The Legacy of a Truth-Seeker

(This is a new, revised and extended version of a poem I originally published in 2012. I feel that this version is the only appropriate and complete one, the earlier one having missed a crucial half of the 'story.' This is also the final version. The video below was created by Peter Jones and imbues the poem with life. Thanks Peter!)

The Legacy of a Truth-Seeker

Having trodden the path for cycles uncountable,
Having crossed the ocean of mind from end to end,
Through all veils, its fountainhead have I finally seen.
To you, honest truth-seeker treading the path behind me,
I grant the gift of my legacy.

I have learned thus:

Only untruths can be experienced.
Hence, only untruths can exist.
Truth is fundamentally incompatible with existence
For it is that which gives rise to existence,
Like a loudspeaker gives rise to sound.

Experiences are self-referential tricks:
They arise from nothing and are made of nothing.
If you dig deep enough within yourself,
You shall always find the layer of self-deception
Upon which any one of your convictions ultimately rests.

One's reality sprouts from the first layer of self-deception
That escapes one's field of critical awareness.
The deeper this field, the more subtle the self-deception.
Those with little critical awareness thus live more colorful lives:
Their fiction is fancier.

The honest search for truth annihilates its own subject
Slowly, recursively, from within.
Having peeled away every layer of self-deception within me,
I have found myself to be like an onion:
Nothing is left.

Only nothing is true.
No external references exist, no outside arbiters.
We are self-created fictions and so is the cosmos.
Truth-seeking is the path to self-annihilation
And thus to liberation.

Rejoice, for your pains, fears, frustrations and regrets
Are all untrue.
There is nothing to fear, nothing to strive for, nothing to regret.
You have no soul; that's just self-deception.
And you won't die; that's just self-deception.

But beware!
As a dream allegorically portrays the inner state of the dreamer,
As a novel insinuates the aspirations of the writer,
As a lie betrays the insecurities of the liar,
So the fiction you call reality reveals something about truth.

Thus pay attention to life,
For truth expresses itself only through its own fictions.
To discern truth in fiction: here is the cosmic conundrum!
To engage wholeheartedly without being taken in: here is the ultimate challenge!
To find meaning in nothingness: here is the epic demand of nature!

Watch reality as you watch a theatrical play:
With inquisitiveness and curiosity.
But watch it as audience, never as character.
Characters spend their lives chasing their own shadows,
Whereas audiences attain subtle insight.

May my legacy serve you as a warning, but also as encouragement.
The prize at the end of the path is handsome:
The freedom to make the deliberate, guiltless choice
Of which untruth to live.
Exercising this choice wisely is the art of life.

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GUEST ESSAY: Metaphysics from Beginning to End - The Perennial View

By Peter Jones

(This is a guest essay submitted to the Metaphysical Speculations Discussion Forum, reviewed, commented on and approved for publication by Forum members. The opinions expressed in the essay are those of its author.)

Photo by Bernardo Kastrup, hereby released into the public domain.

Introduction

This metaphysical essay is a summary of the issues it addresses and not an attempt to properly explain or even attract the reader to the philosophy it endorses. Metaphysics is condensed into four short propositions and if the general discussion were omitted to leave just these propositions and their definitions the substance of it would be unchanged. The discussion is explanatory and hopefully lends the propositions plausibility but is not structural.  The idea is to condense and simplify and has more to do with setting the agenda for a discussion than holding one.

The reason for this approach is simply that few people adopt it. A sceptical philosopher approaching these issues from the outside looking for an easy and quick way to grasp what mysticism or ‘Perennialism’ says about the world that might be relevant to them has little chance of success without years of work. The chances of stumbling across a comprehensible summary of the issues is negligible. The summaries are there if we know what to look for but if we know what to look for we probably have no need of them.    

The four propositions presented could hardly be made simpler yet each can stand considerable study, while the fourth takes us beyond study entirely.  The difficulty of the claims they make may seem to be intellectual and to some extent it is, but the real difficulty would be their profundity and the problem of having to work so close to edge of reason.  We do not stray beyond the edge here but stop just short in order that the issues may be judged by logic and reason and any discussion remains within bounds of what these days is commonly called, for reasons that are not clear to me, ‘rational’ philosophy. The best way to read it might be to leave aside any attempt to reach an understanding of the implications and ramifications of what is being said and to address the issues as they are here, briefly and in isolation, not extending the analysis beyond that undertaken in the essay, since the only important issue would be the truth or falsity of the propositions. If they are true then metaphysics is easy to solve and we can make sense of the Buddha’s dismissal of metaphysics as a waste of our time. If we are a monk seeking enlightenment confident of the possibility of ‘salvation’ and knowledge then this would be an efficient approach. If we are a rational philosopher who has no intention whatsoever of believing any such nonsense then a study of metaphysics would be utterly vital. There would be no other way to clarify the philosophical and scientific implications of the teachings of the enlightened masters.   

I believe that any attempt to properly connect Science and Religion and make them relevant to one another must depend on Metaphysics. When Whitehead characterises commonplace Christianity as ‘a religion in search of a metaphysic’ he states a vast problem that renders Religion incomprehensible and irrelevant to Science. It need not be a vast problem but it will remain one for as long as Science goes on believing that Religion means commonplace Christianity and is thus still in search of a metaphysical basis. For this reason I would lay the blame for the war between Science and Religion on Philosophy as practiced in the Academy, which has not done its sums, leaving the combatants with no means of settling their differences but also unable to do each other much damage.  Religion is not in search of a metaphysic even if some forms of it are, but its logical scheme is not often explained in a way that a strictly discursive or ‘scholastic’ philosopher visiting the Land of Woo would be likely to comprehend. There may be a good reason for this and such an explanation may be impossible, but here is another attempt.   

More than anything the essay is intended to counter the astonishing view expressed in the short preface to the Blackwell Guide to Metaphysics, (2002 edition, Ed. Richard M Gale), which includes this remark. 

It is not an accident that none of the included essays attempt to say what metaphysics is, to describe the methods for doing it and the rules or criteria for assessing the success of a metaphysical theory. For all such metaphilosophical attempts have failed miserably.

Poor workmen blame their tools. This essay would not fit into any such guide and rejects point-blank this undemonstrable and pessimistic characterisation of metaphysics.  The guide describes the metaphysics of the Academy and does us a service by making clear just what a mess it is in but it makes no criticism of metaphysics as practiced beyond the Academy. Like commonplace Christianity the Academy is in search of a metaphysic. The Perennial Philosophy is not in search of a metaphysic. It sorted out metaphysics long ago.

Metaphysics 

Metaphysics is usually considered to be an immensely complex area of study as well as being dull and pointless. Yet it is the study of first principles and these cannot be complicated. It is not even clear that there can be more than one of them. Metaphysics is the study of the world by ‘reduction’ or at the most general level where ‘reduction’ clearly implies a progressive shedding of complexity. Accordingly, we would not expect metaphysics to be complicated, just conceptually and psychologically difficult. Metaphysical questions are usually capable of being understood by anyone over the age of twelve and if the professionals make the subject impossibly complex then this cannot be because they are on the right track.      

The proposal here would be that metaphysics is profoundly simple when examined at the level of first principles, the level at which it must be examined, just as we would expect, and, further, that at this level it can be solved with a single sword-stroke. The problem is only that making sense of the solution would be a very different matter and could take a lifetime or more.  Worse, if it is correct then to understand it fully would be to understand Reality and Existence fully, and this could never be done by studying theories and logical schematics. This difficulty need not be an obstacle to us in formal metaphysics, however, since once we have defined our terms we are concerned only with analysis. Few people understand E=Mc² and fewer still the phenomena to which these letters refer but we do not doubt that it is a correct theory and safe prediction. Comprehension and plausibility could ever only follow from an unpacking of the simple global view presented here into a more complex and developed theory capable of addressing the details and of showing itself to be capable of dealing with them.  The details, however, are not where any solution to metaphysics will lie.  A solution must be general, global, resting on principles that can be applied wherever and whenever we meet a metaphysical problem, and it must be very simple.

