Right. To judge a matter from the outside without as you say “getting one’s hands dirty” with experimentation with it, if that’s possible, is antithetical to science.
Buddhist scriptures speak of the not-self nature of all phenomena. Things to do not possess a self. Nothing in itself contains an absolute identity. This means a rejection of the principle of identity which is the basis of formal logic. According to this principle, A must be A, B must be B, and A cannot be B. The doctrine of not-self says A is not A, B is not B and A can be B.
To understand not-self, consider the concept of impermanence. Everything is impermanent. All is in a state of perpetual change. Nothing remains the same even for the shortest imaginable period of time. Since things transform themselves ceaselessly, they can’t maintain their identity for even the smallest time unit. Not being able to fix their identity things are not-self, that is, they lack an absolute identity. Not having a fixed identity A is no longer the A of the preceding moment. Hence, A is not A. Impermanence is synonymous with not-self. In time things are impermanent. In space they lack a fixed identity. This holds true for all physical phenomena and for our psyche as well.
impermanence is an ontological technicality that has absolutely no existential cash value in the world. it’s the kind of knowledge that would make no difference if you didn’t have it. moreover, you could produce equally compelling arguments that there is permanence if you put some Eleatics on that shit.
name one thing you would do differently in life now that you believe you are impermanent and have no ‘self’. i mean i agree… we aren’t ‘selves’ in the dualistic sense of there being a soul and a body. hume put an end to that nonsense. but how much does getting this concept correct really matter in life? what if you found out you were a permanent, immortal soul that will never cease existing. maybe you’d live more recklessly. okay. but if you weren’t a permanent, immortal soul, and you still lived recklessly, what would that matter if everything is impermanent anyway?
Without the idea of permanence, life itself would be impossible.
Food remains food, shelter remains shelter, danger remains danger.
Not forever but for a sufficiently long time.
“Absolutely”? The principle of not-self brings to light the gap between things themselves and the concepts we have of them. Things are dynamic and alive, whereas our concepts are static. Seeing this can be quite liberating.
Look at a table. Do you suppose the table itself and your concept of it are identical?
I am simply making the distinction between things that can be demonstrated as in fact true and those that cannot. In fact, John does believe in immortality and salvation. In fact, Jane is wrong to say that he does not.
On the other hand, is John able to demonstrate that what he believes about immortality and salvation in his head is in fact true?
In our interactions with each other, what else is there but this fundamental distinction? Grappled with to the best of our ability out in a particular world understood in a particular way. There is what each of us as individuals believes about the coronavirus and there is what we are able to demonstrate that all rational men and women are obligated to believe in turn.
Thus, if some believe it is largely “fake news” concocted by Trump’s enemies to drive him from office, are they able to provide enough evidence to substantiate the claim?
What on earth does that have to do with establishing whether in fact Trump is president of the United States? Instead, people deal with his performance in office [re the coronavirus] based on what I construe to be their political prejudices derived from value judgments derived from the manner in which I construe human interactions here in my signature threads. And here it’s not whether their logic is “fuzzy or multi-state”, but the extent to which there are limits to logic in a No God world bursting at the seams with conflicting goods.
A table is a pattern of mass that we recognize and agree to call ‘table’.
The concept is loose and flexible enough that small changes don’t alter a table’s tableness. If you burn a wooden table, then the pattern disappears but short of complete destruction, it has permanence.
The thing itself that more or less fits your concept of a table, is not graspable to you as it is in itself in the first place, and is not the same thing from one moment to the next. And neither are you. Eventually the table will no longer be a table and you will no longer be you. Impermanence.
I don’t know how to make the distinction any clearer. You believe something in your head about Buddhism. Historical facts. Empirical facts. Demographic facts. Personal facts with regard to your own relationship to it. You are or are not a Buddhist. You know or do not know someone who is or is not a Buddhist. Or you are not sure about it. Something, anything that can in fact be shown to all rational men and women as true rather than false.
How else could we interact with the least dysfunction if not in making this distinction? Whether in regard to Buddhism or the coronavirus. What facts can be established?
Ah, but in having established a set of facts, how about our complex and often conflicting moral and political reaction to those facts? How is true and false established here?
On this thread, in regard to enlightened behavior here and now said to reconfigure into karma there and then in the form of reincarnation and Nirvana.
Okay, but what does that have to do with my attempt here to have it demonstrated to my own satisfaction? If I hear that anyone has demonstrated the actual existence of reincarnation to anyone else at all, I’m interested. After all, I’m here because what I believe is true “in my head”, is that death = the obliteration of “I” for all the rest of eternity.
That’s why I am curious above as to how particular Buddhists are reacting to the coronavirus pandemic around the globe. There have already been over 7,500 deaths from it. And I am clearly in the most “at risk” group. What then would Buddhists imagine the fate of these “souls” – my “soul” – to be, given their own understanding of Buddhism.
How might reasonable men and women be expected to understand how the fate of one’s self is intertwined with that which Buddhists believe about life after death? How does that actually even “work” sans God?
Again, with so much at stake here for the millions now at risk of exposure, isn’t it a reasonable request to probe deeper into the beliefs of any religious faith?
Or, in being one of KTs “assholes”, am I clearly to be excluded from these discussions?
I take this small section of one of his posts :
I tell him what I think he is saying :
Then I ask him, if my understanding of his position is correct, then does the reasoning apply to Buddhism:
Does he answer “Yes, that’s right” or “No, that’s not right because of some particular point”?
No, he can’t do that.
Note to others…
I stand by the points I raised above. And the fact that he chooses not to respond to them at all.
