I don’t think your analogy is quite right. Mathematics lecturers generally do their teaching by means of explaining things, and so it’s reasonable to ask “if I asked Prof Jones for a proof of the MVT, what sort of explanation would he give?”. But AIUI Zen masters don’t generally do their teaching by means of explaining things, they do it by means like slapping you in the face (in the hope that that gets you more engaged with the actual world rather than with word-shuffling, or something of the sort). When Viliam says “the traditional Zen teacher would slap you”, the point isn’t “he would rebuke you and decline to provide you with the sort of teaching he provides to his students”, it’s “he would provide you with the sort of teaching he provides to his students, namely slapping you in the face”.
Asking “How would a Zen master demonstrate that X is a better response to this koan than Y?” is a bit like asking “How would a real analysis lecturer make the audience laugh hysterically with the Mean Value Theorem?”. Neither is the kind of thing that kind of teacher does.
(For the avoidance of doubt: I am not saying that you have to approve of that. You may well say: well, so much the worse for the Zen masters, then, because they’ve adopted an approach that makes it much more likely for them to mislead their students without anyone ever discovering that. You might, for all I can tell, be right. But a Zen master who responds to your questioning by slapping you in the face isn’t refusing to do his job in your case in the way that a mathematics lecturer who did likewise would be.)
Who said anything about “explaining”? That’s a strawman, I’m afraid, and a red herring to boot (a… straw herring?).
The question was:
Suppose I were to say to a Zen teacher: you say the answer to this koan is X, but I think it is actually Y. Please demonstrate to me that it is as you say, and not as I say. How might they do this?
And the analogical question was:
how might Professor Jones, who teaches a real analysis class at the local college, provide me with a proof of the mean value theorem
Is there anything about “explaining” or “explanation” in either of those? There is not.
Zen masters don’t generally do their teaching by means of explaining things? Fine! This in absolutely no way whatsoever invalidates the question.
Indeed one could make the same sort of objection about Professor Jones. “Mathematicians don’t prove things by giving explanations, they do it with formulas and stuff!” Well, who said anything about “explanations”? The question was “how might Jones provide me with a proof of the MVT?”. An obvious answer would be “like this”.
Accordingly, asking “How would a Zen master demonstrate that X is a better response to this koan than Y?” is perfectly reasonable and also perfectly consistent with Zen masters doing their teaching by means other than “explaining things”.
Now, if you want to claim something like “a Zen teacher would slap you, which would be his way of demonstrating to you that the answer to the koan is X and not Y”, that’s one thing. If instead your claim is “a Zen teacher would slap you instead of making any attempt to demonstrate to you that the answer to the koan is X and not Y”, that is a very different thing. We can have a conversation about the former (and indeed we did), but the latter simply constitutes avoiding the question.
I took “demonstrate that it is as you say, and not as I say” to be asking for an explanation, especially given that you consider responses like slapping you in the face to be irrelevant. But perhaps I misunderstood, and for sure you didn’t use the word “explanation”. What other sort of demonstration did you have in mind?
As for the face-slapping, I think it’s possible that in this situation a Zen teacher would slap you by way of showing that the answer is X not Y, and possible that in this situation a Zen teacher would slap you to encourage you to stop asking (what he regards as) unproductive questions, and possible that in this situation a Zen teacher would slap you just because he feels like slapping you and the Zen tradition gives him some cover to do it.
And my point was simply that that first possibility seems like a real one, which means that “he might slap you in the face” is not quite like “he might tell you to stop interrupting his lecture”.
What other sort of demonstration did you have in mind?
I was not making any assumptions about what sort of demonstration it might be. I was neither assuming that it would be a verbal explanation nor that it would not be. “What sort of demonstration” is precisely the question that I was asking.
And my point was simply that that first possibility seems like a real one, which means that “he might slap you in the face” is not quite like “he might tell you to stop interrupting his lecture”.
You see, this is why I addressed my questions to people who know the answer (i.e., people who know things about Zen, e.g. Gordon), not to people who are speculating based on no knowledge of the subject.
I don’t think your analogy is quite right. Mathematics lecturers generally do their teaching by means of explaining things, and so it’s reasonable to ask “if I asked Prof Jones for a proof of the MVT, what sort of explanation would he give?”. But AIUI Zen masters don’t generally do their teaching by means of explaining things, they do it by means like slapping you in the face (in the hope that that gets you more engaged with the actual world rather than with word-shuffling, or something of the sort). When Viliam says “the traditional Zen teacher would slap you”, the point isn’t “he would rebuke you and decline to provide you with the sort of teaching he provides to his students”, it’s “he would provide you with the sort of teaching he provides to his students, namely slapping you in the face”.
Asking “How would a Zen master demonstrate that X is a better response to this koan than Y?” is a bit like asking “How would a real analysis lecturer make the audience laugh hysterically with the Mean Value Theorem?”. Neither is the kind of thing that kind of teacher does.
(For the avoidance of doubt: I am not saying that you have to approve of that. You may well say: well, so much the worse for the Zen masters, then, because they’ve adopted an approach that makes it much more likely for them to mislead their students without anyone ever discovering that. You might, for all I can tell, be right. But a Zen master who responds to your questioning by slapping you in the face isn’t refusing to do his job in your case in the way that a mathematics lecturer who did likewise would be.)
Who said anything about “explaining”? That’s a strawman, I’m afraid, and a red herring to boot (a… straw herring?).
The question was:
And the analogical question was:
Is there anything about “explaining” or “explanation” in either of those? There is not.
Zen masters don’t generally do their teaching by means of explaining things? Fine! This in absolutely no way whatsoever invalidates the question.
Indeed one could make the same sort of objection about Professor Jones. “Mathematicians don’t prove things by giving explanations, they do it with formulas and stuff!” Well, who said anything about “explanations”? The question was “how might Jones provide me with a proof of the MVT?”. An obvious answer would be “like this”.
Accordingly, asking “How would a Zen master demonstrate that X is a better response to this koan than Y?” is perfectly reasonable and also perfectly consistent with Zen masters doing their teaching by means other than “explaining things”.
Now, if you want to claim something like “a Zen teacher would slap you, which would be his way of demonstrating to you that the answer to the koan is X and not Y”, that’s one thing. If instead your claim is “a Zen teacher would slap you instead of making any attempt to demonstrate to you that the answer to the koan is X and not Y”, that is a very different thing. We can have a conversation about the former (and indeed we did), but the latter simply constitutes avoiding the question.
I took “demonstrate that it is as you say, and not as I say” to be asking for an explanation, especially given that you consider responses like slapping you in the face to be irrelevant. But perhaps I misunderstood, and for sure you didn’t use the word “explanation”. What other sort of demonstration did you have in mind?
As for the face-slapping, I think it’s possible that in this situation a Zen teacher would slap you by way of showing that the answer is X not Y, and possible that in this situation a Zen teacher would slap you to encourage you to stop asking (what he regards as) unproductive questions, and possible that in this situation a Zen teacher would slap you just because he feels like slapping you and the Zen tradition gives him some cover to do it.
And my point was simply that that first possibility seems like a real one, which means that “he might slap you in the face” is not quite like “he might tell you to stop interrupting his lecture”.
I was not making any assumptions about what sort of demonstration it might be. I was neither assuming that it would be a verbal explanation nor that it would not be. “What sort of demonstration” is precisely the question that I was asking.
You see, this is why I addressed my questions to people who know the answer (i.e., people who know things about Zen, e.g. Gordon), not to people who are speculating based on no knowledge of the subject.