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<html> <head><TITLE>Response to Tengado</TITLE></head> <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF"> <h3>Is Buddhism an axiomatic system?</h3> <p>(Note: this posting was way too long for the ZBB editor, so I've had to rewrite it as an HTML file. This process unfortunately lost any formatting within the quoted sections.) <p>OK, here's my reactions to <a href="http://www.spinnoff.com/zbb/viewtopic.php?p=336985#336985">Tengado's explication of Buddhism</a>. <p>I'm reluctant to get into this, because I don't really like throwing cold water on someone else's religion-- even if that person has been doing the same. But, well, you wanted a reaction, so here it is. <p>I asked for the explanation because you were making an unsubstantiated claim. It's not that I thought you were talking out of your hat, but on principle, when I see unsubstantiated claims, I ask for substantiation. When the attempted justifications are on the table, we can evaluate them and see where we really are. <p>That said, I'll respond to reasonable discussion, but I won't debate this stuff forever. The initial stages of a debate can be useful even across a wide gap, because people lay out their positions and one can find their assumptions. But extended debate is only possible if both sides can agree on methods and criteria, and there, I think we're too far apart. (To name just one issue, we'd obviously get nowhere if we never agree on what makes a belief system "consistent".) <p><blockquote><font color="#404060">Buddhism is perhaps most easily understood if it is viewed as being based an axioms, like in maths. These axioms are all taken from observation. 1. Everything is always changing. Nothing is permanent. Not one thing in the universe can be observed to be unchanging. All are processes of change. This applies to humans, to the mind, our bodies, our desires, everything. </font></blockquote> To an extent this is a truism... everything we see does seem to change. And yet, it's a hell of an induction, and induction is not a reliable guide to truth. Because the immediate surroundings of an ape-descendant look pretty volatile to his rather limited senses, we know that "nothing is permanent" in the whole universe? <p>Some things, though ultimately subject to change, are so long-lasting that we can rely on them for the astronomical future. The sun has been shining for billions of years and will shine for billions more. Many of the big craters on the moon have been there since soon after the formation of the solar system. Protons are not observed to decay; some theoretical models do suggest that they might do so with a half-life of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years. You're not likely to need something more stable than that. <p><blockquote><font color="#404060">2. This change is not unregulated. It is controlled by cause and effect. The law of cause and effect is the only thing that doesn't change. This also applies to everything - mind, desires, thoughts, everything. </font></blockquote> It's certainly more rational to believe that things have causes than to think that they don't. Nonetheless, it's an induction, and also runs into problems of verification. What's the cause for the Big Bang? What's the cause for the cause of the Big Bang? Are you truly comfortable with an infinite regress of causes? If so, why? <blockquote><font color="#404060">3. Dukkha, existential suffering, is an inherent part of life. We all suffer from it. </font></blockquote> This is too vague to really evaluate. The page you link to says "Dukkha is a term which includes all types of unpleasant experiences such as worry, fear, sorrow, dissatisfaction, disharmony, etc". Once again the problem is induction... I'll readily grant that I've felt these things, but I don't know about every human being throughout history. (Did Jesus feel dukkha? If you think so, how do you <b>know</b>, except by begging the question?) <blockquote><font color="#404060">These are just observations, that can be made by anyone. Indeed a 4th axiom could be 4. All of these things can be verified by personal experience, and moreover should be. Don't beleive just what you are told. [The Buddha taught this directly. The quote is in the page I linked to] </font></blockquote> As already noted, none of these things can be verified; it would take a superhuman omniscience to check on them even for our own planet. But let's go on, and see if, as you say, <p><blockquote><font color="#404060">The rest of Buddhism follows from these basic ideas. <p> Why does dukkha exist? According to 1 and 2, our minds are conditioned by cause and effect. The way they work is not some inherent essense of being that is unchangable. Evolution has given to us - by cause and effect condtioning - a certain default method of operation for our minds. We are essentially selfish. Think of the Selfish Gene. </font></blockquote> <p>OK, I will; in fact I reread chapter 12, "Nice Guys Finish First". Evolution doesn't support the idea that we are "essentially selfish". We, and the biological world as a whole, demonstrate both selfishness and altruism; indeed, life itself depends on massive displays of altruism at every level. The vast majority of the "selfish genes" of Dawkin's book die in order that a tiny number have the opportunity to reproduce. <p><blockquote><font color="#404060">Our mind has evolved to function in a way conducive to our survival in a competitive enviroment. As a result, we think in terms of oppositions and distinctions. Me and you, them and us. This is a natural consequence of the way the world is - an animal who behaves like "all is one" and views the predator as part of himself will get eate, and won't pass this behaviour on. Natural selection. </font></blockquote> <p>Nor will predator who decides that its offspring are prey. Or if you think altruism is limited to one's own species: a virus will soon go extinct if it's so malignant that its hosts always die quickly-- its hosts will die, and it will too. Viruses and hosts co-evolve to reduce the impact of the infection. <p><blockquote><font color="#404060">Our environment selects for this selfish behaviour, and so we now have it. [Note that the theory of evolution of species by natural selection is also a deductable consequence of Buddhism.] </font></blockquote> <p>Can you name a few Buddhists who deduced it before Darwin and Wallace? <p>If you think evolution is something we can deduce at this point, I can only wonder what you think evolution by natural selection means. It certainly doesn't proceed by "selfishness". <p><blockquote><font color="#404060">If we observe our life, we see that most of our suffering is caused by this self-oriented view. When we desire something, feel jealous of someone, worry for the future, fear death, any of these things, we are motivated by this self. </font></blockquote> <p>Very debatable. Hurricane Katrina caused immense suffering; I don't see that we can blame "the self" for any of it. And so far as I can see, I can desire virtuous or neutral things, I can fear altruistically, or feel righteous sorrow. <blockquote><font color="#404060">What is the solution for dukkha? Having identified the cause of dukkha, the solution is obvious. Cultivate a lessening of the self oriented ego. All Buddhist practises can be seen to be aimed at doing this. Cultivating compassion means intentionally overriding your instinctive desire to do only what benefits you, and to sacrifice your selfish desires for the benefit of others. </font></blockquote> <p>On the whole, of course, I'm in favor of compassion. It's all to the good that Buddhism advocates compassion rather than cruelty. But since we're supposed to be using just logic here, I have to point out that it's by no means obvious that compassion is the answer to all suffering. <p>First, by your own statement, evolution favors a certain selfishness. So this new statement implies that evolution doesn't know what it's doing. The chapter I pointed to in Dawkins is good reading here. The best competitive strategies are altruistic, but not wholly forgiving. A wholly beneficient strategy gets whomped by nastiness. <p>Second, selfishness is the basis of our economic system-- which has worked out better <b>for all classes, rich and poor</b>, than anything Buddhism historically came up with. Selfishness is the basis of capitalism: we work hard because we want to get ahead. It's also the basis of democracy: in most things I'm a better judge of what I need and what's best for me than some distant king or bureaucrat. <p>Thirdly, what does "compassion", in itself, tell us about how to recover from hurricanes, or how to turn a poor country into a rich one, or how to foil a psychopath? It may help motivate us to do so, but other faculties are required to mitigate these evils, and often the most effective strategy is actually counter-intuitive if the only tool in your toolbox is compassion. E.g., narcissists, alcoholics, and gang members all behave worse if you just roll over and act 'nice'. <p> <blockquote><font color="#404060">All the other Buddhist teachings and doctrines can be seen to follow logically and coherently from these basic observations also. <p>Karma <br>One that lots of westerners are confused about. Firstly, it is not the same as the Hindu notion of karma, or any new age use that might be commonly used. In Buddhism it has a specific definition. The law of karma (or more correctly-kamma vipaka, but most people abbreviate it) is simply the law of cause and effect. It is not some supernatural entity or