/lit/ - Literature

>But one might go further and ask the Nihilist why he does not feel thoroughly ashamed to go on recognizing himself as the agent in every successive cognition right up to his dying breath, and to remember all his past cognitions from birth on as having had himself as agent, while continuing to adhere to his doctrine that everything goes to destruction the moment it arises? He might perhaps rejoin that all this comes about through similarity. One might then reply to him that the notion ‘this is like that’ shows that similarity involves two entities. But as the Nihilist cannot admit that there is a single perceiver who could perceive the two similar things, his claim that recognition is based on similarity is just babble. If, on the other hand, there were really a single perceiver able to perceive the similarity of two moments, then there would be one person persisting during two moments, which would contradict the principle of universal momentariness.

>But one might go further and ask the Nihilist why he does not feel thoroughly ashamed to go on recognizing himself as the agent in every successive cognition right up to his dying breath, and to remember all his past cognitions from birth on as having had himself as agent, while continuing to adhere to his doctrine that everything goes to destruction the moment it arises? He might perhaps rejoin that all this comes about through similarity. One might then reply to him that the notion ‘this is like that’ shows that similarity involves two entities. But as the Nihilist cannot admit that there is a single perceiver who could perceive the two similar things, his claim that recognition is based on similarity is just babble. If, on the other hand, there were really a single perceiver able to perceive the similarity of two moments, then there would be one person persisting during two moments, which would contradict the principle of universal momentariness.

buddhabros....