Philiminality

There is an apparent  contradiction between Zen way of life and scientific studies of nature.  However, on the fundamental level they have in common search for  reality: through critical examination of facts, acceptance of  impermanence of things and phenomena, and non-reliance on scriptures.  Implementing and understanding common ground in both outlooks can lead  to finding the meaning of human existence, personal flourishing and  happiness.

Tai Chi is a popular method of self-cultivation and health enhancement that goes back to a 17th-century combination of martial arts and healing exercises (daoyin). The latter are first documented in the 3rd century BCE and today activated, under biomedical auspices, in the practice of qigong. To facilitate the smooth movements of Tai Chi, teachers emphasize certain key ideals, such as overall freedom from tension or relaxation, an upright  posture, natural breathing, a sense of centrality, weight separation,  mental focus, and an awareness of the body (and nature) as one unity. These concepts relate directly to certain core Daoist values, most  importantly, oneness or the holographic nature of the universe,  continuous change and constant motion, naturalness (spontaneity),  nonaction or pervasive fluidity,  as well as authenticity, integrity,  simplicity, and sufficiency. This presentation will outline the historical development of Tai Chi  and its major characteristics, then describe how its practice embodies  key aspects of Daoist philosophy, cosmology, and ethics.

Contradictions (and, arguably, the acceptance thereof) pervade Buddhist  Philosophy. What is the point of those contradictions? In this talk, I  shall argue that contradictions are an important soteriological  instrument (upāya) for the practitioner. The enigmatic catuṣkoṭi, a  statement to the effect that every proposition holds, does not hold,  both holds and does not holds, and neither holds nor does not hold, is  noteworthy in this context. In Western research, the catuṣkoṭi has been responsible for plenty furore. Recently, Graham Priest (2010, 2018) has put forward an interpretation of the catuṣkoṭi in non-classical logic. With resource to this technical apparatus, we can uncover the family resemblance of the Kōan practice of the Zen tradition with the catuṣkoṭi. The Kōan, as I shall argue, may be considered an abbreviated catuṣkoṭi. It is generally accepted that the Kōan is  a soteriological instrument on the journey towards enlightenment  (satori). Thus, given their resemblance, I argue by induction that the catuṣkoṭi is more than a purely logical instrument, applied to refute philosophical enemies – it, too, has soteriological importance.

The purpose of many  computer products in the area of information and communications  technology is to capture the user’s attention, distract it from the  actual place where the user is situated, and export it to some virtual  space where advertisers practise their persuasion. The enterprise has  been enormously successful, though the effects on users aren’t always  benign (anxiety, depression, etc). Philosophically, the more insidious  effects are on how we think and who we think we are, encouraging  calculative thinking and a post-Cartesian self-image of ourselves as  disembodied minds only contingently situated in physical places. The  implications for education deserve careful consideration.

A growing number of philosophers are recognizing the value of  psychoanalysis in enriching our understanding of rational psychic  integration—a central task within the Platonic-Aristotelian ethical  tradition. Here, I join their ranks by proposing that ancient Greek  ethical concepts and Freudian psychoanalytic insights may be jointly  applied to conceptualize the psychiatric illness anorexia nervosa as an ethical disorder, and to suggest a means of treating it as such.

It is well-known that Stoic  ideas about ethical guidance and the therapy of emotion influenced the  formation of modern cognitive therapy. This paper outlines those links  and also explores how far the two practices are parallel in their aims  and methods with special reference to Epictetus’ ‘Discourses’  and ACT therapy. Bearing in mind the broader theme of the conference, on  the intellectual challenge of philosophy (and its significance for  practice), I ask how far the distinctive theoretical commitments of  Stoic ‘therapy’ render it different in its objectives and procedure from  modern cognitive psychotherapy.

