Re: dhw--Epistemological Framework (Order of Rank?) (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Sunday, March 06, 2011, 16:02 (5010 days ago) @ David Turell


> > Thomism is dismissed because he asserts that we can know truth. We can't. 
> > Realism--Thomist variety included, makes this distinction: "Contemporary philosophical realism is the belief that our reality is completely ontologically independent of our conceptual schemes, linguistic practices, beliefs, etc."
> > 
> > This has been rejected by philosophers since Hume, with very few notable exceptions, primarily because linguistic relativism is accepted as a fact among humans.
> 
> I understand your explanation, but where I am stuck is "First Cause" I know we do not see reality as it really is, but everything I know has a cause.-Well consider this. -In Buddhism, the idea of "cause" and "effect" are treated as simplistic mental attributions: we separate things to make them easier to handle. A pool cue hits the cue ball. The cue ball sinks the 8-ball. -But, we can only make this kind of distinction on an incredibly small scale. Because the real cause is that you wanted to play pool with a friend. Your wanting to play pool caused the 8-ball to be sunk, not the pool cue. But you had a want to play with your buddy; the want was a cause. That want exists because you know and have a relationship with your friend. That relationship has a cause... -But analyze that same paragraph in terms of effect. Which is effect and which is cause? -The Buddhist answer is that distinctions between cause and effect are delusion; yes statistically a cause exists for a bacterial infection of C. difficile, but the real cause is something else. Something deposited C. diff, and the infected person picked it up. Those C. diff spores are the result of a constant wave of that organism though time, the entire reality of a single person's infection is a single continuous flow of causes and effects throughout time that culminated in that person in your office. There is an infinite network of causes and effects.-The distinction between cause and effect (in Buddhism) is that they are perspective-based things to begin with. A cause is a cause when viewed as a cause but can also be viewed as an effect of something else. The only way to understand what you're studying is to understand it as a unity of cause and effect. -This teaching causes alot of heartburn and is a big reason why Westerner's "don't get" Buddhism at all. But when you contemplate the real nature of things, all things are unity--all things are part of the same singularity. -The question of "first cause" is false. There simply "is". God told Moses "I AM." Consider that. -Reality supersedes all questions of cause and effect--an observer is required to be able to differentiate between them, but the differentiation is due primarily to linguistic relativism...

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"