[Buddha-l] Dependent arising variants

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Thu, 2006-02-02 at 07:03 -0500, Dan Lusthaus wrote:

> > It is worth bearing in mind that the concept of necessary and sufficient
> > conditions is relatively modern.
> 
> They go back to Aristotle, actually, though the moderns have devised new
> wrinkles to be sure. 

I've never encountered them in Aristotle. Can you give me a reference?

> As for logical necessity, vyaapti plays the same role in Indian logic.

The jury is still out on that one. I don't want to rehearse all the
arguments made by both sides on this, but I would refer people to the
writings of such people as Oetke, Tillemans, Gillon and Taber, all of
whom have brought out problems with seeing the Indian notion of vyaapti
as parallel to structures in Western logical theory.

> One can find analogs to this in the Pali sources as well,

I'd love to see some references.

> though the vocabulary with which it was expressed was primitive by modern
> standards

Yes. That was really my point. I think one can find awkward expressions
in ancient texts that can be tweaked to come up with something that
satisfies modern tastes for precision. But we have to add the precision.
It is not there in the ancient texts. 

I guess what I am saying is that someone in our times can understand the
Buddha more clearly than he understood himself. We can improve on the
clumsiness of his way of expressing things.

-- 
Richard