Zen kōans serve a didactic function within the institution of Buddhist  schools, with teachers using them to help their pupils reach  enlightenment. In this paper, I suggest that Platonic dialogues function  similarly to Zen kōans in their inducement of aporia. Thus, reading and understanding the role Zen kōans are intended to play within Buddhist schools illuminates the role of aporia in Western philosophy. Using Plato’s Seventh Letter as a guide for  reading Platonic dialogues, I analyze the form of Platonic dialogues  generally and highlight how the commentarial traditions engage  dialectically with the original texts. Second, I compare and contrast  the form and function of Zen kōans and Platonic dialogues, taking the  authority of the master and philosopher and their orientation towards  truth as the driving force in both. I focus on a kōan written,  ostensibly, by Qingyuan Weixin in the 13th century and Plato’s Republic. I then show how, when stripped of content, the engagement with Zen kōans can be understood in terms of the catuskoti. I suggest how this might also be the case for Platonic dialogues.

Buddhist ethics shares with  Plato a rationalist orientation in the weak but crucial sense that a  correct view of reality is the final goal, and that seeking and  attaining this goal is transformative. This implies a further  similarity, namely that the focus of ethical concern is on  transformation of view, from which transformation of character (or  experience) follows. Choice, deliberation, action, reason happen too far  downstream, and too much simply as the result of transformation of view  and character, for them to be of much theoretical interest in their own  right. Buddhist ethics further shares with Plato a sublime indifference  to human beings becoming ‘good things of their kind’. Normativity is  not grounded in our nature, nor in a metaphysics of natural kinds. While  correctly understanding our human condition may be of vital practical  value in appreciating the manifestation of ultimate reality in the  everyday, or in motivating our concerted efforts to achieve this  understanding, it does not provide a goal to aim at. This is an  overlooked reason why 'virtue ethics’ also fits ill as a classification  of Buddhist ethics. It holds us, as does Plato’s ethics, to a much more  ambitious ethical ideal than virtue ethics can conceive, and this makes a  difference for how seeking that ideal transforms us.

It is well-known that modern strands of psychotherapy—like  Beck’s cognitive-behavioural therapy or Ellis’ rational emotive  therapy—have been influenced by the Stoics and their take on the nature  of emotions. It is not the world which causes our emotional upheaval, the Stoics and therapists propose, but how we construe the world through our mediating beliefs.  What  is rarely appreciated, though, is the fact that a precursor of this  cognitivist theory of human emotion can already be found in Plato’s Philebus. Here Socrates offers a famous yet puzzling argument (between 36c3 and  41a4) according to which our anticipatory pleasures can be false (pseudês). Most recent literature has focused on the source of these pleasures’ alleged falsity: some scholars maintain that they  are false because they do not latch onto the world (e.g. D. Frede),  others think they are false because there is something evaluatively or  morally wrong with them (e.g. V. Harte). In this paper I want to  sidestep this long-standing debate and suggest that we can (and should)  excavate a cognitivist model of pleasure from this puzzling stretch of  text, as it were running in the background of the argument and making it  possible in the first place. On this model, I suggest, any human pathos centrally involves a doxa that  a state of affairs obtains and that this state of affairs is, somehow,  positively evaluatively charged for the person undergoing the affective  experience. Having this cognitivist model in view, we can examine how it  sheds light on the framing question of the Philebus—what makes someone’s life go best?—and explore its promising therapeutic potential.

In the Theaetetus,  Plato ascribes a metaphysics to relativism according to which there are  no stable objects or properties. In effect, the world dissolves and  there is nothing we can refer to in speech. En route to this revisionist  picture, Plato toys with expressions that might be suitable to talk  about a world in flux: something is no more tall than not tall, no more  cold than not cold, etc. The Greek expression used in these  formulations, ou mallon,  becomes a stock element of Pyrrhonian skepticism. My paper makes a  novel proposal by arguing that the Stoics too find a place for this  idea. The idea that something can be “no more this than that,” I argue,  is philosophically richer than is commonly assumed. It is not just a  part of radically revisionist approaches. It is a compelling dimension  of the Stoic distinction between impressions and propositions. The Stoic  wise person suspends judgment when her impressions are neither true nor  false--arguably, this concerns rather many ordinary impressions. For  the Stoics, the epistemic norms that call for such suspension of  judgment are key to leading a good life.