Thanks. I would add that for most people monisms like Buddhism is a maelstrom and the for the monists realism (with the SO split) are maelstroms and I think the latter group thinks of realism as a kind of maelstrom. Some descriptions of Maya for example sound a bit like a maelstrom one gets sucked into.
How did your intuition become so powerful? What is the basis of your intuition? How do you know that your intuition isn’t wrong?
Of course he will have his own answer, but one must trust one’s intuition or one is lost. Of course one can rely on it in situations where one shouldn’t or on issues where one’s intuition is off. Intuition is fallible. No epistemology works without trust in intuition for the individual.
To me, anything that leads to a tautology–either rhetorical or logical–is a descent into a maelstrom. It can be political and/or philosophical–but I think they both stem from psychological egoism–sometimes pathological, psychological egoism. Look at the current political candidates. They may be drowned in the maelstrom and they may pull lots of other people down with them, but they continue, out of egoism–to espouse their tautologies.
And they always have followers.
Is Buddhism a monism? I don’t think so. But maybe that’s a subtle point.
I guess I’ll take your questions last to first.
I don’t know that my intuition isn’t wrong. I think it was in the Determinism-Free Will as Duck-Rabbit thread that I explicitly stated that my intuition is just what I need to get by. I said that it’s important to keep eyes and ears open, and what I didn’t explicitly state there but I hope it’s obvious - you’ve got to stay critically engaged. It’s not just a passive “I don’t need to pay any attention to this issue” kind of thing. I really do desire a robust answer to the problem. Maybe I always will. But as the problem stands, there is no robust answer to the problem and I won’t invent some clever trick to convince myself that the problem doesn’t exist. Conceptual tricks don’t resolve conflicting deep-seated beliefs.
The basis of my intuition is all my experience, rational thinking, experimentation, etc. - my whole life - as a thinking and feeling person who’s lived in this world for 40+ years. Intuition isn’t something that stands radically apart from rational thought. Intelligent intuition is trusting that one particular way of knowing, or one methodology, doesn’t trump all others, like a cancer spreading through a formerly healthy body.
Is my intuition powerful? In a sense yes, in a sense no. It’s not so powerful that I can convince others of what I believe based on my own intuition. That’s both the strength and limitation of this kind of intuition. Intuition is about seeing the big picture, and seeing how things relate to each other. That’s a strong outlook. But a good lawyer on the other hand knows how to make the big picture narrow, and make a clear and robust point that can’t be refuted. And that has all the power of a maelstrom.
If you read Poe’s “A Descent into the Maelström”, which is stronger? The maelstrom itself? Or the wide world around it that isn’t itself sucked in?
That’s a good short answer, imo.
I guess I just wanted to come back and say that though you’re correct in my opinion, I think such beliefs (at least with Buddhism - not sure about Daoism) are just folk beliefs. This kind of monistic thinking is not endorsed by informed Buddhists.
Of course there is the practice of seeing everything/everyone as Buddha, but this doesn’t count at all, as Buddhist teachings aren’t about finding some kind of ultimate existent. Seeing everything/everyone as Buddha is seeing that everything/everyone is basically an open situation. There are no closed books, and “reducing” everything to “Buddha” in the sense you convey here is to get that message backwards. It’s hard for me to see how seeing situations as pregnant with possibility because nothing is permanent, independent, or truly single is either a maelstrom or a monism.
Are you sure you’re talking about determinism? Seems more like fatalism to me
Hi Septimus. Can you clarify the difference? To me the difference is only that it is not necessary that the determinist expresses his determinism as fatalism (a psychological manifestation of the belief). But, ironically, according to the determinist it can’t be helped whether one is also a fatalist or not!
I take predeterminism to be identical to determinism. If you don’t, then perhaps it’s for that reason that you don’t strongly correlate determinism and fatalism.
Abstract argues that
While a determinist should be more lenient on the probability of the future, whereas fatalists agree on complete submission and irreversibility of the future.
“Not necessarily due to causality” is the only difference I see, personally. A fatalist may be a fatalist because of his belief in Zeus.
How is it that a determinist “should be more lenient on the probability of the future”?
I don’t think there are any robust answers in philosophy. That’s why we keep going round and round on this forum, in life and throughout history.
Maelstroms, ideological black holes, call them whatever you want, they are troubling and difficult to let go of. Anyone can understand that people get fed up about them. However, we’re no better off philosophically to ignore the problems and condescend to those who would explore such views.
People overcompensate when they’re uncomfortable. More than other people, it is required that the philosopher be able to endure discomfort. Whereas many people are adept at ridding themselves of their own cognitive dissonance, a philosopher should be attuned to his dissonance and allow it to stand uncomfortably naked before him.
I disagree. But I don’t think there is a robust compatibilism yet. Maybe in a few hundred years there will be.
Well said, Fuse.
You mean that you are committed to compatibilism and you want some proof. What if it’s just an untenable philosophy?
I’m not sure “committed” is the right word.
Untenable how? I assume the way cause and effect works is orderly, and I assume I can make actual (not illusory) choices. That serves me well. In fact how does it serve the determinist well to assume he knows everything that can be possibly be known about how cause and effect works? Can he not have misunderstood something? I think we can work with provisional theories; in fact, I believe that is the best way to approach all theories. Without that approach, theory is just dogma.
This is what seems incompatible. How do you make ‘actual’ choices? Where does the decision come from? It would appear necessary to be able to make an uncaused decision.
A determinist doesn’t say he knows all there is to know - he only says that everything is cause and effect.
Phyllo, I’m confused. You did take part in the duck/rabbit thread, right? I spent a lot of time there making the point that these two basic views are incompatible.