I'd be interested to see how his perspective changes after being introduced to Lamba Calculus. Everything can be represented with functions. Everything. Which says something about the nature of many things: sets, relations, computability. Verbs, actions. If everything is (or can be) a function (a transformation, a verb, an action), does that imply anything about philosophy or reality? Does that give us something resembling Mahayana Buddhism, or lend credence to it? What if we view energy as a function and matter as a state? Mass–energy equivalence tells us energy can be converted to matter. Then, what if we view matter as a function which returns a state? For example, the C functionwe simply took value of to be a relation, not a function
acts as a state, to anyone calling it. But it is most definitely a function. What if matter is the same way: a function (energy) which has been configured to appear as state? int fortytwo() {return 42;}The constructions I have described show how to make precise mathematical sense of the Buddhist views. This does not, of course, show that they are true.