[Buddha-l] Students as potential spooks?

[sjziobro at cs.com]

Richard,

If nothing is really true, or at least you have no idea what true means, nonetheless, on the basis of ignorance, 1) you're coming to judge that thought has no connection to action, 2) that to claim that there is a connection is simplistic (as if claiming that no action follows from any thought is a complex affair), and 3) there is no free will with its attending moral responsibility.  OK.  Then you can now vote Republican with impunity, since now you've no compelling reason(s) to do otherwise and because I've now told you to do so!

Regards,

Stan

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Hayes <rhayes at unm.edu>
To: Buddhist discussion forum <buddha-l at mailman.swcp.com>
Sent: Tue, Feb 7, 2012 11:20 pm
Subject: Re: [Buddha-l] Students as potential spooks?


On Feb 7, 2012, at 6:04 PM, sjziobro at cs.com wrote:

> Intelligence personnel 
> need to know about many matters if  they're to be successful in their field 
> of endeavor.  The CIA, for  example, regularly assesses religious influence 
> within any particular society  or culture.

Unfortunately, whether one is talking about the academic world, the news media, 
or the CIA, most attempts to assess the religious influence on human behavior is 
embarrassingly simplistic. I have pretty much come to the view that there is no 
connection at all between human behavior and thought. So any study of theology 
or philosophy (both of which are thought-based) yields very close to zero basis 
on which to predict how people will act or to analyze how they have acted. 
Thinking is utterly irrelevant. 

There are two theories making the rounds that I find very exciting and that I am 
increasingly convinced may be true (whatever the he'll "true" means). 

The first theory is that there is no such thing as causality. Things just 
happen. One can gather statistics about events,  but statistics have no 
connection with causality. 

The second theory is that there is no such thing as conscious decision making. 
Decisions arise in consciousness after processes of which no one is conscious 
have put the body in motion. Everything we call decision making is after-the-act 
rationalization. There being no conscious decisions, there is no free will and 
therefore no moral responsibility. 

Some of the conclusions I have been driven to consider as pretty likely to be 
the way things really are may be at odds with Buddhist dogma, which is itself 
part of the delusional sham that Buddhists pretend to want to eliminate. 

Just some thoughts. Now I'm going to bed. 

Goodnight,
Richard Philip Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
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