Wittgenstein and Madhyamaka
This article is remarkable in its elucidation of the connections between the private language argument of Wittgenstein and the arguments of certain Buddhist philosophers, in particular Candrakīrti and the Madhyamaka tradition. Thurman, after laying out his thesis, then concludes with a castigation of the Western philosophical tradition’s myopic perspective. It’s well-written and I couldn’t help but want to share it here with some of you who might appreciate it…
In closing, I cannot resist a brief comment on the implications for philosophy of the remarkable fact that Wittgenstein and his successors are very close to the Prasangika tradition in many ways, without ever knowing anything about them directly, simply from pursuing the deepest questions of philosophy in a rigorously critical way, and in spite of the enormous temporal and cultural differences involved. It means that philosophy today is crippled by prejudices of a very nonphilosophical sort-racial, cultural, and historical.
It means that our ingrained sense of the “progress” of knowledge is highly suspect, not because of some sentimental appeal to some imagined primitive stage of nature, but because even rigorous technical matters were as well and even better explored in ancient times by people in supposed “non-technological” cultures and times. After all, we greatly respect Wittgenstein as a shining star in the firmament of philosophy, even if some of his twinklings elude us, and many of the finest philosophical minds today follow him indirectly if not directly in many aspects of their thinking.
If the type of critical vision he achieved and cultivated on his own was highly developed systematically already in a great tradition with thousands of members in the most populous nations of earth, (not that very many perhaps ever reached the greatest heights or depths), then there must have been a rather bountiful crop of unsung, unpublished Wittgensteins over the twenty centuries during which Indian, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, and Mongolian scholars pursued the goddess of wisdom, (the Sophia of philosophy as Prajnaparamita, “Transcendent Wisdom”) whose attainment was defined as the ultimate liberation from the “fly-bottle” of perplexity.
Such being the case, or even the possibility, it behooves us not to rest content with our one river of Western tradition, but to explore and reveal to our young the great ocean of world philosophy. It is all ours, we are all human beings, and the Indian or Chinese heritage belongs as much to us as to the Chinese or the Indians. Especially the philosophical heritage of the non egocentrist, critical tradition which was born from liberation from cultural
conditioning at the deepest levels, perceptual and ideological, never belonged to any race, culture, or even linguistic tradition, but always to those members of whatever such tradition who dare to question what seems self-evident right before them, what is authoritatively told to them, what seems safe and natural to them-those whose sensibilities demand the surpassing peace that comes with the eradication of perplexity.
Source: Philosophy East and West, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Jul., 1980), pp. 321-337
Buddhism and ecology
Still haven’t had time to really post much, but check out this presentation on Buddhism and Deep Ecology. My first year of PhD studies has been overwhelming and blogging has suffered. That’s the way life goes.
I may have a chance to go to Pune, India to study Sanskrit with AIIS, if I can get funding together. I can’t promise, but would hope that I would blog that trip.
Existentialist Consciousness and Buddhist Enlightenment
Albert Camus writes in The Myth of Sisyphus, “the present and the succession of presents before a constantly conscious soul is the ideal of the absurd man.” Faced with the density of life’s experiences and events which are not self-interpreting, the absurd stance is to revolt, and to live happily, experiencing every moment. This sounds, in many ways, like the Buddha’s encouragement not to get caught up in striving, to become aware that everything, even the self, changes and even disappears.
Yet Robert Solomon, in his introduction to this text (and the others contained in his compilation, Existentialism), says that Hermann Hesse’s depiction of Siddharta is unpersuasive.* We, paradoxically, must self-consciously strive for selflessness. Instead of finding peace in the repetitiveness of being a ferryman, we–as the existentialist–would find absurdity, like Sisyphus’ eternal stone-rolling.
Both existentialist and Buddhist see suffering in the human attempt to wrench transcendental meaning from an obtuse reality. The Buddha urges us to not bother with questions about whether the world is eternal or finite, and the existentialists (at least some) argue that if there is a God, our inability to know his existence makes him unimportant. Present experience, consciousness of emotions and self-awareness are central to Sartre and Siddharta. Where do they diverge? Read the rest of this entry »
2008 in review, 2009 in advance
January 2008 - I started teaching ethics at Loyola University in Chicago and a course on religion at the Newberry Library. My blogging centered around Foucault and some thoughts about pedagogy in philosophy.
February 2008 - I gave my first conference paper at Saint Louis University, on belief in God and the zombie argument. I learned a lot from the experience and continued to blog about topics in religion and Unitarian Universalism, as well as gender.
March 2008 -This month I received my acceptance to UT Austin and blogged a bit about Galen Strawson and consciousness.