The approach we are taking here avoids the chaos into which metaphysics usually descends when it begins by examining particular philosophical problems prior to gaining a clear overview of the field.  The biggest mistake that can be made in metaphysics, it seems to me, would be to attempt to solve its problems one at a time.  This would be to miss the whole point of the game. Metaphysics is the board-room of knowledge where total breadth of vision is not optional. To deal with the details of the puzzle we must be able to see the picture on the box and cutting it up into fragments before studying it as a whole would be an odd thing to do. Metaphysics is the search for a general theory or ‘theory of everything’ and for this we must fly high above the landscape of knowledge looking down at the grand picture, always remembering that we are still in it. 

Anyone who has spent half an hour wrestling with a few metaphysical dilemmas will have gone some way towards verifying the situation in which metaphysicians invariably find themselves.  The situation is this. If we were to make a list of metaphysical problems it could be arranged in a binary form as two columns where every theory in the left-hand column would be paired with a counter-theory in the right-hand column.  Note that none of these would be ‘theories’ in the scientific sense of this word, just isolated conjectures on local problems. These contradictory and complementary pairs would include all the famous ‘isms’ such as Materialism-Idealism, Internalism-Externalism, Theism-Atheism, Freewill-Determinism, Dualism-Monism and so forth,  and then One-Many, Mind-Matter and so on, and any other contrasted pairs of metaphysical views such as the view by which space-time must be either a continuum or a series of points, the view by which the space-time world must be real or unreal, the view by which the ‘self’ is either real or unreal, the view by which ethics are either subjective or objective and so forth. These would be the well-known horns of the many ancient and venerable dilemmas that it is the task of metaphysics to resolve.   

This list of paired metaphysical conjectures would be a long one but we would not need to examine it closely for a global solution. It is well-known that that none of these pairs of counterposed conjectures work. This would be the motive for logical positivism, mysterianism, dialethism and various other arguments for abandoning metaphysics as hopeless. It would be the reason why our dogmatically anti-esoteric academic philosophy makes no progress from century to century and why nobody expects it to do so, for the undecidability of all these pairs of selective conclusions is the entire excuse.  Anyone who pursues a metaphysical question with a little perseverance is certain to end up facing an impossible choice between two demonstrably absurd theories.  For many questions this problem arises as soon as we ask it. 

Let us not ignore this well-known fact as is the inexplicable practice in professional philosophy but take it on board.  By doing so we can massively simplify the issues.  Presented here are four propositions which are global, truly metaphysical, and that condense a great many issues and claims into very few words. They take us from the beginning to the end of metaphysics. The end of metaphysics would be mysticism, where analysis and theory must turn to empiricism, experiment and practice, but we need not go beyond formal or speculative metaphysics in order to judge the plausibility and significance of these statements or judge whether they would work as a solution for metaphysics, subject to an investigation of their wider implications.

Proposition 1:  The Universe is reasonable

Definitions: As this is a metaphysical discussion the term ‘Universe’ would mean ‘Reality’, ‘Cosmos’ or ‘Everything’ such that there would be no plural.  The term ‘reasonable’ here would mean that a true explanation of the universe would be consistent with Aristotle’s ‘laws of thought’ and rules for the dialectic, thus with the way human beings usually think.       

Discussion:  This proposition states that a true description of the universe would not require a modification to the laws of the dialectical logic described by Aristotle nor ask us to abandon our usual way of thinking. There would be no true contradictions. The universe would not be paradoxical, logically absurd or terminally incomprehensible. Omniscience, were we ever to achieve it, would not cause us cognitive dissonance. The universe would make sense in principle even if it might be extremely difficult to make sense of it.    

We can read P1 as an axiom or a factual claim. Usually philosophers adopt this ‘reasonableness’ proposition as a necessary starting assumption for analysis and then go on to assume, in addition, that it must forever remain no more than an assumption.  We must start in the same way but we need not go on to make the second assumption.  We can interpret P1 as a theoretical axiom, a basis for a methodology or as a statement of intent, but it is on our list of factual propositions because it can be withdrawn as an axiom and established as an analytical result from a study of the other three propositions. 

One reason for beginning with P1 would be to make it clear that the approach we are taking to metaphysics here is essentially rational and grounded in reason. It leads us to the view of the Upanishads, the Buddha and Lao Tsu, admittedly, this cannot be helped, but it makes no ‘appeal to mysticism’, miracles or necessary ignorance along the way, or to any privileged knowledge. Our four propositions are strictly metaphysical. The common idea that there is some fatal inconsistency between logic and mysticism such that any ‘rational’ philosophy must exclude the possibility that the Perennial Philosophy is true is a hang-over from the past and cannot be justified by any evidence or sound argument. In this internet age, with so many fabulous explanatory texts available on demand, it can reasonably be called a beginner’s mistake.  The correct approach would be to logically prove that a rational thinker must reject this philosophy, and to succeed in this project we would have to falsify one or more of the propositions listed here. There would be no other way to do it. The idea that the Perennial Philosophy, which here would be synonymous with ‘mysticism’ and ‘nondualism’, presents a woolly doctrine that is not a clear target for analysis is sustainable only if we do not do the analysis.      

Proving that Buddhism, Taoism and so forth are a lot of nonsense is just the sort of thing most of us would assume that professional philosophers get paid for doing. After all, they usually express strong views on these matters.  This is naïve. On average it appears that they very rarely think about these issues, preferring to endorse a communal fantasy as to what lies beyond the walls of the Academy. Colin McGinn’s book The Making of a Philosopher, in which he charts his intellectual development from teenager to tenured professor, offers us a useful and entertaining introduction to philosophy and I often recommend it, especially to young people. I do so sincerely here. I envy his communication skills and organised mind. It is also a very good illustration of what happens when we buy into the modern philosophy department’s idea of what constitutes intellectual development.  The tenured professor can no more solve a problem than the teenager, lost in a world where everybody believes that metaphysics is incomprehensible and that mysticism is nonsense. There is no proof of this or any discussion. It is simply assumed, as is the common practice, that the wise men and sages who created the vast literature of mysticism were liars and fools not worth studying or even mentioning.  It does not seem to occur to the inhabitants of the ivory towers that these two beliefs might be causally connected. For the sake of human society and what remains of life on Earth, and hopefully before it is too late, I would challenge professional philosophy to stop relying on entrenched opinions and hearsay and do the sums.  This alone could change the world for the better.  

We come to our second proposition. This would be the big one. It encapsulates the whole of metaphysics. For me it would be the most important statement that can be made in formal metaphysics and the most helpful for any understanding of it.

Proposition 2 - All positive metaphysical positions are logically indefensible

Definitions: The word ‘All’ here makes this a global proposition. It is an unequivocal statement about one entire class of metaphysical positions and takes no prisoners. A ‘positive’ position would be any one of the two extreme position we might take up on any metaphysical question, thus all of the ‘theories’ in the two columns we spoke of earlier. Synonyms would be ‘partial’, ‘extreme’ or ‘selective’.  A metaphysical ‘position’ would be our position on any metaphysical question. ‘Logically indefensible’ would mean capable of being reduced to absurdity in the Aristotelian dialectic by a demonstration that it gives rise to a self-contradiction.  Synonyms would be ‘unreasonable’ and ‘logically absurd’.  In ordinary conversation just ‘absurd’.      

Discussion: Kant states equivalently, with no proviso, ‘All selective conclusions about the world as a whole are undecidable’.  Why is this? It could only be because P2 stands up to analysis and must be true, unfalsifiable or both. There could be no other reason. Kant considers it demonstrably true. It follows that metaphysical dilemmas must always take the form of the question, ‘Would two plus two equal three or five’.  All we can say is ‘no’ and this solves the problem. Francis Bradley states, ‘Metaphysics does not endorse a positive result’ and feels no need to equivocate.  As an Absolute Idealist this would be his solution and explanation for philosophy and not in any sense a problem.  If he is correct then as formulated by the philosophy department metaphysical problems are intractable and will remain so forever.  The only approach it never adopts is that of taking the Buddha and Lao Tsu seriously and so it condemns itself for all eternity to the Sisyphusian task of trying to decide whether 3 or 5 would be the best solution for 2+2.  After two millennia of trying and failing it ought to be obvious that there must be another option and that our questions must embody a category-error. 

