[Buddha-l] there he goes again (sam harris)

[Richard Hayes]

On Monday 30 October 2006 15:12, Vicente Gonzalez wrote:

> yes, I agree. It is an inference. Although it doesn't invalidate the
> existence of an experience of something which is absent. Do you agree?

I don't know. I can't figure out what you are trying to say. What I was trying 
to say is that if one arrives at knowledge by inference, then one is not 
arriving at it by experience. So if you are saying that one's inference of 
the absence of a dog is experiential knowledge, then I would disagree with 
that.

> The experience exists. I don't say that we can experience a dog who is
> not present. Just that we can experience that a dog is not present.

That is precisely what I deny. I agree with Dignaga and Dharmakirti on this 
when they say that our knowledge that a dog is not present is not an 
experiential knowledge but an inference that involves mental constructions of 
the sort that are not present in direct experience.

> I agree. But then, if we cannot establish that the self is present or
> absent, then neither we cannot establish the impossibility of the
> overcoming of suffering.

Right. But then who would try to establish the impossibility of the overcoming 
of suffering. That would be overstepping the range of evidence. At most I 
should think one would say that there is no evidence to support the dogmatic 
claim that suffering can be ended. To say that there is no evidence in 
support of P is quite different from saying that there is evidence that 
not-P.

> Because we don't know if what is experiencing 
> the suffering now, this truly exist.

That is completely irrelevant to this discussion.

>Although also I'm confident that you
> cannot establish the truth of the impossibility of the overcoming of
> suffering.

You're quite right. It is not at all the kind of irresponsible dogmatic claim 
I would make, let alone try to establish. I would rigorously question the 
claim that suffering can be overcome, because I see no basis for making that 
sort of claim. But rigorously questiong a claim is quite different from 
trying to establish that claim's contradiction.

-- 
Richard P. Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes