From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!psinntp!norton!brian Tue Mar 24 09:55:41 EST 1992
Article 4452 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: brian@norton.com (Brian Yoder)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: mean,meaner,MEANING-est/ intention-and-self the buddhist way
Message-ID: <1992Mar14.011223.813@norton.com>
Date: 14 Mar 92 01:12:23 GMT
References: <1992Mar12.060644.15876@massey.ac.nz>
Organization: Symantec / Peter Norton
Lines: 205

A.Raman@massey.ac.nz (Anand) writes:
> >... brian@norton.com (Brian Yoder) writes:

> >>"Locked in"?  Come off it.  Westerners have freedom to think and discover 
> >>whatever they want.  It is the non-westerners (and I am using 'westerner' in
 
> There's been a  lot of talk  recently about `Western'  notions about  things
> and a `Western' attitude to science.  Implicit in  these remarks is the fact
> that free thought  is  a  purely western idea.   Needless to say these quips
> annoy some people no  end, especially those  who don't believe  that  such a
> dichotomy exists.

When I use the term "western" I am not necessarily referring to people living
in "the west", nor to people of european ancestry.  I am referring to the 
western intellectual tradition of science, reason, and individualism.  This is
a tradition that anyone can participate in no matter where he happens to be.

Those who attack the objectivity of "western" thought are just using the term
as a euphemism for an attack on reason, science, and objectivity.  My defense 
of "westernism" is referring to the same thing.
 
> As a person who has lived on both sides of the  globe,  I have observed that
> much as it is talked  about, there is  really  no  such  thing as a  Western
> attitude.  I  have  seen  an equal number of  people  on both  sides  of the
> globe   subscribe   to similar  opinions  about  life,   science and  dogma.
> Some may  argue  that this is  because  in the twentieth   century,  Western
> tradition  has  come to  have  a `fortunate' influence on  Eastern  culture.
> But   historical  information  indicates  otherwise.    Sir Monier  Williams
> notes, for example:

Sure, there are plenty of non-western ideas at work in the west and plenty of
western ideas strongly at work in the far east.  Perhaps it would be more
clear if we discussed the REAL ideologies at work here...reason and science
(westernism) as opposed to mysticism, subjectivism, and irrationality (anti-
westernism).
 
>     "It will not,  of course, be supposed that  in our Eastern  Empire
>      we have  to deal with  ordinary races of men.   We  are not there
>      brought in  contact with savage tribes who  melt away  before the
>      superior  force and intelligence  of  the Europeans.  Rather  are
>      we placed  in the midst of  great and ancient  peoples, who, some
>      of them tracing back their origin to the same stock as ourselves,
>      attained a high degree of civilization  when our forefathers were
>      still  barbarians,  and  had  a   polished language, a cultivated
>      literature, and abstruse systems of  philosophy, centuries before
>      the English existed even in name." [1]

The implication being what?  That just because there are some old cultural 
traditions at work in these places, we should value science, reason, and 
objectivity less that we might otherwise?  Is that really what Williams meant?

> Similar  remarks by eminent  historians regarding Chinese  and other Eastern
> Civilizations are also not lacking.   The  Greeks certainly did not consider
> Indian outlook backward.  In  fact, Diodorus  Siculus explicitly notes  that
> the  tradition  of  Arranged  Marriages, for which   the   East and India in
> particular  today is most frequently criticized  for, was totally foreign to
> India during his time:
 
>     "Now, it was an ancient law among the Indians  that when young men
>      and maidens were minded to wed, they  did not marry  according to
>      the judgement of their parents, but by mutual consent." [2]

Look, I never said that no non-european culture ever did anything intelligent,
nor did I claim that no non-european culture ever adopted any rational
customs or practices.  Are you under the impression that this was my position?

> The  obvious question  that springs  up  in this  context is   "Why then  is
> there  so much poverty in  the   East and not   in the West?"  I don't  know
> why, but as men of intelligence  and  discrimination  we have  learnt not to
> blame poverty on  culture, 

I certainly do!  It is the western reliance on reason and science that have
allowed countries that embraced western ideas to prosper.  It was a direct
cause and effect kind of relationship.  Cultures that spend all their time 
wondering what kind of deamons are hiding under which rock, or who unthinkingly
accept the social, political, economic, or philosophical dictates of 
religious or irrational authorities cannot make scientific advances and cannot
turn those advances into economic improvements.  Do you really think that 
economic development can occur just as easily in a country dominated by reason
as in one dominated by unreason and superstition?

> just as  we know that  healthy  men of sound mind
> do not get  sick   and die because they   believe that the  moon orbits  the
> earth.

I quite disagree.  The means by which people come to know that the moon orbits
the earth (rather than being some kind of mystical force or an 
unfathomable mystery) is the same method by which the western world has 
discovered the means to cure diseases and take the average life-expectancy to
levels never experienced before.  Reason makes people healthy.  Irrationality
kills them, and in more ways than just medical ones.
 
> There have
> been philosophers    of   Reason,  Mysticism, Science,  Logic,  Selfishness,
> Selflessness and many others, all  in the  Western  sense of the word,  just
> as much in the East as in the West.

