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9 Buddhism & Science - Interview with Graham Priest

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hello my name is orestes Palermo's and I

am a postdoctoral fellow at the Aidan

Research Center at the University of

Edinburgh and today I'm here at the

University of Edinburgh with Professor

Graham priest from the City University

of New York to talk about dilation

philosophy of logic mathematics and

paradoxes hello professor priest higher

essays please call me Graham yeah hello

Graham so you are working on philosophy

of logic and you are famous for your

defense of die elitism your may be

infamous infamous well there's no such

thing as bad fame logical paradoxes

you're interesting Peres consistent and

non classical logics would you like to

tell us a little bit how you got

interested into that and maybe what died

elitism ease about there's one okay so

let's start with donatism okay so this

word dilute here is a neologism which we

made up many years ago and it means a

true contradiction so a contract

contrary foods are things of the form

were in Scotland we're not in Scotland

the sun shining the sun's not shining

all men immortal

some men are immortal and the standard

view going back to Aristotle is that if

you've got a pair of contradictory they

can't both be true once true once false

better die lethea is some it's a

contradiction that's true so this is a

daily --this myth of you that some

things are die luthiers and this is a

highly unorthodox view just because as I

said the sort of standard review in

Western philosophy has been that

contradict trees can't both be true so

that stylus is 'm now why did I become

interested in Daddy thism well many

years ago I was a mathematician and

writing about mathematical logic and as

a lot of Aleutians don't they think

about the importance of the girdle

serums and so on

and if you look at the proofs of girdles

theorems or girls proof is theorems they

come very close to paradox so the proof

of girls theorem involves a sentence

which says in effect you know this

Center is not provable in a system or

rather now think about that sentence for

a moment if it's provable then

presumably it's true so it's not

provable so if it's proof but it's not

proof or so it can't be proved but hey

we've just proved that okay so it's true

no um that's a bit of paradoxical

reasoning now that sort of reasoning is

employed in girls proof is sin although

you can't actually push the

contradiction through what you get is

you get off the boat at a certain point

and you prove that your theory is

incomplete but nonetheless you're

dealing with this kind of paradox about

proved ability so I got interested in

this kind of paradox and it's clearly a

close cousin of other paradoxes of self

reference like the liar paradox this

sentence is not false and so I became

interested in this kind of paradoxical

argument and of course these paradoxes

are well known in the history of

philosophy and the standard a response

has always been well there's something

wrong with these arguments and the game

has been to find out why and the game

has not had a very successful conclusion

as of yet you know logicians have we not

argue about these things for over 2,000

years and as far as paradoxes like the

liar goes there's absolutely no

consensus so a kind of natural thought I

think is hey maybe we've been barking up

the wrong tree we're trying to show

what's wrong these arguments but there's

actually nothing wrong with them they

establish what they appear to establish

namely that certain contradictions are

true so you have dire thism

would you say that that actually offers

a way out of some problems between

philosophy so for instance some people

support the relativist position but then

say well is that relative itself so you

know some positions them to be seem to

be self referencing but then if dial if

is miss true then that would be not a

problem for these positions well it I

mean real this one could mean many

things and the okay let's suppose you've

got a version of relativism which ends

up in a contradiction I'm sure there are

such things then if you endorse such a

theory then you look so you can be

pushed into contradiction and you might

take that as showing that the relative

term is wrong on the other hand you

might turn the modus ponens and modus

tollens and say look if the arguments

for that kind of relativism really are

good then you should buy and you should

buy the consequences and maybe that

consequences is dial atheism there are

lots of ifs there okay but that's the

kind of logical geography of the

situation okay so we see that dilated

who has lots of applications within

philosophy and logic but you have also

linked it to Buddhism both the kind of

consequences it has because Buddhism

