Okay. I would genuinely like to know. Some of Husserl is very accessible, like Cartesian Meditations and others. Ideas get rather technical, but it is here I think you can see how phenomenology works. I haven't read Logical Investigations. On my list. — Constance

In the meantime...

Whereas retentions and protentions in the early lectures were defined as retaining the primal impression, or projecting a new primal impression, respectively, in Husserl’s later research manuscripts, the primal impression is considered the line of intersection between retentional and protentional tendencies that make up every present phase of consciousness. Even in his earlier account Husserl had claimed that primal presentation is not self-sufficient, rather it operates only in connection with retentions and protentions. In the Bernau Manuscripts, however, Husserl seems to suggest that the complicated interlacing of retentions and protentions is constitutive of primal impression. Not only is primal impression not self-sufficient, it is a constituted product rather than something that makes a constitutive contribution of its own. — “The Past, Present and Future of Time-Consciousness: From Husserl to Varela and Beyond”, Shaun Gallagher (in Constructivist Foundations, November 2017)

Barrett describes instead three event structures: an ongoing interoception of affect constructed by internal and external sensory data as the state of the organism; an ongoing prediction of affect generated by conceptual structures; and a 4D instructional map of attention and effort (energy) distribution across the organism, constituting the ‘complicated interlacing’ of interoception and conception, similar to Husserl’s primal impression.

This relates to my suggestion that the present is a construction, what we make of it, and doesn’t seem too far from Husserl’s internal time-consciousness. The ‘present’, or primal impression, is not understood as an ‘object’, but as a constituting event operating only in connection with ongoing interoception and prediction.

I also see a similar relational structure, at a three-dimensional level, reflected in the bio-chemical function of DNA and mRNA, but that’s another discussion... anyway, I’ve just picked up ‘The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness’, so bear with me...

That observation is an interesting dynamic involved with what might have changed a "working" arrangement to a less functional one. On the other hand, the awareness of what was lost in the "original" structure is presented as an ad hoc solution to what has been lost. There are attempts to correct the attempts at correction. However that might be framed, it is not simply invoking the return of a commonly received value. — Valentinus

Agreed. The idea is to recognise that the ‘original’ structure is the ultimate reference point - in the same way that righteousness is not the Tao and wisdom is not righteousness, so too, the example observed in the old masters is but one aspect of the Way, and the teaching of the old masters is but one aspect of their example. The relational structure here can be simplified to a linear hierarchy, sure - but I think it is more accurately dimensional, and that rendering it as a linear structure misses something of the quality and functionality of the Tao.

Contrary to many misinterpretations, Husserlian phenomenology is not an idealism but a radical subject-object interactionism. — Joshs

Thank you for this, and for the quotes - the more I look into Husserl, the more I find this to be a more accurate description. Idealism is far too confining a term for what he had in mind.

These, to me, are all interpretations that derive from taking the English translations at face value. The Chinese characters refer to the relational quality of ideas, not the meaning of concepts. In my mind, they are like fuzzy, photon-like balls of light with flowing extensions reaching for surrounding ideas. The form they take is dependent on their relation to these surrounding ideas, and on how I arrange them in my mind.

So zhong has the relational quality of loyalty, faithfulness and devotion. The assumption that this quality relates to our ‘true nature’ (essence of the ‘self’?) has no evidence in the original text at all, but can easily be inferred from our own cultural understanding of English word concepts such as ‘sincerity’, ‘loyalty’ and ‘honesty’.

It probably seems such a small quibble to imagine faithfulness as a relational quality, rather than as a concept such as sincerity. But for me, this corresponds to the qualitative structural difference between righteousness and wisdom. For you, it’s a linear hierarchy, but for me, it’s another dimensional aspect of awareness. That’s not to say that I disagree with you - it can certainly be perceived as a ladder, but it’s a bit like drawing a circle and saying that’s the moon: it loses something in the telling.

I realise you think my approach attempts to undermine the foundation you’re trying to work from. I think I can imagine how that might feel from your perspective, and I don’t think it would be a comfortable experience. It does seem a shame to me to devote so much effort and attention towards understanding a text of this quality, that you’re not really accessing first-hand. And it is frustrating for me to watch you defend your own interpretation by using someone else’s interpretation as evidence. But this is what we’re working with.

I appreciate the efforts you have made to include my perspective in your approach. I hope you don’t mind if I continue to chime in, even though I get the sense that my dissension may be more tolerated now than taken into account. I am enjoying the opportunity to explore the TTC and see how others interpret it.

I have read carefully a number of writings by Clark , Friston and Barrett, and I can say with confidence that their thinking is squarely within the realist tradition( not naive realism, as Barrett points out, but a more sophisticated neo-Kantian version which distinguishes between real sense data and constructed human realities). — Joshs

I agree - that doesn’t mean they can’t inform or be informed by phenomenological idealism. It’s the similarities in relational structure that interest me here, especially when you take away Husserl’s struggle with references to an intentional object.

“I see coal as heating material; I recognise it and recognise it as useful and as used for heating, as appropriate for and as destined to produce warmth. [...] I can use [a combustible object] as fuel; it has a value for me as a possible source of heat. That is, it has value for me with respect to the fact that with it I can produce the heating of a room and thereby pleasant sensations of warmth for myself and others.[...] Others also apprehend it in the same way, and it acquires an intersubjective use-value and in a social context is appreciated and is valuable as serving such and such a purpose, as useful to man, etc.” (Husserliana, vol. IV, pp. 186f; Husserl 1989, pp. 196f) — SEP, Edmund Husserl

When you categorise, you might feel like you’re merely observing the world and finding similarities in objects and events, but that cannot be the case. Purely mental, goal-based concepts such as ‘Things That Can Protect You from Stinging Insects’ reveal that categorisation cannot be so simple and static. A flyswatter and a house have no perceptual similarities. Goal-based concepts therefore free you from the shackles of physical appearance. When you walk into an entirely new situation, you don’t experience it based solely on how things look, sound or smell. You experience it based on your goal.
So what’s happening in your brain when you categorise? You are not finding similarities in the world but creating them. When your brain needs a concept, it constructs one on the fly, mixing and matching from a population of instances from your past experience, to best fit your goals in a particular situation. — Lisa Feldman Barrett, ‘How Emotions Are Made’

It may be that I haven’t really come down firmly on either side of the realist-idealist debate at this stage. I do consider myself to be an ontic structural realist to some extent, but that’s a relatively new development. FWIW, I can see realist structures echoed in Husserl, and phenomenological structures in Barrett and Rovelli, so I’m intrigued by the overlap.

When the great Tao is abandoned,
Benevolence and righteousness arise.
When wisdom and knowledge appear,
Great pretense arises.
When family ties are disturbed,
Devoted children arise.
When people are unsettled,
Loyal ministers arise.

This is from Derek Lin’s translation of Verse 38:

Therefore, the Tao is lost, and then virtue
Virtue is lost, and then benevolence
Benevolence is lost, and then righteousness
Righteousness is lost, and then etiquette
Those who have etiquette
Are a thin shell of loyalty and sincerity
And the beginning of chaos

This describes a descent from spontaneity to rigid rules and bureaucracy then to forceful, repressive action and then to corruption and weakness. This highlights a theme that comes up a lot in the TTC – what we call virtuous rule, which would be our highest aspiration in a democracy, is not the highest way to govern. Kindness and open-heartedness, which would be our goal in our personal lives, is not the highest step. To me, the step up to contact with the Tao isn’t really a step up, it’s a step out. — T Clark

I refer to this as a ‘cascade’ because I think the multi-dimensional aspect to the structure is an important one: loyalty is one aspect of etiquette/wisdom, politeness is one aspect of righteousness, and benevolent justice one aspect of the Tao. Not just the top step but each step is therefore a step out in all directions, rather than up, broadening our capacity to interact with the world, increasing awareness, connection and collaboration. The ‘descent’ is characterised by ignorance, isolation and exclusion - a closing ourselves off from our capacity to interact with the world, and a satisfaction with a lesser aspect. If we can’t be righteous, at least we can be knowledgeable; if we can’t be polite, at least we can be sincere...