P2 was logically proved by the Buddhist philosopher-monk Nagarjuna in the second century CE for his exegesis of the Buddha’s cosmological scheme, placing Buddhist metaphysics on an explicable and unshakeable logical foundation. It is proved less formally by Bradley in his 1897 essay Appearance and Reality.  The stagnation of philosophy within the Academy would be incontrovertible evidence that whatever the success of their proofs their common conclusion is correct.  

With P2 we have identified the problem of metaphysics and can now solve it.

Proposition 3 - A neutral metaphysical position is logically defensible

Definitions: A ‘neutral’ metaphysical position would be a rejection of all positive positions. It represents a ‘Middle Way’ solution for the countless undecidable questions that arise when we do not reject all such positions. ‘Logically defensible’ would mean irrefutable in the dialectic and in accordance with the ‘laws of thought’. ‘Reasonable’ would be a synonym. It would be important to note that a neutral metaphysical position is defined here as a logical phenomenon and that as such it would belong fully in metaphysics as a testable theory, for this would be the whole point of it.  Although directly associated with the terms ‘Middle Way’, ‘Nondualism’, ‘Mysticism’ and ‘Perennial Philosophy’ these would refer to a doctrine that encompasses a great deal more than formal metaphysics lying largely outside the scope of a metaphysical essay.

Discussion: The idea of calling the metaphysical scheme of nondualism ‘neutral’ may be the only novelty in this discussion. The only other philosophical use of it I have noticed is by Charles Peirce and he uses it to mean something quite different.  Here it indicates that wherever a metaphysical theory or conjecture has a contradictory and complementary counter-theory we would reject both for a neutral position.  It would be a global application of compatibilism, a reconciliation of opposites and an un-breaking of symmetries. We would follow Lao Tsu, for whom the universe cannot be described as this or that in any respect.  

A neutral position has an explanatory reach that extends beyond properties and attributes, divisions and distinctions, describing a world that would extend not just beyond our physical senses but beyond the reach of our intellect.  Kant, exploring this idea in respect of psychology, concludes that that basis for our intellect must be a phenomenon that is ‘not an instance of a category’, thus a unity free of division and distinction. Plotinus calls this a ‘Simplex’. Peirce calls it the ‘First’.  Kant proposes that this phenomena would be the ‘proper subject for a rational psychology’.  Mysticism claims that it would be the proper subject for a rational psychology, ontology, epistemology and theoretical physics.  

P3 is perhaps the most complex on the list because establishing its truth would require a study of Aristotle’s logic, about which there is much confusion in philosophy.  There is insufficient space here to discuss this. The crucial point for now would be that a neutral metaphysical position would state there is no such thing as a true contradiction and no formal contradiction would arise for a true description of the world.  Contradictions would certainly seem to arise, and this would be why metaphysics must look beyond appearances in order to see past them.     

Metaphysics is the attempt to construct a systematic fundamental theory and anyone who examines the foundations of mathematics, psychology, physics, consciousness or indeed anything at all will sooner or later end up facing the same set of metaphysical problems. In the professional academic world, where the solution we are exploring here would normally be off-limits, there is as yet no fundamental theory of anything at all. There never can be one unless it is the one presented here since problems of self-reference will prevent the success of any competing theory.  It would be these ancient and perennial problems of self-reference that a neutral metaphysical position uniquely allows us to overcome.   

A systematic theory requires an initial axiom on which the structure can rest and from which the truth and falsity of the theorems in the system can be derived. The axiom I would choose is Proposition 4.

Proposition 4: The Universe is a Unity  

Definitions:  It would not be possible to define the term ‘unity’ in a positive way since any such definition would have to be a denial of unity.  Such a definition would have to identify attributes and properties that this unity either has or does not have in order to speak of it, while a unity must be defined as having all properties and no properties, a perfect balance of opposites. It would be for this reason that for Lao Tsu the Tao ‘that is eternal’ cannot be spoken.  This would be a definition and not an appeal to ignorance. There would be two ways of conceiving or speaking of this phenomenon in respect of each potential attribute and also globally in respect having or not-having attributes, neither of which would ever be strictly correct.  A ‘Necker cube’ may be a rough sort of analogy, or perhaps an electron, albeit there can be no accurate analogy.  This would be an implication of the Yin-Yang symbol -- the two faces of a mountain, one in light and one in shadow, neither of which is the mountain -- and this implication would extend to all  attributes we might try to assign this unity such as temporality, freewill, extension, personality, existence or being.  This problem emerges in western philosophy as the ‘problem of attributes’, since a phenomenon that ‘has’ attributes obviously does not have them.  This paradox is clearly explained by McGinn, who struggled with it as teenager, in his aforementioned book.  A unity would be a fabulously subtle phenomenon in discursive philosophy, inconceivable and unspeakable. It would not even be correct to call it an undefined term since negatively it can be defined with great precision. It would not be this as opposed to that in any case. It would be the phenomenon that Kant believed to be the proper subject for rational psychology, a phenomenon that is not and cannot be an instance of a category of thought. Here we see that while metaphysics may be simplified beyond a certain point its simplicity becomes its principle difficulty. We are asked to look beyond intellect and analysis to being and identity.  

Discussion: A unity would not be a numerical ‘one’ although it would in a sense be ‘One’. The term advaita (not-two) as used for nondual interpretation of the Upanishads can be seen to deliberately avoid endorsing a numerical property. A unity may be defined negatively by denying it partial properties or divisions but even this approach can lead to misunderstandings. When we are told that a phenomenon is not ‘A’ we might assume that in this case it must be ‘not-A’ instead. This is how our minds work. Yet the assumption that the two horns of a metaphysical dilemma would exhaust the possibilities is a  demonstrable misuse of logic leading to the stagnation of academic philosophy and to the amazing sight of otherwise reasonable and intelligent scientists arguing at length for ex nihilo creation on the grounds that if there was not originally ‘Something’ then…. We have nowhere else to go but chaos and confusion once we reject the unity of the universe and take up extreme positions on this kind of question. Unless we assume that the universe is a unity the problems of metaphysics cannot make sense and must remain intractable. The evidence is there in the writings of every published philosopher. If there is only one truth then there is only way to solve metaphysics.   

A neutral metaphysical position, which denies the ultimate or metaphysical reality of all division, distinction and differentiation at a final level of reduction, would depend on an axiom of unity.  From this axiom we can derive the principle of nonduality, the principle on which rests the philosophical structure of Middle Way Buddhism and the entire philosophical plausibility of the phenomenon we call ‘mysticism’. If the universe is not a unity then the knowledge claimed by the mystics would be demonstrably impossible. How could Lao Tsu learn of the origin of the universe from looking inside himself otherwise? If metaphysics is the study of first principles then it must surely be the study of this one. If, as philosophers, we are not able to falsify this axiom and accompanying principle then we are not able to make a serious objection to the Perennial Philosophy and can have little reason to suppose it is false, for this axiom encapsulates the entire doctrine by implication insofar as it pertains to formal metaphysics.      

We arrived at P4 by a process of inference but we could have started with it.  Such is the coherence and logical integration of a neutral metaphysical theory - the close and ineluctable inter-connectedness of its theorems by logical implication - that many and possibly all of its true theorems can do duty as axioms.  When Heraclitus states, ‘We are and are not’ he unambiguously denies the truth of either of these extreme views and proposes the unity of the universe. When Lao Tsu states, ‘True words seem paradoxical’ he denies the ultimate truth of any positive or partial statement about the world as a whole and endorses its unity. When Nicolas de Cusa writes, ‘He lies beyond the coincidence of contradictories’ he is explaining the Unity of All that he has realised in his vision.  When the Sufi sage Al Halaj tells us that it would not be rigorous to state ‘God is One’ he is endorsing a doctrine of unity for which there can be no testifier set apart from God.  And so on. The authentic literature of mysticism never varies on this point.  It appears that people who follow the Oracles’ advice to know themselves and who persevere consistently discover the same thing, just as we all discover the same thing when we study metaphysics.       