puts forwards lots of let's say

paradoxes in its philosophy but also you

have linked it historically as a way of

understanding the wound to do this okay

so my interest in Buddhism was not

driven by dial atheism I think it's it's

a philosophy which I find independently

very interesting but there are elements

of Buddhism which tend to push you too

contradictions this is okay this is not

just true Buddhism it's also true if

many of the Great Western think it's

like Heidegger and we can shine in the

Tractatus and so on

but I think probably it's true that many

of the Asian thinkers especially the

East Asian thinkers have been more

inclined to be comfortable with

accepting a contradiction than most

Western philosophers so you know how you

interpret this is contentious and people

who do Buddhist philosophies agree about

these things of course its philosophy

but it does seem that certain aspects of

Buddhist philosophy will push you

towards contradiction and again if you

think the arguments that push you

towards its philosophical position are

good then you have to accept the

I have a question which might be taking

this a little bit way it might be a

little bit akt1 but I want to ask you so

the world.i elitism comes from the Greek world

world

Alethea real language truth and if

you're going to translate

Alethea literally it means that it is a

thing that you cannot forget this is

bringing any banks for you when you're

thinking about dialy Faceman

and could that relate to paradoxes

somehow okay yes it rings bells come

back to that in a second but just the

word direly through from itself it's

it's obviously a neologism and many many

years ago when I was starting to work on

this stuff I was working with an old

friend of mine Richard Sylvan Richard

rattly as he was them who's now sadly

been dead for nearly 20 years

and we were interested in power

consistency so earlier you mentioned non

classical logics power consistent logic

is a kind of logic where contradictions

don't you apply everything as they do in

kind of standard logic now you might

well think that the correct counter

validity is power consistent but that

does not mean that you think that some

contradictions are true it just means

that not everything follows from a

contradiction but in those days the word

para consistent was being used both for

the sense I just explained but also for

dial atheism and we need to find a word

to distinguish between these two views

so we had to kind a neologism so I

remember we were at the ANU and we went

down to the library and we looked

through the the Greek dictionary and we

looked through the Gaelic dictionary and

we looked through the Hebrew dictionary

looking for a nice word okay and we just

couldn't find one so in the end we

decided we wanted took

we had to kinda Diala jism and the

inspiration is a passage by Vic and

Stein from the remarks in the

foundations of mathematics where he

likens the liar sentence this sentence

is false to a Janus headed figure facing

truth and falsity so it comes it's a

2-way truth as it were so we thought ok

die Aleph you know does it ring bells

yes the obvious bullet rebill it wrings

his with with Heidegger because when

Heidegger talks about truth he insists

on using the word alla' fear because he

identifies truth in a certain sense with

revealing this which is áliveá ok so

many years ago I started reading

Heidegger and writing about Heidegger

and it always seemed to me that

Heidegger should have been a dial a

theist and as far as I could see he

wasn't but I a student of mine last year

finished his his doctoral thesis on hide

again man called Filippo Casati and he

showed me I think quite conclusively

that in his later life

Heidegger actually became a dilute East

which is not a common view I think

but the textual evidence I think is

pretty strong so I don't know if that's

the kind of Bell you had in mind however

that's the bell that run ok so that's

very interesting because there Xbox turn

I wanted to ask you was about what are

the links between dilithium Buddhism and

modern science which is something that

you were talking about the massive

online open course that he recorded for

us and for instance hide the gives

philosophy of mind is known to lead to

certain advances recent advances within

philosophy of mind and there are also

perhaps some things that similar to Buddhist

Buddhist

philosophy in Heidegger's philosophy so

in other words that this seemed to be a

connection between ancient Buddhist

thought modern advances within

philosophy of mind and cognitive science

but at the same time you have also

talked about connections between physics

and Buddhist thought as well as other

disciplines what would you say are the

most obvious connections between all

these different means ok well that's

that's a complex let me start by drawing

