User:Silence/Buddhism

Why talk it over?

 * In defense of offense

Nonduality and language. Mature and compassionate Buddhisms have long recognized that it is inadequate to recognize that effects depend on causes. One must also recognize which effects depend on which causes, if we are to enact the right changes in the world to benefit other sentient beings. But the intensive and cooperative study of co-occurrence and dependence over time is precisely what is meant by "science".
 * Distinctions

Religion and evidence

 * What is Buddhism?


 * What is religion?


 * Extraordinary claims

Action

 * All practice, no theory?


 * By their fruits...

Authority

 * Historicity

Skillful means. Cultural relativism and the skeptical problem of picking the right scripture of our own time.
 * Scripture and consistency

Rebirth

 * The evidence


 * The counter-evidence


 * What makes a theory good?

The basis of mind

 * Consciousness

When we draw the conclusion that water is nothing more than hydrogen and oxygen, we do not thereby conclude that water isn't real, or that it's an illusion. When we account for the beauty of a rainbow by noting the properties of light and water vapor, we do not thereby rob the rainbow of its beauty. (Hamburger...)
 * Explanation is not elimination

Idealism, physicalism, and mixed accounts (dualisms, pluralisms, etc.).
 * Monism or dualism

What would an eliminativist Buddhism look like?
 * Spiritless spirituality

Questions of "meaning" and "purpose" deferred to Chapter 4.

Paranormal miscellanea

 * Psychic shenanigans

Contrary to the expectation that indeterminism at the quantum level might 'make room' in our physics for free will to sneak into the picture, in fact quantum indeterminism is the one part of Nature that seems to stubbornly and absolutely resist any human influence or control. We are powerless to influence quantum probabilities in any way. It is deeply ironic that determinism, long thought to be the bane of human freedom, is in fact the necessary condition for such freedom. For it turns out that without determinism, we can't do anything to control what happens in the future. Anything we try to do will just result in the same arbitrary outcome. So our freedom, our control over the course of our lives, depends on the parts of the world that are deterministic — or close enough approximations thereof for practical purposes. When events occur without causes, we are at their mercy.
 * Quantum hijinks

Indeed, the most liberating aspect of the Buddhist notion of 'dependent arising' is precisely it's notion that since the future is contingent upon present causes, we can change the future by changing our present causes. What matters isn't whether we are determined by our past — what's past is past. What matters, instead, is whether we are determiners of our future. Dependent arising affirms that the future is contingent upon the present. And this is precisely what reassures us of the possibility of enlightenment: Suffering seems like a universal inevitability, but determinism teaches us that suffering is causally dependent, and therefore that it can be destroyed by destroying its cause. Determinism is not fatalism; determinism is simply the idea that every event has a cause.

The strong anthropic principle. Fine tuning and divine design.
 * Cosmogeny

Questions of determinism deferred to Chapter 6.

Is life suffering?

 * The varieties of discomfort


 * The hedonic treadmill

Are there positive aspects of moment-to-moment samsaric existence? Is any aspect of Buddhism tenable without reincarnation? The problem of suicide. Negative vs. positive experiential values. Normative perspective-taking and existential meaning.
 * What makes life worth living?

Why awaken?
Oblivion vs. enlightenment. Negative vs. positive grounds for Buddhism. Worldly vs. transcendent liberation.
 * What is nirvana like?

For the metaphysical side of nirvana, see Chapter 5.

Is the Buddhist program only warranted because it lets you escape evils? Or is it further justified by the positive goods it produces?
 * Positive and negative value

What is grasping?
Volition (deciding, choosing, willing), motivation (drives, compulsions, temptations), desire (wanting). Affective states as the basis for action. The inextricability of emotion/evaluation.
 * Desires


 * Roots of suffering


 * Is liberation psychologically possible?

What goals are worthy?

 * The goal of lacking goals

What room does Buddhism leave for pluralism about meanings? Existentialism vs. human nature as the grounds for meaning.
 * Meanings of life

Reconciling compassion, joy, and passion with desirelessness.
 * Ethics and dispassion

What is enlightenment?

 * What happens?


 * Attainment and non-attainment


 * To whom?


 * Time and eternity

What is real?

 * Conventional and ultimate reality

How can one not be a Buddha?
 * Illusions

Dependence

 * Causality

Does being conditioned imply impermanence? Is impermanence compatible with changeless eternalism?
 * Impermanence

Buddhists should be arguing that the things we desire are impermanent, or at most that the things we can obtain are impermanent. Arguing that everything is impermanent will, first of all, require subsequent backpedaling -- things like nirvana and space are not generally considered 'conditioned' by Buddhists.

'Our bizarre prejudices are slightly more intuitive than your bizarre prejudices!' is not the most persuasive of arguments.

Freedom, autonomy, and responsibility. Selfhood over lifetimes.
 * Karmic injustice

A history of determinisms. Quantum indeterminism. Should Buddhists lean toward a particular interpretation of QM?
 * Determinism

So there's good news for Buddhism, and there's bad news. The good news is that our universe, at the fundamental level, seems to be far more inextricably interconnected than we ever thought possible. The bad news is that this interconnection seems to involve indeterminism. Things depend on each other all over the place, but not completely; a remainder seems totally random. Such randomness, although describable in probabilistic terms, seems more reminiscent the random "swerve" (clinamen) of Epicurean atoms than of hard-line Buddhist dependence. The Greek philosopher Epicurus explicitly suggested that fundamental particles must occasionally behave in random, unpredictable ways in order to preserve free will; but Buddhists have never had a doctrine of "free will," and have no problem allowing that all our present decisions are ultimately the effects of past causal chains. (But see "Karmic injustice" for the moral problem with this metaphysical view.)

So the Buddhist determinism seems exhaustive. Indeed, its exhaustiveness is its very power, since it allows Buddhists to argue that the intuition of dependence is completely general and all-inclusive; the more situation-specific dependence looks, the less fundamental and necessary it seems to be. But the trade-off is that making interdependence a stronger doctrine makes it a riskier doctrine. Even one counter-example risks upsetting the entire edifice — and quantum mechanics affords such counter-examples in abundance.

Emptiness

 * Parts


 * Selfhood


 * Essence


 * Language and knowledge


 * Is all grasping bad?