Very interesting logical exercises. Thank you! The point is existence transcends logic, and things usually are much more complicated than it seems on verbal level. For example you arrived at the “probably” result. It may be so, but psychology of self-deception teaches us that how probably things are very often depends on predilection of one who calculates probability. If not on direct self bias, how probably things are, depends on assumptions within which one operates.
More, there is always uncertainty whether one arrived to the idea due to logical line of thinking, or one simply finds certain idea emotionally satisfactory and seemingly logical argumentation is merely rationalisation of certain emotional predilection. Now, I do not say it is the case with you, just point out our general tendency to self-deception:
The more I meditate on our capacity for self-deception, the more my certainties crumble, slipping through my fingers as fine sand. Pessoa
Also certain certainties, so to speak, in Dhamma come not from ability to think logically, but rather are based on the ability to suspend thinking. So perhaps not everyone needs such logical exercises in their interpretations of the Dhamma.
But since ideas have consequences, your logic can be reduced to existential confession:
“I am not willing to investigate things and ideas which seem to me improbable.”
Unfortunately for you on different levels and in different subjects, the truth quite often is hidden in very improbable places, so one who rejects certain ideas and doesn’t want to investigate them, because they seem to him probably not true, can be for me only suitable object for compassion.
I have no doubt that you feel the same compassion towards me, because of my lack of logical skills - so obvious to you. Such differences are inevitable, see below ↓. Nevertheless my question: please show me the Sutta which contradicts the idea, or just point out that it is incompatible with Suttas, which you rejected as logical fallacy can be translated on existential terms as follows: “As long as the idea or view doesn’t fall into direct contradiction with Suttas it is for me a suitable object of Dhamma investigation, specially if additionally connected with cessation, dispassion and detachment”. It seems for me quite logical, but it looks like we belongs to different schools of logic.
Also right view doesn’t depend directly on believing who can and who cannot enter the attainment of perception and feeling, but most certainly it depends on understanding of dependent arising. And ideas about the nature of the attainment of perception and feeling, can influence understanding of dependent arising. I don’t know which interpretation is right, but surely seeing cessation of perception and feeling as liberating “experience” clarifies certain misconceptions about sankharas in the context of depended arising. So I don’t say, “it is so”, but rather “what if?” Kind of invitation for Dhamma investigation.
Nanavira Thera:
In his letter he remarks that I explain too inductively, that I tend to look for my ideas in the Canon instead of deducing from the passages what they mean. This criticism, however, supposes that we are, in fact, able to approach the Canon with a perfectly virgin mind, equipped only with a knowledge of Pali and a sound training in logic.
But this is precisely what we cannot do. Each of us, at every moment, has the whole of his past behind him; and it is in the light of his past (or his background or his presuppositions) that he interprets what is now presented to him and gives it its meaning. Without such a background nothing would ever appear to us with any meaning at all—a spoken or written word would remain a pure presentation, a bare sound or mark without significance. But, unfortunately, each of us has a different past; and, in consequence, each of us approaches the Canon with a set of presuppositions that is different in various ways from everybody else’s. And the further consequence is that each of us understands the Canon in a different sense. We try to discover our personal ideas in the Canon because there is nothing else we can do. It is the only way we have, in the first place, of understanding the Canon.
Later, of course, our understanding of the Canon comes to modify our ideas; and thus, by a circular process, our later understanding of the Canon is better than, or at least different from, our earlier understanding, and there is the possibility of eventually arriving at the right understanding of the ariyapuggala. Certainly we can, to some extent, deduce from the Canon its meaning; but unless we first introduced our own ideas we should never find that the Canon had any meaning to be deduced.
For each person, then, the Canon means something different according to his different background. And this applies not only to our understanding of particular passages, but also to what we understand by the Buddhadhamma as a whole.
(i) We may all agree that certain passages were spoken by the Buddha himself and that they represent the true Teaching. But when we come to ask one another what we understand by these passages and by the words they contain we often find a profound disagreement that is by no means settled simply by reference to other Sutta passages. (…)
He may (perhaps) say that he reads and understands the Suttas without any reference to a background, and (if so) I have no wish to argue the point; but I know that, for my part, I never come without a background (in a sense I am my background) when I consider the texts, even though that background is now very different from what it was when I first looked at a Sutta.
And if he disagrees with what I am saying, that disagreement will itself be reflected in the way each of us understands the nature of the Dhamma.) [L 107]