Saturday, September 13, 2014

The rangtong/shentong debate in a nutshell

Balder said in a FB IPS post: “Whitehead and Hartshorne suggest that a-terms (absolutes) are asymmetrically dependent on, and abstracted from, (relative) r-terms. […] What would be the reason for the differing testimonies (such as you find between Rangtong and Shentong schools, for instance)?”

That's the difference in a nutshell: the shentongs see that the r-terms are asymmetrically dependent on, and abstracted from, the a-terms. It's quite clear in Wilber's writings. And no, the solution isn't a 'balance' of the two in some higher integration, which is an extension of the shentong (aka 'false' a la Lakoff) reasoning. There's a lot in Lakoff and company's research that supports the rangtong version as noted in several threads, like 'real/false' reason.

We might also add the testimony of the popo versions of rangtong who also live in Multipli City: the polydox theologians, as well as that 'other' school of complexity (Morin, Prigogine), as well as the speculative realists and ontocologists. And so on.

See the Batchelor thread for a thorough discussion of the shentong/rangtong debate.

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