From: Scott Roberts (jse885@earthlink.net)
Date: Wed Nov 24 2004 - 06:14:40 GMT
Platt et al,
> I agree. This "self is an illusion" business makes no sense. How can
> Pirsig and the Buddhists deny they exist without existing? If Pirsig
> denies that when the "self" of his son died it wasn't real and had no
> effect on "himself," then maybe it's time to call for the guys in the
> white coats again.
>
> As Sam says, seems to me the people who have a lot of explaining to do
are
> those who claim self is figment of imagination, like unicorns, fairies
and
> ghosts.
Buddhist philosophy does not quite say that the self is an illusion. What
is said is that the self, like everything else, does not have inherent
self-existence. That is, everything exists by being related to everything
else ("dependent co-origination" is the usual term), but does not exist by
itself. There is no way to state this in a way that conforms to
Aristotelian logic. Hence the need for the logic of contradictory identity.
The self exists by negating itself, as Nishida puts it. So, the phrase "the
self is an illusion" is just as much an error in Buddhist philosophy as
"the self exists". The traditional Buddhist formulation is the tetralemma:
One cannot say that the self exists. One cannot say that the self does not
exist. One cannot say that self both exists and does not exist. One cannot
say that the self neither exists nor does not exist.
- Scott
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