There can be no possibility of making much sense of the term ‘unity’ here but it can be treated as a theoretical term yet to be fleshed out. It can be defined negatively by listing all the things that it is not and so it would work as a logical term for an investigation of its usefulness. G. S. Brown, whose book Laws of Form explains this nondual solution for metaphysics by way of a formal calculus, thus solving Russell’s famous and here immediately relevant set-theoretic ‘paradox’ or problem of self-reference, elsewhere likens this phenomenon to a blank piece of paper before the first ‘mark’ or conceptual distinction is made on it. This is where the world of opposites in which we live would originate, an emanation from, encompassed within or whatever the correct description would be, a phenomenon prior to number and form.

Overview

We could add to the list but just these four propositions carry us from scholastic philosophy, which would normally assume P1 and have P2 as a result, to mysticism, which depends on P3 for its external intellectual plausibility and for which P4 would be both an ‘empirical’ or experimental finding as well as a result of logical analysis. These propositions therefore transcend the philosophy of our western universities and enable us to solve problems that baffle professors. Logic and experience would coincide.  

A neutral metaphysical position can be defined so closely, like the state of a pencil balanced on its tip, that there can be no prevarication on metaphysical problems.  The danger of adopting this position, therefore, or the price, would be that one tends to becomes rather dogmatic about what is right and wrong when speaking about fundamental issues. One pulls out the principle of nonduality and this enchanted sword just chops through the problems.  Nobody else will have a competing solution that works since there would not be one.  Yet there would always be two ways to look at this. Neutrality means that no view would be entirely wrong, and so it would usually be possible to half-agree with any opposing view as capturing something of the truth.     

Hang on, I hear you say, this is all much too simple. Not long ago I would have agreed. When I came across this simple solution, at which time I knew approximately nothing about philosophy and truly nothing whatsoever about mysticism and thus thought I had invented my idea, I was immediately amazed that it had not become the orthodox solution for many problems in academia over time and that it is, rather, derided for being nonsense. It seemed so obviously correct. A decade and a half later and I am still amazed. Kant calls Scepticism the ‘scandal of philosophy’ but it is surely just a symptom of a much wider scandal. The problem seems to be a lack of interest. It appears that professional philosophy has given up on metaphysics and thus on the whole of philosophy.  The Blackwell Guide suggests that this is the case. 

A million books have been published yet it is rare to meet a paid-up member of the profession who has properly examined the claims made by the Perennial Philosophy.  How is this possible? It cannot be because it is somehow not part of philosophy.  It is called ‘philosophy’ because it gives an explanation of philosophy. It cannot be because this philosophy has been tested as a formal metaphysical theory and found wanting. It is called ‘perennial’ because it cannot be improved upon or falsified.  It is, after all, supposed to be true. It may be explained in ever renewed ways, as here, and must be, and as an explanatory theory it must be extended in all sorts of directions by examining its ramifications beyond metaphysics, but the metaphysical underpinning never changes. Surely it is about time that the academic community explained to the rest of us what exactly is wrong with this description of the world.  A summary such as this ought to provide a clear enough target for a refutation. 

Can we be sure that a neutral position is, in fact, the correct position to associate with the Perennial Philosophy? It seems to me that this is a question that each person must decide for themselves. Can we be sure it would work? This can be demonstrated so is not be a matter of opinion and need not be doubted. It is unfalsifiable and gives rise to no problems of logic.  Can it shed light on the relationship between Science and Religion? To me it would represent a complete solution for their mutual antipathy, a common position on which they could, if they chose, happily agree to stand, side by side, as two proven and practical methods for understanding the world around us and our place within it, and for realising the world within us and our place outside of it.

Copyright © 2016 by Peter Jones. Published with permission.

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GUEST ESSAY: The Marketing of Philosophy: A Preliminary Report

By Peter G. Jones

(This is a guest essay submitted to the Metaphysical Speculations Discussion Forum, reviewed, commented on and approved for publication by forum members. The opinions expressed in the essay are those of its author.)

The School of Athens, by Raphael.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.

There is much talk in the profession these days of finding ways to improve the marketing of philosophy as an academic discipline. The department is under attack from almost all sides for its ongoing inability to reach a conclusion on any important philosophical question and some prominent scientists publicly doubt the value of studying it. In the US at least the teaching of philosophy is coming to be seen as inessential to a credible university curriculum and departments are closing.

A commercial enterprise finding itself in this positon would initiate a marketing review as a matter of urgency, probably bringing in external consultants armed with have a fresh eye and holding no stake in maintaining the status quo.  It is interesting to wonder what their report might look like.

Marketing is often confused with selling but would normally refer to a broader range of activity.  Confusion on this point afflicts many suggested approaches to promoting philosophy as an academic discipline and rarely are they more than proposals for selling the current product by dumbing it down, repackaging it, making it cheaper or increasing the advertising budget. This is disrespectful to the customer. It is being assumed that the customer is at fault for not seeing what a wonderful product the company is selling. This is naïve and a well-known recipe for failure. In the way it pre-judges, makes assumptions and fails to look at the complete picture it is even unphilosophical.

Marketing in a full sense would begin with the design of the product. If the product is poor then it will require much effort, a large budget and considerable copyrighting sophistry to sell it. A great product will be relatively easy and cheap to sell and customers will keep coming back. It is not always easy to change a product when it loses its appeal and sometimes a manufacturer has no option but to continue to promote it at any cost up to the bitter end, but few companies have total inertia and philosophy is not one of them. A company with a marketing focus will be continually re-designing its products and services in order to minimise the cost of selling them. In this way products evolve and do not become ossified relics of their former glory.

Is university philosophy a great product? Clearly not, given the widely acknowledged difficulty of selling it and the current interest within the profession in finding new and more effective ways of doing so. The question then arises of whether the product has to be this way, such that it must be sold at any cost, or whether it can improved. The first question to be asked would be that of whether this is a problem affecting the whole industry or just our own product.

This latter idea is rarely considered in the Academy. The only successful alternative to the current university product belongs to its main competitor, the Perennial philosophy, and so it is felt that this must be shunned and its good features denied. Most importantly, the study of it must not be encouraged for this might lead customers to take it seriously. The success of this denial is such that over time a myth has arisen that there is no competitor product and it is only poorly known. It is assumed by almost all professional philosophers in our universities at this time that philosophy is what universities currently sell, no more and no less, and that this cannot be improved. No improvement would be necessary anyway, since on this view the customer has no choice as to what to buy.

A consultant would be duty-bound to point out that this is not marketing but commercial suicide. It is also the betrayal of philosophy, albeit that this is not a strictly commercial concern. A corporate culture exclusively focussed on selling the traditional product has blinkered the company’s vision and acts as a major obstacle to the creation and implementation of a well thought-out and effective marketing plan, one for which product design would be at the core and not promotion and selling. The consequence is a product that has not evolved in centuries that is becoming increasing difficulty to sell even to highly intelligent and interested students of science and religion.

A marketing plan would normally start with the needs and wants of existing and potential customers. What do they want? Fortunately no market research is required. They want to know how the world works, whether life has any purpose or meaning, what happens to them when they die, whether they have freewill, whether God exists, whether space and time are real, whether Materialism is true, how they should interpret quantum mechanics, whether it matters how they behave and if so how they should, how they can find happiness, how they can make sense of their own consciousness, the list is a long one. Does the current product meet their wants and needs? No. So how can it be sold effectively? Only by arguing that although the company’s product cannot provide these benefits it is better than nothing. This requires maintaining the pretence that there is no alternative product. It requires that the customer be misled not just at the time of purchase but on an ongoing basis and it ensures that the product never improves.

