> Paola,
>
> Let me emphasize one thing very strongly: there is a wide range
> of ways of thinking that are common to people around the world.
> People in the same country may differ from one another more than
> they differ from people half way around the world.
>
> When Gautama Buddha meditated in India, he wasn't reacting against
> western logic. He was reacting against the ways of thinking that
> he learned in *India*.
>
> When Lao Tse wrote about the Tao in China, he wasn't reacting against
> western ways of thinking. He was reacting against Chinese ways of
> thinking that he learned in *China*.
>
> Furthermore, Buddha in India and Lao Tse in China lived about the
> same time as Heraclitus in the Greek colonies in Anatolia. Many
> scholars have noted strong similarities in the teachings of all
> three of them. And Heraclitus had a strong influence on both
> Plato and Aristotle, and through them all of Europe.
>
> PDM> 1) Are you finally buying into the idea of 'chinese logic?'
>> (or japanese as in this case) (as in non FOL, or more generalise
>> as more western)
>
> Please note what I've been saying for years: the Zen and other
> ways of thinking are *extremely* important. But that doesn't mean
> that other ways of thinking are not important. (See the excerpt
> below about the Buddhist theory of knowledge, which I wrote in
> my 1984 book.)
>
> Just look at the publications on logic and mathematics in China
> and Japan. The scientists there are very competent in using FOL,
> where it is appropriate. And for many applications, it is indeed
> important. But for other purposes, other ways of thinking may be
> more important.
>
> PDM> 2) If we can admit that certain verbiage/propositions - such
>> as Haikus - may not reflect in FOL (or may not be expressed as FOL,
>> or other FOL relation as you may see) what other logic would be
>> suitable for them?
>
> The fact that Japanese mathematicians use FOL very well does not
> imply that they can't write haiku. The haiku express feelings that
> they can't express in FOL. What they are doing is expressing a way
> of feeling that is different from logic.
>
> The same person can use many different ways of thinking.
>
> John
> _____________________________________________________________________
>
> The following excerpts are taken from Chapter 7, "Limits of
> Conceptualization" in _Conceptual Structures_ by J. F. Sowa,
> Addison-Wesley, 1984.
>
> Different conceptual systems may be internally consistent, but
> incompatible with one another. In Either/Or, Kierkegaard presented the
> world views of two men: the first man had an esthetic view of the world,
> and the second an ethical view. Each view contained a comprehensive set
> of mutually compatible concepts. In terms of them, each man could give a
> coherent interpretation of his experience. Yet communication between the
> two broke down because their concepts were incompatible. Even when they
> used the same words, their concepts were oriented in conflicting directions.
>
> Compatible concepts form self-contained systems, and knowing one leads
> to the discovery of others. Every concept is compatible with its
> opposite: good and evil, beauty and ugliness, justice and injustice. In
> the Book of the Tao, Lao Tzu said, “When everyone recognizes the good as
> good, there is beginning of evil. When everyone recognizes the beautiful
> as beautiful, there is the beginning of ugliness.” This seemingly
> paradoxical statement refers to the interdependence of all the concepts
> in a compatible set. When smooth, tender skin is classified as
> beautiful, then coarse, wrinkled skin becomes ugly. In such terms, an
> elephant may become ugly, even though an elephant, on its own terms, is
> a very beautiful animal.
>
> Conceptual relativity sets limitations on the generality of conceptual
> analysis. The concept types and schemata discovered by the analysis hold
> only for a single culture, language, or domain of discourse. Leibniz's
> dream of a universal lexicon of concepts that would be fixed for all
> time is doomed to failure. For a special application or range of
> applications, it is still possible to have restricted lexicons that are
> adequate to support knowledge-based systems. A universal expert system,
> however, would require a method for freely inventing new concepts for
> any possible domain. Such a system would require learning and discovery
> techniques that are far beyond present capabilities.
>
> Discrete concepts divide the world into discrete things. The
> arbitrariness of this division is a common theme of Oriental
> philosophers. Lao Tzu said, “The Nameless is the origin of heaven and
> earth, the Named is the mother of all things.” The world flows according
> to the unnamed Tao, but the differentiation of the world into discrete
> objects is a consequence of the discreteness of the conceptual
> mechanisms and the words that reflect them.
>
> By meditation on paradoxical sayings or koans, Zen Buddhism seeks to
> undermine a person's conceptual system and promote a direct experience
> of conceptual relativity. The process cuts through many years of
> cherished beliefs and automatic ways of thinking and acting. It requires
> a painful letting go of familiar habits. But the result is a blissful
> state of Enlightenment where the anxieties based on the old system of
> concepts melt into insignificance. The most detailed statement of the
> Buddhist theory of knowledge comes from the Lankavatara Sutra (Goddard
> 1938):
>
> * Appearance knowledge gives names to things. It “belongs to the word
> mongers who revel in discriminations, assertions, and negations.”
>
> * Relative knowledge does more than classifying. “It rises from the
> mind's ability to arrange, combine, and analyze these relations by
> its powers of discursive logic and imagination, by reason of which
> it is able to peer into the meanings and significance of things.”
>
> * Perfect knowledge “is the pathway and the entrance into the exalted
> state of self-realization of Noble Wisdom.” Perfect knowledge does
> not rule out the use of words and concepts, but it goes beyond them
> to a state of nonattachment to any particular conceptual system.
>
> Concepts are useful fictions that are not absolute. There is a Buddhist
> saying that words are like a finger pointing to the moon: one who
> focuses only on the words and the concepts they symbolize will miss the
> reality they express, just as one who looks only at the finger will not
> see the moon it points to. Nonattachment to any system does not mean
> ignorance of all systems; appearance knowledge and relative knowledge
> are important for everyday life. The enlightened one is free to use
> concepts, but is not bound to them as absolute. Yet the path to
> enlightenment requires a painful abandonment of the comfortable old ways
> of thinking before any assurance is offered that the new way is better.
>
>
>
>
Thanks.
Ravi
(Dr. Ravi Sharma)
313 204 1740 Mobile