Sunday, April 20, 2008

Nothing in the universe to everything in the universe III


Burmakin: Your majesty, Can you do Burmese a favor? Injustice is prevailing in Burma. The military is foisting on us this unfair constitution.

King of Angels: Why you say this constitution is unfair?

Burmakin: So obvious. They are trying to legitimize the military people as a class of the specially privileged.

King of Angels: I don’t think this is a problem. The whole world is replete with such kinds of people who have such kind of either official or non-official special privileges. Since lies have started to appear in the world, the moral order of the world is always retrogressive. In the very beginning, the universal laws could punish would-be-Devadatt because this was the first time violation against the moral authority. But that was long time ago. A great nostalgia for your human beings!

Burmakin: Yes. The earth snapped open and devoured the King who lied by substantiating the elder one as the younger brother and the younger one as the elder brother. Today, the evil military also pronounces a skyful of lies. Why the universal laws couldn’t punish the evils as before?

King of Angels: My son, when people frequently do the wrong things, this becomes a custom and then it gets to be entrenched in the culture and at last even transforms into the order of the universe. Initially lies are regarded as abnormal behavior. Discrimination is regarded as despicable. Getting special privileges is dishonorable. But remember this is the age of decline. As time ebbs, more and more immoral things are depleted from an abnormal domain (set). They come to be listed in the normal domain (set) of human. And we divine either.

Burmakin: Your majesty, if you don’t mind I like to object your statement. For me, there is not such a normal set for arraying good acts. There is also no abnormal set counterpart for hoarding the evil behaviors either.

King of Angels: Aha. Quite interesting! For me, Buddhism is thought to be a system of dialectics because it says there is an opposite thing for every phenomenon. Just before my death, Buddha saved me from my throne by preaching Sakha Sutta. I still remember this Sutta. Buddha told me to keep my mind in equilibrium not to be diverted to the magnetic poles of dialectics of happiness and sadness. Now you sound like presenting a new theory. In natural thinking, a person is alive, if not, he is dead. A thing is tall, if not, it is short. The military rulers in Burma are unfair, if not, they are good people. It should be one or another. Now you are saying that a person is NEITHER not dead NOR not alive. A thing is BOTH short AND tall. For me, my preference is a system to clearly differentiate the good and evil. There should be exclusive sets to record all normal people to be kept apart from all abnormal people. Some Buddhists believe that I have a book made of the dog-skin to record the evils and a book made of gold to record the good-hearted acts.Only when domains of separate attributes are clear cut from each other, I could be easier to manage for assigning whom to be punished and whom to be rewarded.

Burmakin: All religions of the world tend to say that there is a heaven to hold all the good people. They also tend to say there is also a hell to hold all the bad people.You also tend to get two separate domains of the evils and the saints for your justice management of the stick and carrot system.Probably not in reality, your majesty. After seeing my theorem, you come to fathom that a person is neither dead nor alive. A person will also be either dead or living as this theorem will verify.You can’t believe it? Neither your dog-skin book nor the golden book can hold the sets for recording the good (normal) and the bad (abnormal) people.Because there is no universal set qualifying for those names of mutually exclusive qualities.The fundamental thinking in believing the world system to be a nature of dialectics will be derided to the ground zero by atomic bombing of this theorem.

King of Angels: I know there are many mysterious things in this world. I could believe if you can convince me this statement with any good reasoning.

Burmakin: I will prove this statement with Mathematics. You know, in many ways, Mathematics is a virtually perfect presentation of the universe.

King of Angels: When science principles get more and more credit in your human world, the humanity principles of Buddhism probably need to be in synergy with principles of Mathematics of physical sciences.This could probably be the evolution of your human Buddhism in the future.OK! Let’s see your logic. I will appreciate it.

