Element
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Posts posted by Element
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Isn't this a special case of Heraclitus? There are no entities, only change. You can't step in the same stream twice, etc.
I think Ayn Rand once said of Heraclitus that change without that which changes is a stolen concept but don't quote me on that. That is, you only get the concept of change by observing entities changing in the first place, so you can't very well turn around and use that concept to argue against their existence.
I don't know if that is true. I think they would say that there are things that change, and there is cause and effect. The point is that the things that are changing are on a more fundamental level that what we see. So like there is a person, but what is really going on is that he made up of a whole bunch of interacting parts. These interacting parts change, so the nature of the aggregate is in constant flux.
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Key ethical concept is "non-acting", especially so since, as with most religions, ethical concerns are front and center.
Lots of non-this and non-that thrown around, and most of it fairly gratuitous.
In practice, "non-acting" gets converted into "acting in harmony with one's surroundings", which is not, I would guess, what Buddha was getting at per se. I would guess, given the inclusion of some Taoist doctrine into Buddhism, that the idea of "non-acting" is properly more akin to "acting in accord with one's nature", but I don't mean to interpret the Buddha here.
Anyhow, FWIW, I have found Korean Buddhists to be among the easiest to convert to Objectivism ... (convert being the correct term for a change in philosophy, and religion being a primitive form of philosophy).
- ico
Not quite, what you are describing is a lot more like Hinduism or Taoism. Hindus would like to renounce value and action altogether and erase the subject-object dichotomy. Taoists believe in acting through passivity. Buddhists believe in giving up strong desire and acting with detachment.
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I recently read Ayn Rand's essay criticizing JFK, in which she stated that FDR was responsible for delivering 1/3 of the world's population into slavery at the hands of Soviet Russia and plunging the US into WW2. My question is: how? Can anyone provide a brief explanation, or recommend something to read? And did Ms. Rand elaborate on these thoughts elsewhere? I suspect that I wouldn't find an answer in a standard history textbook.
Its sort of strange. It was always insisted that the communists were a threat after WWII, yet when they were they weakest, when we could have easily taken Russia, we did nothing.
American Foreign Policy
Arm Your Enemies
Pretend They Are Not Your Enemies
Pretend your enemies are more powerful than they are to scare voters and make you seem important.
Don't actually try to win a war or destroy your enemies because it is "inhumane" and because it makes your friend more money if they war goes on forever.
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Hi!
So this semester I have been taking an Eastern Philosophy class in order to fill the non-western “civilization” part of my general ed requirements. It occurred to me that this stuff really got me interested in talking about philosophy, something I stopped doing a long time ago even though I consider myself an Objectivist.
Lately we have been studying early Buddhism. I was asked to write a paper about Buddhism. Our professor likes us to examine arguments and argue for or against things. My main problem is that the only thing I could say about Buddhism is that it is obviously anti-life.
I said this because Buddhism does not believe that there is any part of the self that persists over a whole life time. Buddhists believe that people make the mistake of perceiving themselves a permanent ego and thus get wrapped up in desire. The Buddhist conception of desire is any value that would cause a strong negative emotion if not kept or gained. Now “desire” necessarily is the root of suffering. There solution is to give up desire and live rather passive lives. I would argue that this passivity would lead to the end of civilization if practiced consistently.
The problem is that a Buddhist wouldn’t care if this was the case. To really argue with a Buddhist I need to argue with their view of the self. The problem is that I have a hard time figuring out where their argument goes wrong.
In class our professor asked us what the self was, and I said “the mind”. He asked me what I meant. I couldn’t really thing of anything other than “well our mind has a logical structure, and our body attempts to maintain this structure over time”. He told me this is what makes us human, but that isn’t what make me an individual.
So I come to this forum of Objectivists to ask what they think the self is or where they think the Buddhists go wrong in their philosophy. So far I have this for their philosophy.
Metaphysics - Primitive form of materialism, primacy of existence.
Epistemology - Nominalism
Nature of Man - There is no permanent self, just many selves over time. Kind of like Hume’s bundle theory.
Ethics - Worrying about yourself is absurd because those will be different people in the future. More fundamentally suffering can be eliminated by ridding yourself of the illusion of the ego and renouncing desires (altruistic and egoistic)
In order to stay sane though, this usually ends up being a form of altruism.
Politics - Depends, they are usually medievalists, but their philosophy seems more consistent with Anarcho-Communism.
Buddhism & The Self (Long Post, Sorry)
in Metaphysics and Epistemology
Posted
I had a similar idea, although Buddhists argue that volition is impermeable because one's will changes. The argument goes like this...
1. I am sometimes dissatisfied with my body, so I seek to change it.
2. I am sometimes dissatisfied with my sensations so I seek to change it.
3. I am sometimes dissatisfied with my perceptions so I seek to change it.
4. I am sometimes dissatisfied with my volition so I seek to change it.
5. I am sometimes dissatisfied with my thoughts, so I seek to change it.
6. If there was a self it would be the master of these things.
7. But all these things can be shown to affect one another (violtion changes body, thoughts change sensations etc. (through action mostly)).
8. There is no self.
I pointed out to my professor that there was a logical structure to the mind, and that this rarely changes (like you have to go insane to see a circle square). So if this is the case there is a self. He told me that I wasn't describing a self, but Human nature, and that I didn't indicate anything that made me an individual.
All I could say, well that mind is in a different place and context, so that is what makes it individual. I wasn't sure if this really solved the problem.