And then suddenly we’re insisting on sincerity and loyalty instead of encouraging wisdom, or enforcing ‘political correctness’ instead of striving for benevolence. And a leader (like Trump) who claims sincerity and loyalty as his greatest strengths (without any interest in intelligence, etiquette, virtue or righteousness) is but a thin shell and the beginning of chaos...

If we’re thinking of these levels as ladder rungs, then I think there’s a tendency to quantify them in isolation. The idea that knowledge and formality/etiquette can result in falseness comes from understanding sincerity as one aspect of this level of awareness - but in a qualitative, not quantitative, sense. In other words, we don’t reach wisdom or etiquette by insisting on brute honesty in all relations. It’s about a qualitative awareness of sincerity. If we cannot differentiate levels of sincerity or loyalty in a qualitative sense, then any ‘knowledge’ we have is just data: it lacks formal structure, the relational qualities of wisdom.

Energy distribution? Neuroscience and psychology? But what is it about this that is not outdated by a century? Not regarding specific content, but regarding it NOT being empirical in nature. Rovelli does not take the matter to its foundational level if he is still talking like this. Tell me, how does Husserl figure into this? — Constance

I’m not going to pretend that I have read much on Husserl, or that I can discuss phenomenological description with any academic confidence. But the way I see it, both Rovelli and Barrett recognise that the base unit common to both empirical science and phenomenology is not the ‘object’ but the ‘event’. In my view, this changes how we look at phenomenological descriptions of Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, etc. The notion of the ‘intentional object’ is no longer necessary - we simply don’t need to reduce this far to make the connections between human thought and behaviour. In fact, to do so is to ‘overshoot’ the relational structure of consciousness.

But I’ll leave it there until I have looked more into Husserl in particular.

I haven't read the entire book, but I have read "through" it and about it, and it is clear to me that he is an iconoclast to the scientific community, but what is striking is that he brings in Heidegger and Husserl, so he might be worth looking into. I say this because Husserl was famous for keeping science at bay in philosophical discussions, for science does not ask basic questions or go into the presuppositions of empirical research. It doesn't ask, what is a concept? How can we describe the experience that delivers the world to us? How is what we have before us as objects in the world actually constituted as "what we have before us"? An object is given in time, so what is the temporal structure of giveness?

Questions like these are ignored by science, which is why I don't go to the scientist for philosophical insight. They don't deal in basic questions, foundational questions. They often think they do, but they don't. — Constance

That depends what area of science you’re looking into. The idea that all science is empirical is outdated by at least a century. The scientific method itself begins with these basic, foundational questions, before formulating hypotheses. But the language of philosophy has often been deliberately unhelpful to scientists for some time now, and science has also avoided the complication of interpreting what they’ve discovered in relation to reality in general. These strategies are self-protection more than anything, if you ask me.

The problem is that most working scientists are happy to have their hypotheses formulated for them, rather than face the questions themselves. They leave that to philosophers. The reason Rovelli gets the attention he does in the scientific community and beyond is that he’s not afraid to face these questions. He speaks to the scientist and the philosopher. That he approaches these questions from the other side, from the point where empirical science fails us, and attempts to restructure ‘what we have before us’ in a way that makes sense in both a scientific and philosophical discourse, is where he has my attention. It’s what’s often missing from science.

I’m certainly not suggesting that Rovelli has all the answers. Far from it. But the questions he asks, and where he is willing to take theoretical physics, both in relation to the structure of time and in relation to information theory, is worth exploring. Where Rovelli falls short, Lisa Feldman Barrett fills in more of the puzzle for me - with a theoretical approach to emotion, awareness and energy distribution, based on empirical research in neuroscience and psychology, which (probably quite unintentionally) draws intriguing parallels with Rovelli’s restructuring of reality as consisting of energy-based events rather than objects, and explores in depth the question of what is a concept?

I’m just saying don’t write science off just yet. I have a feeling they’ll come around eventually, and the more that philosophers are informed by - and strive to inform - the frontiers of theoretical science, the faster this may happen.

Since Rovelli is an empirical scientist, it is safe to assume that the indeterminacy of time has to do with relativity. I gather this also from the way he talks about "meaning which changes between here and there" and the lack of a "single global order" in temporal events. Am I right about this? — Constance

Actually, he’s a theoretical physicist, working in Quantum Field Theory.

This is a major procedural disagreement between you and me. You question the basics of all the translations of the TTC and I accept them, at least as a platform to work from. The TTC has been studied for thousands of years and translated hundreds of times. As I've said before, you've convinced me that, if I want to understand the TTC, I have to pay attention to language, but, when trip comes to fall, I will never be able to second-guess the opinions of a whole lot of people who know a whole lot more than I do. — T Clark

Why not? You seem convinced that your own experience and understanding of the world has nothing to offer these so-called experts. I’ll admit that I’ve learned to second-guess all opinions, and never take ‘expert’ on face value. This may be a generational thing - plus, my university education in the 90s was steeped in PoMo, and I’ve since done the existential journey into nihilism and emerged out the other side unshackled by my Catholic upbringing, for one.

But surely you would agree that the most accurate platform to work from is still the original text, and that Fenollosa’s essay highlights just some of the errors and assumptions surrounding any interpretation from Chinese to English - especially by experts. I’ve learned from bible hermeneutics that we interpret religious texts as much from our own belief systems as from textual analysis, and that when push comes to shove it is invariably the text that gives way. Each translation brings with it the translator’s historical, cultural and ideological position in relation to the text, to ancient Chinese culture, to Daoism and to the Dao. This is more pronounced with the TTC because its structure invites this subjective relation much more than the bible, for instance.

I could spend my time on a contextual analysis of each translation, which might give an idea of the motivations that pull these experts to assume and even justify that Lao Tzu is talking specifically about governments and leaders, for instance. But I find it more useful to offer my own interpretation into the mix. When it differs markedly from most translations, I offer an explanation of the process by which I arrived at my interpretation, and why I think it’s truer to the original. If you choose to dismiss this based on my apparent lack of expertise, then that’s your methodology. I’m just sharing my journey.

Personally, I think the TTC - particularly these verses we are exploring right now - highlight the value of returning to original expressions of the Dao, armed with a better understanding of wu wei, to look for what is unobserved and unintended. It is these hidden examples of wu wei that are overlooked by experts, particularly those who claim to have the answers because they can demonstrate the success they have achieved.

I read through the Amazon free pages of Rovelli, and it's not like I disagree with all he says at all, but tell me briefly what it is that he says that you find compelling. Container structure of values? Eternalism? — Constance

The fact that we cannot arrange the universe like a single orderly sequence of times does not mean that nothing changes. it means that changes are not arranged in a single orderly succession: the temporal structure of the world is more complex than a simple single linear succession of instants. This does not mean that it is non-existent or illusory.
The distinction between past, present and future is not an illusion. It is the temporal structure of the world. But the temporal structure of the world is not that of presentism. The temporal relations between events are more complex than we previously thought, but they do not cease to exist on account of this. The relations of filiation do not establish a global order, but this does not make them illusory. If we are not all in single file, it does no follow that there are no relations between us. Change, what happens - this is not an illusion. What we have discovered is that it does not follow a global order...

Nature, for its part, is what it is - and we discover it gradually. If our grammar and our intuition do not readily adapt to what we discover, well, too bad: we must seek to adapt them.
The grammar of many modern languages conjugates verbs in the ‘present’, ‘past’ and ‘future’ tenses. it is not well adapted for speaking about the real temporal structure of reality, which is more complex. Grammar developed from our limited experience, before we became aware of its imprecision when it came to grasping the rich structure of the world.
What confuses us when we seek to make sense of the discovery that no objective universal present exists is only the fact that our grammar is organised around an absolute distinction - ‘past/present/future’ - that is only partially apt, here in our immediate vicinity. The structure of reality is not the one that this grammar presupposes. We say that an event ‘is’, or ‘has been’, or ‘will be’. We do not have a grammar adapted to say that an event ‘has been’ in relation to me but ‘is’ in relation to you...

