No, it is not a concept, according to “conditioned arising”.
is not an argument, what did you mean to elucidate by your quotes? just because you repeat material from suttas doesn’t make your perspective independent of Theravada, Theravadins (and Mahayanists btw) quote suttas all the time, it doesn’t make their interpretations of those suttas normative.
if there is no such thing as a “concept of natural law” then what are you talking about?
I am talking about “conditioned arising” of dukkha, not about a metaphysical concept.
is a metaphysical concept.
to quote Sellars , Metaphysics is to try "to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term”
conditionality is precisely the buddhas metaphysics (a critical and deflationary one to be sure, but that’s neither here nor there)
Nope. Almost everyone points to parallels between Hume and conditioned arising. And Kant wrote that he was woken from his slumber, dream, fog or whatever it was because of Hume.
Incorrect.
‘Conditioned arising’ is about phenomena (in connection with dukkha, its arising, its ceasing, and the way leading to its ceasing), not about metaphysics.
Correct. Be it suffering or any other thing, they are all conditioned (dependent on causes & conditions or “iddappaccayata”).
Whether Realized Ones arise or not, this law of nature persists, this regularity of natural principles, this invariance of natural principles, specific conditionality.
Uppādā vā tathāgatānaṁ anuppādā vā tathāgatānaṁ, ṭhitāva sā dhātu dhammaṭṭhitatā dhammaniyāmatā idappaccayatā.
SN 12.20
Note: the suffix “tā” may possibly have ontological relevance.
It seems SN 12.20 is specifically referring to “idappaccayatā” as a “fixed permanent law of nature” (rather than specifically paṭiccasamuppāda. For example, if all beings/minds attained Nibbana, it seems paṭiccasamuppāda would cease in the universe but idappaccayatā would remain 
).
OK, @Meggers and @thomaslaw I think it has now become crystal clear that we have different understandings about what constitutes metaphysics that are unfortunately insurmountable.
But just to quote philpapers for your sake @Meggers ;
Hume approaches topics in metaphysics and epistemology via his theory of ideas and the cognitive faculties. In metaphysics, his primary interest is in questions not of the form ‘What is X?’ but of the form ‘What can we conceive X to be?’ His best-known contribution is his argument that causation, as far as we can conceive it, is just regular succession among objects or events, plus our habit of inferring one object or event from another. He also made important contributions concerning space and time, existence, identity, substances, and free will.
Again, Kant is the most significant contributor to the subject of metaphysics in the western philosophical tradition probably since Plato, and Hume is pretty much universally regarded as the most significant philosopher, including in metaphysics, in the english language.
Again, this may simply be one of those situations where we just have to agree to disagree and move on, I think trying to use Kant’s relation to Hume as a reason for denying the existence of the subject of metaphysics pretty much demonstrates that.
Metta
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Well metaphysics means beside physics right. It’s from Aristotle. There is definitely an argument, I think in part provoked by contemporary Buddhist studies, as to what is metaphysics. Now, my opinions is that early Buddhism is very robust realism. It draws upon direct observation to establish “the real.” That which, technically, our way of being can be reliably founded upon. There’s nothing to say metaphysics can’t be “realism,” it just always pushes at the edge. And this is a little bit in the direction of Hume, and his challenge to Kant, a very stalwart Newtonian, btw.
But anyway, nice speaking with you again.
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It is not easy to say what metaphysics is. Ancient and Medieval philosophers might have said that metaphysics was, like chemistry or astrology, to be defined by its subject-matter: metaphysics was the “science” that studied “being as such” or “the first causes of things” or “things that do not change”. It is no longer possible to define metaphysics that way, for two reasons. First, a philosopher who denied the existence of those things that had once been seen as constituting the subject-matter of metaphysics—first causes or unchanging things—would now be considered to be making thereby a metaphysical assertion. Second, there are many philosophical problems that are now considered to be metaphysical problems (or at least partly metaphysical problems) that are in no way related to first causes or unchanging things—the problem of free will, for example, or the problem of the mental and the physical.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The word ‘metaphysics’ is notoriously hard to define. Twentieth-century coinages like ‘meta-language’ and ‘metaphilosophy’ encourage the impression that metaphysics is a study that somehow “goes beyond” physics, a study devoted to matters that transcend the mundane concerns of Newton and Einstein and Heisenberg. This impression is mistaken. The word ‘metaphysics’ is derived from a collective title of the fourteen books by Aristotle that we currently think of as making up Aristotle’s Metaphysics . Aristotle himself did not know the word.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Realism is a position in the subject of metaphysics.