Must the company suffer increasingly from cut-backs and closures or might the situation be turned around? If it can be turned around then it could only be by making the product more attractive. This will only become possible if the organisational culture of the company is re-oriented away from promotion and selling towards a process of constant product-improvement on behalf of its customers. Here university philosophy may have much to learn from industry.

The academic study of philosophical questions brings well-known benefits regardless of its success as long as it is serious, but are these fringe-benefits incidental or are they what customers really want? Are they enough to generate healthy sales forecasts? Are they enough to fill courses and attract investment and grants? It seems they are not even enough to convince many scientists or university administrators that philosophy is a worthwhile activity. What most potential customers want from philosophy is answers, conclusions, results, tangible and quantifiable benefits that would include a better understanding of themselves and their world. The product currently on offer is not what customers want but what they settle for because they have been told they must. This is marketing madness. The walls of academia are coming down and even a casual browse around Youtube would be enough to establish the ineffectiveness of the philosophy department’s product and the low opinion of it held by many senior academics. Indeed, often those with the lowest opinion of the efficacy of philosophy are often professors of philosophy, for it is they who are most affected by the failure of the current product.

A vital ingredient for any marketing review would be a close examination of the products and services of competitors. For the modern Academy the main competitor would be the school of practice and thought known as the Perennial philosophy, yet it appears that at this time little is known about this competitor. If there is an alternative to its own product in the same market then a commercial company would usually know it as well as their own, and for anyone involved with marketing this would be a matter of professional competence. Yet ask most professional philosophers to explain this competitor product and their lack of competence is likely to become immediately clear.

What does the competitor product offer? What would the philosophy of the writers of the ancient Upanishads, the Buddha, Lao Tsu, Al-Halaj, Rumi, Eckhart, de Cusa, the Gymnosophists, Druids, Advaitans and Nondualists be able to claim in its marketing brochure that the Academy cannot claim for its own product? That it provides answers to questions and solutions to problems. That is has a strong and global customer base, a myriad of ecstatic customers and thirty centuries of positive customer-feedback including endorsements from countless well-known celebrities. That it has proven reliability, is unbreakable and remarkably cheap to teach while offering something for everyone from the dabbler to the professional expert or committed practitioner. Unlike the traditional ‘Western’ or northern European product - which accompanies and supports a religious world-view rejected by its competitor for having become as naïve and misleading as the philosophy that supports it - it is a product only very occasionally criticised by physicists, who rarely know anything about it, but that is quite often endorsed by them where it is studied.

Its brochure could, without demonstrably breaking the Trade Descriptions Act,  claim that it offers an interpretation of quantum mechanics, an explanation for consciousness, a way of avoiding philosophical ‘hard’ problems and of solving Metaphysics, a ‘hands-on’ method for increasing happiness in life and reducing fear of death or even of overcoming it, an ethical scheme that is forgiving, clearly-defined and practical at all times and a description of Reality that reaches beyond time and space to enshrines Love and Compassion as Cosmic principles. It offers a vast multi-lingual literature characterised by its rigour, elegance, beauty, simplicity, helpfulness, reliability, humour and honest motivation.

Such a competitor might seem a dangerous threat. Even if it is unable deliver on all its claims it is able to present itself as a very attractive product and that it maintains these claims over centuries indicates that it would be difficult to prove that it cannot deliver. Yet, as the cliché goes, every threat is an opportunity. This competitor has captured a large market share and its student numbers continue to rise. To compete for these students the company would only need to jump on the bandwagon and copy, steal or improve on its competitor’s product. The work of establishing a market has been done, the entire theoretical edifice is in place and the blueprints for the product are in the public domain.

A consultant in this situation would be bound to advise the company to examine this competitor product in great detail. A formal analysis of strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats may be anticipated to conclude that the main and urgent priority for the marketing department should be product research. Market research would be unnecessary since enough is known about what customers want. They want the same as we all want. The research focus would have to be placed on backwards-engineering this competitor product in order to steal its best features and cash-in on its appealing brand-image and global market. This research would then later inform product design and eventually, once the bugs are ironed out, the promotion and selling of a new and improved product, this last step now made cheap and easy by having a product that can openly claim to meet all customer needs and wants.

If the company’s in-house research into this competing product leads to the creation of a set of corporately-approved texts, interpretations, commentaries and other introductory teaching materials that can be trusted within the company as authoritative and which are capable of being comprehended by a strictly ‘scholastic’ philosophy student at undergraduate level then this may be a highly profitable product that could be offered by most existing philosophy departments. As a wildly different product from the traditional fare it would attract attention and it might even be popular with many of the competitor’s existing customers as a way of studying the theory behind their practice.

The marketing brochure could look too good to be true. Many people young and old may be expected to want to come to university to learn about this astonishing description of the world, how it would connect-up with physics, consciousness studies, psychology, theology and other areas of knowledge, what it would mean for their daily lives, how it would explain origins, freewill, matter, mind and so forth, what it predicts will happen to us when we die and what may have happened to our deceased loved ones, and, for the more analytical of them, what makes this philosophy unfalsifiable such that it can safely be called ‘Perennial’ not only for its ancient origins but as a hostage to fortune. There might be queues around the block.

This world-view is easy to sell for its mysteriousness and weirdness, for its magical and seemingly endless literature, for its claim that life and death are of cosmic significance while also being a misunderstanding, for its air of peace and tranquillity, for its opposition to the status quo, for its immediate connection with hearts and minds, for its encouragement of joy and happiness, for its claim that within each of us the universe is enfolded. Whatever else it is this other philosophy is not boring, unengaging or unchallenging. Whether it is true would be another matter but students should not be allowed to pass their first year exams unable to make a well-informed judgement, for this would be the USP of the course and what makes it a wildly new product. And then, the cherry on the cake, the practices normally associated with a theoretical study of this philosophy are reported to be assisted in the early stages by the ingestion of mind-altering substances. There seems to be no downside, a perfect product for a healthy student market.

At under-graduate level a ‘scholastic’ approach to teaching the Perennial philosophy may only be practical if it remains almost entirely theoretical. If so then it need not be a replacement for existing courses but an extension, an acknowledgement that there is more to philosophy than for a long time has been taught to students. Later development might extend courses into post-graduate studies but there would be a limit to the level at which a university can be relevant to advanced study. At post-graduate level one would expect students to be doing practical work guided by an expert teacher off-campus in addition to their academic studies and scholarly research. If an undergraduate course covers the theory properly then subsequent courses would have to be almost entirely practical in order to be worth taking.

Driven by a new and resolute marketing focus there would get underway a natural and ongoing process of improving the explanation of the Perennial Philosophy taught to undergraduates and this didactic goal could provide a focus for post-graduate research. Hesse’s evolutionary ‘Glass Bead Game’ might provide a model for this communal enterprise. At present there is much confusion and nothing like a consensus on how to translate the teachings of even one authentic Master or Sage into the language and concepts used by the Academy, or even on whether it would be a good idea to do so, but the Academy itself has all the skills and resources required to change this situation. It has the motivation of growing criticism, falling sales and a measurably increasing rate of professional redundancies.

University philosophy has no global marketing department or ability to act in a directed way so a list of marketing recommendations would be useless to it. There will be as many opinions on this initial report as there are readers of it. One practical and probably uncontentious approach, and perhaps as much as would be necessary in the long-term to turn the situation around, would be the establishment of a grant-awarding body charged with encouraging and promoting the study of the philosophy of the Upanishads and its equivalents with a strong emphasis on the clarification and reliable communication of this doctrine within an academic context. This might be likened to a testing process for the introduction of a new drug and should be just as rigorous. It would be a process of getting to know the enemy and its product, the first step towards designing a new product that can be expected to attract punters at little cost for a long time to come. This would not be a duplication of existing work but a shot in the arm for an area of research and literature that is under-motivated and under-populated at this time and that could be much improved by some targeted encouragement. The competitor’s product is so poorly known at present most professionals would be pushed to say what is wrong with it. This alone would seem to be sufficient justification for the investment and it would be doing a service for philosophers everywhere.