intellligence that will wreak retribution on you for your bad deeds. It is not the ancient Greek Nemesis or the Furies, it is not fate. Observation 1 says that all is changing. This applies to our mind too. This we know to be true from experience. Throughout your entire life have you always reacted in the same way to the same things? Have you always had the same views on thngs? </font></blockquote> <p>To all things, no. But some aspects of my personality can be traced back to infancy. <p><blockquote><font color="#404060">Of course not. A trivial example is between childhood and adulthood. You do not act the same way you did as a child. But with closer observation, you will see that we do not maintain the same views on things as adults either. Over the course of your life, your views and ways of thinking change. We learn. We adapt. We are always changing. our minds are not static and unchanging, they change slowly and smoothly from day to day, moment to moment. They are are always ours, we think, but they are not always the same. Observation 2 says this change is not random, It is reguated by cause and effect. These changes are caused by many things - external stimuli (if santa claus smacks a child, the child will feel a lot less happy to see santa the next time), internal things like hormones, and also our own volitional thoughts and acts. Right now you have a choice in what you can do, and whatever you choose will have an effect on the rest of your thoughts int he future. If I choose to keep a lost wallet I find, I might as a result feel guilty and act as if I am bad and deserve punishment. If I give it back to the rightful owner I mgith as a result feel proud and become arrogant. Differnet people will react in deifferent ways, but an effect will be there. No actions have no effects, andthe way they all interact can be very hard to understand and see. [The Butterfly Effect and chaos theory is also a logical consequence of Buddhism.] Karma is simply this cause and effect relationship in the mind. All your choices will leave imprints in your mind. If you make choices that cause sufering motivated by your selfishness, it will reinforce your selfish mindset, causing you further dukkha. If you make a choice that is compassionate and unselfish, it will weaken your selfish mindset, reducing your future dukkha. You cannot escape those consequence because that is just how the mid and the whole universe works: cause and effect. That is karma. Nothing supernatural or weird. </font></blockquote> This certainly doesn't follow from your first two axioms; at best you could make it a third one. At the physical level it's quite wrong. A physical effect can die down-- throw a rubber ball into an empty box and you'll see an impressive display of action, but ultimately the ball stops. (Yes, the energy becomes heat; but the heat is indistinguishable from the heat that could be created some other way. Not all information is preserved; that's a consequence of entropy.) <p>At the mental level, I just don't see it. Actually it can be quite hard to make a change in the way one's brain works. Try learning a language: frustratingly, it seems that one can see the same word a dozen times without it registering. Memories and even beliefs fade with time. Even evils can fade-- there <b>are</b> some ills, though not all, that time can mend. <p>A computer doesn't retain something for every state its memory has been in, and I don't see that neurons do either. Most of us don't have photographic memories. We seem instead to retain a fairly vague précis of what's happened to us, and even that can get holes in it. So it seems very possible to me that a large fraction of our mental life simply disappears without consequence. <p> <blockquote><font color="#404060">As a logical result of this comes Buddhist ethics and behaviour and Buddhist practise. Since we know our actions will have an affect on our midn in the future, and we now how it works (even thought we lack the abilit yto predict it entirely due to the complexity - chaos theory. Too many variables and the system is sensitive to small differences), we can use this knowledge to plan our actions. Intentionally do the things that will cause the effects we want. We can control the evolution of the mind, cultivate it like a garden. Gardeners know that plants come from seeds. It is not a random miracle. Either you can just chuck seeds in the garden willy-nilly without even being aare of what they will grow into, or you can select, plant and nurture the ones you want, and uproot the ones you don't. This is what Buddhism does. It understands that your mind is like a garden, your thoughts and actions are seeds and that they all will sprout and grow. So it quite sensibly pays attention to the seeds it plants. </font></blockquote> Not