On black swans - that old canard!

[csmswhs]

On black swans - that old canard!

All swans are white.

If we think this is a falsehood then this depends on how we define the swan. Once, swans were defined as large, white birds with long, S-shaped necks. Their whiteness was a defining feature of the swan, and if the bird wasn’t white then it wasn’t a swan.

Later, fashions for defining swans changed. We became more interested in their musculoskeletal characteristics then their plumage. If we encountered a bird with the S-shaped neck and the musculoskeletal characteristics then we started calling it a swan, even if the bird was black.

In the future, when the genotype of the swan is mapped we might, for reasons of heredity, find ourselves calling a bird a swan, even if it doesn’t have the S-shaped neck and comes in all manner of colours.

So, which is the better, truer definition of the swan? The plumage-based definition, the musculoskeletal definition, or the genetic definition? Or indeed any of the infinite ways in which we might define a swan? Call? Colour of eye or bill? Etc?

This is important to know because unless we know the best way to define a swan our opening statement ‘all swans are white’ is in a terrible logical limbo:

To the plumage-definer the statement is true; to the musculoskeletal-definer it is false.

This means that the statement is both true and false, depending on your perspective of what a swan is. In other words, all swans seem to be both P and not-P.

To resolve this intolerable contradiction it is necessary for us to explain what a swan really is – what is the definition of the true swan? How do you know?

If you can manage this then you may, with justification, go on to resolve the contradiction. If you cannot manage this then we are not logically permitted to step beyond the contradiction:

So, ‘swans are both P and not-P’ becomes the most illogical, and at the same time, logical viewpoint to hold.

I wonder where this leaves logic?

(Nikolai)

 

[VanillaCreme]

Birds stank.

 

[SophiaGrace]

I'd ask a biologist about classifications about different species .

But i understand you're trying to do philosophical logic here.

 

[csmswhs]

I'd ask a biologist about classifications about different species .

But i understand you're trying to do philosophical logic here.

i'm not doing it lol, its someone i used to know. i like his writing immensly. he always wrote perfectly everything that i was experiencing, etc. or have allready come upon

i just felt like sharing it.

here is his writing about Interconnectedness and On Permanance and Impermance

It is always crucial to remember the interconnectedness of all that appears –remembering this is the habit that develops in those with Zen consciousness. The Ordinary mind sees a cup as a clear and distinct object. The Zen mind sees the cup as a mere pattern of molecules that are in a state of constant exchange with surrounding molecules. The cup is no more distinct from its surroundings than a whirlpool is distinct from the river. Therefore the cup is not spatially distinct from its surroundings in actuality; it only appears so to our unreliable perception.

And neither is the cup temporally distinct from its surroundings. The cup is made up of the clay and the glaze, and the paint and the tea stains, and the shape of the handle and the man who designed the handle and his moods and influences, and those of his wife. And each of these characteristics: the clay, the man, the tea stain is made up of its own causes and conditions that relate to all else and include every thing that can ever be conceived. Everything that has ever come to pass in the past is expressed in the present through this cup, and all that will come to pass is dependent on the cup. The cup as it exists now is intrinsically dependent on everything that has come to be. There is nothing that is not the cup – the cup is all.

So when we look at the cup and see in it everything that is, and has ever been, or will ever be – that is when we perceive reality with the wonder that is Zen.

I am lying in the park on a summery day:

Scenario 1 – with my eyes closed.

At time = 0 I think of ice cream.
At time +1 I think of Socrates.
At time +2 I think of ice cream.

A commonsense commentary – These thoughts were objects of consciousness whose existence is only ‘in my own head’. Further, my first thought of ice cream was entirely annihilated by the arrival of the Socrates thought. When I thought of ice cream for a second time, it was a completely fresh and new thought – in other words, the Ice Cream Thought did not endure in some extra-conscious realm while I was thinking of Socrates. The two ice cream thoughts shared the same theme, but they were very different thoughts.

Scenario 2 – with my eyes open.

At time =0 I look the blades of grass.
At time +1 I look at the sky.
At time+2 I look at the blades of grass again.

A commonsense commentary – My observations of the grass of the sky were objects of consciousness in the same way as Socrates and ice cream. However, the existence of sky and grass is not ‘only in my head.’ When I looked at the sky, the grass did indeed continue to exist in an extra-conscious realm. When I looked at grass for the second time it was therefore the same grass that I had looked at before – grass that exists independently of consciousness.

~

While this is a common way of thinking about the contents of consciousness, it is impossible to justify why we consider some of our consciousness content to be impermanent, insubstantial and dream-like (scen. 1) and some to be permanent, enduring and real (scen.2 ). While both might be possible interpretations, there is never any good reason to justify the conventional divisions on permanence and impermanence that doesn’t commit a circular argument

For the sake of consistency, many philosophers have attempted to unite all objects of consciousness under the same scheme. Some would say that everything is impermanent, and to think that the grass endured in an extra-conscious realm is illusion. Others would say that everything is permanent, and that our thoughts of ice cream did indeed endure in an unconscious realm outside of our narrow individual beam of attention.

Wisdom, these philosophers would say, is the ability to be utterly thoroughgoing in applying this.

Everything changes, say one camp, but your ignorance causes you to view things as having an enduring existence. You attach yourselves to things, and grasp after them, and then you make yourselves suffer as a result. You do not realise that whatever you want is already gone.

Everything is static and unchanging, say the other camp, and change is an illusion caused by thinking that the change that happens in your own head is happening in reality. You are in darkness peering at a torch beam and think that people are coming and going. What you do not realise is that the fresco of the people is static and unchanging and it is your own arm holding the torch that is waving wildly around.

Both camps agree that our individual perspectives create an illusion, but they differ fundamentally. One assumes that reality is changing, but the individual perspective that observes it all is changeless and eternal. The other assumes that reality is changeless and eternal and it is our roving individual perspective that causes us to think that things can change.

Permanence and impermanence are two sides of the same coin. To propose that either is the truth is only possible insofar as we are ignorant of the other perspective. When we believe that the world as an unchanging fresco and our eye roving, it is necessary we forget that it might be our eye that is unchanging and the world that roves.

If this is the case, how can we know what is the world outside and what is being perceived in here? Whenever we point at something and say ‘that is reality’, it is also possible that it is just insubstantial thoughts ‘in our own head’. Whenever we think that something is ‘just in our own head’ it is possible that it does have an enduring existence out of it that our narrow beam no longer illuminates.

The solution is to understand that the separation of ourselves and the world is untenable and creates confusion. There is no world and there is no ‘me’ looking at it – or at least world and self are inadequate intellectual notions that undermine themselves.

Look for the world and you won’t find it; look for yourself and you won’t find it. But does this mean that there is nothing there? No, it is all right before your eyes!

...
but as my thinking evolved I realised that rejecting free will was the same argument as accepting it and so just as untenable.

 

[eris]

I remember this stuff

Oh, how I could go on and on and on....

Instead I will say :

I like this thread.





keep thinkin', cmswhs

 

[csmswhs]

I remember this stuff

Oh, how I could go on and on and on....

Instead I will say :

I like this thread.





keep thinkin', cmswhs

i'm glad you liked it its nothing new to me either, but just felt like sharing it. i like his writing and i thought maybe someone else might appreciate it too. if not, no big deal