Honestly I think one of the things I'd like to discuss is, if the Tao cannot be explained, why do we have the Tao Te Ching? I'm familiar with the generalities of it, but it does seem deliciously ironic in a very Taoist way. — MrLiminal

You're exactly right, and that's right at the heart of what the Tao means to me. Of course Lao Tzu understands the irony of speaking about what cannot be spoken about. I've always seen it as a kind of a joke. For me, the Tao Te Ching is about pointing with words rather than explaining with them. Lao Tzu is showing us things, not telling us about them. It's the first contradiction in a book full of them. If you've read all the way through the Tao Te Ching, you've seen that there are verses that seem to contradict each other. That gets even stronger when you start looking at more than one translation.

My approach is to take each verse and each translation as a snapshot of something that can't be covered in a single photo. The result is impressionistic. Keep in mind - the Tao Te Ching is not about the words, it's about the experience Lao Tzu is trying to show us.

do you have a favorite translation? — MrLiminal

I started with Stephen Mitchell's translation and I still like it a lot. It's very westernized and you'll hear lots of criticism that it's "inauthentic." Be that as it may, you should definitely look at other translations. For more authentic ones, I like Gia-Fu Feng and Lin Yutang. They're both found on that web page I linked to you, but I like lots of other versions too. Here are a couple of links that provide comparative translations.

https://ttc.tasuki.org/display:Code:gff,sm,jc,rh/section:meta
https://www.bu.edu/religion/files/pdf/Tao_Teh_Ching_Translations.pdf

For a specific verse, here is one from Wayne Dyer's translation:

“It is through selfless action I will experience my own fulfillment." — MrLiminal

This is from Verse 7. Let me think about it for a bit.

That's what I'm hopping to add to this specific conversation, about Taoist thought. — Arcane Sandwich

He's made it clear what he's interested in. You should back off.

Am I on the right track? Any deeper insights? Let me know what ya'll think. — MrLiminal

Why don't you pick a verse of the Tao Te Ching you'd like to discuss.

I disagree with that — Arcane Sandwich

@MrLiminal is talking about what the Tao Te Ching says and his description is a pretty good one. If you want to disagree with a 2,500 year old philosophy which, I assume, you don't understand very much if at all, your opinion is not very useful.

Am I on the right track? Any deeper insights? Let me know what ya'll think. — MrLiminal

I have a strong interest in Taoism as expressed in the works of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu. I have never found a philosophy closer to my own understanding of how the world works. If you look at my discussions and posts you'll see that the Tao is never far from my thoughts. That being said, you're asking for a lot. I'm not sure what to offer. Here are a couple of things.

This is a link to dozens of different translations of the Tao Te Ching along with other Taoist texts. When you get deeper into it, reading more than just one version can be very helpful. I like Stephen Mitchell, which is very non-traditional but is good for beginner westerners. To get deeper into a more "authentic" version, I like Gia-Fu Feng and Lin Yutang. There are plenty of other interesting ones.

https://terebess.hu/english/tao/_index.html

This link goes to a very brief, clear, and insightful summary of Taoist principles from a western point of view.

https://superbowl.substack.com/p/taoism-minus-the-nonsense

And this is to a discussion I started several years ago about my favorite verses from a very personal point of view. I only got up to about verse 25 before people lost interest.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/10427/my-favorite-verses-in-the-tao-te-ching/p1

I also recommend Alan Watts "Tao - the Watercourse Way." It's a good simple introduction with some depth.

So, I'd love to discuss this with you, but I don't know where you'd like to start.

I might as well conclude that outside reality doesn't exist; — A Realist

It is a commonplace, legitimate, and useful metaphysical position that an objective reality doesn't exist. From that point of view, there is no ultimate truth about reality.