everything you plant in a garden grows. Beyond that, this is too vague to comment on. <blockquote><font color="#404060">Non-existence of a permanent self <br>Our mind, our body, our thoughts, everything we consider to be ourself are changing all the time - they are a dynamically evolving collection of things, forever changing under the influence of cause and effect, from without and within. As a result, it is quite logical to claim there is no such thing as a permanent, essential core of one'self. If it's always changing it isn't permanant. Not a difficult conclusion. </font></blockquote> Not logical at all; it seems like an inability to grasp that a complex thing has an identity beyond that of its parts. Entities such as General Motors, the Chicago Cubs, the Hohenzollerns, or the United States can persist for decades, every single component person being replaced, and yet retain histories, traditions, strategies, and even physical attributes. The Colorado River isn't a static collection of molecules, and yet we can talk about the effects of the entire river over time-- the Grand Canyon is a pretty spectacular one. <p>On my foot I have a scar from a shard of glass I cut myself on almost forty years ago. Very likely every molecule that made up my foot at that time is gone, as gone as the piece of glass. Yet it makes sense to say that it's the same foot and the same scar. <p><blockquote><font color="#404060">Rebirth <br> Buddhism - as it does not teach the existence of a permanent soul - cannot teach reincarnation. It teaches rebirth. This is a consequence of cause and effect. All actions have consequences. So what happens when one being dies? What happens to the effects of his final thoughts? Buddhism teaches that [for slightly more complicated reasoning about whether effects can be of a different type to their causes, but that is more complex] those effects, the results of the karma are manifested in the birth of a new being. It is not a reincarnation of the old being; the old being is gone and no longer exists. It is simply that what would have been the next momentary state of the subconscious mind of the deceased being is instead the first momentary state of mind of the next one. It then carries on evolving under cause and effect, under the influences from all the new experiences and thoughts and hormones it has, and is very very soon totally different to what it would have developed into had the previous being not died. So in no way can it be consdered to be the same being. </font></blockquote> And in no way can it be considered to be a consequence of general laws of cause and effect. You're positing that some sort of physical or supernatural activity can transfer something as subtle as a state of mind across unknown distances. Science certainly can't supply any such vehicle, nor is there any conceivable way to test the idea. <p><blockquote><font color="#404060">For pramatic reasons, these are normally presented first, but if were looking at the logical consistency they make more sense shown as what they are - deduction from more basic ideas, and a summary of the basic teachings. </font></blockquote> (Omitted, as the points I'd immediately make are covered above.) <blockquote><font color="#404060">Measure a triangle and its angles do not add up to 180 degrees. it just doesn't apply to the real world. </font></blockquote> It's nothing to do with Buddhism, but I have to point out that this statement is incorrect. You're remembering that there's a problem with Euclidean geometry, but not what it is. It's quite correct for a plane. <blockquote><font color="#404060">And it does. All of the training methods it suggests can be tested. Do them and see if they actually do yield the results promised. And they do. It has been done for 2500 years and they work. They do reduce selfishness, increase compassion, and Buddhists are found to suffer less and less from dukkha. </font></blockquote> <p>It's nice to see a claim of testability; but I'm afraid that doesn't in itself constitute testability. First, you must be crystal-clear on what you're testing. How do you intend to measure the amount of selfishness, the amount of compassion, the amount of dukkha? <p>Second, you need a control-- really, for a complex hypothesis, several controls. Have some of your subjects do nothing. Others should try Buddhism according to your prescriptions. Yet others should do all the external activities (e.g. they sit down silently when the others meditate) but with no internal ideology at all. Yet others follow Christianity or Taoism. External conditions (the subjects' age, race, social position, etc.) must be the same between groups. Make it as close to a double-blind test as possible: assign the system to follow randomly, so you can't unconsciously (say) assign Buddhism to all