a distinction sometimes people talk

about an early hiding and a later hide

ago so the early Heidegger is designers

ight then there's something that happens

in heidegger's thought called the kafir

the turning and after that you get the

later Heidegger which is way starts to

talk about language and poetry and

things which kind of more metaphysical

if you I can use that word now the

connection between the Hydra in the

philosophy of mind is with the early

high to go so this is his discussion of

embodiment in Zion and cite his views

about being embedded in the world and

that's been picked up by number of

people in cognitive science who are

thinking about the mind have realized

that you can't talk about the mind if

it's embedded physically embedded in a

body in a society etc so those

connections I think have a number of

cognitive scientists have really started

to think about then that's great the

connections between hydro and Buddhism

are not between the first Heidi of the

early heidi gap but the later hide again

so designers sight starts with the

science far get a question of being ah

from a sign is it-- what is being and

this was a question which was to

motivate heidegger's thought throughout

his whole career so even after the care

it's still central to his thought and

he's struggling with the question of how

to answer it because there's an obvious

problem I mean as soon as he asked

designs of Fargo he says look there's

one mistake you must not make whatever

being is it's not a being it's what

makes any being a being okay so if you

want to say what is being but any answer

you give to that question it's going to

treat it as a Bing if I say being is

sound so I'm treating it as an object

just if I say Edinburgh is the capital

of the world I have a Scotland that's

treating Eddie brezin objects and so on

so say X is something rather it's a

treat X as an object right so you can't

answer the damn science Fargo in fact

it's worse than that you can't even ask

it so I say what is being I'm still

treating it as an object so haiduk has a

problem and this is properly wrestles

with a lot especially in the later hide

again now there is a strong connection

between Heidegger and especially East

Asian Buddhism so there's a school of

philosophy in the 20th century the major

score of Japanese philosophy in the 20th

century called are the Celtx called

physics in Kyoto and a number of the

kuratas called philosophers who were

very interested in Western philosophy

and some of them actually went to study

with Heidegger initially started with

high degree in the late 30s for example

so the Kyoto scold philosophers are

drawing on elements of Western

philosophy but also on elements of

Buddhist philosophy and especially Zen

Buddhism now

Zen Buddhism has a kind of problem which

is similar to the problem that Heidegger

faced because in Buddhism there's a view

to the effect that there's a world of

appearances the way the world appears to

us and then there's a kind of ultimate

reality which the period is the word

but if you start to ask what ultimate

reality is like you can't ask that

question because it turns out to be

what's left when you strip off all the

concepts did you use so it's it's it's a

conceptual but of course you know the

Buddhist philosophers talk about it just

as much as Heidegger talks about being

so both of these both Heidegger's

thought and Buddhist thought have this

problem that there's something that

appears to be ineffable being ultimate

reality yet you go ahead and talk about

it and it looks as our urine dialectic

territory here now to what extent you

know HIDA get influenced the kyoto

school philosophers all the other way

around i think we may may never know but

certainly there was a sort of

convergence of the thought of the kyoto

school philosophers and and Heidegger

are on the question of ineffability okay

so that being several questions in mind

the first one I wanna ask is we've

talked about dilation and which is

related in certain ways to Buddhist

thought and logic mainly I think you

have made the connection what is known

as sadist courting the idea that

something can be true it can be false it

can be both true and false or it can be

neither but you have also talked about a

fixed possibility which is the

possibility of something being ineffable

which is what you just referred to and I

think you have also just since writing a

book on it so would you like to tell us

a little bit about this fifth option and

how it contrasts okay do the other form

so let's let's talk about the

treacherous kotti first of all church

scottie means literally four corners

four points and what these four points

are is as far as if if you take any

statement okay in Aristotelian logic

it's true it's false not both not

neither historic right but in early

Buddhist thought there's this Prince