Given the promises that it would allow the department to make to prospective students it can be expected that demand will be high if the ‘nondual’ philosophy of the mystical traditions were to be offered as an area of undergraduate study but prior to research it should not be assumed that it is perfect and cannot be improved. Perhaps it will be found that it cannot deliver on its marketing claims. Until this is determined there is also the risk of introducing a new product only to see it immediately made redundant by an even better one. It would be important, therefore, that throughout any product design process the mission statement for the company remains the same as ever.  The pursuit of a rational intellectual understanding of the universe, consciousness, time, origins, knowledge, God, ethics and so forth that can confidently and effectively be communicated to students will not be over until there is a professional consensus that it is over. Perhaps the answers and explanations given in the Upanishadic tradition can be shown to be incorrect and the company’s research process eventually destroys the credibility of its competitor. In marketing terms this would be a fabulous outcome and well worth the time and effort, although not as profitable as seeing it survive the testing and so allow the creation of a more attractive product to sell.

A necessary first step would be to reach a corporate consensus on what this other philosophy actually is, what it claims, how it explains things. This must be presented in an accessible language appropriate for use within the Academy. This would require the creation of an officially approved and trustworthy body of literature and its dissemination internally. This will take time. A philosophical view can be taught without making a commitment to its truth or falsity but if front-line staff are going to be able to tell customers about a great new product then they will have to know that it is one and must be able to explain what makes it so.

Curriculum changes need not be considered. If these come about they should be self-motivating, evolutionary, something individual departments or philosophers may choose to do if given the opportunity. The corporate-wide issue would be a scholastic one, the lack of any sort of consensus as to what the competitor is actually selling, how to interpret its ambiguous and self-contradictory language, how it solves metaphysical problems and so forth. Within the Academy at this time there is no agreement on how to interpret or translate the ‘nondual’ or neutral philosophy of the ‘enlightened’ ones, the countless prophets, sages and other less exalted practitioners who endorse it, and barely even a recognition that it is an identifiable doctrine open to analysis and comparable with the alternatives. To many Academy members it must appear that this other philosophical tradition is a myriad of different voices and nothing at all like a choir. This uncertainty about the competitor’s product would have to be cleared up before it can be offered as a new attraction. The Academy has spent many years - Heidegger would say twenty centuries for he blamed the early Greeks after Socrates for abandoning the idea of Unity necessary to the Perennial philosophy - trying to undermine the credibility of its competitor and internally seems to have been entirely successful. Western religion and philosophy have ever since Plato worked hand in hand in this endeavour and the layman never stood a chance. If the Academy is to now to endorse this product as worthy of serious study as a complement or extension to its traditional product then for the sake of its own credibility it will have to be able to show that there are very good reasons for this change of tune.

Such an approach might seem to prioritise sales over philosophical progress but the two goals are mutually self-supporting, just as they must be for an effective marketing approach. As long as the company retains a marketing focus it will be an honest search for the best possible product to offer to its customers and thus an honest search for Wisdom, Knowledge and Truth.  It cannot be predicted how or whether the competing product can be improved or whether it needs to be and so a new field of research and teaching practice will be opened up. If it turns to have terminal flaw then nothing has been lost and much gained. The Academy will then be able to offer courses explaining what is wrong with the Perennial philosophy. Such a course ought to be popular and is surely long overdue. If no such flaw is discovered then it would not be a business decision to offer courses to students but a professional duty.

The recommendation of this report, a little tongue-in-cheek and for discussion only, is the establishment of a grant-awarding body supporting work that fosters a better theoretical understanding of Metaphysics and the philosophy of the Upanishads within the profession, with the long-term goal of creating an internally-approved canon of explanatory literature that can be trusted by undergraduate students and their teachers to be well-informed and safe to include on their reading-lists, one that is comprehensive and that deals with all the necessary philosophical issues whilst also making the appropriate connections to scientific consciousness studies, physics, evolutionary biology, psychology and so forth and is informed by them and which, crucially, is designed for students who have not yet chosen to undertake experimental work in the mountains of Tibet but want to study philosophy as a theoretical problem.

This will not be a reproduction of the existing literature, which for the most part is targeted at practitioners and already more extensive than it needs to be. Rather, it will be a reliable and clear translation and interpretation of that literature into an appropriate language that does not depend on non-ordinary experience (or mind altering substances!) for comprehension at the required level. Much authoritative and useful literature already exists but identifying it requires expertise and there are significant gaps.

A rigorous corporate approach to the creation of teaching material would capitalise on the existing analytical and communication strengths of the company and create a well-defined new subject for study. If the marketing claims of its competitor prove to be genuine or at least cannot be falsified such that its product can be honestly promoted and sold, then its introduction into the curriculum will make possible a discipline that cannot be criticised by physicists, university administrators, students or anyone else for its irrelevance, ineffectiveness or, one would anticipate, its unprofitability.

Copyright © 2017 by Peter G. Jones. Published with permission.

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GUEST ESSAY: Aristotle, Nagarjuna and the Law of Non-Contradiction in Buddhist Philosophy

By Peter G. Jones

(This is a guest essay submitted to the Metaphysical Speculations Discussion Forum, reviewed, commented on and approved for publication by forum members. The opinions expressed in the essay are those of its author.)

Nagarjuna and Agatsaya. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Life, they urge, would be intolerable if men were to be guided in all they did by reason and reason only. Reason betrays men into the drawing of hard and fast lines, and to the defining by language—language being like the sun, which rears and then scorches. Extremes are alone logical, but they are always absurd; the mean is illogical, but an illogical mean is better than the sheer absurdity of an extreme.

Samuel Butler, Erewhon

This quotation from Butler’s topsy-turvy land of Erewhon describes the view of the professors of the Colleges of Unreason. His satire of academia is an odd mix of good sense and madness but by the way it questions so many of our intellectual habits and assumptions it provides much food for thought. The professors of Unreason argue that reason forces us to draw lines and make divisions and that it enslaves us to language. This is usually considered a conclusion of rational thought and not at all an unreasonable idea. ‘Unreason’ enters with the idea that the ‘illogical’ mean is better than the absurdity of the extreme views into which language forces us.

The professors of Unreason teach their students that in order to endorse a middle way or ‘doctrine of the mean’ as the solution for metaphysical dilemmas we must embrace unreason and illogic. This seems a reasonable idea to them for it is, after all, their reason that allows them to see the absurdity of the extremes in the first place. In this case their endorsement of ‘illogic’ is an outcome of sound reasoning. Yet it is questionable whether we should ever abandon the ‘laws of thought’ in this way even where logic can find no other way forward. Butler’s professors would answer that we should, but real professors generally say we should not on the grounds that metaphysical questions must be decidable even if nobody can actually decide one. What is not questionable, for it would be a matter of logic and definition, is whether endorsing the middle way would in fact require that we modify or abandon Aristotle’s logic and embrace Unreason and Illogic. Butler’s students are taught that the mean is ‘illogical,’ that this solution breaks or modifies the rules by which we prove it is the best solution, and so are most students everywhere. Yet it is not possible to prove it, and the consequence of assuming it is an incomprehensible metaphysics.

A great many philosophers share the view of logic held by the professors of Unreason and perhaps almost all those who would call themselves ‘Western’ thinkers. It is endorsed in a recent article for Aeon on Buddhist philosophy by Graham Priest under the title ‘Beyond True and False,’ in which he proposes that while the extremes are logically absurd the mean would require a major modification to classical logic. He discusses various complex ideas that would make Buddhist philosophy very difficult to understand. The implication is that one would have to be extremely clever to understand Buddhist philosophy and perhaps even a mental contortionist able to believe two opposite things at once.

