RE: Jainism
July 18, 2020 at 7:11 am
(This post was last modified: July 18, 2020 at 8:07 am by Porcupine.)
(July 18, 2020 at 6:57 am)Belacqua Wrote: I don't think it's incoherent at all. It says that things may appear to be true from one viewpoint and not true from another.
I'd just categorize that as people talking past each other and using different understandings of the term. To be charitable to Jainist logic, I guess I could suppose that Jainist logic sees using different interpretations of the same term as expressing different truths about the same thing that are equally, relatively, true. But to me, that's a fallacy of equivocation because, to me, having a different understanding of a term is actually to express different truths about different things ... and not to express different truths about the same thing. So, yes, people can express different truths using the same term ... but because their understanding of the term is different they're actually expressing different truths about different things and not different truths about the same thing.
Another quibble I have is that, according to Jainist logic, it seems that it is thought that there are three truth values: true, false or non-assertable. I would understand non-assertable to mean "not actually a proposition", though. So to me there are only two truth values: true or untrue/false. It's ultimately a true dichotomy as far as I'm concerned. i.e.: X or not X. It's true that something can be neither true nor false but only in virtue of that very something not being a proposition at all and only propositions have truth values. Therefore, there are still only two truth values because all propositions are either true or false. Only non-propositions get to be neither true nor false. "Please pass the salt!" is neither true nor false. But "Please pass the salt!" doesn't have a truth value because it isn't a proposition.
"Zen … does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes." - Alan Watts