Are there any accounts of "emptiness", preferably purely phenomenological/methodological, that don't presume a contentious metaphysics?
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Replying to @FateOfTwist_
“The absence of thought with the presence of awareness” seems relatively unproblematic. (Although the possibility if rhat is denied by some major philosophers.) Nb I don’t particularly advocate that definition, just noting it as reasonably inoffensive metaphysically
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Replying to @Meaningness
What do you not like about it, that it is in some sense misleading (like given differing interpretations of what "thought" is), or that it is outright false/there is more to it?
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Replying to @FateOfTwist_
Well “emptiness” is just a word. There’s 2000 years of arguments about “what it really means” (in the absence of a philosophy of language that would dissolve that question). Different thinkers have given it quite different interpretations.
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Replying to @Meaningness @FateOfTwist_
Some of the meanings-in-use of “emptiness” are pretty clearly wrong; many are too vague or self-contradictory to do much work for us. Others might be importantly functional, but they’re hard to separate from their history of use and apply in a different context.
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Replying to @Meaningness @FateOfTwist_
I avoid “emptiness,” and use the word “nebulosity” as a coined alternative, in order to point at a more-specific thing, which is one I think is important, and which is at least in the penumbra of some senses of “emptiness” in the literature.
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Replying to @Meaningness @FateOfTwist_
Anyway, “the absence of thought with the presence of awareness” is not what I mean by “nebulosity” (although there may be some experiential connection). It’s also not a common meaning historically; it comes from Dzogchen Semdé, which is a fairly obscure branch of Buddhism.
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Replying to @Meaningness @FateOfTwist_
I cited “the absence of thought with the presence of awareness” just because you asked for examples of metaphysically-uncontentious interpretations of “emptiness,” and it’s the least metaphysically problematic one that came to mind. I don’t think it’s The True Meaning.
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The absence of thought with the presence of awareness is something you can experience, briefly at least, with only minimal meditation experience, so it would seem also to fit your “purely phenomenological/methodological” criterion.
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