For example I lean towards the opinion that (at least some) of the EBT’s defend the (metaphysical) position of quietism which is elucidated here:
Philosophers who subscribe to quietism deny that there can be such a thing as substantial metaphysical debate between realists and their non-realist opponents (because they either deny that there are substantial questions about existence or deny that there are substantial questions about independence).
SEP again (but this time the article in Realism)
The whole “metaphysics isn’t real” school of thought was the position of the Vienna Circle, and has sort of filtered out into the popular consciousness as a sort of “science good/metaphysics bad” mantra that is really no longer taken seriously in the academy precisely because “metaphysics bad” is a position one takes in relation to the subject of metaphysics and thus a metaphysical position and therefore part of metaphysics:
Their radically anti-metaphysical stance was supported by an empiricist criterion of meaningfulness and a broadly logicist conception of mathematics. They denied that any principle or claim was synthetic a priori . Moreover, they sought to account for the presuppositions of scientific theories by regimenting such theories within a logical framework so that the important role played by conventions, either in the form of definitions or of other analytical framework principles, became evident. The Vienna Circle’s theories were constantly changing. In spite (or perhaps because) of this, they helped to provide the blueprint for analytical philosophy of science as meta-theory—a “second-order” reflection of “first-order” sciences. While the Vienna Circle’s early form of logical empiricism (or logical positivism or neopositivism: these labels will be used interchangeably here) no longer represents an active research program, recent history of philosophy of science has unearthed much previously neglected variety and depth in the doctrines of the Circle’s protagonists, some of whose positions retain relevance for contemporary analytical philosophy.
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and just back to @Javier re plausible physicalist accounts of rebirth, if you grant the premise that phenomenal consciousness can be instantiated in an arrangement of physical particles but didn’t like my “entropic entanglement” notion you could just go with a Boltzman Brain type of idea ala this article and imagine a state of affairs where the memories of part lives are all instantaneously instantiated by random arrangement of gas molecules 
Another way the Boltzman style arguments can work is if the universe is eternal and finite, or at least not temporally closed or spatially open, then;
A familiar result of statistical mechanics is the Poincaré recurrence theorem. It tells us that the time evolution of a thermal system will eventually bring the system back to within an arbitrarily small neighborhood of its starting point. Hence, if ever it was possible to have a world with observers such as ourselves, then, even if we degrade thermally, over time we will eventually be reconstituted near enough; and it will happen infinitely often over an infinity of time.
(from the same excellent article linked above)
Which might be pressed into the service of rebirth style pictures (although there are obvious problems to try and overcome)
Anyway, I have been informed by the forum AI that I am now responsible for over 20 percent of the posts in this thread 
so I will settle down and see if there is more to be said by others with an interest in these things. fingers crossed.
Metta.
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Oh my dear, you’re not talking to a scientist here. This is who taught me. And is still teaching me, because she’s just that far ahead of the curve. Duke University Press - The Skin of the Film
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Ooh, thanks for the tip @Meggers ! I am much more familiar with the “Analytical” school of philosophy than with the “Continental” tradition (not terms I endorse, but hopefully you know what I mean) So I will check out some of Laura’s work on your recommendation! Ohh, there’s lots on Youtube!! exciting
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Yeh, well. Deleuze will eat you up if he gets hold of you. Be careful. I just mentioned this because he’s well known for opposing the ‘end of metaphysics’ stuff of I guess it would be Heidegger. Deleuze is a major metaphysician. Evil, evil, evil man.
And him, we call part of “French Theory.” (eye roll)
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but I like metaphysicians! and I like Deleuze’s knits, he always seems to look like a wizened sailor or something, the only problem is that every time I have tried to read anything he has written I find it incomprehensible, and get the strong sense that I have entered into a conversation “half way through” and need to go back to the beginning so i have the necessary background, the only trouble being that I then go back to Heidegger etc and find them equally incomprehensible.
I think that one of the things that makes philosophy, or a certain style of philosophy, so fascinating to me is that I am one of those people who very often finds themselves confused about things that the other people in the room don’t seem to find confusing, and I need things sort of “broken down” for me, and explained in the clearest, simplest possible terms, and then if I am lucky I can see where I think differently to the others and move on.