It must be conceded that many people who read Nagarjuna, the Buddhist philosopher who most clearly describes the logical scheme of Buddhism and more generally ‘nondualism,’ conclude that he did not fully understand the nature of Reality. Some even read him as proving that a full understanding would be impossible. It must also be conceded that this view may only arise when we are failing to understand him. Nobody can tell us who is right about this and we must make up our own mind. Priest’s view is that Nagarjuna "thought that certain things might be simultaneously true and false." This implies that nobody would be capable of understanding Buddhist philosophy for it seems unlikely that anyone could perform this intellectual feat. In fact his philosophy is much simpler than it may appear. Indeed, its simplicity is what makes it so difficult to understand.

Nagarjuna is completely intolerant of contradictions and demonstrates this in his Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way. In this text he proves that all extreme metaphysical positions are logically absurd. This is just as professors everywhere conclude. He does not prove that his own view is logically absurd. He clearly intends to prove that the mean is the only logically defensible view. In metaphysics the phrase ‘Middle Way’ indicates neutrality in respect of all extreme views and so it is an explicit denial of the reality of the divisions and distinctions on which metaphysical contradictions depend. There would be no such thing as a metaphysical dilemma. His proof is a classic demonstration of logic-chopping that follows Aristotle’s rules to the letter and entirely depends on them for its success. He shows that there is no such thing as a true contradiction and that no contradictions would arise for a true description of the Universe.

That is to say, Nagarjuna painstakingly proves that there are no contradictions in Buddhist philosophy. And yet, highlighted at the top of Priest’s article is the statement "Buddhist philosophy is full of contradictions." It is not clear who makes this statement and it may be an editorial addition but that it can be made so boldly suggests that it expresses a common view. So what is going on here? Is the Buddhist universe paradoxical or is it a model of logical soundness?

Let us examine two oft-quoted statements that encapsulate Buddhist philosophy and follow their logical implications. The first is the statement of Heraclitus "We are and are-not." For Buddhist philosophy this would not be exactly a true statement (as Nagarjuna proves), but it would be rigorous in that it would point accurately towards the truth and not mislead. Does it embody a contradiction?

Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction (LNC) states that for any A it is impossible for both A and ~A to be true. That is to say, if the assertion ‘x is square’ is true, then the assertion ‘x is-not square’ cannot also be true. The law of the excluded middle (LEM) states that for any A it is necessary for one of A and ~A to be true. Either x is square or it is not and there is no third alternative. Where there is a third alternative then what we are calling A and ~A are not legitimate dialectical propositions. Given these rules, should we agree with the professors of Unreason that this statement of Heraclitus is an example of ‘illogic’? Must we reject it for embodying a contradiction and breaking Aristotle’s rules?

The second statement is Lao Tsu’s famous aphorism, "True words seem paradoxical." Is this statement true? If so, it should seem paradoxical. Nagarjuna proves that it is true. The whole of ‘nondualism,’ ‘Mysticism’ or the ‘Perennial’ philosophy proposes that it is true. This is the explanation for the use of a language of seeming paradox and contradiction in the Perennial philosophy. This language is required precisely in order to avoid the paradoxes and contradictions that we are led into by our everyday language and that may become conceptual errors where we allow ordinary language to restrict our reason, the very problem identified by the professors of Unreason.

The idea that the view of Heraclitus, Lao Tsu and Nagarjuna requires that we abandon or modify the LNC or LEM depends on one crucial assumption, which is that for complementary and contradictory pairs of extreme metaphysical positions one member is true and the other false.

Would either of these statements imply a rejection of Aristotle’s LNC or LEM? Despite appearances they would not. Lao Tsu tells us that true words seem paradoxical not that they actually are, and Aristotle was a rigorous thinker who would not have written a set of rules for rational thinking that did not cover all situations, even that described by Heraclitus and Lao Tsu.

The idea that the view of Heraclitus, Lao Tsu and Nagarjuna requires that we abandon or modify the LNC or LEM depends on one crucial assumption, which is that for complementary and contradictory pairs of extreme metaphysical positions one member is true and the other false. How many of us do not make this assumption? We ask ‘Does the world begin with Something or Nothing?’ or ‘Do we have Freewill?’ and expect a straight answer, and when we do not get one the same assumption prevents us from understanding why not. When we make this assumption we must insist that Heraclitus make up his mind for now he cannot endorse compatibilism without appearing to break the rules. He must say either we exist or we do not. But Heraclitus knows that such words would not be true. By his juxtaposition of opposites he tells us that for his view it would not be metaphysically rigorous to state either that we exist or we do not. When we use language we are forced into stating two half-truths just as Nagarjuna proves and explains with his ‘Doctrine of Two Truths,’ and this would be why a statement that is rigorously (thus metaphysically) true must be complex and is bound to seem paradoxical.

The reason why such statements are not actually paradoxical would be that Aristotle carefully defines what he means by a contradiction. He saw that it was vital to closely define the pair of opposites ‘A/not-A’ in order that his rules for the dialectic would not be misapplied and produce incorrect results. For any system of computation the rule is ‘garbage in, garbage out.’ His Rule of Contradictory Pairs (RCP) is clear and simple:

Of every contradictory pair, one member is true and the other false.

Aristotle’s system is tautological in the sense that the LNC and the LEM would apply to pairs of statements only where we already know that they apply. If we do not know that they apply then we may be making a mistake by applying them and our reasoning will be unsafe. Members of a true dichotomy are jointly exhaustive and mutually exclusive, but not all seemingly contradictory pairs will meet this criterion. If we know that a switch has only two positions and that no other position is possible then the statements ‘the switch is on’ and ‘the switch is off’ would form a contradictory pair such that one is true and other false. We can then use the dialectic method to decide which position it is most likely to be in given what else we know about it. For instance, if the room is dark we might use this fact to reduce to absurdity the idea that the switch is on. However, if we are not certain that no other position is possible then the LNC and LEM cannot decide this for us. We would have to go and look. Aristotle ensured that there was no possibility of the world breaking his laws by formulating them so that wherever they might be broken they would not apply. His definition for contradictory pairs protects his system from any tricks that Reality might pull on him. Perhaps more importantly, it requires us to closely examine our assumptions before building them into our questions and our reasoning and by so doing rendering both more a hindrance than a help. The system is sophisticated and reliable but only when used with rigour. This would be the danger of category-errors in philosophy, where they can run so deep that even one can undermine the integrity of the entire system.

Heraclitus ... was not suggesting that the atomic statements ‘We exist’ and ‘We exist-not’ form a contradictory pair but precisely the opposite, that they would not form a contradictory pair for there is another alternative. ... Heraclitus and Nagarjuna tell us, Existence and non-Existence are seen not to form a contradiction but two ways of describing a situation that defies description in language because of the very nature of language.

In the literature of the Perennial philosophy, which would include Nagarjuna’s writings, it is very difficult to find pairs of statements that would meet Aristotle’s definition. This would be the reason why its language seems paradoxical, for it is difficult to avoid such statements. There would be no true contradictions and this requires that we deny them in our statements about the world. Heraclitus shows us how to do it. He was not suggesting that the atomic statements ‘We exist’ and ‘We exist-not’ form a contradictory pair but precisely the opposite, that they would not form a contradictory pair for there is another alternative. If his statement seems formally contradictory to us then this must be because we are assuming it would be true to say either ‘we exist’ or ‘we do not exist.’ Lao Tsu tells us that this language is nonsense. It embodies assumptions that have nothing to do with logic but depend on a misunderstanding of Existence and Personhood. The professors of Unreason would mark us down for allowing language to limit what our reason will allow. Once comprehended, Heraclitus and Nagarjuna tell us, Existence and non-Existence are seen not to form a contradiction but two ways of describing a situation that defies description in language because of the very nature of language. It would not be that there is no truth of the matter, as if Buddhist philosophy is not informed by truth or grounded in it. Heraclitus’ statement could hardly be more simple and clear or more packed with meaning, while on metaphysics Nagarjuna says all that he needs to say. From a logical perspective the latter’s famous proof states no more than that all positive or extreme metaphysical positions are logically absurd, an analytical result that it is difficult not to reach upon which even the professors of Unreason agree. We need not study Nagarjuna’s proof to verify that this is a perennial result of metaphysical analysis. The problem is only understanding his explanation of this result.

