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as sandy said appearances to the contrary notwithstanding we agree about a whole lot and as he pointed out to me yesterday the hairs that we split
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probably couldn't get split if we didn't stand so close together so there is that on the other hand we also disagree about a lot and that's as it ought to be I mean Tibetans always say if two people
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agree you've got two fools and that doesn't mean we don't have two fools now but at least we have two folks who disagree so I want to talk a little bit about one of the issues about which I
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think we disagree and which i think is methodologically important and it didn't actually come into focus to me that this is what I wanted to talk about till I was listening to David last night and then it suddenly kind of crystallized
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which is partly why I'm thinking David so much since I walked into yesterday thinking I have no idea what I'm going to say on Saturday morning chandrakirti you know about whose work we all kind of
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orbit in some way or another says at the beginning of majolica Vitara he has this wonderful praise of compassion that where he says you know compassion is the seed and the rain and the harvest it's
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there at the beginning and the middle of the end and the end and that's why I praise compassion but it struck me he could have said the same thing about reason the reason is there at the
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beginning of majolica philosophy it's there in the middle and it's there in the end but it's there in just as compassion is there in different ways reason is there in different ways and
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therefore above all I praise reason and so I wanted yeah George I know it sounds funny but but let me talk about that I because
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I think that reason plays a peculiarly constitutive role in the very enterprise that animates Sandy's work and to an extent that animates mine and that is
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the deconstruction of reason and the understanding of non conceptual thought and non conceptuality and it's that constitutive role that reason plays in
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that argument that I think is one of it that is at the center of the Guardian is thinking about thought and about knowledge and about chandrakirti's it's one of the things that I think makes chandrakirti's work so profound but I
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also think and I think I pointed this out in in the paper that one of the places where I agree with Sandy is that if we're going to be reading majolica texts there's something to be said for adopting a kind of methodology and
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hermeneutic perspective that is harmonious with the the way we interpret we see the texts going and so I actually also agree about this I think this is a place where chandrakirti is right and it
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gives us a way of thinking about texts and so let me get at it a little bit backwards by talking about the way the same point emerges in certain strains in
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the Western philosophical tradition and as you know it's anybody who's read my work knows I tend to like to think Maude yarmulke through a classical skepticism and so I'm thinking now about sex this
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empirical remarks in against the logicians and the way those are taken up by David Hume in the section of the treatise of human nature where he's talking about skepticism with regard to
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reason sex dis of course very famously in against the logicians points out that there's no reason to ever be convinced
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by any argument because deductive argument if to be probative has to be known to be probative and the only way we could know that is by offering either a deductive argument for the probative nature of
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deductive arguments or an inductive argument an inductive argument is going to work for familiar reasons and a deductive argument involves us working in circles similarly for induction media either have to show deductively that induction
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is probative which is impossible or inductively and hence arguing circles and so sects this concludes you should never be convinced by any argument including this one right including that
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argument itself hume takes this up in a very nice way in his section on skepticism with regard to reason when he points out that a mathematician who's
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involved in a proof you know might think he's proven the theorem but then what does he do he checks the theorem and then after he's checked the theorem he sends it out to his friends and then he asks other people to check the theorem
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and finally sent it to the journal for review and only if he gets the universal approbation of mankind as he inputs it is he convinced of the the truth of his position now it's not as though Hume
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thinks that somehow mathematicians rely on inductive evidence for the truth of the theorems that prove they're proving rather what Hume is pointing out as he says at the end of that section my aim
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in the set of reasonings has been to show that belief arises from custom and is more a part of the sensitive than the cogitate of part of the soul so again Hume is concerned to show that if you think reflectively about
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arguments and about reason reason in the end undermines and subverts itself as he says again in the discussion in skepticism with regard to the senses reason undermines and subverts itself
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and that's something that's an intuition that i think john vacuity and the guardzilla share and that sandy shares and in what it philosophy we often you know worry
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about trying to get to a domain of non conceptual thought of subverting reason but the question is how do you go about doing that well here's one way sandy might turn up with a pill
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and sandy says take this pill it'll make you totally non-conceptual I don't advise doing that I mean unless you've got a few days of despair but
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because simply going non-conceptual gets you absolutely nowhere moreover you would have no reason to believe that that peel and the effects that it produces are efficacious or have any any
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value for you when we begin trying to approach a domain of non conceptual thought we begin by convincing ourselves rationally that there is some advantage
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to be gained from achieving non conceptual direct insight we then go after achieving that if we're with chandrakirti and the Gardena by a very
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careful argument not fictional argument not non-existent argument not by reading about the arguments that somebody else gave but by pursuing analysis
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rationalist tsongkhapa puts it rational analysis that attempts to find out the fundamental nature of reality and we pursue that analysis and what we
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discover is that that analysis undermines itself in the end that the analysis teaches us that we shouldn't be convinced that we're going to find any object of knowledge at the end so then
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if we achieve this non conceptual understanding of knowledge rational analysis succeeds in subverting itself do we end up completely non conceptual completely mute no we don't we end up
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with any luck with a non conceptual insight that we can then communicate that we can then discuss that we can then articulate and that requires as I said that reason be present at the
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beginning like the seed in the middle when we're performing the analysis like the rain that nourishes the crops and in the end in the harvest because norm conceptuality is really easy to achieve all you need is a very large rock right
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just bang right on your head and non conceptuality is there but that's a mute inert non-conceptual 'ti right non-conceptual 'ti needs to be enriched by the conceptual insight that
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allows you to actually make something of it so where I think that sandy and I end up disagreeing the hair that we end up splitting is in this kind of
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transcendental need for reason as the vehicle of itself undermining there are a lot of paradoxes that emerge at the limits of thought and the limits of
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conception as we all know especially we Australians but one of the great paradoxes is that the only way to
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understand the way that reason is in the end subverted the only way to understand that reason isn't self-justifying and the only way to understand that there is
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knowledge that transcends reason is to use reason and the deeper paradox is that when you get to a stage where you might think reason can be abandoned
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that's when reason is most necessary non conceptual thought if it's to be thought at all has to be conceptual throughout and an understanding of the limits of reason requires reason and that's what
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medomak is about it's a middle path not because it sort of falls into the error of arguing that reason is self-justifying and universally
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probative nor into the extreme of complete irrationalism and an abandonment of thought at any stage but rather because it realizes that reason is an enormous ly useful tool at the
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beginning the middle and the end and for that reason I praise reason above all else thank you
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