[net.philosophy] Zen

jwp (04/23/83)

There has been some discussion of Zen in net.religion lately.  It has
always seemed to me that classifying Zen as a religion rather than a
philosophy is somewhat incorrect.  It is probably incorrect to try to
classify it at all.  In any case, since I have available a rather large
collection of Zen storie, and since I've always thought Zen is best
described by attempting to show what it *is*, I will post one occasionally
for the enlightenment of us all.

Before I do that, however, I ran across an item that I feel illustrates
a "Zen" response, though it was not originally intended to be:

Most of us are, I'm sure, familiar with the paradox involving a card with
"The statement on the other side of this card is true" on one side, and
"The statement on the other side of this card is false" on the other.
Take a strip of paper and write "The statement on the other side of this
paper is true" on one side; write "The statement on the other side of this
paper is false" on the other side.  We have duplicated the paradox.  Now,
take the paper, give it a half-twist, and join the ends.

			John Pierce, Chemistry, UC San Diego
			{ucbvax, philabs}!sdcsvax!sdchema!jwp

myers (04/25/83)

Thanx, John; the occasional Zen koan would be a welcome addition to this
newsgroup (in my humble opionion).

A simpler version of the paradox you described is
	"This statement is false"
which is known as the Epimenides (sp?) paradox.  Well known to
connesuers (sp? my ignorance is showing) of Godel's incompleteness theorem.
For a fascinating discussion of this, Zen, AI, ad infinitum, read
Douglas Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach", a book no self-respecting
computer scientist should be without.

Anybody wanna discuss the implications of Godel's theorem for scientific
thought, AI, etc.?  I personally feel that the theorem offers a great deal
of insight for a characterization of truth as a unity of opposites, of
rational and irrational truth.  Godel's theorem, transfinite counting, etc.,
never fail to instill a feeling of awe in me!

				Not afraid to tout irrationality on the net
				(there's a great deal of it already here),
				Jeff Myers   ...seismo!uwvax!myers