We are struggling to adapt our language and our intuition to anew discovery: the fact that ‘past’ and ‘future’ do not have a universal meaning. Instead, they have a meaning which changes between here and there. That’s all there is to it.
In the world, there is change, there is a temporal structure of relations between events that is anything but illusory. It is not a global happening. It is a local and complex one which is not amenable to being described in terms of a single global order. — Carlo Rovelli, ‘The Order of Time’

What does it take to be knowledgable about general history, general science, current affairs, and the like? It takes lots of reading in these areas, selective TV viewing (mostly PBS), and discussion with others likewise informed. Avoiding the slop troughs of social media is also helpful.

Why don't more people do these things?

Time, for one. As a gay man I've never had the demands of raising children. I have had time to read a lot. I've generally worked at professional service jobs where there were other college educated people. The more one comes to understand, the more one can fit into a better understanding of the world.

Social reward is another. It helps if others appreciate one's knowledge.

On the other hand, we well-informed people should be grateful that most people are taking care of business, and not spending al their time reading. — Bitter Crank

I’m a middle-class, part-time professional raising two teenage children with a full-time teacher husband. We make time to read a lot, and read to our children from when they were small until they picked up the habit themselves. But then, we also agreed to forego the work-til-you-drop path of social reward (with its bigger debt income, new house and cars, latest tech and annual trip to Bali) for a broader experience of reality, and the wiggle room to make informed rather than ‘popular’ choices.

Time is a poor excuse. It’s about the value of staying informed.

I don't want to imprint data on a photon. Rather, I want to know if data has been imprinted on a photon that we can glean after the fact. I tried to use the analogy of a bullet. One can sometimes take a bullet and determine that it first went through a shirt with X thread count, then glanced off a bone before passing through guts, out and into some kind of wood. This is data recorded on the bullet. I thought maybe, someday, we might be able to look into the past by finding evidence of what light "saw" in it's journey. I don't suppose a whole lot happens to it in flight from that distant star. Maybe it bends around some curve of space or whatever, but that may not leave a print that stays after the flight is over. And, while it might tell us something about the past regarding the star it came from, I'm thinking closer to home. — James Riley

I don’t have the physics background of fishfry, so I can only offer my poorly informed thoughts...

I tend to think of a photon as a ‘light event’. If you consider that your own path through life is ‘imprinted’ to some extent on your physical body, then we might assume that the same sort of information might be retrieved from light at the end of its journey. But the ‘imprint’ on your physical body after death is interpreted only by understanding the potential in a human life to impact on the body, just as the imprint of a bullet’s trajectory is interpreted by understanding its potential to be impacted as it travels through a shirt, glances off bone or passes through guts. How do we know what ‘glancing off bone’ looks like to the bullet? This may seem anthropomorphic, but we’re really asking what would ‘glancing off bone’ translate to on the bullet’s surface?

If all that we can measure of a photon at the end of its life is wavelength and frequency, then there’s not a lot to differentiate in relation to its path. A bullet that has not been fired presents a smooth surface, and we must first differentiate between the marks made by firing, and those made after leaving the barrel. With a photon, we would need to start with known origins, and then group measurements of many, many different photons arriving at the same point to try and distinguish alternative trajectories. There are a lot of variables to consider along the way, not the least of which is that we cannot differentiate two photons arriving at the same point simultaneously, regardless of their journey...

This seminal quote from Mark Twain portrays (with searing accuracy) one of the major limitations of our human intellect (apologies to any other life-form looking in). Instead of living life the way is, our minds (those incredibly clever magicians) take reality and, without so much as a sleight-of-hand, create all kinds of illusions that define the majority of our lives.

Even the most balanced among us must contend with disappointment, loss, pain, illness, and death as part of of our everyday lives, so adding on (bad stuff that isn't even real) seems to this observer to be unnecessary, yet we often feel relieved when we discover that our rogue intellect has once again taken us down this short path to Hell. Instead, shouldn't our reaction be to correct this repeating nightmare?

The human condition seems to be one of non-acceptance of those things that people can do little about and acceptance of those things that people can do a great deal about. Seems as if this inversion needs to be turned right-side-up. What say you? — synthesis

Lisa Feldman Barrett describes an internal ‘scientific’ process of prediction, interaction, data, error and revision that is heavily influenced by affect - to the extent that we can either: change predictions to reflect the data, select only data that fits the prediction, ignore data and maintain that the prediction is reality, or simply focus on the data - depending on how we respond to prediction error (pain, loss, humiliation, etc) in particular situations.

I think perhaps there’s a certain attitude towards life, particularly in the current climate, that leans towards predictions of powerlessness. There is so much in our lives at the moment (for many of us) that confines and restricts our options, it’s easy to feel helpless - which then affects how we predict the world. If we have a tendency to ignore sensory data and rely mainly on existing conceptual structures for prediction, then we’re less likely to focus on correcting the repeating nightmare...

But what really interests me is the way K brings the past and the future "into" the present, for as one reflects, one is always already in the crossroads of eternity, as eternity is overarching and the moment is a synthesis of the past and the future and all possessed by the eternal present. That is, how does one apprehend the past? By thinking about the past, but the thinking is done in the present. How does apprehend the future? By thinking about the future, which is done in the present. Is there REALLY a past or future AT ALL? No. — Constance

I always recommend Carlo Rovelli’s book ‘The Order of Time’, which explores the changing view of time from ancient philosophy to post-Einstein physics, and attempts to deconstruct and then reconstruct this aspect, positing a reality consisting of interrelated events rather than objects. It also touches briefly on the notion of Eternalism as simply the way we experience reality, or the ‘container’ structure of values or potentiality in which these events interact for us.

We apprehend the past or the future by relating to it from our current position as an ongoing event, which is always changing. Lisa Feldman Barrett describes this from a neuroscience/psychology perspective, in her book ‘How Emotions Are Made’, as an ongoing prediction of attention and effort, generated by past experience and informed by an ongoing state of valence and arousal in the organism. It isn’t so much that past and future don’t really exist, but that our relation to past or future is always relative to an ongoing and variable state of the organism.

Perhaps it is the present that does not really exist, but is merely what we make of it.

I'll take a shot based on my personal experience. It's all about awareness. When I come to something new, I have a general sort of awareness based on my immediate impression. If I expose myself repeatedly and pay attention, my awareness grows and I start noticing the parts of the phenomenon I am experiencing. They start to call my attention to themselves and I start focusing my attention on them. I actually started a discussion about what it feels like to become aware like this a few years ago. Here's a link if you're interested. — T Clark

Our attention and effort is naturally drawn to sensory details that differ from our predictions. So long as we find it useful to allocate attention to new information, then we generate an immediate overall impression or prediction of this something new, and then with repeated allocations of attention and effort, we acquire further sensory details that distinguish qualitative structure, and the brain employs sampling strategies to maximise detailed information with minimal effort - we categorise and group repeating qualitative patterns as concepts.

I had a quick read of the discussion in the link. I kind of wish I had been a part of it. Your discussion with Praxis was interesting - for me, the initial step in awareness is the unfathomable whole, or what I refer to as ‘this’, the possibility of which must exist prior to il y a or ‘there is’. It’s the reference point necessary for any awareness to occur, even in a potential sense. Yet there is no awareness of it. This points to the contradiction at the heart of all existence.

When the Master governs, the people
are hardly aware that he exists.
Next best is a leader who is loved.
Next, one who is feared.
The worst is one who is despised. — T Clark

I find it curious that so many of these translations read in a subject, such as the Tao, the government or leaders, that doesn’t exist in the original text. One of the basic rules of Chinese grammar is that it is topic-prominent, whereas English tends to be subject-prominent. Many sentences in Chinese don’t have a subject at all, which can be confusing.

