Do we really exist?
Am I going totally nuts?
Or may it be a relevant question?
Jay Garfield thinks this in his book Engaging Buddhism - Why it Matters to Philosophy
To get a clue who he is; Here he is in a conversation with Robert Wright
(though he doesn't discuss "my" question here);
In the book he compares Buddhist thinking to western philosophers as Hume, Heidegger and Wittgenstein.
If you search on his name at Wikipedia you will find out that he's a really serious guy.
he puts his finger on the fact that philosophy didn't start in Greece and is still going strong in, for instance, Asia.
I qoute from his book (p 36)
"For if the Madhyamaka metaphysical picture we are sketching is correct, the world as it is is not entirely given to us independent of conceptual imputation, either. That world, and the interdependencies that obtain in it, as well as its ontology of entities and parts, comprises, inter alia, the social world we construct. Such things as nations, economies, academies and families constitute and are constituted by their parts, by the wholes in which they participate, and are subject to causal dependencies, and these are constituted in part by our conceptual imputations. And given the multiplicity of ways of taking the world scouted above, there is no reason to believe that the way that we take even the natural, non-human world, is uniquely privileged. Conceptual imputation may be at work all the way down. Another way of putting this point concerns the close relation between identity and existence, as seen from a Buddhist metaphysical perspective. The Quinean slogan “no entity without identity” has a clear ancestor in this tradition. To say that something exists, whether it is a proton, a person or a national deficit, is to presuppose that it has an identity. If we cannot say what it is that exists, an existence claim is empty. And the force of the thoroughgoing determination of ontology from the subjective side, whether by the structure of the senses, of thought, of language or of social structures and purposes, means that assertions of identity independent of those considerations are empty. We don’t even know what we mean when we assert that something exists simpliciter, what the truth conditions of such a claim might be, and there may well be no content to any such claims at all. The Buddhist critique of the idea of independent existence encodes the intuition that since identity conditions for phenomena are determined by an interplay of subject and object, and since existence is always existence as an entity with a particular identity, existence is also dependent in this sense. This is another way of saying that the attempt to find a determinate reality beyond the apparently ethereal lebenswelt may well be doomed to failure."
Madhhyamaka is primarly a Mahayana Buddhist school founded by Nagarjuna (born 150 CE in India).
To see that human constructions as religions, ideologies and the value of a dollar has no essence and is changing is quite easy. They in some sense not exist, for instance "Buddhism" is a very vague term, it may refer to a range of phenomena. And the meaning of the word may change because of the senses and the view of the interpreter. If he or she is blind, a Hindu or a an atheist influence what we mean.
So does Buddhism really exist?
Garfield compares with Hume and Wittgenstein here.
Yuval Harari refers to religions and ideologies and so on as stories or narratives ( a very common word nowadays).
But what about you and me?
Lets say that we are figures in someones dream..... We could then fade away in the next second.
We will probably not. But Hume may respond; are you really sure? You have been real for a long time, but what do you know about the next second?
Well, from a Buddhist point of view we will still be here, but the word we would better be written "we".
As you and I have no intrinsic existence and are changing all the time.
We may be more like a peace of music, we are in a continuum or we are the continuum.
If we would stop the water in a river, it would no longer be a river.
And if will try to describe you it would be like to take a photo.
A film would be better, but again, it would just be you in this special day and in a special mood and so on.
So its true that we wold be best described in novels, that will include the persons, milieus and circumstances that we interact with.
So if no steady person per exist, is it not adequate to ask if we exist at all?
Well, if I exist like a melody do, I think I today would like to be like this tune NILS FRAHM - RE:
Or may it be a relevant question?
Jay Garfield thinks this in his book Engaging Buddhism - Why it Matters to Philosophy
To get a clue who he is; Here he is in a conversation with Robert Wright
(though he doesn't discuss "my" question here);
In the book he compares Buddhist thinking to western philosophers as Hume, Heidegger and Wittgenstein.
If you search on his name at Wikipedia you will find out that he's a really serious guy.
he puts his finger on the fact that philosophy didn't start in Greece and is still going strong in, for instance, Asia.
I qoute from his book (p 36)
"For if the Madhyamaka metaphysical picture we are sketching is correct, the world as it is is not entirely given to us independent of conceptual imputation, either. That world, and the interdependencies that obtain in it, as well as its ontology of entities and parts, comprises, inter alia, the social world we construct. Such things as nations, economies, academies and families constitute and are constituted by their parts, by the wholes in which they participate, and are subject to causal dependencies, and these are constituted in part by our conceptual imputations. And given the multiplicity of ways of taking the world scouted above, there is no reason to believe that the way that we take even the natural, non-human world, is uniquely privileged. Conceptual imputation may be at work all the way down. Another way of putting this point concerns the close relation between identity and existence, as seen from a Buddhist metaphysical perspective. The Quinean slogan “no entity without identity” has a clear ancestor in this tradition. To say that something exists, whether it is a proton, a person or a national deficit, is to presuppose that it has an identity. If we cannot say what it is that exists, an existence claim is empty. And the force of the thoroughgoing determination of ontology from the subjective side, whether by the structure of the senses, of thought, of language or of social structures and purposes, means that assertions of identity independent of those considerations are empty. We don’t even know what we mean when we assert that something exists simpliciter, what the truth conditions of such a claim might be, and there may well be no content to any such claims at all. The Buddhist critique of the idea of independent existence encodes the intuition that since identity conditions for phenomena are determined by an interplay of subject and object, and since existence is always existence as an entity with a particular identity, existence is also dependent in this sense. This is another way of saying that the attempt to find a determinate reality beyond the apparently ethereal lebenswelt may well be doomed to failure."
Madhhyamaka is primarly a Mahayana Buddhist school founded by Nagarjuna (born 150 CE in India).
To see that human constructions as religions, ideologies and the value of a dollar has no essence and is changing is quite easy. They in some sense not exist, for instance "Buddhism" is a very vague term, it may refer to a range of phenomena. And the meaning of the word may change because of the senses and the view of the interpreter. If he or she is blind, a Hindu or a an atheist influence what we mean.
So does Buddhism really exist?
Garfield compares with Hume and Wittgenstein here.
Yuval Harari refers to religions and ideologies and so on as stories or narratives ( a very common word nowadays).
But what about you and me?
Lets say that we are figures in someones dream..... We could then fade away in the next second.
We will probably not. But Hume may respond; are you really sure? You have been real for a long time, but what do you know about the next second?
Well, from a Buddhist point of view we will still be here, but the word we would better be written "we".
As you and I have no intrinsic existence and are changing all the time.
We may be more like a peace of music, we are in a continuum or we are the continuum.
If we would stop the water in a river, it would no longer be a river.
And if will try to describe you it would be like to take a photo.
A film would be better, but again, it would just be you in this special day and in a special mood and so on.
So its true that we wold be best described in novels, that will include the persons, milieus and circumstances that we interact with.
So if no steady person per exist, is it not adequate to ask if we exist at all?
Well, if I exist like a melody do, I think I today would like to be like this tune NILS FRAHM - RE:
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