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grammar because these identities are excluded self arising from self is also excluded this is how the philosophical method of prasangika works yet we do not exclude a self made man from language so there are cases which on the face it in some sense of self created or self arising appear to be selves arising from themselves for the prasangika these must be different cases of self arising to the absurd ones what this shows is that self arising is not clear in meaning it is related to both legitimate and illegitimate cases the philosopher then says i am only interested in the illegitimate cases this is the kind of self arising which leads to reduction ad absurdum but then we can no longer say anything about the general case arising from itself we can only exclude the specific cases food as excrement and so on but these are obvious and trivial so the idea of consequence from a general case does not apply it is the same with the absurd situations prasangas which are presented as consequences of origination from other there are obviously illegitimate cases such as darkness from flames or water from fire which are given there are obviously legitimate cases as well such as barley shoots and barley seeds not to mention striking a match in which light arises from something which was not itself light these seem to be examples of origination from other too if we cannot specify in general terms which are the illegitimate cases except by listing them we cannot draw any general conclusions about other origination at all it might be argued using general terms that cause necessarily ceases before the effect because cause and effect cannot co exist necessarily here other origination is stipulated in general terms to be simultaneous cause and effect only no other kind of other origination is of concern but this is not a consequence prasanga of anything and nor does it lead to any consequence it is the stipulation of a rule nothing counts as simultaneous cause and effect now this rule may or may not be accepted as part of the english language and probably it is too unclear to be followed as a genuine linguistic rule but even if it were accepted we would not have acquired any new knowledge we would only have ruled out a certain way of talking and so that is just what the prasangika does in insisting that certain claims result in contradiction he rules out certain ways of talking specifically certain philosophical or metaphysical ones posted by adrian o sullivan august 22 2014 march 27 2018 posted in uncategorized leave a comment on the logic of origination necessity and metaphysics necessary truths are or are internally related to rules of representation and reasoning which form the network of concepts and transitions between concepts and propositions in terms of which we describe how things are although we present them to ourselves as truths and although we conceive of them as necessarily true and think of them as describing objectively necessary facts they are not descriptions at all but expressions of rules for forming descriptions they are forms of representation g p baker and p m s hacker grammar and necessity in wittgenstein rules grammar and necessity p 320 here we have a nice encapsulation of wittgenstein s important insight into the nature of necessity an insight that goes to the heart of what philosophy is already in the tractatus wittgenstein was claiming the only kind of necessity that existed is logical necessity a necessity for one thing to happen because another has happened does not exist there is only logical necessity that is whenever we describe something as necessary though we may not be aware of it we are describing a logical connection for example say we contend that a fruit cake necessarily contains raisins that without raisins it cannot count as a fruitcake this is asserting a logical or conceptual relationship not an empirical one we are defining what a fruitcake is necessity and logic go hand in hand in this way what about if we say that in order to get to the job interview on time you must necessarily catch the 9 20 from paddington station is this a conceptual logical or an empirical connection are there really no circumstances at all under which you could miss this train but still make your appointment might you not for example call them up and let them know you will be late might there not after all be a bus that gets you there on time whenever the must is not iron clad it is an empirical not a logical proposition saying necessary connections are logical is on wittgenstein s view a tautology for these two terms mean the same the necessary contingent distinction is exactly the same as the logical empirical distinction he does not eradicate the distinction as quine tried to do contingent truths are true but might have been false necessary truths could not have been otherwise their falsity makes no sense this means it is excluded from empirical discourse it has no use but there are nuances among necessary logical truths there are necessary propositions necessary truths which belong to the domain of logic such as the law of the excluded middle p v p the law of non contradiction p p and other laws e g if all f s are g and x is f then x is g their common element is that they are all tautologies it is the recognition of these as tautologies that consigns them to the domain of logic they are not descriptions of any state of affairs they say nothing about the world they are unconditionally true they are not meaningless however they are tautologies they can be employed in reasoning and the establishment of proofs or contradictions that is their purpose that is their use which is for wittgenstein the chief determinant of meaning arithmetical propositions are similar in that they are not descriptions of the world nor indeed of a mathematical reality and say nothing they are not useless however they license the transformation of empirical propositions for example because it is necessarily true that 2 2 4 we are entitled to go from i had two apples and i bought two more to i have four apples empirical claims such as this are of course contingent i might have eaten one of the apples indeed in any applied example that involves counting or arithmetic the arrival at the correct answer e g 4 apples is never inevitable it is not in the nature of things as frege thought that if we start with two things then add two more things we will inevitably have four things there is no such inevitability unless we explicitly say so by our knowledge that nothing else was added or we apply a ceteris paribus clause arithmetical claims are different they are necessary this is not because arithmetic is in the nature of things but because we reserve arithmetic from falsification nothing could show 2 2 is not 4 this is a social practice but that does not mean arithmetic is true by convention or true because we say it is we do not make arithmetic true nothing makes it true it is unconditionally true as before their meaning is closely related to their use which is only in connection to empirical propositions if they have no use in this regard they are like the rules of a theoretical game nobody ever plays then there are what wittgenstein called grammatical propositions which specify other rules for the use of words for example red is a colour is a grammatical proposition that specifies a rule for the use of the words red and colour these cause trouble in philosophy