DieCommie said:

Really?  Whats the question?

Thats news to me. 

---

teknix said:

viktor said:

There used to be great materialist vs. idealist debates on here, but the champions of the materialist side (OC, Icelander, Ped) have all gone.

Did the materialists lose?

---

Yeah it seems much quieter in here now, what happen to those guys and diploid?

---

Icelander is alive and well in Oregon. CosmicJoke and Jokeshopbeard visited him in July. OC is still here, but perhaps his invectives against "mystic-heads" (an epithet he applied to me) has mellowed. Diploid moved from Florida to Chicago or its vicinity, I believe, where he passed away from causes I do not know.

teknix said:

DieCommie said:

Really?  Whats the question?

Thats news to me. 

---

The question that begins the process of the scientific method.

---

Quote:

Wikipedia:
Pratītyasamutpāda , commonly translated as dependent origination, or dependent arising, states that all dharmas ("things") arise in dependence upon other dharmas: "if this exists, that exists; if this ceases to exist, that also ceases to exist." The principle is applied in the twelve links of dependent origination doctrine in Buddhism

---

MarkostheGnostic said:

Icelander is alive and well in Oregon. CosmicJoke and Jokeshopbeard visited him in July.

---

Quote:

(...) But skeptical philosophy is a cross-cultural phenomenon. A rich skeptical tradition is present in Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophy; the Prasarigika-Madhyamaka tradition particularly is startlingly akin to the Western skeptical tradition, in terms of its aims, methodology, and philosophical problematic. Nagarjuna and Candrakirti, like Sextus, emphasize the therapeutic nature of philosophy:

"39 Since ultimately action is empty, If it is understood it is seen to be that way.
Since action does not exist, That which arises from action does not exist either.
73 When one understands that this arises from that, All of the false views are thereby refuted.
Hatred, anger and delusion are eliminated, And undefiled, one achieves nirvana."

(Nagarjuna Sunyatasaptati)

They, too, are concerned to develop skeptical problems and skeptical solutions thereto regarding personal identity and the existence of the external world, the self, morality, and meaning. The arguments are immediately accessible and familiar to Western philosophers.

But these Buddhist skeptics, because of their cultural and philosophical contexts are a bit more explicit about certain features of the skeptical method than their European counterparts. In particular, the theory of the relation of skeptical positions to dogmatic positions is more carefully worked out; the nature of the suspension of belief or "positionlessness" is more explicitly characterized; and the relation between skeptical methodology and the role of convention in the life of the skeptic is more apparent in these accounts. There are numerous other interesting points of similarity and difference between the traditions, but I want to trade on these three expository advantages, using the Prasarigika-Madhyamaka formulation of skepticism to motivate and to illuminate certain obscurities in the skepticism of Europe. This is an essay with a complex agenda. I hope to demonstrate the possibility and desirability of European and Buddhist skeptical arguments together, as a vehicle for their mutual illumination. Finally, I hope to defend the skeptical enterprise as a much-needed corrective to some contemporary philosophical confusions(...)

Consider skepticism about the existence of the external world. The reificationist argues that since we apprehend qualities, there must be some material substance in which they inhere — that there is a substantial, independent external world, whose furniture consists in material substance and its attributes. The nihilist, on the other hand (perhaps Berkeley or a Yogacara fellow-traveler), argues that we can make no sense of the concept of such material substance or substratum, or that if we can, we can never have knowledge of it. So, she or he argues, there is no external world, or at least we have no knowledge of any such world.

The skeptic concedes to the nihilist that we have no idea of material substance as a permanent substratum for attributes, or that if we had a concept of such a thing, we could never have knowledge of its existence. Think of Hume ("that unintelligible chimera of a substance" [1922, p. 222]) or Nagarjuna ("[47] Form is not apprehended as inherently existing"). 5 Candraklrti puts it this way (Prasannapada 420.): "One might think: Even though a cause of material form is unintelligible it could be that inasmuch as form exists as effect, since that exists, it will have to exist as cause as well. If form existed as effect, that would be so. But, it doesn't exist."

But the skeptic denies that our ordinary discourse about and use of material objects in any way implicates the concept of a substance with attributes. Instead, the skeptic argues, our conventions and practices regarding the use of, talk about, and justification of knowledge claims regarding external objects get their point just from their role in our individual and collective lives. It is these practices that give sense to talk about objects, and not the existence of substance.

