The truth is that there never was any real dispute.

You raised a question in a totally different context, and I siezed on it, wholly unecessarily, to set out a view of causation. I am doing this kind of thing rather a lot at the moment, because I am struggling with some issues at work that are stopping me from sleeping, and I am attempting to keep my mind occupied.

Am I saying "that even were I to arrive at a non-causal understanding of the world I could only get there through having a causal understanding in the first place?"

Not really, since I'm not sure what a non-causal understanding of the world would be like. It's a bit like asking whether in order to understand what a disk would be like without an edge, we first have to understand edges (a bit like). It sounds like a plausible question, but it's really just a string of words in the form of a question - like something one of your owls would come up with. That could sound rather rude, but I don't mean it to be.

I wonder where the impulse to pick at an issue like this comes from? Personally I think it's down to a sort of feeling that we are entitled to answers for all questions and that an answer should be possible if only we could find the place to be, in relation to the issues, where we could truly see what the issues are. It's like the common belief that all will become clear when we die; i.e. move outside the context of our lives. I'm sure that it's the same impulse that led people like Bertrand Russell to come up with meta-languages which, supposedly, stand outside everyday language in order to explain what is inexplicable from inside it.

The problem is, he could never become a native speaker of meta-language, any more than I can learn Owlish.

That's all well and good, but it doesn't answer the /real/ question: just who /is/ Cobra2?

I'm not glad you're struggling with things at work and I'm not glad that you have to do things to keep your mind busy because I know that feeling much too well but I am glad it results in this.



(giggle)

I see the Madhyamaka school's understanding of dependent origination as a non-causal understanding of the world. Do you see it as not non-causal or just as invalid? (It's the reason I asked the Owlish question, I think it might be fair to say that only a being able to think causally could come up with it).

The cobra 2 is a criminal organisation...Oh Bugger! No, that's the 39 steps. I dunno.

I'd probably borrow Ludwig W's remark about the solipsist and twist it slightly: what they want to say is correct, only it cannot be said. I might not though. It's ever so slightly arrogant to make glib summations of an entire philosophy, when you don't really know much about it. Bad taste at the very least.

It isn't the approach to understanding causation I would take. They are clearly correct in that all the possible causes and sets of circumstances in creation cannot be determined and hence, this sort of investigation cannot lead to an ultimate truth. But then, I wonder whether the emphasis on the lack of independent reality of phenomena and the emphasis on "dependent origination" is actually a way of setting a frame of mind; like the ladder that you have to climb to get somewhere, but which you then dispose of.

I'm not sure that it's a non-causal view. I think it might be putting causation into a proper place or perspective, by emphasising that it can have no ultimate (as in enlightening) explanatory power. There's a tendency in western thought to assume that science can explain everything. This is very much like, if not completely synonymous with the thought that if only we knew all the causes, then we would know all the answers. So in this sense, relegating cause to it's proper place, is a useful exercise.

I don't think I know  Madhyamaka writing well enough to say much more without making crass mistakes. It's years since I read any Bhuddist stuff anyway. I don't really know whether they're getting at a Zeno-like notion that all existence, time, movement etc. are illusions, or whether they're saying something more like a sort of Platonic view of forms. Or something different altogether.

What do you think?

I think I agree with you mostly.

I agree that it's mainly about setting a frame of mind. But then I think the causal way of thinking is, too, for other purposes.

I absolutely agree with what you said about the view of science in western culture. I think that's a big problem.

I think Madhyamaka are definitely saying all that shiz is an illusion but I don't think they're saying it in a Zen way. It smacks more of Taoism (to which, along with Ludy W. I am very sympathetic) to me.

I'm sorry, I haven't really said much. Nothing useful is coming to mind right now.

I think that having a non-causal "understanding" would be the equivalent of insanity.