by Tang Huyen

Those who don't use thought don't fall into logical errors and don't need Russell and Frege to help them think correctly — simply because they don't think. Logic is of thought, not of reality.

For a logician to situate himself in the world of thought (and a world without thought) with balance and perspective would be a perilous job.

Logicians are fascinated with possibilities, logical possibilities especially, and the fiction of God exerts a mesmerising effect, to say the least, even if it is only a fiction — and logicians with a realistic bent are wont to make such fictions real and deal with them accordingly.

Jules Vuillemin, "Les théorèmes négatifs de Gödel," in Frédéric Nef and Denis Vernant, eds., Le formalisme en question. Le tournant des années trente, Paris: Vrin, 1998, 188: "A mind which would be powerful enough to represent to itself simultaneously all the singular states of things would know all that is without bothering with logic or mathematics." That is, a contentually omniscient mind would not need universals like patterns, laws, structures, etc. to help it set to order the numberless particulars, because the latter are already fully known.

Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger, Débat sur le Kantisme et la Philosophie (Davos, mars 1929), "Conférence du Professeur Martin Heidegger sur la Critique de la Raison Pure de Kant et sur la tâche d'une fondation de la métaphysique," here 23: «C'est parce que l'intuition de l'homme est finie qu'elle a besoin de la pensée, qui, en tant que telle, est elle-même de part en part finie (L'idée d'une pensée infinie est un non-sens).» I translate from the French translation: Heidegger said, "It is because the intuition of man is finite that it needs thought, which, as such, is itself finite through and through."

Cassirer, Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit, vierter Band (1832–1932); English trans. Woglom and Hendel, The Problem of Knowledge, Yale UP, 1950:

German 112, English 105: Ernst Mach, Geschichte und Wurzel des Satzes von der Erhaltung der Arbeit, S. 31: "Because the capacity to comprehend and remember details is limited, the material must be arranged in order" [Weil die Fassungskraft des Einzelnen, sein Gedächtnis ein begrenztes ist, so muss das Material geordnet werden].

German 114–115, English 108: Mach, op. cit., S. 30f.: "Accordingly a physical law or principle had no independent cognitive value comparable to that of immediate perception, and certainly none above it. It merely repeated in abridged form, as a convenient verbal summary, the knowledge that perception furnished directly, and consequently better and more faithfully. A law is no more than a catalogue of isolated facts, a principle no more than a register of laws. The implication of this was the strange corollary that the necessity of thinking in general concepts and laws did not represent a special virtue of the human mind but actually originated in its weakness. An intellect broad and inclusive enough to grasp all details as details would require no such roundabout method — nor would there be any 'science' for it. 'If all single facts, all separate phenomena, were as directly accessible to us as we demand that knowledge of them be,' Mach expressly declared, 'science never would have arisen.'" [Ein physikalisches Gesetz oder ein physikalisches Prinzip besass daher keinen selbständigen Erkenntniswert, der sich mit dem der unmittelbaren Wahrnehmung vergleichen liess oder sich gar über ihn erheben konnte. Es wiederholte nur in kompendioser Form, in bequemer sprachlicher Zusammenfassung, die Erkenntnisse, die die Wahrnehmung uns unmittelbar, und also getreuer und besser, darbietet. Ein Gesetz ist nichts anderes als ein Katalog von Einzeltatsachen, ein Prinzip nichts anderes als ein Register von Gesetzen. Darin war die seltsame Folgerung eingeschlossen, dass die Notwendigkeit, in allgemeinen Begriffen und Gesetzen zu denken, keine eigentümliche Kraft des menschlichen Geistes darstellt, sondern dass sie im Grunde einer Schwäche des Geistes entspringt. Eine Intelligenz, die weit und umfassend genug wäre, um alles einzelne als einzelnes zu erfassen, bedürfte eines solchen Umwegs nicht — und für sie gäbe es demnach auch keine "Wissenschaft." "Wenn uns alle einzelnen Thatsachen, alle einzelnen Erscheinungen unmittelbar zugänglich wären, so wie wir nach der Kenntniss derselben verlangen," so erklärt Mach ausdrücklich, "so wäre nie eine Wissenschaft entstanden."]

Mach and Heidegger agree that thought actually reflects a human weakness and is not a human glory. Thought is needed because our mind is finite and cannot handle the whole mass of data that it faces, and thought with its concepts and categories helps us set that mass to order and make it manipulable. It is a necessary evil.

Russell and Frege each in his way broke the circle of self-predication, much indulged in by Plato — but self-predication and all other logical errors and fallacies are only within thought, and those who don't use thought don't fall into them and don't need Russell and Frege to help them think correctly, simply because they don't think.

The redeeming feature of Buddhist teachings is that they are only meant as means and not as ends, and that once the end that they point at is attained they can be let go of — so even if logical errors are made, they are made only as means and not as ends.

So logicians and logic have to contend with an imaginary competitor or adversary that does not need them and that relegates them to utter uselessness: a mind that can deal with reality without the benefit (or handicap) of logic. And since such a mind can deal with reality without logic, logic is of thought, not of reality. Good logic, the kind fostered and promoted by Russell and Frege, spares one errors of thought, not errors of reality. Hence with regard to dealing with reality, logic is a mere superfluity, as useful as adding legs to a painting of a snake.

Thus regardless how successful a logician is and how much he contributes to his discipline, there planes on him and his discipline the suspicion that they are dealing with air — clean, antiseptic air, but sheer air nonetheless. They may fight the errors of thought, but they are only fighting with shadows.

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on May 26, 2004. Author: Tang Huyen (Laughing Buddha, Inc.). Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

Tang Huyen was a scholar of Buddhist studies with deep command of Pāli, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan sources. Posting to talk.religion.buddhism and related groups from 2003 to 2008, he was among the most rigorous analytical voices in the English-language Buddhist Usenet world. This post builds a case — via Vuillemin on Gödel, Heidegger on finite intuition, and Ernst Mach on thought as cognitive weakness — that logic and science are workarounds for a limited mind, not approaches to reality itself. The Buddhist conclusion is characteristic: even if Buddhist doctrine contains logical imperfections, it does not matter, because it is a raft, not a destination. Logic fights within the domain of thought; the Buddhist path exits it.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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