[edited]

What do models model exactly? It's not a hard question; the answer is behavior. — Srap Tasmaner

If you're modelling a farmyard, it's the overall behavior of the system that matters, not the behavior of individual elements. For that, the relationships among the behaviors of the various elements are more important than the behaviors themselves. You start off with initial conditions which are then modified based on internal time rates of change for each element and external defined relations with other elements. The duck model you are discussing just provides the initial conditions.

How about highly pathetically a very poor reader? — Janus

Azimov’s Rules of Robotics - 1942

The Three Laws, presented to be from the fictional "Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D.", are:

[1] A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

[2] A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

[3] A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Laughably poorly. As in, ha ha, Clarky can't even read 1/2 a page daily. — Hanover

Yes, hypothetically I acknowledge I am a very poor reader.

Or alternatively - I hypothetically acknowledge I am a very poor reader.

Or maybe - I acknowledge I am hypothetically a very poor reader.

To complete that book in a year, you would need to read 0.44 pages per day. No way you read that fast. — Hanover

I did not indicate how long it took me to read the book.

Impressive. The only one on your list I've read is "The Wisdom of Insecurity." It's probably my favorite book by Alan Watts. It's one of his earliest and I have imagined it represents an early stage in his path from western toward eastern philosophy.

It is precisely because we cannot extricate ourselves from our emotions that we need to view them as having some sort of worth or at least examine them in terms of what they do or do not impel us to do — ToothyMaw

Emotions themselves are, as I wrote, our natural bodily and mental reactions to events and are, mostly, outside of our direct control. On the other hand, viewing and examining those emotions, which you propose, are human actions and judgments.

So what worth are emotional reactions then in the absence of objective actions? — substantivalism

In the world as I understand it, moral judgments are created by humans, so it makes sense to talk about their value. Emotions, on the other hand, are our body's, primarily biological, reactions to events. It does not really make sense to talk about their value. It's just what we do.

There is no requirement of mine to feel any strong reaction — substantivalism

Yes, this is true. I don't see why that is a concern.

I do agree that religious perspectives are more inclined to looking within. Putting it together with life in the outer world is where it gets messy. Ultimately, the two should work together, but they frequently become separated so much and become so hollow. — Jack Cummins

I think of this from the perspective of Taoist philosophy as expressed in the writings of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu. In my experience, Taoism is an inward-looking philosophy - it's all about self-awareness. At the same time, following Lao Tzu's principles leads to action in the real world. You have to go inward before you can go outward. I think that religions in general have this same sort of inward focus. That's definitely a "seems to me" claim given my lack of any deep experience with religion.

It's long past time to consider (also) the deadly toxicity of religion... And here I will only note that by these and in the name of all they hold holy and true have been committed most of the murders on this planet in the entire history of people on this planet. — tim wood

I think this is clearly not true. It's the party line spouted by anti-religious bigots without providing more than anecdotal evidence. I think of all the wars and genocides started by non-religious actors - the Mongol invasions; Germany in World War 2; Communism in Russia, China, and Cambodia just to start. Sure there were plenty of wars where religion had a major role, but in those cases, as far as I can see, religion is just along for the ride. The big wars and genocides are started by people who want power, and then more power and then more. What's my evidence for this? Well, it's mostly anecdotal just like yours, but I don't have to provide evidence. You're the one who made a claim, so you have to provide justification for your beliefs.

I think rational-pragmatic philosophies aspire to much more than 'superstitiously living according to the folk stories of miracles and magic' canonized by religions (& cults). — 180 Proof

I'm shocked! Shocked! to find you have a different attitude about this than I do. I've been trying to get myself to start a new discussion about this. I keep getting half way through and then losing traction.

He queries the relationship between religion and philosophy. I am extremely interested in this relationship and whether religion was central in this, or a later development. — Jack Cummins

I don't know enough to speak about the historical relationship between religion and philosophy, but from my modern perspective, they fill very similar roles. Whether or not God exists is a matter of fact - yes or no - but religions are not just about God or gods. They also have associated metaphysics that guide people's understanding of the universe just as the kinds of philosophies we discuss here do. That being said, I wonder if religions have more of a focus on looking inward rather than outward. I don't know enough about comparative religion or comparative philosophy to say whether that's true.