record the

Oh Scottie which says hey there were

more than two possibilities there are

four okay true/false both neither and

this informs and up some of the debates

in the early sutras so we're talking

about you know something it goes back to

the fifth or sixth century BCE okay now

just to stay on the track of cottage for

a minute a number of Western

philosophers when they meet the chat

riccati find it very hard to understand

because it runs against principle so the

principle of non-contradiction the

prehistoric screwed middle and how do

you make sense of this and it's very

hard if you stick to a logic which just

has these two possible answers but one

of the things that's happened in modern

logic is precisely the invention of non

classical logic seem particularly

many-valued logic switch accommodate

this possibility very very naturally so

although of course the early Buddhist

knew nothing about this you can

certainly make sense of view in terms of

modern or classical logic all right so

that's there from the earliest days of

Buddhism but something rather

interesting happens around the turn of

the Common Era where a new kind of

Buddhism arises

it's called Ayana the greater vehicle

and this brings a whole new bunch of

metaphysical ideas to Buddhism and the

greatest of the Mahayana philosophers

arguably the second most important but

it's philosopher after the body himself

was a philosophy called Nagarjuna second

century first century no one really

knows the dates working somewhere in

India no one really knows where but he

is the kind of foundational philosopher

of Mahayana and the chapter Scottie

plays an enormous role in his thought in

various ways but one thing that seems to

emerge from the thought of Nagarjuna is

that sometimes he rejects all four of

these possibilities so that he seems to

think there's a fifth possibility

and when you'd look at who's thought

what this possibility seems to be is

ineffability and he's in the kind of

territory I talked about just now of

this ultimate reality okay it's ultimate

reality which seems to be ineffable so

that's the fifth possibility but of

course immediately to say there's this

fifth possibility that something is an F

bull and explain why your entire lithic territory

territory

what kinda you was doing well it's it's

in the same territory as Heidegger but

of course it's some 2,000 years earlier

roughly so the book I've just finished

is is called the fifth corner or four

and it's precisely about the history of

Buddhist metaphysics the chatter Scotty

and ineffability and so it tells a story

about Buddhist metaphysics its evolution

over 1,500 years in India and China and

Japan and then our since I'm a logician

I tend to thinking logically terms and

so it deploys some of the concepts of

modern non classical logic to try to

make sense of this because one thing

we've learned about is that the

techniques of logic are so much more

versatile than people realized in the

first half of the 20th century that we

can make sense of a lot of things that

may not have occurred to people like

sense before that okay so as a final

question I would like to ask you what do

you think are there connections between

and seemed Buddhist thought and Anson's

philosophy a great philosophy and some

Greek philosophy because I think you

mentioned that when Buddhism started

leaving India Middle East was a Greek

colony so one question is whether they

brought back many of the Buddhist

philosophy with them and also whether

these two philosophies have perhaps

coexisted along the centuries because

for instance you said that we can find

similar themes in heidecker's philosophy

2,000 years after the Buddhist first

thought about it you know

okay so let's deal with the second

question first that there are many great

philosophers who deal with the limits

Plato

can't Vickie Stein Heidegger Nagarjuna

nishitani and the thought that language

or concepts have a limit is a very

natural one and all these philosophers

have advanced reasons as to why language

and concepts have their limits you may

or may not agree with their reasons

however that they put these forward but

if you explained that there are limits

to language there are things you can't

talk about and explain why you can't

talk about them hey you're in this

apparently dialectic situation so yeah

the thought that that there are limits

to language and concepts seems to be a

perennial one in philosophy east and west

west

and it might be driven by very different

considerations which suggests that there

are limits to our concepts and language

but it does seem to be one that occurs

again and again again and you know for

quite different reasons many times so

that that's the second part of the

question now the first part of the

question is sort of unalterable however [Music]