because they can look similar to empirical claims in fact out of context they can look indistinguishable from empirical claims for example this pointing to an object is red in one case this might be an ostensive definition of red teaching the meaning of red to someone by pointing at a sample object on another occasion it might be an empirical claim this car is red it was supposed to be green one is definitional conceptual unconditional i e necessary to deny it is to say nothing about the world it is only to dispute the validity of employing a sign for a certain concept the latter usage is factual empirical falsifiable i e contingent logic mathematics grammar these are rules for the use of language and constitute forms of representation we sometimes call them true and this is one way in which philosophers sometimes get into trouble and fail to clearly understand their difference from empirical propositions empirical propositions are true or false logic mathematics and grammar are not the same for them to be true is just to be a rule to be accepted as something one has to be in accord with in order to make sense to be understood to be false is to be nothing not even a rule in chess there is are rules for the movement of each piece moves that do not accord with these are simply not part of chess so although we might say 2 2 4 is true and 2 2 5 is false these should not be understood as descriptions of any kind of reality but just as statements of rules that ought to be followed like it is true that the bishop moves diagonally outside of these three kinds of rules or necessary truths there are some propositions which are somewhere between the empirical and the necessary and these are dealt with in wittgenstein s late paper on certainty the world is billions of years old water is h2o these are examples of proposed rules which have come to be accepted as rules water is h2o is a rule that partially determine the meanings of the constituent terms such examples are cases of empirical propositions that have hardened into rules our forms of representation can in this sense change over time rules can be thrown out and new ones adopted philosophers have certainly spent ages pondering the metaphysics of the domain of logic and mathematics do numbers exist are there objects corresponding to the logical constants the metaphysics of grammatical truths have also been rife in philosophy does redness exist is the fact that red is a colour a law of some special kind wittgenstein s correlation of necessary logical and conceptual truths sweeps away metaphysics as a mythology resulting from treating some necessary truths as a special kind of super hard contingent truth in a quite ordinary or common sense red things exist and the concept of red exists but apart from this asking whether red or redness exists is meaningless it is like asking whether mozart s music smells you can say no but it is clearer to say there is no meaning to the question that nothing counts as music with an odour on this account the medieval debate in tibetan philosophy concerning the ontological status of universals which corresponds closely to the medieval western debate on nominalism and conceptualism is confused the only kind of necessity is logical or conceptual necessity the only point of logical and conceptual truths is their use in providing rules for the use of empirical propositions they are not descriptions of anything this is a sweeping away of metaphysics everything empirical is contingent it is is logical feature of the empirical domain that everything might have been otherwise this insight itself is logical it is a rule to clarify the proper employment of empirical and contingent the casualty of this conclusion is metaphysics nothing counts as a description of a non empirical or ultimate reality this is the insight that has important ramifications for traditional madhyamaka philosophy our understanding of emptiness buddha nature the kayas and wisdom and all the ontology of buddhist philosophy will be misunderstood if thought of as metaphysical in nature as a super reality posted by adrian o sullivan june 10 2014 august 15 2014 posted in uncategorized leave a comment on necessity and metaphysics on not finding the mind s colour it is a very important point of many teachings that though we might look for mind we cannot find it milarepa sang in the root verses illuminating primordial wisdom of mahamudra it is the thought of the buddhas and mind of sentient beings it is without colour form centre or periphery it is free from bias in any direction it cannot be experienced as existent or non existent rje brtsun mi la i phyag rgya chen po ye shes gsal byed kyi rtsa ba gdams ngag mdzod vol 7 pp 66 67 trans lama jampa thaye 1990 and of course this kind of presentation of the view is stated in many places not unique to the kagyu lamas the particular observation i want to make here concerns the freedom of mind or here the basis mahamudra which is the same thing from colour and form i want to apply to this a very insightful point made by wittgenstein on the nature of meaning which leads to two ways this might be understood is it that in some circumstances other than those in which we find ourselves it could have been the case that mind has a colour or a shape but as it happens under the actual circumstances mind does not happen to have either is it in other words a contingent fact that mind is not coloured or shaped a fact which could be altered under the right circumstances now this is surely not what is meant when we say that mind does not have a colour or shape we mean that it is in some sense impossible for mind to have a colour or shape that such a thing is necessarily ruled out even absurd it is essential to mind that it has no colour or shape there is no such thing as a mind with a colour or a shape here is the point if there is no such thing as mind having a colour or shape there is no kind of search or empirical investigation that could discover or learn this knowledge about mind if it is true that mind has no colour or shape i already know this about mind such knowledge is like the bedrock along which a river must run or it is like a rule one must not violate if one wishes to make sense it is not a contingent fact about the world or the nature of mind it is not so much false to say that mind is red or cubic as it is wrong it is wrong to say that because we can find no meaning or usefulness in making such a statement this is like the difference between the false claim my eyes are blue and the claim my eyes are loud checking the colour of my eyes involves looking but there is nowhere to look to check whether they are loud or quiet i do not have to look or search to know they cannot be either similarly what kind of looking can one do to check whether or not mind has a colour or shape one can search for a poetic or metaphorical meaning to a statement like her eyes were loud but mind s not having colour or shape is not a poetic device it is simply not possible to look for the colour of mind like one looks for the colour of someone s eyes this is not because we lack some kind of ability which a super being might have it is that nothing counts as looking or checking for mind s colour or shape there is an important caveat to this we might create or invent an activity and call it looking at my mind we might sit cross legged and engage in introspection we might ask ourselves is my mind red is it round we might think i do not see th...