Burmakin: I argue that no set can be a normal set OR an abnormal set at the same time. After seeing my proof of this theorem, the answer will be first produced to affirm that a set is either a normal set or an abnormal set. Then it comes to the conclusion that a set is neither a normal set nor an abnormal set. And both positions will be self-contradictory conclusions. Then it comes to my historical continuation of “Nothing in the Universe to Everything in the Universe ” that is also a self-contradictory argument.

Alertness: People who read the following derivation of the theorem should use utmost of their brain to understand its logic. You could probably face depression and nausea even if you are an inborn mathematical genius. I recommend that you should read again and again if you don’t understand the theorem immediately.

Proving that there is no set qualifying for the set of all normal sets or all abnormal sets.

Let's set A be the set of all special privileged classes in Burma.



Military people are specially privileged people in Burma.



Therefore Set A contains military people of Burma.



However there can be other specially privileged people like the thug justice, Aung Toe.



Then Set A is not equal to the set of all military people.



Military people are just a subset of Set A.



The set of all specially privileged people in Burma is not equal to its member, the set of military people.

Let's define this kind of set that is not equal to its member as a normal set


Then Set A, the set of all special privileged people is a normal set.



Let R be the set of all sets that are not the members themselves.

By our above defined criteria , R is the set of all normal sets.

The reader can also assume R as the universal set that includes all injustice people in the world. Injustice prevailing in this world is a normal happening. Isn't it?

My question is if R is a normal set or not?



If R is a normal set, it should not be its member itself.

If R is not its member itself, then R is not a normal set.

Because R contains all the normal sets

Then R is an abnormal set

If R is an abnormal set, R should be its member itself

Then R is a normal set

The answer is R is either a normal set or an abnormal set (OR)

R is neither a normal set nor an abnormal set.

So the desire of the King of Angels to have the exclusive ALL INCLUSIVE lists of the evil people and the good-hearted people is impossible. Because the list that contains all evils is not a list of evils. It is also not the list of the saints either. At the same time, it is also a list of evils and a list of saints. This is impossible for our human reasoning, too.However the theorem that applies this great endowment of our human reasoning verifies it. Nothing is everything and nothing is nothing (OR) Nothing is not everything and nothing is not nothing!

To be cont....

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

You guys trying to convert Buddhism to main stream philosophy? When I read the article “Mysticism and Logic” by Bertrand Russell, Buddhism most resemble to Mystical Philosophy (Metaphysics) compare to other philosophical branches. If you are doing “ Wi Pa Tha Nar” to seek ultimate truth , you are just like a person in Plato’s Cave . You are just ignoring all “the relation of sense-data to outside world” .

Ever since Boole’s “Law of Thought”, Philosophers and Mathematicians alike are excited about representing all Thought by logical analysis. “If such and such a proposition is true of anything , then such and such another proposition is true of that thing”. Do you really think this kind of logical deduction is enough to analyze Buddha’s thoughts ? [ Suggest you guys to read “Mathematics and the Metaphysicians “ by Russell ]

If u v read “The philosophy of Logical Analysis” in “History of western philosophy” there is no way to assume that you can do logical deduction for Buddha’s thoughts.

Kant famously said in his “Critique of Pure Reason, ’87 edition” , “ Although none of our knowledge can transcend experience, it is , nevertheless , in part a priori and not inferred inductively from experience” .

So guys, when u study Philosophy , pls be aware of the general atmosphere , history, time-line , culture background of these philosophers as well as their ideas.

And when things come to Real Politics , Game Theory is much more useful than your Set A , Set B analysis .. :)

Anyway, nice to meet you guys

Sai Lashio (SG)

Anonymous said...

Thank you Ko Sai Lashio for his wise comment.

