as one likes to play with such concepts. Nothing has an own-essence, therefore, looking at or hearing one thing, you literally simultaneously hear/smell/feel/know/taste/see everything.)

Like one big omniscient mind eh? ;-)

 

peace

 

e

 

[kelamuni]

whata pile o crap. hahaha.

[Dawid Dahl]

"Like one big omniscient mind eh? ;-)"

 

A huge one.