https://app.getpocket.com/read/2863351551 Tags: Buddhism#media/article logic
- Buddhism is not like western logic in that it not only supports but embraces contradictions
- things can be both true and false at the same time and neither true and false at the same time Author:: aeon, Graham Priest Full Title:: Beyond True and False Tags:#media/article Link:: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/beyond-true-and-false
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- Summary::
- summary 1
* highlights from 2021-02-08
* This principle is called the catuskoti, meaning ‘four corners’. It insists that there are four possibilities regarding any statement: it might be true (and true only), false (and false only), both true and false, or neither true nor false.
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* Even so, you might be wondering how on earth something could be both true and false, or neither true nor false. In fact, the idea that some claims are neither true nor false is a very old one in Western philosophy. None other than Aristotle himself argued for one kind of example. In the somewhat infamous Chapter 9 of De Interpretatione, he claims that contingent statements about the future, such as ‘the first pope in the 22nd century will be African’, are neither true nor false. The future is, as yet, indeterminate
* Central to his teachings is the view that things are ‘empty’ (sunya). This does not mean that they are non-existent; only that they are what they are because of how they relate to other things. As the quotation at the beginning of this essay explains, their nature is to have no intrinsic nature
* our concepts apply only to things we can experience.
* There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth: not going all the way, and not starting.
* To say anything about it would merely succeed in making it part of our conventional reality; it is, therefore, ineffable. In particular, one cannot describe it by using any of the four possibilities furnished by the catuskoti.