I also thought the conditions of Burmese today are looking like the prisoners of Plato's cave.However I don't assume that the practitioner of famous Wi-Pa-Tha-Nar in Burma is COMPLETELY looking like the ideal model of a free prisoner of Platonic allegory.In this historic Plato's "Republic",the person who is freed from the imprisonment from the cave,at the fourth stage of his ultimate enlightenment, returned back to this disgusting prison(dark cave) to free all his fellow prisoners. For Burmese Wi-Pa-Tha-Nar,the practitioner had to stop at a point where it is looking like the third stage of Plato's "Republic",he just realizes the illusory world he has been imprisoned for the whole life so he runs away from the dungeon ignoring his fellow prisoners who were forever cheated and tortured in the cave left behind.As for my good hope,Burmese will be progressive to the fourth stage of enlightenment in the future.

Also thank you Burmakin for his attempt to relate Mathematics to prove some unexplainable concepts in Buddhism.However,in terms of ontological weakness of human understanding of the world, I agree with Ko Sai Lashio for the fact that the deduction of the logic can't become an enough match to verify Buddha's thoughts-more relevant vocabulary can be Buddha's supreme understanding of the universe.

Burmakin's example is a very brilliant proof to present a paradoxical nature of the universal sets for qualification of any exclusive nomination.However,I find two weaknesses in this logic construct.

First,our human epistemology is not at the level of knowing infinity.For the Set A, as a finite set,it will clearly show exclusive quality of normality he refers because the members in Set A is inside the realm of our human count/our human knowledge.However, when he extrapolates this COMPARATIVELY small set to the universal set Set R,a CATHOLIC set that contains ALL the normal sets, that is beyond our human epistemological knowledge because no human being on earth can count the number of infinity.This is one definite constraint getting me suspicious to believe this logic as TRUE.

Another constraint I discern is that we have a fallible language problem in our understanding of the mathematics.No pure mathematics can escape from the imperfect nature of our language as we identify the objects only by categories pre-existing in our human languages.For example, if we like to count "No votes" in this referendum, we need the symbol of "X" as a category for our understanding of "No".The count result (number) appears because we have the priori knowledge (as Kant said all human knowledge is in part priori)of knowing the categories of X as people's "NO" to this shameless government.No number, no digit, can't be constructed in our human realm without our intuitive understanding of categories in our languages of our everyday life.

What Burmakin refers as a universal set to contain ALL normal sets is beyond the language realm of our categorization as the infinity is can-be-known-only-abstractly perception of our mind.Why don't you drop "ALL as INFINITY" from this logic. Once the infinity concept that has both epistemological constraint and language constraint is dropped off, this logic can't have any intimidating power of inverting our human reasoning of the universe that is inherently based on the human language.Your "Nothing and everything" can be thought in the same way.They are safely meaningful as long as they have a definite count in a definite domain.However, they are transcendental (beyond our human reasoning) if we try to extrapolate them as the universal sets that are, actually, "virtual entities of our human mind".

Alvin S. C. Lee said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Alvin S. C. Lee said...

Hmmm, very interesting concepts in both the post and the comments.

Let's use an analogy in modern physics. Suppose that we are now traveling at the speed of light.

Now, at that speed, there is no concept of space-time since all phenomena presumably comes together. What we saw as a point in space is the same as what we see now, since light reaches us at the same time... hence, what we saw in the past is the same as in the present (comparable with Schrödinger's cat proposition).

There is contraction of length as we approaches the speed of light. At the speed of light, length is theoretically zero.

What happens when zero=infinity? All mundane logic breaks down, I guess.

Anonymous said...

I will also appreciate this interesting post and these deep thought comments.

It is wonderful that Burmese start to REALLY think how they can relate Buddhist thoughts to scientific discoveries.In the past, there are only air pot Buddhist scholars who blindly and blatantly bubbled Buddhism as scientific without a real study and intuitive understanding of BOTH principles of sciences and Buddha's explanations of the universe.Now I believe the age of chivalry of Burmese has started to go away.