so Buddhism starts to develop in about

invades and takes his army from Greece

across Central Asia in through

Afghanistan Pakistan into parts of India

and so around I guess the turn of the

Common Era I'm not quite sure when the

Alexandrian empire collapsed but

certainly for much of this time Central

Asia was a Greek colony and that's very

obvious if you look at art from that

period because a lot of the Buddhist art

from that time looks very Greek okay and

that's because of the influence of Greek

art on the middle or on Central Asia

however when Buddhism starts to expand

out of India Mahayana Buddhism goes

north west so it goes into Central Asia

now why is that important

well Central Asia that the Silk Route

runs through Central Asia

so the Silk Route is a trading route

that runs from China through to the

Middle East and hold this period of time

there was of course trade going

backwards and forwards across the Silk

Route and a trade not just in spices and

silks but also in ideas you know because

merchants move they talk to people

so certainly Buddhist ideas would have

been located on the Silk Road in fact

that seems to be how they got into China

so they're going to Central Asia first

and then across the silk route into

China that that's a major route of

Buddhism into China but of course if it

went east it could have easily gone west

as well and there are certainly

resonances between Buddhist thought and

some elements of Greek thought so for

example Hellenistic philosophy the the

sceptics the Stoics the Epicureans have

an idea of which in many ways sounds

like a Buddhist idea because a central

Buddhist idea

is that you shouldn't you you need to

encourage peace of mind by having a sort

of a non-attached attitude to things

that happen in life now you find a very

simple similar thought in a lot of the

ancient Hellenistic schools they all

think that ataraxia or tranquility tasks

is a good thing

and it's to be achieved by having a

certain non-attached view to the things

that happen okay now the metaphysics of

the Hellenistic schools are very

different from the metaphysics of

Buddhism but the kind of ethical

attitude is very similar and that's true

now was there some kind of causal

connection between these two things

as I said that's really impossible

because we don't do this we just have no

documentation so it can remain at best a

speculation hey you know maybe there was

a causal inference between the

Hellenistic ischool's and Buddhism but

then you know as I've said good ideas

often occurred people independently so I

guess we'll never know and we'll just

have to you know speculate on that one

okay and a final question then this was

you answer about the past of how the two

schools of thought may have interacted

how about the future in the massive open

online course you talk about some things

about how Buddhists or the might feed

back to the Western modern science so

what would you say are the main well

there are certainly elements of

resonance or commonality between some

aspects of Buddhist thought and some

aspects of scientific thought if there's

going to be a inference there I think

it's more likely to go from science to

because you know the Dalai Lama is on

record as saying well if it's science

establish the stuff that sinka back with

Buddhism it's the science that's important

important

and that that may well happen buddhism

is being revised quite a lot in 2,000

years and it I'm sure it's gonna be

revised some more I don't think that I

can see developments in science coming

from Buddhist thought although maybe it

will suggest some experiment so I could

do for example you know on brain

structure however since you raised the

question of the relationship between

Eastern thought and Western thought

let's just stay in the realm of

philosophy not between science but

philosophy and philosophy and here I

think something very interesting is

happening because traditionally the

Asian philosophical traditions have not

been taught in the West partly this is

because if you can ruin its you know

that Western philosophers don't know

much about it but I think it's fair to

say there's also been an element of bias

against Asian ideas so 40 years ago it

was not uncommon to find Western

philosophers say well you know the Asian

philosophical traditions really

philosophy they're their religion their

mysticism they're sort of wise man

pronunciations and so on now it's quite

clear that this view can be held only

out of ignorance because these people

had never read the texts and you can't

read the text for understanding this is

serious philosophy now I think that

attitude has largely gone but I think

it's also true that Asian philosophical

traditions are still thought in the West

as kind of fringe --is-- which is

unfortunate because these are rich

philosophical traditions traditions I

mean India is quite different from China

which are just as fascinating and rich

as the European traditions and all the

great tradition traditions whether

they're right or wrong I think have

interesting things to teach us so I

think that it's important that in the

future in western academy philosophy Academy

Academy

do start to engage much more with the

Asian traditions not because we're going

to give up the Western traditions but

because we can learn we can enrich our

philosophical ability by drawing on

different traditions from different

parts of the world so I think this is

happening so you know most philosophy

department in Australia now teach at

least one or two courses on the Asian

traditions this is not the case in the

UK and the u.s. so much maybe this is

because of the location of Australia

geographically but slowly I think it's

become more and more common for Asian

material to be incorporated into Western

philosophy departments this is going to

take a lot of time because you can only

teach what you know and we don't train

our students across traditions what we

do we're starting to but you know what I

improve it was that within sort of

another two or three generations most of

the students that we trained in the West

are going to have a decent knowledge of

the Asian traditions as well as the

Western traditions and we can I think in village

global philosophy for the first time so

hopefully this is a bit more productive

than global capitalism but what's going

to happen I think it's quite

unpredictable because when traditions

meet you know sparks fly off each other

and radically new ideas happen so that

there are many examples of this in the

history of philosophy so for example

when Christian thought because Greek

philosophy and the early years of

Christianity I mean you can you get

these amazingly new thoughts about

impossible if you've just got Judaism or

Greek philosophy but you get the whole

wealth of Christian philosophy or when

Indian Buddhism goes into China you get

this sort of clash of cultures between

India culture and Chinese philosophy and

then you get this hub this whole new

development of Chinese Buddhism okay so

when these cultures come to go when

different cultures come together and

they rub against the

that I think really exciting things

happening in the development of

philosophy and well anyone who makes

predictions about the history of about

the future of philosophy is kind of

foolish hey let me be foolish okay I

wouldn't be at all surprised to see this

kind of element seen in philosophy in

the West it's already starts happen in

the East but I wouldn't be surprised to

see it happen in the West and the next

two or three generations I'm where that

goes I have no idea but I think it will

be very exciting let's be open-minded

then as much as we can

let's eyeline yeah it's a great idea

okay thank you very much thank you

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