Arbitrary Marks

At stake for Nāgārjuna in the first objection by his opponents is whether his entire argument is self-referentially contradicting. His interlocutor’s claim is that Nāgārjuna believes that all things are empty. Things which are empty are things which, by definition, do not have causal impact. Included in the set of all things is Nāgārjuna’s statement: [...]

I have to retract my earlier comment that the Baylys don’t ever respond to non-Christian criticism. I suspended my normal “lurker” status briefly on a post and Tim amended his writing, ever so slightly. It’s not an overwhelming victory for inter-religious dialogue, but I’ll take it as a positive step.

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A few weeks ago, I picked up Jaegwon Kim’s slim volume Phyicalism, or Something Near Enough and have finished his first chapter, an overview of the philosophical situation.

He calls the two problems of mental causation and consciousness Weltknoten, or a “world-knot” which philosophers haven’t been able to unravel yet. In a nutshell, the problem is that several key claims which seem to be necessary to hold are contradictory:

It’s the time of year that students are busy studying for and taking final exams. Professors are occupied creating them. During these days, instructors have to decide how to “wrap up” their course. In my Newberry Library class, I decided to give a brief ten to fifteen minute presentation of my views on the problems [...]

After seeing countless blog entries about Expelled, I finally decided to watch the film for myself. I’d seen posts taking the movie to pieces but purposely refrained from reading them–except for the ones about the PZ Myers/Richard Dawkins debacle. Since I often wind up somewhere in the middle on many science-religion debates, I wanted to [...]

I just got back from watching Expelled at a local movie theater, along with seven other people. Hey, it’s Tuesday afternoon. Watch for a detailed synopsis and review later in the week. Right now, I can say this: It’s a well-done propaganda piece that culminates in a rousing call for freedom. Unfortunately, the film has [...]

Whether in the causes [hetu], in the conditions [pratyaya], in the combination of the causes and the conditions, or in a different thing, nowhere does exist an intrinsic nature of the things, whatever they may be. On this ground it is said that all things are void [śunya].
For instance, the sprout is neither in the [...]

You may have noticed that I’ve added an Amazon.com widget as well as my HubPages link. I’ll admit that I’m adding a few ways (apart from my CafePress goods) that I might be able to make a few bucks from this site. I promise, however, that I will not clutter up the site with gratuitous [...]

I’ve joined HubPages, a community of freelance writers similar to About.com or Yahoo! Answers. My focus will be, naturally, philosophy. I’m trying to create pages that make getting into philosophy more accessible, including guides to what’s online and which books to read. You can click on the link below or in the sidebar to view [...]

Nāgārjuna in the Vigrahavyāvartanī is responding, as I’ve noted, to critics of his view of emptiness (also translated as “void”). The way that this particular prose work is structured involves twenty verses from his opponents–the last post was a translation of Verse 1–and thirty verses of Nāgārjuna responding.