I find that some classical philosophy (Plato springs to mind, as do parts of the EBT’s) and some “analytic” philosophy (Dummett, more recently Maudlin) really helps me to get a handle on what is being spoken about, and what the turns of phrase that I cannot see the meaning in actually mean, but a lot of my attempts to come to grips with more recent European authors (i’ve tried to read Lacan, because I love Freud and find him clear as a bell, i’ve tried to read Deleuze, Heidegger as I said, a few others) and I find that I am lost from the beginning and never really get to a point where I feel like i’m “getting” it.
Anyway, as I said, I will certainly try some of the EGS videos of Laura Marks, as sometimes I get more from lectures than from texts.
Metta
Paṭiccasamuppāda ‘arising by causal condition’ (or ‘conditioned arising’) is idappaccayatā ‘causal relatedness’. It is about a natural law of phenomena, not about an entity.
Pages 152-3 from The Fundamental Teachings of Early Buddhism Choong Mun-keat 2000.pdf (109.2 KB)
I don’t know that I’ve ever had a lecture from Laura. She does lectures? What! I can’t imagine. She’s so interactive. I should go look at her lectures on this EGS, whatever it is. Who knows what I’m getting you into.
Laura is really nice, and she does understand Deleuze. Yes, very well, even though it’s all bonkers, because he’s completely out of his tree. I just laugh, because she made me read books and books of his stuff, and everyone else only a chapter or two, or three. Not much.
He’s not really like other philosophers, he’s attempting to do philosophy in a whole new way. And he really means new. What’s interesting about him though is that he’s an anti-foundationalist. Or at least he says he is. I’m not convinced, but that’s another matter for another time.
You might want to check into his concept of the body without organs (BwO). It’s an interesting juxtaposition in relation to the five aggregates. He develops it in a few different places. Logic of Sensation … hysteria is maybe a good place to start. I wouldn’t read any of his interpreters if I were you. Most of them are wrong.
Deleuze is of course a materialist, big time. He would never surrender Marxism, I don’t think. He just has a completely different approach to it. Hostile maybe is the best way to describe it.
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So I have had a bit of free time today as I wind up in my job, and I was watching this rather excellent lecture on causation:
Marianne Talbot discusses Hume’s famous account of causation.
And she mentions 3 conlusions we may come to about causation;
reduction
elimination
and admission
and this reminded me of the opening bit of Mark Siderits’ book Personal Identity and Buddhist Philosophy: Empty Persons, where he talks about the same three options for personal identity, that is we may be reductive about persons, saying they are not fundamental and can be entirely explained by by more fundamental features of the world (like form, sensations, perceptions, choices and consciousness) or we may be eliminativists (i.e we may deny that there really are persons) or we may be “anti-reductionist” i.e taking persons to be real things (why Siderits doesn’t use realism for this position is a bit beyond me but whatever).
No, I was sort of scratching my head and thinking, “isn’t it interesting that these options seem to be the same in both causality and identity?” and then I had this thought, there is another option, that is to be what Siderits calls anti-realist, that is denying the reality of persons, but denying the reality of aggregates as well, and then it struck me that this sort of looks like the catuṣkoṭi!
reductionism:
A is B (somehow)
so several versions of physicalism about mental states take this position, saying that somehow one day all mental states will be fully explained in terms of brain states, that si mental states reduce to brain states.
eliminativism:
not A just B’s
this is the position more or less of the consciousness is an illusion crowd (who is subject to such an illusion one wonders)
realism:
A and B different but equal (both real)
persons/causes are real and not eliminatable or reducable to say, physics
non reductive anti-realism:
there are neither A’s nor B’s (both fictional)
persons are fictions jsut like everything else.
Anyway, I thought it was neat, and I am going to ruminate on it, any observations or suggestions would be welcome!
Metta
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EGS is the European Graduate School on youtube, https://www.youtube.com/user/egsvideo
but unfortunately Laura’s videos appear to have really poor sound, so you may be disappointed, as I was.
But there are a lot of lectures there, from Agamben to Zizek, so to speak, worth checking out.
the Laura talk I found that I can actually hear is here:
but i’m going to wait till I’m home to watch it as it seems less like work than the causation video
Metta