In my understanding of Buddha, Buddha never confirmed the pre-life , post-life or reincarnation that are the core concepts of Hinduism.
Einstein brilliantly proved in his allegory of "Moving train and its railway hit by two lightning bolts",radically showing that there is no absolute time to define what is happening simultaneously at the same time.Only for a stationary object exactly at the middle point between two lightning bolts,these two thunder bolts can be said to be hit at the same time.For a moving object,at least one thunder bolt is striking earlier than another depending on which direction the observer is moving.Long live dominating Newton's principle of ABSOLUTE time was crushed into nothing.If time is relative to the speed of the observer, Buddha is absolutely right not to say the pre -life and post-life as the universe has so diverse bodies of innumerably different speeds (countless observers) to definitely say what is the early and what is the next, as "early for the one" is "the next for the other".

The famous Schrodinger's cat is the principle that ever made the perfect agreement between Einstein and Schrodinger who seemed to be in conflict in their foundational ideologies before.This is also a
great scientific testimony of "dependent origination"(Parittsa Tamapoketa) of Buddhism.Since the ancient times,Burmese Buddhists have erroneously thought and interpreted the "Vinyana causation principle" as the first consciousness appeared at the very beginning of fertilization.It is quite ridiculous if Buddha had to unimaginably struggle very hard for 4 infinite periods and 100,000 eons for saying to the world what is happening to our zygote at the time of fertilization.Nobody ever denies this funny concept as our authoritarian Burmese Buddhism enforces that what the Elders said must always be accepted as true.

Schrodinger's cat is both dead or alive as long as we don't open the box to observe.That is what Buddha said: Vinyana causes object (Rupa) and mental conceptualization (Nama).In simpler terms, only by observation,the system of the universe comes to be stabilized to affirmatively say that the cat is either alive or dead.This is one of the best paradoxes of the history of scientific revolution: we try to observe what is the universe- and then we realize that "our observation itself is determining" what is the universe at this subatomic level.This principle of quantum mechanics in modern times was also our Buddha's disclosure of the magic of the universe more than 2500 years ago.Science is said to be approaching to Buddha's spirituality if the monks don't continue to say Vinyana as "fertilized mind" and tried to RIGIDLY follow Buddha's decree of Kalama Suttra to explore the concepts logically before accepting something doctrinally.

This is a great post. I am very delighted to see that a new model of Buddhism in synchrony with modern sciences has germinated at last in Burmese society even if Burmese have been blinded for such heinously oppressive military dictatorship.

Alvin S. C. Lee said...

Here is one interesting article for your reading pleasure :)

Anonymous said...

Guys,

Shall we discuss about how Buddhism did OR could contribute to our human civilization? Or to our human quest for knowledge?

Regds,
Sai Lashio(SG)

Anonymous said...

Hello guys,

For describing the contribution of Buddhism to human civilization,I think a great apologue of this process can be the "entanglement principle" of quantum mechanics.No matter how distant are a particle from another,a superposition of one particle at one end of the universe is causing a superposition of another particle in the other end of the universe.

Buddhism contribution to the human civilization is, in most part, in Asia rather than the West or Africa.India,China, Tibet,Sri Lanka and South East Asia are pre-eminent regions where the philosophy of Buddhism has tremendously entangled with the cultures and other religions of people in these societies.

If you can accept my proposition of entanglement as Buddhist civilization process,we also need to be clearly convinced that Buddhism itself has also been counter-affected by the national and cultural "bias" of the people who will indelibly create "the observer effects" for distortion of the Buddha's actual position.If we can accept that human knowledge is imperfect,Buddhism in every particular region of the past and current worlds have been continuously in "disequilibrium" rather than getting true insight into the MIDDLE WAY or perfect understanding of EMPTINESS.

So guys, how do you think?Before any debate with his dissidents, Buddha always set up a preliminary rule which affirmed that both contenders (He and dissident)would eliminate any bias in accepting the truth of good reason.Are you ready for understanding the numerous bias of eclectic human choices before exploring Buddhist civilization or dissecting the IMPERFECT nature of human inquest of knowledge?

Anonymous said...

I really appreciate ur effort...
Go on !!
Count me in your regular reader!!!!