Or consider skepticism with regard to the existence of the self. The reificationist (for example, Descartes or the typical Hindu philosopher) argues that experience presupposes a persistent self as its subject. The nihilist (Hume in setting up the problem, or Sextus) argues that in view of the incoherence of such a notion, or its unknowability, there can be no such self, or at least no selfknowledge. The skeptical reconstruction proceeds by noting that the self is, as Hume puts it, a "forensic" or, as Tsong khapa puts it, a "conventional" concept. The identification and discussion of selves presupposes not a substance to which we have privileged access, but conventions regarding the applications of names, attribution of responsibility, and so forth.

Think of skepticism with regard to meaning. The reificationist (Frege, Old Testament Wittgenstein) argues that there are particular semantic facts that constitute or determine the meanings of words and that we grasp when we know word meaning. The semantic nihilist (Bhartrhari on some readings or Wittgenstein's imaginary interlocutor in the New Testament) argues that there can be no such facts, or that we could never know them, and hence that there is nothing that constitutes the meaning or correct use of terms. The skeptical solution developed by Wittgenstein and Tsong khapa concedes the lack of any such special semantic facts but requires us to note that word meaning and the assertability of correctness regarding word use rest not upon such facts but upon a network of social conventions regarding word use. Consider next the example with which I will be most centrally concerned later.

The reificationist with regard to causation argues that the regularities we observe in nature are to be explained by a fundamental causal power that causes have to bring about their effects—a necessary connection. The nihilist argues that because we can have no clear idea of such a causal power or natural necessity, causal explanation is impossible. The skeptical solution to the problem thus posed regarding the possibility of scientific explanation—as Hume, Wittgenstein, Nagarjuna, and Candrakirti argue—is, rather than to understand regularity as vouchsafed by causation, to understand causal explanation as grounded in regularities.

All of these examples, to be sure, are presented in telegraphic form. But I hope they illustrate the constructive response skepticism provides to the challenges posed by nihilistic critiques of reificationist positions. There is an important additional characteristic of the relationship between skepticism and the dogmatic extremes against which it is counterposed that warrants emphasis. And it is only by appreciating this feature of skepticism that we can understand the sense in which the skeptic can be claiming to "suspend belief" or be "positionless." To suspend belief in the sense Sextus has in mind is not to shrug one's shoulders in indecision regarding competing claims. To understand suspension this way is to see skepticism as a wholly negative position. I want to emphasize the essentially constructive character of skeptical argument, however, which requires a subtler understanding of suspension. To suspend judgment in this sense is to refuse to assent to a position, while refusing to assert its negation, since either would commit one to a false or misleading metaphysical presupposition. To suspend judgment is hence to refuse to enter into a misguided discourse.

For the skeptic, European or Buddhist, both members of any dogmatic pair, despite their apparent antagonism, share some common metaphysical thesis as a presupposition of their respective positions. And it is in the rejection of this position—and in the consequent suspension of judgment regarding the opposing dogmatic positions— that skepticism consists. The dogmatic thesis in the case of the existence of the external world is that the existence of physical objects and the truth of claims about them presuppose the existence of material substance. With respect to the existence of the self, the thesis is that personal identity and self-knowledge are possible iff there is a persistent soul; with respect to meaning, it is that conditions for the correct use of words presuppose the existence and grasp of semantic facts. Finally, the causal reificationist and nihilist agree that causal explanation is possible only if the regularities it exploits are grounded in independent causal links.

In each case, the reificationist and the nihilist differ only on the issue whether the metaphysical presupposition in question is satisfied. The skeptic rejects the presupposition of the dispute.

The skeptical move in each case consists in rejecting exactly the thesis that the apparently diametrically opposed dogmatic positions share. That is what makes skepticism so radical, so deep, and so apparently nihilistic when viewed uncritically. For in each case, the thesis rejected is an unquestioned fundamental presupposition of much mainstream philosophical thought — "the decisive move in the conjuring trick." In each case, however, the skeptic determines to argue that these shared fundamental metaphysical assumptions regarding the necessary ontological conditions of knowledge must be rejected in order to understand and explain epistemic practice.

When Sextus urges us to suspend belief, he is referring to the metaphysical beliefs that lead to dogmatic opposition; we should, in addition, absent ourselves from the debates concerning them. When he says "not more," he urges that the external world is not more than what we observe, that personal identity is not more than an aggregation of experiences and capacities, that meaning is not more than convention, that causation is not more than regularity. Custom and the particular practices of the arts and sciences, he urges, yield all the knowledge, certainty, and justification we need to navigate the world, identify ourselves and others, speak intelligibly, and explain natural phenomena.

