Originally posted by JS357
Would a longer quote be better?
"I hold that orthodoxy is the death of knowledge, since the growth of knowledge depends entirely on the existence of disagreement. Admittedly, disagreement may lead to strife, and even to violence. And this, I think, is very bad indeed, for I abhor violence. Yet disagreement may also lead to discussion, to argument and to mut ...[text shortened]... ance."
- Karl Popper, The Myth of the Framework
http://www.wisewords.demon.co.uk/popper/
Discussion is most interesting. Sent me thinking and exploring. Popper > Fallibilism > Pyronnhic philosophy (Pyrrhon, Sextus Empiricus) > extremes of skepticism as to final knowledge.
Finally, the scent of Buddhist-like skepticism led to this site >http://pontosda.tumblr.com/post/5456143338/language-is-a-virus-skepticism-buddhism-and-the-best < informing of me of connections in history I did not know of. Fascinating.
Some excerpts:
"...As a brief introduction to a conversation that may be somewhat complex for those non-familiar with philosophy and Greek skepticism: the Greek word skepticism comes from the verb skeptesthai, “to observe”, “to investigate”. And that’s the skeptical attitude as described in Sextus Empiricus’s Outlines of Pyrrhonism; the skeptical is someone who observes and investigates. After considering differing and even contradictory views, and coming to the conclusion that all of them are acceptable and can be proved, the skeptical suspends his judgment. So the suspension of judgment (in Greek, epoche) is mainly something that happens to the skeptical, and not something that he actively seeks. It’s a passive process as well as an active one. Having suspended his judgments, the skeptical continues to live, of course, and continues to have the experience of phenomena, the experience of what happens, and is able to communicate and live this experience, without giving to it any solidity. Eventually the repeated experience of epoche leads to ataraxia, usually translated as “tranquility”.
From “Hellenism and Madyamika Buddhism”:
Pyrrhonism grew out of a Stoic philosophy and it reached its high point with Sextus Empirircus in the second century of our Common Era. During the same time Nagarjuna spent most of his life in Naagaarjunakonda and that city was in the orbit of Hellenistic influence.
I enjoyed seeing that the dialectic was introduced into Indian and Buddhist thought through Pyrrhon. McEvilley argues […] that the Hellenics must have introduced it, since Nagarjuna’s dialectic picked up at the stage of development of that of Sextus Empiricus […]
What amazed me was seeing the extraordinary similarity between Nagarjuna and Pyrrhon positions. To realize that these two thinkers were expressing the same doctrines, the same attitude, and even using the same metaphors and analogies to express their thought was eye opening...."
And another excerpt:
"...Both systems of the dialectic are designed to remove consciousness from identifying with any conceptual structure and that includes both natural and philosophical languages, and to block the possibility of identifying with ontology. They both believe the unreflective imposition of language and its categories on experience forces experience into the categories of language for which it is totally unfitted. It creates all the delusions and with it all the sufferings that mankind experiences. Thus, when you realize this, then the very conditions for being upset and suffering are overcome. And I know it is not an easy and simple task to live without these impositions of thought upon experience. It takes courage and an inner determination to live without concepts, but the concept-free mind is the mind of the Buddha, enlightenment.
The idea that we can have a non-conceptual experience of the moment, without intense goal direction in life, and without emotional attachment, is actually common to both Nagarjuna and Sextus. When the mind is suspended so that it neither affirms nor denies anything and recognizes nothing is more this than that, one reaches Epoche. What is that but a mind suspended from judging things as good or bad, right or wrong, and neither real nor unreal? Thus, the mind reaches silence (aphasia), freedom from all phenomenal influence (apatheia), and is no longer perturbed (ataraxia) so that each moment is lived without being either attached nor non-attached to anything... "
My comment:
This not fixing on final truth or rigid "reality" does not lead to ineffectiveness or lack of practical application, it simply frees and leaves open the meaning of phenomenon and further emergence. In fact, it prevents the rigidity that stultifies the scientific endeavor. All such "truths" appear to be ultimately furry and "working" ones. I am no mathematician, but I am reminded of Godel here also.