用变分自编码器建模宗教传统，揭示永恒主义的解释优势
The Manifold of the Absolute: Religious Perennialism as Generative Inference
- 将宗教传统视为从共享潜空间映射到文化表象的生成过程
- 永恒主义在解释跨传统冥想趋同上表现最优，排除排他主义与融合主义
- 强调深入特定传统修行才是通向宗教统一的必经之路
本文通过变分自编码器的数学框架形式化宗教认识论。将宗教传统建模为从共享低维潜空间到高维可观文化形态的生成映射，定义了三种竞争性生成配置：排他主义、普遍主义和永恒主义，并将融合主义视为可观测空间中的直接混合。通过溯因比较，论证排他主义无法简洁解释跨传统冥想趋同，融合主义因组合不同生成过程的输出而产生语义混乱，普遍主义则受后验坍缩困扰——剥离传统核心会丢失推断所需的结构信息。永恒主义配置提供最佳解释契合度。在此框架下，严格正统并非文化约束，而是结构性必然：恢复潜源的冥想实践必须与输入其形态的传统相匹配。若宗教统一存在，它真实但不可捷径抵达：唯有深入而非广涉，方可达此境。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
This paper formalizes religious epistemology through the mathematics of Variational Autoencoders. We model religious traditions as distinct generative mappings from a shared, low-dimensional latent space to the high-dimensional space of observable cultural forms, and define three competing generative configurations corresponding to exclusivism, universalism, and perennialism, alongside syncretism as direct mixing in observable space. Through abductive comparison, we argue that exclusivism cannot parsimoniously account for cross-traditional contemplative convergence, that syncretism fails because combining the outputs of distinct generative processes produces incoherent artifacts, and that universalism suffers from posterior collapse: stripping traditions to a common core discards the structural information necessary for inference. The perennialist configuration provides the best explanatory fit. Within this framework, strict orthodoxy emerges not as a cultural constraint but as a structural necessity: the contemplative practices that recover the latent source must be matched to the specific tradition whose forms they take as input. The unity of religions, if it exists, is real but inaccessible by shortcut: one must go deep rather than wide.
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