Hacker News Reader

Comment by dusklight | Hacker News Reader

This article is kinda missing the point. The "empty" is the undefined. That which has yet to exist, or never will. There is that which is uncountable, for example the number of corners in a circle. Just because it is a contradiction doesn't mean it is wrong -- maybe your models are wrong. The usefulness of eastern philosophy is to free yourself of preconceived ideas. I think it is obviously clear to everyone today that there are modes of thought that are far inferior to logic. I think it would be supremely arrogant to presume that logic is the best mode of thought that humanity will ever come up with. To try to shoehorn everything to fit into a logical framework feels akin to epicycles to me.

View on HN

Maybe it is missing your pet theory, but the article has a definite point and Priest argues it at length. You seem not to have grasped the article because you refer to logic as something singular that should not be deemed superior to other modes of thought, while the article demonstrates there are many different, mathematically rigorous conceptions of logic. Epicycles are a non-sequitur here, because there is not a particular proposition that you set out to prove with whatever explanation you can find. Rather the goal is to find a logic that does not break down when presented with paradoxes.

There can be an infinite number of different rigorous conceptions of logic, while at the same time there are also an infinite number of modes of thought outside of logic .. we know the ones like instinct, superstition, and religion that are considered inferior to logic. Is it possible for there to exist a mode of thought yet to be found or invented that is better?

I wouldn't say we "know the ones like instinct, superstition, and religion [...] are considered inferior to logic". They are not comparable, unless you formulate criteria for what is better, and then you can easily bias the comparison towards one or the other.

If there exist an infinite number of modes of thought as you posit, then yes it is possible that the best one is not among the ones we know of now.

I don't really think of it this way though, because logic is not supposed to give us something new, not supposed to give surprising conclusions. Logic formalizes the steps you can take to arrive at valid conclusions. However, what constitutes valid conclusions is ultimately based on our intuitions, it is what the logic is founded on (comparable to how mathematics is ultimately based on accepting axioms).

>>The "empty" is the undefined. That which has yet to exist, or never will.

The "empty" is the un-defined. Direct experience, that which can't be talked about, labeled or categorized. That (this) which has always existed, and always will.

The void is that which can't be named. It's all around you! You can never leave it because it is you, stretching from your center in all directions.

There are no contradiction here, because you need a logical layer over reality to have contradictions.

Tat twam asi!

So true. To experience the un-manifested one has to just be actively aware: - listen to sounds/silence; - look at where you're looking out from; - feel the tickle of the body's energy. Bluntly said, you have to fucking shut-up!

Here are some links to people that go directly to the essential: http://www.eckharttolle.com http://www.adyashanti.org http://www.headless.org

Did you read the article?

> Just because it is a contradiction doesn't mean it is wrong

That's basically precisely one of the points of this article.

>I think it would be supremely arrogant to presume that logic is the best mode of thought that humanity will ever come up with.

Then what is a mode of thought, and what would constitute superiority to the many and varied plausibility-preserving logics we've invented thus far?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com