The topic of verse 17 is its title - chún fēng - roughly translated as ‘honest, genuine, pure’ ‘matter, style, wind, news’. To me, this clearly refers to the manner of the old masters, described in the previous verse, and verse 17 goes on to describe how this was all but lost to the world over time. With little but observable manner to base any understanding on - this manner appearing passive, murky, and unidentifiable - people were more inclined to trust their own accomplishments, and with this success as evidence, they relied on their own limited certainty.

Initially, others were unaware of its existence. Then it was loved and praised, then feared, and then despised.
Without complete confidence in the why or how, there is no confidence at all.
Far removed, oh such noble, precious words!
Having accomplished success, many ancestors said: “I am surely correct”.

There are a number of differences between my own interpretation here and the majority of translations. I’ve tried to interpret the characters as literally as possible, and structured these ideas in relation to the general rules of Chinese grammar, without adding any of my own assumptions. I’m often surprised with how different this turns out from other English translations. The hermeneutics commonly employed in other translations has been clearly exegetical, similar to biblical interpretations, which seems to be the correct approach. The aim is to ascertain communicative intent from cultural, historical and biographical evidence.

But any intentionality is fundamentally unimportant, and so obscured, in followers of the Way, through the practice of wu wei. In the same way, the TTC is deliberately passive, murky and unidentifiable - just like the manner of the old masters. The trick, I think, is to be wary of making the same mistake as described in this verse, and forcing an interpretation to fit the conceptual structure of our own experience and knowledge, but rather to be open to restructuring our experience and knowledge, our conceptual structures, to fit the original Way.

Three useful skills:
Awareness, connection and collaboration

Thanks for the information. I found this excerpt and TED video, here:

Excerpted from the new book 7 1/2 Lessons about the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett. Copyright © 2020 by Lisa Feldman Barrett. — Amity

Yes. Her older book ‘How Emotions Are Made’ also explains the body-budgeting system:

Your body-budgeting regions play a vital role in keeping you alive. Each time your brain moves any part of your body, inside or out, it spends some of its energy resources: the stuff it uses to run your organs, your metabolism, and your immune system. You replenish your body’s resources by eating, drinking, and sleeping, and you reduce your body’s spending by relaxing with loved ones, even having sex. To manage all of this spending and replenishing, your brain must constantly predict your body’s energy needs, like a budget for your body. Just as a company has a finance department that tracks deposits and withdrawals and moves money between accounts, so its overall budget stays in balance, your brain has circuitry that is largely responsible for your body budget. That circuitry is within your interoceptive network. Your body-budgeting regions make predictions to estimate the resources to keep you alive and flourishing, using past experience as a guide.
Why is this relevant to emotion? Because every brain region that’s claimed to be a home of emotion in humans is a body-budgeting region within the interoceptive network. These regions, however, don’t react in emotion. they don’t react at all. They predict, intrinsically, to regulate your body budget. They issue predictions for sights, sounds, thoughts, memories, imagination, and, yes, emotions. The idea of an emotional brain region is an illusion caused by the outdated belief in a reactive brain. Neuroscientists understand this today, but the message hasn’t trickled down to many psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, economists, and others who study emotions.
Whenever your brain predicts a movement, whether it’s getting out of bed in the morning or taking a sip of coffee, your body-budgeting regions adjust your budget. When your brain predicts that your body will need a quick burst of energy, these regions instruct the adrenal gland in your kidneys to release the hormone cortisol. People call cortisol a ‘stress hormone’ but this is a mistake. Cortisol is released whenever you need a surge of energy, which happens to include the times when you are stressed. Its main purpose is to flood the bloodstream with glucose to provide immediate energy to cells, allowing, for example, muscle cells to stretch and contract so you can run. Your body-budgeting regions also make you breathe more deeply to get more oxygen into your bloodstream and dilate your arteries to get that oxygen to your muscles more quickly so your body can move. All of this internal motion is accompanied by interoceptive sensations, though you are not wired to experience them precisely. So, your interoceptive network controls your body, budgets your energy resources, and represents your internal sensations, all at the same time. — Lisa Feldman Barrett

I talk about my emotions, perceptions, and thoughts; but I also talk about my fingers, toes, and stomach. That doesn't keep me from thinking of my body as all one thing. The self, the body, or whatever you want to call it, is one of the 10,000 things. It can be separated into parts. — T Clark

My question wasn’t to challenge this separation, but to understand the process of switching from fingers and toes to body, and to emotions and thoughts - particularly the qualitative structural differences between what we refer to as fingers, bodies, organisms, emotions and selves.

I went back and looked at several versions of Verse 13 and I'm not sure what you mean by three levels. Do you mean body, self, life? — T Clark

This from my interpretation of verse 13 14 (edit: oops! - my error):

First of all, these are aspects of reality that elude us in some way. Perhaps we can look at them this way:

What draws our sensory attention, but cannot be seen in itself, we call destructive. Energy is like this. So is time, the weather, gravity, erosion, etc.

What attracts our desire to learn, but doesn’t offer a clear set of instructions, we call hope. Potentiality is like this. So is peace, knowledge, success, morality, and the path of a quantum particle.

And what attracts our effort to relate, but cannot be grasped, we call abstruse. Truth is like this. So is objectivity, meaning, the ‘God particle’, etc

For me, these three correspond to four, five and six-dimensional qualitative structures, but this is probably not what Lao Tzu saw. What he did see was that, unable to examine these aspects closely as such, we tend to confuse them all as one. This doesn’t help. The blended confusion fails to sparkle at best; at worst, we can’t just ignore it. We can’t stop it or name it, and it appears to be nothing at all - the uncaused cause, unmoved mover, etc. — Possibility

From outlining the problem, Lao Tzu looks at the old masters, and then puts together the cascade structure in verse 16 that corresponds to these three levels in a process of increasing awareness, connection and collaboration:

I understand this verse as describing a process from attaining stillness in being, to then being able to observe the flow of everything, and notice the stillness to which everything returns again and again, revealing an underlying constancy to the world. When we’re aware of this, we have a clearer understanding of the world as a whole; but without this awareness, our actions lack flow and can be reckless and vicious. Without this awareness, we are apart from the world, and in conflict with it.

From an awareness of this underlying constancy, though, we are part of the flow, and act with fairness and justice for all. When we are fair and just, we have the capacity for great leadership, which then enables a spiritual awareness that brings us to the Tao. — Possibility

Which then led me to this explanation:

When the body is recognised as just one facet of our conduct in living (rather than as its main part), then what draws our attention but cannot be seen is recognised for more than its destructive quality.

When our conduct, morality or lifespan is recognised as just one facet of consciousness, then what attracts our desire to learn but offers no set of instructions is understood as more than merely hopefulness.

And when our knowledge or consciousness is recognised as just one facet of a broader experience, then what attracts our efforts to relate, but cannot be grasped is meaningful for more than this quality of being abstruse. — Possibility

I hope this clarifies what I was saying.

I think one role of "trying to describe what can't be really described" is the listener is being invited to look for this follower of the way in their own being. That an activity is underway that involves all of existence means that one is a part of it with varying levels of experience. One can start finding the "old follower" in experience that has already brought about good results. The power of metaphor can observe what precise explanations cannot. The elusive quality of "Falling apart like thawing ice" cuts through any list of qualities that can be expressed in other ways. All of our attempts to characterize it cannot add up to the "observation" we are being invited to participate in. Laozi is including his own efforts in that separation. But it doesn't mean we can avoid trying. — Valentinus

I agree, although I’m not sure what you mean by ‘good results’.

Experience is about quality, not ‘qualities’ - about relational structure and process, not activities or ‘things’. Quality interrelates in a many-to-one structure that is not conducive to separation and isolation into language concepts or ‘lists of qualities’. Metaphor enables the reader to recall the quality in an experience they may have around thawing ice falling apart, relate it to the quality in an experience they may have of the formality surrounding a guest, among others, and begin to render a possible experience out of the qualitative potentiality that results - without trying to consolidate it into a language concept.

