So .... not unlike Archimedes, I suppose, I was soaking in a bath last night. (I mean, warm water is warm water, whether appearing in 21st-century Colorado or in ancient Greece, right?) Though rather than pondering ways to measure the volume of irregularly-shaped objects, I was reading Shankara's Crest-Jewel of Discrimination. At least this was the plan. But on this particular evening, for …
Western Philosophy
Revisiting The Tenets Of Valid Cognition: When Is Knowledge Reliable?
Seems like once a year or so that I feel drawn to reviewing – and hopefully in some manner clarifying – the tenets of valid cognition. And so it is that I embark once again on this journey … What Is Valid Cognition? The phrase “valid cognition” (Sanskrit: pramāṇa) is one that appears largely in Buddhist philosophy – though there are similar explorations within Yoga and Vedanta. The aspects of …
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Turtles All the Way Down: Tao as First Cause
Would it be fair to consider the Tao of Taoism to be more-or-less the equivalent of the Aristotelian “unmoved mover”—the “first cause” of all motion in the universe? Let’s explore .... Why? Most two-year-olds, as they’re first learning how to speak, become fascinated with the question “why?”—which they quickly discover can be applied not only to their initial inquiry, but also—ad infinitum—to …
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Questions That Are Not
In the great tradition of Neo standing in the kitchen with the Oracle, amidst the scent of cookies, here’s a passage from Wei Wu Wei’s Why Lazarus Laughed which, as of late, has really been “baking my noodle.” Questions that Are Not A good example of a question that is not is: “Do you believe in such-and-such a thing?” In so far as nothing exists, there is nothing to believe in. In so far as …
Bachelors & Buddhas: On The Validation Of Scientific & Metaphysical Claims
If we define “bachelor” as “an unmarried man” – then the statement “Every bachelor is an unmarried man” is true by definition. Given how we’ve defined our terms, it simply cannot be false. It is necessarily un-falsifiable. Hence, it really doesn’t make sense to call such a statement a “theory” or a “hypothesis.” It’s not something that can be proved or disproved empirically. It’s not a matter …
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Realisms Interlinked: A Preview
I’ve been dipping into the rather dense but fascinating book Realisms Interlinked: Objects, Subjects, and Other Subjects by Arindam Chakrabarti—a scholar who, with great facility, straddles the worlds of Indian and (analytic) Western philosophy. Mr. Chakrabarti’s overall project is to propose and defend a form of metaphysical realism. And while I—from my lay-woman’s perspective—remain agnostic …