"Now, we cannot be entirely inactive when it comes to the observances of everyday life. Therefore, while living undogmatically, we pay due regard to appearances. This observance of the requirements of everyday life seems to be fourfold, with the following particular heads: the guidance of nature, the compulsion of the feelings, the tradition of laws and customs, and the instruction of the arts. It is by the guidance of nature that we are capable of sensation and thought. It is by the compulsion of the feelings that hunger leads us to food and thirst leads us to drink. It is by virtue of the tradition of laws and customs that in everyday life we accept piety as good and impiety as evil. And it is by virtue of the instruction of the arts that we are not inactive in those arts which we employ. All these statements, however, we make without prejudice." (Hallie 1985, p. 40)

This thought is echoed by Wittgenstein's observation that when we hit explanatory bedrock, we find not certain propositions, but practices:

"204. Giving grounds, however, justifying the evidence, comes to an end;— but the end is not certain propositions' striking us immediately as true, i.e. it is not a kind of seeing on our part; it is our acting which lies at the bottom of the language game.
344. My life consists in my being content to accept many things." (On Certainty)

When the Mahayanists argue that phenomena are all empty, the same insight is being expressed: material objects are devoid of substance in the metaphysician's sense; persons are empty of immaterial souls that persist through change; words are empty of special semantic facts that determine their meanings; and regularity in nature is empty of special causal powers that provide its underpinnings.

The constructive side to the skeptical enterprise has a characteristic strategy, involving two moves. In the first place, it involves what I like to call the "skeptical inversion" of the order of explanation: the nihilist challenges us to explain the apparently problematic by reference to what, according to the reificationist, should be the unproblematic, and argues that we cannot. The skeptic grants the force of this argument but demonstrates that in fact the explanans—or at least the forms of discourse involving vocabulary pertaining thereto—is what is problematic and obscure. Moreover, the skeptic argues, the very reality—such as it is—of that explanans is in fact grounded in what was originally problematized by the skeptical challenge.

This is a highly abstract characterization. A few familiar examples should clarify the point. Hume accepts that we can never explain the regularity of nature by appeal to a causal link and inverts the order of explanation by arguing that our talk about causation is to be explained by our familiarity with regularities. Nagarjuna makes the same move.

Wittgenstein and Tsong khapa grant that the ability of a community of language users to use words in roughly the same way cannot be explained by the private grasping by each member of the community of the meanings of words, and they invert the order of explanation, arguing that the possibility of an individual using a word meaningfully is to be explained by reference to the regularity of practices in the community. Sextus, Hume, and Nagarjuna argue that our conventions regarding the identification of person are not to be understood as grounded in the reference of each person's "I" to a particular enduring mental substance; rather, the talk of myself as an individual (and of others as individuals) is explained by reference to our conventions of personal individuation, conventions that are, as Hume notes, "forensic."

This second characteristic of the skeptical inversion, which should now be obvious from this brief survey of examples, is that an appeal to social conventions is central to the skeptical reconstruction of our heretofore metaphysically or epistemologically confused discourse. In the private-language case this is obvious. It should also be clear in the case of personal identity and in that of the skeptical reconstruction of morality. Though Hume and Sextus are less explicit on this point, Nagarjuna, Candraklrti, and Tsong khapa emphasize—and Hume and Sextus would undoubtedly agree—social convention is also hard at work in skeptical reconstructions of discourse about the existence of physical objects and causation.
For the boundaries of physical objects are not given by nature, nor are the classes of events that count as "the same type" that underlie the generalizations that vouchsafe the attributions of explanatory significance involving words like because. The canonizations of sortals and of object-boundaries drawn in space, time, and composition require social and linguistic conventions. Tsong khapa puts the point this way:

"With respect to earth and solidity, etc as definition and definiendum — if one presents them as definiendum and definition whose meaning is determined through engagement with a basis of conventional engagement found through previous analysis, this will prove incoherent; instead, they can only be presented through their mutual interrelationship. (1998, 200)

Prasangikas use the above-mentioned analysis into whether or not things have any independent defining characteristics only to determine whether or not they exist ultimately. As it is presented in the previous scriptural quotations, existents are merely names and symbols and conventions, as has been explained many times. "Being name only" means, as I have previously explained, that if the conventional meaning is investigated, nothing is found; not that name exists but the object does not, nor that without a name no object exists. So, not everything posited nominally by a conventionally designative mind as conventionally existent is accepted; but nor is anything not posited through the power of a conventionally designative mind as conventionally existent accepted as empirically real." (1998, 201)

Jay L. Garfield; Empty Words

---