This is where I think meditative practices come in handy - and with them the ability to recognise the quality of experience as a more complex structural process than the idea of consolidated ‘concepts’ colliding in mind-space, or the intellect wrestling for control over a primitive, emotional brain.

This is not a building block construction, it’s more like a painting. When we paint, we paint with quality. We reach for an element with a blue-green quality, and place it alongside an element with red qualities, and this draws attention to the red-green relation. We add sand to the paint, and it adds a textured quality to how we experience the image - it doesn’t add sand. We add water, and it gives a translucent quality.

Of old he who was well versed in the way
Was minutely subtle, mysteriously comprehending,
And too profound to be known.
It is because he could not be known
That he can only be given a makeshift description:
Tentative, as if fording a river in winter;
Hesitant, as if in fear of his neighbors;
Formal, like a guest;
Falling apart like thawing ice;
Thick like the uncarved block;
Vacant like a valley;
Murky like muddy water.
Who can be muddy and yet, settling, slowly become limpid?
Who can be at rest and yet, stirring, slowly come to life?
He who holds fast to this way
Desires not to be full.
It is because he is not full
That he can be worn and yet newly made. — Translated by D.C Lau. Book 1, verse 15 — Valentinus

I like this description. We like to think of ourselves as complete, whole, known (or at least knowable) in some substantial sense; that there exists some predetermined ‘essence’ of who we are, waiting to be discovered by ourselves and others. We continually lose and try to ‘find ourselves’, not realising that we are newly made by the variability of our ongoing relation to the world. The old masters didn’t assume or try to form an identity for themselves. By holding fast to the way, instead of holding fast to an identity or ‘known quantity’, they come across as unidentifiable, murky, passive and lacking in any apparent personality. It’s like trying to describe an electron. I especially like the phrase “formal, like a guest”.

The "holding fast" seems to involve both deliberate focus and bearing along with not doing what has to happen without his help. Desiring not to be full in contrast to desiring to be full. The intentions are hidden from others but is the one who is "holding fast" also hidden from themselves? — Valentinus

I don’t think they’re necessarily ‘hidden from themselves’. I think it’s that intentionality doesn’t collapse into intended action for them but rather remains wave-like. It isn’t about their own intentions, but about the flow of energy - the distribution of attention and effort as far as their awareness of it extends into the world. Perhaps it isn’t that their intentions are hidden, but that they comprise only one facet of this more complex flow of energy.

Addiss and Lombardo translate the last line as "Tao endures. Your body dies. There is no danger." I think you make too big a thing out of the body/self distinction. I don't really experience my body as something separate from my self, identify, ego, spirit, consciousness, whatever you want to call it. I talk about it separately, just like I can talk about my emotions, perceptions, thoughts separately, depending on the situation. But I don't experience them as different. It is my understanding that many people do. I experience myself as all one thing. — T Clark

The translation choice of shēn as ‘body’, ‘life’, ‘self’, etc highlights the flexibility and unity of this quality/character, depending on the focus or perspective of the reader/translation. I think if we’re looking across the various translations, we can’t overlook this body/life/self relation as a qualitative structure - but it’s more complex than distinction or no distinction, separate or one thing. Why do we talk about emotions, perceptions and thoughts separately depending on the situation, when we don’t experience them as separately as these terms make out? I think this highlights the three levels of awareness that are often confused/blended into one (verse 13), and the cascade structure (verse 16) that presents each level as merely one facet of another level of awareness/relation. I think the TTC starts to give a sense here of a qualitative relational structure that talks about experiencing body-life-consciousness-self-spirit - shēn - without separation, but also without blending these levels of awareness into a single level.

From that point of convergence, the line between the practical and the intellectual is not only a type of self awareness but an understanding of what is around you and the capacity to act effectively as a result. — Valentinus

I think it has a lot to do with understanding the flow and distribution of energy throughout and around the body. Barrett talks in her book about the ‘body-budgeting’ system, which manages the flow of energy for the organism - including energy flowing to and from the people and situations around us - and how affect plays a role. There are a number of parallels between Barrett’s description of body-budgeting and interoceptive networks of the body, and management of chi through sitting, moving and deeper meditation practices such as Shen Gong.

I think a lot of Western-style meditation aims to temporarily quiet the mind, but doesn’t build skills towards permanently dissolving the apparent gap between mind and body. We like the gap - it gives us the illusion that we’re exercising some form of intellectual ‘control’ over the body. Taoist practices work instead towards a collaborative unity, and aim to refine our system structures of emotion, thought and action with an improved flow of energy (chi), beginning with an awareness of this underlying constancy that leads us to the Tao.

A lot of scholars resist reading this perspective as the intention of Lao Tzu and Zhuangzi but the many traditions that used those maps for their own purposes are important voices to be heard. — Valentinus

I agree. I’m not often convinced by the reasoning given for Taoist practices, but I definitely think they draw attention to an important aspect of ‘experiencing the Tao’ that can be easily ignored in an intellectual approach to the TTC. I think verses 13 to 16 at least point out the bodily aspect of relating to the Tao as inseparable from our experience.

Attain the ultimate emptiness
Hold on to the truest tranquility
The myriad things are all active
I therefore watch their return
Everything flourishes; each returns to its root
Returning to the root is called tranquility
Tranquility is called returning to one's nature
Returning to one's nature is called constancy
Knowing constancy is called clarity
Not knowing constancy, one recklessly causes trouble
Knowing constancy is acceptance
Acceptance is impartiality
Impartiality is sovereign
Sovereign is heaven
Heaven is Tao
Tao is eternal
The self is no more, without danger — T Clark

I think the first two lines of this verse refer to meditative practices as a method of attaining the ‘emptiness’ observed in the old masters of the previous verse. Strict stillness is required to have any hope of getting to the root of existence.

I understand this verse as describing a process from attaining stillness in being, to then being able to observe the flow of everything, and notice the stillness to which everything returns again and again, revealing an underlying constancy to the world. When we’re aware of this, we have a clearer understanding of the world as a whole; but without this awareness, our actions lack flow and can be reckless and vicious. Without this awareness, we are apart from the world, and in conflict with it.

From an awareness of this underlying constancy, though, we are part of the flow, and act with fairness and justice for all. When we are fair and just, we have the capacity for great leadership, which then enables a spiritual awareness that brings us to the Tao.

The beginning of this verse and the end is where I notice the difference between monist and idealist - and it’s quite possible that I’m not relating to these labels in the same way as you do, so bear with me.

A Google translation of this last line is quite simply ‘not dead’, which amused me. But the characters describe the quality of not having a ‘main part’ to one’s structure (shen), and also a quality of ‘not almost’, or ‘probably not’. There seems to be a common assumption that this first quality of not having shen refers to a person, but the Tao is not a person. Plus, from the beginning of this sentence structure (arguably even the beginning of the verse) Lao Tzu is referring to a quality with no reference to ‘self’/‘I’ (the person in question attaining ‘emptiness’), so it really doesn’t make sense to suddenly bring a ‘self’ back in at the end.

English is insufficient in helping me articulate what I’m understanding here, so again bear with me. This last line refers to the eternal Tao as having no ‘main part’ to its structure, and no probability to its existence. This is contrast with verse 13, where the ‘I’ (the self as wú) is described as having a ‘main part’ to its structure (shen), through which one suffers greatly.

When we relate to the self as a living organism, its ‘main part’ is the body; as a conscious being, its main part is conduct or life (inclusive of body); as an experiencing subject, its main part is mind, consciousness, knowledge (inclusive of life). When we attain the state of ‘emptiness’ that leads us the Tao, there is no ‘main part’ to the structure, and yet, most importantly, none of the structure is lost - this ‘emptiness’ is inclusive of consciousness, life and body, NOT isolated from or dismissive of these aspects in any way.

So, the attaining of ‘emptiness’ is not a state of having NO self, but of dissolving the ‘I’ into the Tao - a state of being aware not as ‘I’ yet still inclusive of ‘I’: as but one facet of awareness.

When the body is recognised as just one facet of our conduct in living (rather than as its main part), then what draws our attention but cannot be seen is recognised for more than its destructive quality.