It is well-known that Heraclitus, Nagarjuna, Lao Tsu and the Buddha never endorse a metaphysical view that would qualify as a member of a contradictory-pair. Nagarjuna is famous for his argument that we should never do this.  How can contradictions arise? Heraclitus implies by his juxtaposition of extreme views that on their own each half of his complex statement would be unrigorous, inadequate, more false than true, and a contradiction cannot arise for two falsities. His statement is certainly not easy to understand but on what grounds can we argue that it breaks the laws of logic? If there is a third alternative then there is no contradiction. The contradiction would be in the eye of the beholder for such words only seem paradoxical.

By calling the mean ‘illogical’ the professors of Unreason fail to take into account Aristotle’s simple definition for contradictory pairs. The mean is not ‘illogical’ or even unreasonable when it is the only alternative to the absurdity of the extremes. It is only when we misapply Aristotle’s rules that the mean need seem paradoxical. Buddhism is the claim that there is no such thing as a true contradiction. The Universe would be a Unity such that all contradictions would be illusory conceptual things. Aristotle gave us a well-designed precision instrument and if we follow his instructions for using it we will find it difficult to discover violations of his LNC or LEM in Buddhism’s Middle Way philosophy.

Buddhist philosophy uses Aristotle’s rules correctly, as Nagarjuna demonstrates by using it to refute all false views. By contrast, professors generally ignore Aristotle’s definition for contradictory pairs. Metaphysics then becomes an inconclusive muddle of flawed thinking. The only known solution for metaphysics will have been ruled out for being logically incoherent. If we are serious about the LNC then when our reason concludes that Something and Nothing, Mind and Matter, Freewill and Determinism or some other pair of extreme views are absurd then we have no option but to seek a resolution in some sort of compatabilism. Logic forces us all to follow Nagarjuna and Aristotle puts up no objection. This approach disposes of all metaphysical dilemmas and antinomies. However, if we believe that this approach would break the laws of ordinary logic then we will believe that Buddhist doctrine is ‘illogical,’ unreasonable or at best incomprehensible and may reject it. Even if we withhold judgement on its truth we are likely to believe that we would be incapable of understanding it. Thus the view that Aristotle and Nagarjuna are at odds may be profoundly damaging to Buddhism and something of a PR disaster. It seems disrespectful to both and history shows that it renders metaphysics intractable.

At this time the professors of the Colleges of Unreason are in full agreement with those in our universities. The mean is illogical and Buddhism must be considered logically tortuous and perhaps even incomprehensible. This is not a charitable interpretation of Nagarjuna and even if it were it would not be plausible. It makes his doctrine seem logically devious, as if he pulled some sort of trick on us by exploiting a loophole in the rules. In fact his entire logical argument depends on the Aristotelian idea that logical contradictions are a proof of falsity. Where a theory gives rise to contradictions he assumes we will all agree that it should be considered false and will reject it accordingly. If we do not then his proof of Buddhism is rendered useless.

When we are asked whether two plus two equals three or five we do not consider this to be a case of A/not-A because we know that there is an alternative. If we do the same for metaphysical antinomies then no logical problems arise and for exactly the same reason.

The Middle Way doctrine appears to be paradoxical only when we assume that the ‘mean’ represents a violation of reason and dialectical logic, an assumption that is not supported by Aristotle. There is a conceptual challenge here but no logical problem. Whether there is a third alternative for a pair of statements may sometimes be a matter of logic or definition, but where they are statements about the world it would be an empirical matter. Only where we know there is no third alternative would the LNC and LEM apply. If we ignore this proviso and use the system without rigour then Buddhist philosophy will seem to be full of contradictions and the whole of the Perennial philosophy along with it, while metaphysics will become incomprehensible.

When we are asked whether two plus two equals three or five we do not consider this to be a case of A/not-A because we know that there is an alternative. If we do the same for metaphysical antinomies then no logical problems arise and for exactly the same reason.  This creates difficulties for our intellect but not for logic. We cannot assume two statements meet Aristotle’s definition for a contradictory pairs but must know that they do, otherwise in our reasoning we will ask improper questions and reach unreliable results. Nagarjuna’s logical demolition of all metaphysical positions except his own proves that there is a third alternative for all metaphysical extremes and it would follow that no modification of Aristotle’s rules would be required for his view. As Kant notes, and as we all discover, selective conclusions about the world as a whole are undecidable. Both extremes are absurd. The reason would be, as Nagarjuna proves, that there are no true contradictions. The extremes would be conceptual mistakes. Metaphysical dilemmas would be misunderstandings.

In his Metaphysics the ninth-century Persian thinker Avicenna writes, “Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned.”

Buddhist philosophy would not disagree on the importance of the LNC. Nagarjuna and Lao Tsu claim that the metaphysical truth is not this or that in any case. If we assume this and that are the only available options then their claim will seem to break the laws of ordinary reason and logic. Should they be burned? Clearly not, for they argue that in metaphysics there is no case for which this and that exhaust the possibilities. Many philosophers and theologians endorse Compatibilism in respect of the Freewill-Determinism dualism for they see the possibility that this contradictory and complementary pair might be transcended for a reconciliation. Are they being unreasonable? Aristotle would say not. Compatibilism endorses neither extreme view and denies that they form a contradictory pair for the dialectic.

This statement on the LNC would seem muddled to Heraclitus because Avicenna forgets that it is not just the burning that matters but the identity of the victim. If ‘we are and are-not’ then it would never be rigorously true to say that we are being burned or not being burned. This is the subtlety of the Buddha’s teachings on suffering, that for an ultimate analysis there would be no such thing. Nagarjuna explains this. He shows that Avicenna is right to value the law of non-contradiction highly and he uses it to eliminate all extreme metaphysical positions. He denies the truth of either/or and both/neither for every pair of metaphysical opposites, showing that in no case and on neither axis would they meet Aristotle’s definition for a contradictory pair. The idea that he asks us to abandon the LNC or LEM is incredible. He asks us to enforce the rules with complete rigour and to make no exceptions. For metaphysical antinomies such as Mind-Matter or Something-Nothing there would be a third option and it would be that the words and concepts we are using inevitably misrepresent the true situation in just the way the professors of Unreason fear. If we hang on to these linguistic and conceptual distinctions then metaphysics cannot be solved. No fundamental theory would be possible. As Kant concludes, all concepts would have to be reduced for a complete theory. Both Matter and Mind must be reduced.

There are too many issues here to summarise. Although the discussion is an attempt to simplify it may yet give the impression that Buddhist philosophy is hopelessly complicated.  Yet the logical issue we are discussing is basic, a high-school level philosophical issue. For a contradictory pair of statements one of them must be true and the other false. If this holds for a pair of statements then we can use the dialectic method of refutation to decide which is true and which false. Where it does not hold then the dialectic is an inappropriate method for deciding and it will lead us to unreliable conclusions.

The difficulty of understanding Buddhist philosophy and the world it describes is intense precisely because there would be no true contradictions. This idea challenges our intellect, which depends on contradictions for its functioning. What Nagarjuna proves and Kant later concludes is that the only reasonable world-theory would be one for which our conceptual world-of-opposites is reduced to Unity, a phenomenon Nicolas de Cusa famously places "beyond the coincidence of contradictories." In this case it is not plausible that there are contradictions in Buddhist philosophy. If they seem to be all over the place it would be because true words seem paradoxical. They may seem less so if we take note of Aristotle’s rule for contradictory pairs and allow ourselves to abandon the absurd extremes for an exploration of the mean.  

(This discussion is heavily reliant on two texts and they are recommended to anyone wishing to pursue these matters: Whitaker C. W. A., Aristotle’s De Interpretatione: Contradiction and Dialectic, Oxford, 1996; and Gyamtso, Khenpo Tsütrim, The Sun of Wisdom: Teachings on the Noble Nagarjuna’s Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, Shambala, 2003.)

Copyright © 2017 by Peter G. Jones. Published with permission.

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