[Buddha-l] Re: Greetings from Oviedo

[Dan Lusthaus]

> There are two flaws with your claim, Dan. First, it is not a fallacy to
> see something as a causal factor when in fact it is a causal factor.
> Saying that what is arguably the most influential country in the world
> has been a factor in a global political situation is not necessarily
> fallacious.

The sun is the most important causal factor affecting planet earth and the
solar system (which is why we call it "solar" system). Therefore Bush and
all his policies are the sun's fault. Bush never did a thing or had a
thought without the sun around somewhere, affecting not only Dubya but all
his neocon gremlins as well.

Maybe we differ on this, Richard, but I not only consider that "causal"
argument fallacious, it's just downright silly.

>Secondly, I am quite confident you could not find even one
> instance of my blaming anything, let alone everything, on the USA.

I'll let the buddha-l archives speak for the past. For the future, perhaps,
when/if that fallacy is committed, I will post a short message to the list
simply stating "causal fallacy."

>
> Bin Ladin, the last I heard, had never blown himself up.

The suicidals are the pawns, the expendible foot soldiers. The terrorists
are the ones doing the planning. (As you recognize before ending your
message).

The fallacious misapplication of the theory of equality (Bush = Bin Laden,
Hiroshima = Bali), even aside from the misguided moral relativism and the
ignoring of context, can now be added to the list of fallacies. A visiting
Zen teacher gave a talk at the Cambridge Zen center last Spring (founded
near Harvard by DT Suzuki and others back in the 50s, though it is now
affiliated with Korean Son). Talking about his time in Korea he explained
that generally he found Koreans very friendly and accepting, except this one
fellow, who repeatedly slashed him with a knife. He gave all sorts of
hair-raising details in his lengthy recounting of his many encounters with
that fellow. He told us he carries the physical scars from those encounters
today. The punchline was that the fellow was a surgeon who treated him for a
serious illness while there. He just left out a few contextualizing details,
and the story sounded like a slasher movie. One doesn't study surgeons to
stage a revival of West Side Story.

Even in the Huayan universe. Popular dumbed-down Huayan might sound like
everything is the same because everything shares causal connections with
everything else, but the dumb-downers usually get bored with eyes glazing
over when they try to work through the actual Huayan lists of types of
causal relations, in which everything is *not* the same (which is one of the
things each unique thing shares in common with every other unique thing).
Mindless conflation and false equalization is not what Huayan is about.

Dan Lusthaus