When our conduct, morality or lifespan is recognised as just one facet of consciousness, then what attracts our desire to learn but offers no set of instructions is understood as more than merely hopefulness.

And when our knowledge or consciousness is recognised as just one facet of a broader experience, then what attracts our efforts to relate, but cannot be grasped is meaningful for more than this quality of being abstruse.

I get the sense that intellectual approaches to the TTC tend to put aside the genuine difficulty in attaining this ‘emptiness’ as a physical state. I notice you’ve skipped verse 15, presumably not a favourite. There seems to be a kind of ‘could if I chose to’ approach to this practical aspect of the Tao, a drawing of the line that lends it an idealist bent. I guess if you never try, then you can’t fail, and it all remains a comfortingly theoretical approach to monism. The idea that we theoretically have intellectual control over our emotions, and thereby our thoughts, words and actions, is what Barrett challenges from a scientific standpoint. Taoist meditation challenges it from a practical standpoint.

But I don’t want you to get a sense that I’m attacking your approach as such. This is just something that concerns me about many of the translations I’ve seen here and elsewhere. We seems content with a description of what everyone ought to be doing, but I think the TTC calls us to relate to what it says from every level of our awareness.

I like word you used: “balance”. Yes, it is definitely better than equilibrium. Because TTC wants somehow to put equality principles to work on. You would not see in TTC something as totalitarian as The Prince, by Machiavello. — javi2541997

I just wanted to clarify here that I was saying I think your word of equilibrium is better than balance. I think it allows for a continual sense of movement and change.

Yes, pretend in Spanish is a “false friend” word. I didn’t mean “to give a false appearance” but the verb “to claim”
Sometimes we have to be careful about different words meanings :sweat: — javi2541997

English is a strange language. The origin of the word ‘pretend’ is ‘to claim’. In English, we’ve packaged this up more recently with a judgment of intention and/or accuracy in our meaning - thereby making our own ‘claims’ to knowledge. But I digress...

I admire your efforts to discuss philosophy, and especially a translated text, in a second language among native speakers. I don’t imagine it’s easy, and I have enjoyed reading your contributions here.

The structure of TTC is (just my humble interpretation) the Principle that can be also named as “world” or the the thing that emanates everything, etc... because Lao-Tzu puts some metaphor to at least trying to get these objectives: peace (this is why in some verses talks about a the difference between a good or bad savant can lead to be in wars or not) equilibrium (when talks about the Principle itself and how we interpret it in the most balanced position possible). Again, these are my interpretations probably I am wrong. — javi2541997

Peace and equilibrium seem to me fairly accurate descriptions of objectives, or ways towards the Tao. I think most of us agree more or less with the importance of these concepts, but perhaps not so much with the methods for achieving them. I think many people would advocate ignorance, isolation or exclusion as useful methods towards achieving a practical peace, for instance. But I don’t think this is the kind of peace that the TTC strives for - one that prefers division over interaction. So I would suggest unity as a third main objective - in the sense of acting as if one, not dissolving into a literal, singular totality. I also like that equilibrium has a more dynamic quality than balance.

Did Lao Tzu write the TTC for a specific purpose? This is from Addis and Lombardo, Verse 63.

Act without acting. Serve without serving. Taste without tasting....
Therefore the Sage Never attempts great things and so accomplishes them.

So, I guess, no... Lao Tzu didn't have a purpose in writing the TTC. I think Lao Tzu meant what he said and said what he meant. — T Clark

Well, you know that our views differ on this notion of ‘act without acting’. But I don’t think the TTC was meant, originally. I think it is an expression of reaching towards the idea of the Tao in a way that provides some scaffolding for complex ideas beyond understanding. I think we attribute an author to the text in order to distance ourselves from what we cannot yet grasp, but I think the TTC is so ambiguous because there IS no ‘what Lao Tzu says’ and no ‘what Lao Tzu means’ in the text at all. All we can do is relate to the Tao from where we are, making use of scaffolding provided by the TTC to reach closer...

Would you consider yourself a Taoist ?
— Amity

I think not at all because Taoism tend to be ideal. I respect and like the poems but somehow I only believe if I live it. I guess this is why I always like empiricism. — javi2541997

I personally don’t think Taoism is an idealist perspective - I think many interpretations read this into the text, and there is nothing in the text to actively discourage it. I don’t think it’s possible to interpret the TTC from its original form without bringing our own perspective into it - so perhaps the TTC itself is an idealist structure, but that’s not the same thing. I think we struggle to make the connection between Taoist thought and Taoist practices because of this notion of wu wei as an indirect, many-to-one causal relation.

When we try to make sense of English or Spanish translations of the TTC, we have consolidated concepts, verb tenses and sentence structures that we’re expected to relate to from a potential position, so we shift perspective in relation to the text. But the Chinese text doesn’t contain either expectations or instructions about our position as reader. It says that ‘these ideas relate to each other in this way’, and how we relate to that idea structure within the Tao depends on our own subjective position as a structure within the Tao, regardless of the author’s meaning or perspective. If we consider this subjective position to consist only of what ‘appears in the mind’, then it’s easy to mistake Taoism for a form of idealism. This is common to those who merely translate the TTC, as well as those who approach it philosophically or intellectually.

But if we recognise that this subjective position which relates to the Tao is inclusive of our variable position in spacetime (we often overlook this), then ‘experiencing the Tao’ is a much deeper process, and necessarily involves understanding the limitations, capacity and processes of the body in relation to what appears in the mind.

I’m thinking perhaps we see Taoism as either monist or idealist. I tend towards the monist perspective, myself. That may be why my interpretation often seems so out of step here.

The names we give to these three aspects are clearly a point of contention among translations. I understand that the English words are chosen mainly for their apparent relevance to the previous lines, but I think it’s important to note the literal translation of the characters in question, especially since the structure stands each apart from the rest of the text.

yí: non-Han people, esp. to the East of China; barbarians; to wipe out; to exterminate; to tear down; to raze.

xī: to hope; to admire;

wēi: tiny; miniature; slightly; profound; abtruse; to decline; one millionth part of; micro-;

The first two are those whose translation attempts most baffle me. Where do we get ‘dim’, ‘minute’, ‘colourless’ or ‘equable’ from the direct translation above? Where does one get ‘rarified’, ‘faint’, ‘soundless’ or ‘inaudible’ out of ‘to hope; to admire’? There seems to be a liberty taken with these translations, which to me demonstrates a misunderstanding of the idea Lao Tzu was trying to convey with this character. It took me a while to make the connections between these ideas that allowed it all to flow without being forced.

I know we like to go with a simple 1:1 translation, but this doesn’t always work. Qualitative experience is a many-to-one relation. There is more to what is ‘looked for without being seen’ than simply being practically invisible - what is it about ‘invisible things’ that inspire us to call them ‘destructive’? What is it about ‘to listen/obey’ without ‘to hear/news/well-known/reputation’ that leads us to dismiss something as merely ‘hope’?

The confusion with the third aspect came from the common translation of bo as ‘to seize’.

bó: to fight; to combat; to seize; (of heart) to beat;

What does fighting, seizing and the heart beating have in common that fails to grasp, and in doing so render something microscopic, profound or difficult to understand (depending on your perspective)?

This just gives you an idea of my process...

A fun novel exploring MWI here, in case you were interested...

In order to do that Laozi resorts to paradoxes, contradictions, because these are the extremes of division; we could make the case that grey is black or that grey is white but to say black is white, as the Tao Te Ching's many paradoxes eventually reduce to, is to defy all reason. — TheMadFool

I do agree that paradoxes are an important aspect of the TTC, but I think those you offer as examples demonstrate what are only apparent paradoxes - as illustrated by the word ‘seem’. As an analogy, black is grey and white is grey, which seems to imply that black is white. The challenge is to stop looking at the concepts, and instead examine how we relate to the qualities of experience expressed. From our discussion on verse 2:

Good and bad, black and white, beautiful and ugly - these are not naming things or concepts but boundaries to value structures that differentiate our relation to the Tao.