April 2008 - April was primarily focused on Nagarjuna and his view of causation. I also reviewed “Expelled”
May 2008 - In May I wrote a series on emptiness, gender and race, exploring constructivism and its relationship to Madhyamaka. I also wrote a bit on reduction.
June 2008 - Solve, a Chicago street artist, died this month. I began to post more links because of being busy, though I blogged some about the Churchlands and neurophilosophy.
July 2008 - July was a light blogging month (the first of many in the second half of 2008), focused on reading for the UT Austin Methodology Conference.
August 2008 - I moved to Austin, Texas and tried to start a new blogging schedule lighter on philosophical content. It doesn’t last even an entire month.
September 2008 - My most commented post is a false start on a Wittgenstein/Davidson paper, and I write a little about politics.
October 2008 - Lightest blogging month so far. I write about Gricean maxims and Palin and Buddhist views on extinction.
November 2008 - I fix the site after some SQL issues, promise to come back, host the Philosopher’s Carnival, and disappear back into my coursework.
December 2008 - On break from class, I write a couple more posts on social constructivism, related to the DSM-V and philosophy of language.
For 2009, I’m hoping to post at least once a week as a writing journal, since I’ve started a Scrivener writing journal and can simply copy/paste with minimal editing. My guess is some of the focus on mind will return, since I’m taking a course with Michael Tye and Mark Sainsbury in the fall. I’ll also be translating the Vigrahavyavartani and anticipate posting some of that here. All in all, my blogging has decreased as my academic load has increased–to be expected. I would like to return to it, some, however, since it gets me thinking in writing before I have to write papers.
Cheap Books for Sale!
If you’re interested in some vacation reading, I have 100 titles for sale (viewable at this Google spreadsheet). They include Spanish language fiction to American fiction to essays on reading, drama, etc. All I’m asking is $1 for books in “good” condition (some writing is possible, but nothing major) and $2 for “excellent”, or $5 if it’s an excellent condition hardback. That, plus shipping via book rate.
Leave your name in the spreadsheet and a comment here so I can contact you to get shipping information.
DSM - V and Rigid Designators
Yes, they are connected. I just finished reading a chapter of Ian Hacking’s book The Social Construction of What? where he discusses mental illnesses and questions of semantics and construction. I don’t have time tonight to expand on it, in terms of my own thoughts, but here are a few pertinent excerpts from a recent NY Times article and Hacking’s book: Read the rest of this entry »
Academic Update: Imagination, Construction and Possibility
It’s finally winter break and my coursework is nearly complete. I say “nearly” because, for the first time ever, I found myself taking an incomplete in a class. I’m still working on my paper on Kripke’s argument about pain and C-fiber stimulation. As an undergrad and even in my master’s program, the thought of carrying over coursework into the next semester was appalling.
But now, when my papers are part of the preparation for my dissertation and potentially pieces I’d like to publish, there’s no point in sloppily dashing off some half-thought arguments just to get a grade.
The paper is about halfway done and centers on Kripke’s claim that, even if we tried, we couldn’t imagine something like “heat is not molecular motion.” He’s linked our imaginative capacities to what things are possible (not an uncommon move for most analytic philosophers) and argues that, in cases like “heat is not molecular motion” or “Hesperus is not Phosphorus”, we’re imagining something else, although we think we’re imagining the situations described by those statements. Christopher Hill and Peter Kung give different explanations how our imagination works. I’m trying to adjudicate between them, but with a considered dose of skepticism about the connection between our imagination and what is possible. Read the rest of this entry »
Back…and then back again!
I’ve updated the style of the blog, to be more crisp and more informative. I also have a few blog posts knocking around in my head, which have to wait until my papers are written. However, I am aiming to return to a more frequent schedule over break and next semester.
I think that returning to a reading journal style blog would be most beneficial, especially since I’ve used Arbitrary Marks in the past to help build my annotated bibliography (something else to update over break). Most often I use Google Reader and Facebook to share links and social commentary, so I anticipate this blog taking a more scholarly direction in the next several months.
Arbitrary Marks is back.
Although not necessarily for frequent posting. Some of you may have noticed that Blue Host suspended my account. Apparently I had some SQL tables hanging around that needed to be deleted and my Wordpress version was out of date.
That’s all taken care of now, and access is restored. Maybe, just maybe, in a few weeks, I’ll have time for some actual blogging…
Blogging on works in progress
As any readers still left out there will have noticed, Arbitrary Marks has gone very quiet. I fully intended to keep up a regular blogging schedule this semester, but have found that I’m much busier than I anticipated and–this is the reason for this post–reticient to share my thoughts in progress online.
I’m not even sure I’ll put up any papers I write until I’ve submitted them for publication. Anyone else in a similar situation have thoughts on works in progress online?