Sure, but the ones with the dominant effect on the overall outlook of the 
cultures have primarily been (at least before the 19th century) the pro-reason
ones in the west and the mystics in the east.  This distinction is becoming 
less and less clear with time as more in the east adopt rational philosophies,
and as the professional philosophers of the west continue their march 
(initiated by Hume, Kant, and Hegel) toward nihilism, and sophism.  That does
change the fact that the typical businessman on the street in the United 
States still respects reason and science.   
 
> The very fact  that the Buddha chose to  ignore the concept  of God and  the
> Immortal Soul  which  were predominant  at  his   time among the  Hindus  in
> India should   be  a sufficient  indication   to  us that  he  was  far more
> advanced  and  freer and his  thinking than most  "so called Westerners" are
> today.   Much rational  thought, (I  say  that in  the  Western sense of the
> word)  has gone  into  his  philosophy,  and  his words   can  be rationally
> justified even today.

"Rational justification" for buddhism?  Bosh! You can quibble over whether 
buddhism is better or worse than hinduism, but don't go claiming that it
can be justified somehow by reason.  If you really think it can be, then 
go ahead and provide the rational proof that buddhism is valid.  
 
> As the Buddha says:
 
>     "Two ideas are very  deeply rooted  in human nature:  The first is
>      the  idea of self-protection.   The second is  the idea  of self-
>      preservation.  For  the first idea,  it invented  the  concept of
>      God.  For   the second idea, it  invented  the concept  of  Soul.
>      But we as [intelligent] men can choose  to  break free from these
>      fetters realizing them to  be  unnecessary.  They  are hindrances
>      to our pursuit after happiness." [4]

So you think that THIS is an example of rational thinking?  If one is
pursuing happiness, how can one refrain from choosing to pursue self-
protection and self-preservation?  Without existing, one cannot be happy
in the first place, so any plan of action designed to bring about 
happiness would HAVE TO entail a plan of action to continue existing.
This kind of nonsense dissolves in even the reakest rational scrutiny.
To claim that these ideas are somehow valid as compared to scientific 
knowledge is not possible without some kind of self-deception.  No honest
person could look at this and not see it's flaw.
 
> It would be  a pity  indeed, if we  were to reject his profoundly  pragmatic
> conclusions based upon  a few sticky  mystic bits tacked  on to it  by later
> philosophers. 

What "pragmatic conclusions" might those be?  The one listed above?
 
> But, as Schrodinger notes in his essay "What is real?" (1960),

>     "The more fine,  abstract,  sublime and subtle   a  faith  may be,
>      so much more fearfully  does man's  weak, fainting spirit  snatch
>      at miracles,  however foolish, to  be its  stay and support." [5]
> 
> Maybe some psychologists  could care to comment  on this; but I believe that
> the reason some people  make such  an emphatic distinction between  the East
> and West is because there is so much poverty in  the East.  Most of the East
> is  filled with corpses of dead   civilizations.   And the paranoia of death
> and the urge to live comfortably  inherent in  every man causes him  to seek
> every possible difference between an impoverished country and his own.

That is completely wrong.  The reason I am so adamant about the differences
between the philosophies is that mysticism/irrationalism/subjectivism is
wrong and false.  This gives rise to the poverty and corpses of civilizations
we see everywhere is that that bad epistemology causes people to act contrary
to the facts of reality, just as reason/science/objectivity leads to 
success, prosperity and the like when applied.  The reason some countries are
rich and others are not is not a matter to be rationalized away (as socialists
so commonly do), but is a matter to be rationally examined to determine the 
cause.  The cause of most human misery and poverty is irrationality, and 
countries in the "west" are just as subject to the consequences of unreason 
as those in the "east".  OK, how do YOU account for the fact that some
countries are more prosperous than others?  Dumb luck?
 
> We do  not yet know  why  a human body gets old  and dies.   Science has not
> yet progressed to the stage when we can  determine the cause of  old-age and
> natural death.   Just so,  we   don't know why entire civilizations   perish
> after  reaching  peaks    of  great achievement.    Why   they    die,   why
> individual units  of a composite being  cease  to co-operate in  producing a
> harmonious whole  still befuddles   us.  But  meanwhile,  let us   not allow
> forming a dogmatic opinion on  the matter deter our  search  for a cause for
> old   age  and death.   

What you seem to be interested in is the abandonment of our only too for 
discovering the truth...reason.  This apparently is because you are an
epistemological egalitarian who believes that any method can lead to knowledge
equally well.  If reason doesn't suit you, there are other approaches that
will yeild results just as true...right?

> Just  so,   let   us  not  allow  the   fact that  a
> civilization is  defunct prevent  us from using some  of its   most precious
> contributions to mankind  when it was  alive  and well.  If  Einstein  still
> lived today  and was  senile, would that  prevent  us  from using his Theory
> or Relativity?

I'm not opposed to buddhism because it's old.  I'm opposed to it because it's
false, and I know it is false because it is irrational.  That also why 
buddhism isn't something I'm likely to turn to in the creation of AI systems.
A machine built on false principles will not work, and I am so tainted by
westernism that I think that having a machine work properly is better than 
having it not work.  I'm funny that way. 

--Brian
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-- Brian K. Yoder (brian@norton.com) - Maier's Law:                          --
-- Peter Norton Computing Group      - If the facts do not fit the theory,   --
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