I’m saying that black and white, for instance, we have arbitrarily named as upper and lower limitations to the variable quality of greyness. Good and bad, beautiful and ugly, etc are also nothing but constructs of our own limited relations. I’m saying that the variability of greyness can be differentiated and named as particular ‘shades’ only in relation to black and white. The variability of our experience can be differentiated and named as particular things only in relation to these upper and lower limitations of value structure. This is how we make initial sense of our relation to the world. — Possibility

This verse is a watershed of different views. Are the things being named as awkwardly related to each other as the problem of talking about them? Or is there an order that is consistent to itself as how things come about that we only understand poorly through deficient means?

The answer or problems toward answering that question tempers the element of Mysticism that has been represented in so many different ways, here, and in the academic commentary.

Put another way, the strong language about how one set of conditions leads to another points to one kind of observation. The ground where we make comparisons points to something else. — Valentinus

Yes - I think this verse is the beginning of a new tack. First of all, these are aspects of reality that elude us in some way. Perhaps we can look at them this way:

What draws our sensory attention, but cannot be seen in itself, we call destructive. Energy is like this. So is time, the weather, gravity, erosion, etc.

What attracts our desire to learn, but doesn’t offer a clear set of instructions, we call hope. Potentiality is like this. So is peace, knowledge, success, morality, and the path of a quantum particle.

And what attracts our effort to relate, but cannot be grasped, we call abstruse. Truth is like this. So is objectivity, meaning, the ‘God particle’, etc

For me, these three correspond to four, five and six-dimensional qualitative structures, but this is probably not what Lao Tzu saw. What he did see was that, unable to examine these aspects closely as such, we tend to confuse them all as one. This doesn’t help. The blended confusion fails to sparkle at best; at worst, we can’t just ignore it. We can’t stop it or name it, and it appears to be nothing at all - the uncaused cause, unmoved mover, etc.

Lao Tzu’s solution seems to be to examine our history of relation to the Tao, and the very next verse begins with a description of the old masters.

What is looked at but not (pu) seen,
Is named the extremely dim (yi).
What is listened to but not heard,
Is named the extremely faint (hsi).
What is grabbed but not caught,
Is named the extremely small (wei).
These three cannot be comprehended,
Thus they blend into one.
As to the one, its coming up is not light,
Its going down is not darkness.
Unceasing, unnameable,
Again it reverts to nothing.
Therefore it is called the formless form,
The image (hsiang) of nothing.
Therefore it is said to be illusive and evasive (hu-huang).
Come toward it one does not see its head,
Follow behind it one does not see its rear.
Holding on to the Tao of old (ku chih tao),
So as to steer in the world of now (chin chih yu).
To be able to know the beginning of old,
It is to know the thread of Tao. — T Clark

I don’t have much to argue over with this translation at all, nor with Chen’s detailed comments. I can see why you use this version - its descriptions of the Tao itself seem quite clear to me. It reminds me of qualitative descriptions in quantum field theory.

My own understanding of the Tao is this: there exists, quite unnecessarily, a structure of qualitative relation which in totality cancels itself out, in plurality ignores, isolates, and excludes, and in unity increases awareness, connection and collaboration.

You seem reluctant to explore this, preferring to see fear as all in the mind.
— Possibility

It's not fair (stomps feet). I tell you I don't see things the way you do and you say I'm "reluctant to explore." — T Clark

I don’t expect you to see things the way I do - only to explore its potential from your own perspective, to ask yourself why you don’t see fear in the body as well as the mind, how your perspective might change if you did, and if that’s such a bad thing...

As you might intimate from what I wrote above, I don't agree with this. I don't think there is a reductionist methodology within 10 miles of the TTC. — T Clark

Except you do think that Lao Tzu wrote the TTC for a specific communicative purpose, and I think you’d agree that the text uses a particular language, and employs a particular style and structure in itself. That a reductionist methodology, right there - a way of rendering an understanding of the Tao in a relational structure of strokes on a page. Like the choices an artist makes to render a 4D experience of light and movement in 2D.

This is where the TTC in its Chinese character format shines. Each character signifies a relational quality rather than a concept, retaining this same quality regardless of where or how it’s positioned in the text or in our experience. There’s an honesty to this that makes the language ideal for piecing together what we experience qualitatively, but don’t yet understand. Lao Tzu painted the human experience with relational qualities that flowed in patterns he was aware of, connected to and collaborating with - regardless of whether or not he understood them as such. These included some that modern readers now understand much better than Lao Tzu ever did, as well as some that the reader ignores, isolates and excludes. The flexibility of this format makes the theory of ‘the Laozi’ as a culturally compiled text of wisdom, rather than a single person’s understanding, plausible. Where the TTC makes sense to us, the language seems to hum and resonate within us. And where it doesn’t, there are experiences to which we’ve yet to relate, and koans to meditate on.

When it’s translated into English, though, these relational qualities cease to flow, and we struggle to distinguish between possible gaps in our own awareness and that of the translation. The structure of the English language insists that biology is not chemistry and psychology is not anatomy - that each ‘level of organisation’ must be spoken about in a different way, using different words. But the qualities of experience don’t change between these levels - only our relation to them changes. Many relational, qualitative structures of chemistry are echoed in biology, and there are patterns of qualitative flow that can be found at every level of organisation. Expectation or prediction, for instance, looks like DNA at a biological level.

Each attempted translation of the TTC proposes an alternative reductionist methodology, a set of hypotheses to be tested by relating to experience, life and objective reality. We’re not testing what is written, therefore, but our own relation to it.

Fear, at least as I'm talking about it, and as I think Lao Tzu thought about it, is a mental experience. It's part of the mind. Let's not get into a discussion of mind/brain identity. For me, the mind and the brain are completely different things. The nervous system, the whole body, is a living organ made up of cells. Fear is an experience. — T Clark

I see this reflected, too, in your personal preference for ‘self’ instead of ‘body’ in translations of this verse. It seems from what you’re saying here that you subscribe to some form of dualism or idealism, as incongruous as I find this to be with the TTC.

The way I see it, fear is an experience inseparable from ‘mind’ or ‘body’. You seem reluctant to explore this, preferring to see fear as all in the mind. Ideally or potentially, sure, it can be. But any event we manifest includes our relation to these qualitative aspects we consolidate as ‘fear’, whether we can see through the concept or not. When we’re aware of this or anticipate it, then we can deliberately see through it, dissolving ‘fear’ into an unpleasant, arousing feeling in relation to a prediction. I do think that Lao Tzu challenges us to anticipate both pleasant and unpleasant surprises, and in doing so see through both fear and hope.

But I also think Lao Tzu describes our relational structure as dissolving any quantitative distinction between mind and brain. More often than not we’re not paying that much attention introspectively. We should acknowledge, with humility, those times when, in failing to predict accurately, we find ourselves surprisingly affected by our expectations. Despite physiological preparation to fight or flee, we need not act on this, but often we’re left to explain an unconscious response after the fact. How readily do we acknowledge fear as an explanation then - especially if we believe that fear is just a mental experience?

I don't want to give the impression that it's something I can do on an extended basis. Do you meditate at all? I don't in any formal way, but if I pay attention, I can go to state of mind where I am aware of what is going on inside me with no words. When that happens, fear, expectation, dissolve. I haven't forgotten them and I'm not hiding them, they're just not there. This is a pretty common description of a meditative, now they're calling it "mindful," state. — T Clark

This is a common intellectual, even Western, description of ‘mindfulness’. It’s a restructuring of our conceptual reality that consolidates the mind as isolated from the body.

The difference between this and genuine meditation is a sense of being: of the mind as inclusive of the body and its affect, rather than disconnected from it. It’s a much more difficult state to attain - almost impossible from an intellectual standpoint. Taoist meditation practices are designed to help us get out of our own way - to get our brain out of this ‘default mode’ that Barrett talks about, and focused on input as the start of an internal process. The idea is to become more aware of what happens to this input - what the ‘scientist’ does with the incoming data in relation to the hypotheses, so to speak. Meditation faces affect head-on, creating controlled conditions of distributed attention and effort in order to disentangle affect from the incoming data.