Or, sure, I am completely guilty of that which he accuses me of.
I’m just not sure what that is.
Sure, if, in fact, someone does demonstrate to a Buddhist that reincarnation is a real thing, then between the two of them it is clearly demonstrated.
But how in fact does that get me any closer to believing it? How does any of this get me any closer to understanding how Buddhists think and feel about the coronavirus pandemic and the extent to which what they believe reflects that which can demonstrated such that all rational and virtuous human beings are obligated to believe the same?
In regard to karma, enlightened behavior, reincarnation and Nirvana…as that relates to what over and over and over again I point out is my own interest in all this: connecting the dots between the behaviors one chooses on this side of the grave as this relates to that which one anticipates will be their fate on the other side of it.
Then that must also be true of physics, math, etc … if two physicists agree on some physics problem, “then between the two of them it is clearly demonstrated”.
“But how in fact does that get me any closer to believing it?”
Yet he repeatedly posts as if physics is somehow different, as if the agreement of physicists makes something a true fact and all rational people are obligated to believe it. That is his is/ought distinction, isn’t it?
I could be reading something into his posts that is not there. 
Again, I am either clearly not getting your point or you are clearly not getting how your point is irrelevant to mine. Physicists deal by and large with interactions in the either/or world. Something either is or is not in fact in sync with the laws of physics. It is only when they probe the really, really big and the really, really small that facts often give way to conjectures. Theoretical speculation predicated on the gap between what can be known by the human species having come into existence from the evolution of life on Earth, and all there is to be known going back either to God or to an understanding of existence itself.
With the coronavirus, biologists, medical specialists, doctors, nurses etc., become the equivalent of physicists insofar as collecting all that can in fact be known about this particular ominous bug.
What then do various government officials and politicians do with these facts insofar as creating public policy in any given community? What comes closest to the most rational behaviors here.
Then the part where philosophers and ethicists and practitioners of one or another religious faith react to that. The part where behaviors on this side of the grave are ultimately connected to one’s fate on the other side.
The part you and others here avoid discussing at almost every opportunity. Why? Because, really, what in fact can you demonstrate as true for all rational and virtuous human beings given what you think you know is true in your head.
Why would I discuss it when I don’t think all rational people are obligated to think and act as I do.
I don’t even get how such an obligation would/could work.
I understand why people steal, cheat, kill. If they do that, then they are not going to be bound by some abstract obligation.
Your demonstration would show that those things are objectively immoral but those people still have the capacity to do those things and to be called immoral. And they will do them.
What’s so special about this demonstration?
Then you are not a moral or a political objectivist. The main focus of my arguments.
Okay, but what then are you?
If you argue that there are in fact actual rational people in regard to conflicting goods, and they are not obligated to think like you do then aren’t you obligated to think as they do?
Otherwise that would make you irrational.
Only discussing this up in the clouds is one thing, bringing our own moral narrative and political agenda out into the world of actual human interactions, another thing altogether.
And here we need a context. The coronavirus. What are you saying…that you believe in an objective morality here that rational people have access to but that your own assessment may not be rational at all?
Okay, then how would rational peole go about demonstrating the most sensible way in which virtuous people should behave in a particular context whereby conflicts erupt over the best way to react to it?
Isn’t that basically what I am trying to avoid here myself? Don’t discuss stealing, cheating, killing etc., by referencing some religious scripture, or political ideology, or social/economic ism, or deontological assumption or assessments of nature. Instead, recognize how the experiences that encompass the life that you have lived in a particular historical, cultural and experiential context is far more likely to have shaped and molded your own rendition of the existential “I”.
Of course we don’t make that point about demonstrations in the either/or world.
There something is either demonstrated or it is not. Thus the extraordinary technologies over the past decades are ample proof regarding what either is or is not in sync with what is in fact true.
But I suspect that to the extent that truly rational men and women could in fact demonstrate the most sensible and ethical manner in which to react to the coronavirus, that would be deemed special indeed.
What indeed? Label me.
I just said that obligations don’t make sense to me. Why would this “reversed” obligation be any different?
I have to admit that I can’t figure out the logic here. How did irrationality suddenly enter into the discussion?
Stealing is not irrational in lots of situations but it’s not a good thing.
Again, you’re interested in some sort of demonstration with an emphasis on “most sensible” and probably “optimal” and “obligatory”. I just expressed doubt about the value of such demonstrations. Obviously one can argue that this is better than that for reasons A, B and C. It doesn’t mean that anyone will accept and even if they accept it they may not act on it.
What does that have to do with being bound by an obligation?
I don’t get how you imagine that this obligation would work. My concern has nothing to do with an existential “I”.
I guess what’s happening here is that you are really focused on “the most sensible and ethical manner” and I’m not. And for some reason, which I don’t get, you really want and need that “most”, “optimal”, “obligatory” answer.
The language of Zen always aims at destroying the habit-energies of those who only know how to think conceptually.
Notice the use of the passive - my emphasis above. Instead of taking responsibility for what he wants, he makes it seem like some vague consensus (of experts, or rational people, of people in general…?) would deem this special. Talk about an is/ought sneaky sentence. He wants to have an objective ethical stance on, for example, corona, and instead of taking responsibility for being someone yearning to be objectivist (and since he’s not he’s frozen), he makes it seem like this desire is objective by using the passive form.
And who try to solve all types of problems with rumination. You need to fix that robot arm at work, well, some time doing troubleshooting coupled with analysis, sure, good strategy. Trying to understand the nature of reality or yourself or how to feel better or what’s wrong, spinning your habitual thoughts will, drumroll, produce habitual thoughts. And these did not solve your problem.