the most promising subjects, or give them special attention as you go. Report back on how they all do. <p>And thirdly, "working" does not in itself endorse a practice. Newtonian physics "works" too, for vast realms of experience-- we built a civilization on it. But it's wrong, or more precisely, it's wrong in some areas. Many alchemical procedures "worked", in that they predicted certain effects and those effects happened, and yet the alchemical theory behind them was hopeless. <p>(The philosophically minded will wonder if <b>anything</b> can be said to work. Philosophically, probably not; but to compare ideologies, the level of "working" I expect is simpler than absolute certainty: I want the theory to explain what works <b>better than alternative theories</b>. So, I firmly reject Newtonian physics only because we've got a better physics in hand. If Buddhistic practices "work"-- and that's a big if-- that's not good enough, if other ideologies explain the working better than Buddhism itself does. <p><blockquote><font color="#404060">Then we have enlightenment. The big weird supernatural part of buddhism. </font></blockquote> [omitted some material covered earlier] <blockquote><font color="#404060">The quite logical question is how do you know the people were not just self-hypnotised into such a view. Well, a quick look at the training methods is sufficient. None resemble hypnosis or suggestion in anyway. There are no attempts at drumming in the correct view. An example is the main zen practise of shikantaza [pactised under differet names as a part of every school, to my knowledge. Zen just focuses on it]. It is a kind of meditation where you just sit without fiocussing on anything. You simply observe. Observe your thoughts, the noises around you, but without engaging in thought about them. Thoughts arise naturally, but you just observe them with attention, with out grabbing them and indulging them like we usually do. You just sit back and watch everything, rather than running around and joining in intentionally. This can hardly be considered a hypnosis technique that will instil the same deliberate message to everyone. </font></blockquote> <p>Well, that's one straw man down. Though I'm a little curious to know if you've ever actually been hypnotized, to be so sure of yourself. Do you think hypnotists achieve their effects by repeating a command over and over again? <p>That hardly exhausts the possibilities, though. Is this practice any better than prayer, or taking a walk, or cuddling with your significant other, or just sitting quietly without any Buddhism in you at all? <p><blockquote><font color="#404060">Find me what you beleive to be an inconsistency in Buddhism's teachings, and I can almost guarantee [I never said there were no gaps. I'm not as enchanted or in love as zomp might think, plus I'm not an expert] that I can point out either the mistake in your understadning of the teaching that led to the flaw, or I can point out how it is solved by a logical follow on from a basic idea. </font></blockquote> <p>Now, I fully expect that you can do that-- that is, to <b>your</b> satisfaction. The thing is, you haven't come close to recognizing my basic point all along: <b>these sorts of experiences are common to any intellectual who has adopted a belief system</b>. By this point, your mind has probably made itself invulnerable. Any incoming contrary message will be deflected, just as you've said: you'll decide that the message is a "mistake" and you'll create a counter-message that satisfies <b>you</b>. If you run into a message you can't immediately counter, you'll look for an answer in trustworthy sources-- that is, ones you know are completely safe from anti-Buddhist messages. <p>That may sound harsh or cynical, but I don't think it is. I think it's just how a large class of human beings are. In itself, it's not even a bad thing, and may be a very good thing for a person. Belief systems are useful and even beautiful things, and really mastering one-- which requires going through this phase-- is probably better than bumbling along forever with the half-formed, less-than-half-examined belief system you'd have otherwise. <p>This state of invulnerability does not in itself say if your belief system is "true" or not. The process reliably occurs, for instance, if the system you're mastering is quantum mechanics, which is about the truest thing we know of. Nonetheless, for questions of truth, I think it's wise to get beyond the invulnerability phase. Personally, I don't think <b>any</b> belief system is "true" in a universal sense. (And that includes systems whose basis is attacking other systems, e.g. agnosticism or deconstructionism.) I don't entirely trust anyone who isn't worried that parts of their belief system are wrong. <p></body> </html>