In this state, for me it isn’t so much that fear isn’t there, or that expectation dissolves, but that it just isn’t what we think it is. What ‘fear’ consists of still exists as variable qualitative experience - it’s just not a thing in itself.

We don't discard fear, we see through it. See through the illusion. — T Clark

Ok - seeing through it makes sense. I just get a sense that we’re intellectually accepting these translations because they have a satisfying quantitative or logical structure to them, regardless of whether or not they’re qualitatively accurate. I think we need to be more thorough than that.

Fear is not an illusion, anymore than money or countries are illusions. They are concepts in our social reality, a product of human agreement - this is something that Barrett also covers early in her book. Fear is identified by neural firing patterns as a mental event, in a categorisation method (proposed by Darwin) known as population thinking. Fear as an event has been demonstrated as irreducible to a particular location or set of neurons in the brain, leading to an understanding of degeneracy: a many-to-one relational structure between neurons and the firing patterns that identify as mental events. This many-to-one relational structure is a key understanding between what we perceive as objectively, actually and conceptually real. It makes perfect sense to me as a dimensional relation - objective reality as 3D, actual reality as 4D and conceptual reality as 5D. And I find uncanny parallels between this dimensional or many-to-one structure of reality, and the one described in the TTC - when we ‘see through’ the quantitative consolidation of 10,000 things: concepts, events, objects, shapes, lines and binaries.

An intellectual relation to the TTC is not enough - we can’t just see through affect and from there expect to effortlessly render the Tao in our everyday reality. The process of understanding the Tao includes constructing a reductionist methodology that renders this understanding in how we think, speak, act and generally relate to the world - all of which is necessarily bound by affect. So we need to understand how affect binds us and those around us, and then seek the soft tendons and effortless actions that preserve the knife. I see this as increasing awareness, connection and collaboration.

Barrett gives an analogy of the brain’s interoceptive network as a scientist formulating and testing predictions. I’m adding it here because I think it relates to this idea of constructing our reductionist methodology, and why qualitative accuracy is important in translating the TTC:

...your brain works like a scientist. It’s always making a slew of predictions, just as a scientist makes competing hypotheses. Like a scientist, your brain uses knowledge (past experience) to estimate how confident you can be that each prediction is true. Your brain then tests its predictions by comparing them to incoming sensory input from the world, much as a scientist compares hypotheses against data in an experiment. If your brain is predicting well, then input from the world confirms your predictions. Usually, however, there is some prediction error, and your brain, like a scientist, has some options. It can be a responsible scientist and change its predictions to respond to the data. Your brain can also be a biased scientist and selectively choose data that fits the hypotheses, ignoring everything else. Your brain can also be an unscrupulous scientist and ignore the data altogether, maintaining that its predictions are reality. Or, in moments of learning or discovery, your brain can be a curious scientist and focus on input. And like the quintessential scientist, your brain can run armchair experiments to imagine the world: pure simulation without sensory input or prediction error.
The balance between prediction and prediction error determines how much of your experience is rooted in the outside world versus inside your head....in many cases, the outside world is irrelevant to your experience. In a sense, your brain is wired for delusion: through continual prediction, you experience a world of your own creation that is held in check by the sensory world. Once your predictions are correct enough, they not only create your perception and action but also explain the meaning of your sensations. This is your brain’s default mode. And marvellously, your brain does not just predict the future: it can imagine the future at will. As far as we know, no other animal can do that. — Barrett, ‘How Emotions Are Made’

I'm reading Barrett's book and I like it a lot. Thanks for the reference. By "expect" in this context, are you talking about the mind's automatic filling in the blanks in incomplete perceptions that Barrett talks about? If so, I think that's a completely different phenomenon than we're talking about here. I think any intimation of "expectation" is a more common everyday use of the word, i.e. we are anticipating what will come next. We are living in the future rather than the present. — T Clark

Keep reading. These incomplete perceptions are not just static images - that’s just a demonstration that she can orchestrate using a book. I will say that I first read Barrett’s book following Carlo Rovelli’s ‘The Order of Time’, so the notion of the universe consisting of interrelated events rather than objects was the context for my understanding of Barrett’s theory. The entire physical structure of intentional action and consciousness necessitates anticipating what will come next - ‘living in the future rather than the present’.

I think we come back to a big difference between your way of seeing the TTC and mine. I think it's about the experience of the Tao. Hope and fear feel the same. We process them the same. — T Clark

I do think that hope and fear have a certain experiential quality in common, but I disagree that we always process these experiences the same, or that they feel the same every time. I think we can approach these concepts in such a way that they do appear to feel the same, but only by collapsing our perception of the experience to a single aspect.

So, while it makes sense to say that there is the same quality of expectation in experiences of both hope and fear, those experiences differ markedly in affect (one being pleasant and the other unpleasant), and so we process them differently, and they feel different. Once we acknowledge this, then we can begin to understand the quality of expectation beyond our affected distinction of hope and fear, and also understand affect in relation to our expectations.

I think you are using "expectation" in the sense that Barrett means it and not how Lao Tzu would and I do. So, yes I have tried and succeeded to not have expectations in the everyday sense of the word. It's hard to do unless I'm really paying attention. — T Clark

What we’re calling ‘expectation’ here, Barrett refers to as prediction. When you do appear to succeed at not having expectations, are you aware of what it is you are paying attention to? And what you are ‘discarding’?

Different translations seem to differ on whether fear or surprise is a bad thing or just a thing. — T Clark

Yes - I think this difference corresponds to whether or not their interpretation is coloured by affect.

I went back and looked at several different translations of Verse 13. I looked at this one by Thomas Cleary, which i hadn't looked at before. It really lays things out the way I've been thinking about it. He uses both "alarmed" and "startled."

Favor and disgrace seem alarming; high status greatly afflicts your person.
What are favor and disgrace? Favor is the lower: get it and you're surprised, lose it and you're startled. This means favor and disgrace are alarming. — T Clark

I struggle to relate to Cleary’s translation - I don’t think that ‘surprise’ or ‘alarm’ describe qualitatively how it feels to gain favour or to lose it AT ALL. The sentences are logically structured, and the character translations are all quantitatively accounted for - but it’s lacking accuracy in qualitative structure as it relates to experience. That this qualitative aspect seems such an insignificant thing to us is what concerns me.

In my view, courage is always needed.
— Possibility

Courage, whether it roars or whispers, is not needed if fear is discarded. — T Clark

How do we ‘discard’ fear? By ignoring it? By isolating or excluding it from our reality? How can we understand the Tao without including fear?

This is what we do with the English language: we bind qualitative experience into concepts, and then think we can ‘discard’ the things we don’t like.

An interesting character in Chinese is wei - the one in the line of verse 13 meaning ‘entrust to’ (as distinct from ‘entrust with’). It can also be translated as ‘appoint’, as well as ‘throw away’ or ‘discard’, even ‘actually’ or ‘really’. From an English language perspective we think: how can this one character possibly mean ALL of these things?

The quality of this character wei, as I see it, is a limit on perceived potential. When we appoint someone to a position or task, we limit our perception of their potential to their capacity to perform that task. When we are entrusted to the world, we limit our perceived potential of ourselves to the value that others attribute to us. And when we throw something away or discard it, we limit our perception of its potential to achieve anything at all.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing - it is what it is. In order to intentionally perform any action, we must temporarily limit our perceived potential to act in that situation. This is what affect is: instructions to the organism on how to distribute the limited energy it has available in that moment, based on an interaction between what we expect to happen and an interocepted state of the organism. But what this quality does suggest is that we don’t really discard anything - we just limit our perception of its potential. When we supposedly ‘discard’ fear we just ignore its capacity to affect us. This can be useful as a selective strategy in the short term, but this kind of ignorance can be harmful as an overall perspective.