Another in a line of movies that my son makes me watch to make me a more sophistimakated person - "The Long Day Closes." About a British boy in the 1950s and his daily life with his family, at school, and especially at the movies. What an odd little movie, but in the end I liked it. Nothing really happens. It's mostly a string of set pieces. Very slow and downbeat, but the people are appealing. What really makes it work is the music - I'm tempted to call it a musical, but that's not right. Every scene has a song, either a recording of Nat King Cole or Doris Day, an instrumental, or movie characters singing at a party.

But what about someone who is naturally close to being incapable of sympathy, compassion, kindness, etc.? Would it be wrong for them to induce in themselves the kinds of emotions - negative and positive - associated with the activation of these traits to try and foster them? If that would even work, that is. — ToothyMaw

Not wrong but I’m not sure it’s possible.

The reaction of me or anyone else to such injustices generally would be one of moral disapproval that would take the emotional form of anguish, sadness, depression, discontentment, disgust, rage, etc. — substantivalism

What value does moral disapproval have if you aren't going to act? Answer - none. It doesn't mean anything. As @ToothyMaw notes, it's emotional reactions that lead us to action. Not so much the ones you mention but empathy, compassion, kindness, a sense of responsibility. Moral outrage is an easy way to act as if you've done something without actually having to do anything.

Exactly, and not all knowledge is discursive knowledge. It's a sad philosophy that has to look at the climax of Dante's Commedia in Canto XXXIII of the Paradisio, his appeals to the inadequacy of language and memory, and say "well he's just sputtering nonsense." And it's just as sad to have to say something like "we can appreciate the words but not its rational content," since the Comedy is one of the very best (IMO the best) instances of philosophy breathed into narrative form. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I've never read it. I'll add it to my list.

Thanks for the heads up.

However, I think that, if we are not careful—and we have not been—this move becomes a major step down the road to deflationism vis-à-vis truth. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I wasn't familiar with the term "deflationism so I looked it up. I'm still not sure I understand what it means, so I'm not sure what I'm going to say is relevant to your discussion.

Ever since I started thinking about it from a philosophical perspective, I have believed that the idea of truth, what you call binary truth, is over-empathized in western philosophy. I don't think it is a property that is central to how real people know about the world and make decisions about their everyday lives. I'm not sure if that makes me a deflationist.

"truth is primarily in the intellect and only secondarily (or fundementally) in things." — Count Timothy von Icarus

As you note, truth only applies to propositions. If I understand what you've written, you and I agree that we don't generally know the world as a bunch of propositions. I'll go further - the nature of the world cannot be expressed in propositions except in a trivial and partial manner. As you say - ...the move to making truth primarily a property of isolated propositions seems to need to assume that propositions are intelligible in isolation from one another (meaningful simplicitier)."

This is a view that I think is every bit as untenable and radical as either solipsism or epistemological nihilism, its advocates just tend to obscure this fact by ultimately deficient appeals to "pragmatism." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Guilty as charged.

As I indicated at the beginning of this post, I'm not sure how relevant it is to your discussion.

I guess it is important to say that Cheever himself was from Massachusetts; so is Clarky ( T Clark ). Two great human souls who belong to the same place of the Western civilisation — javi2541997

To start, this is a great summary of where things stand. It's easy to see you put time and effort into it. I haven't been paying much attention lately so it's nice to get a feel for what's up. Thanks.

Nowadays, however, with Trump being elected (twice!) and "fake" news, and all facts being considered as suspect, social media, and the "democratization" of information, everything is up for grabs in the media environment, thus most people now will just shrug their shoulders at the idea that a major country's legislative body has spent time listening to ex-military officials from the executive branch give testimony about programs that have found real UFOs, NHI, retrieval and reverse engineering programs. — schopenhauer1

A prominent philosopher, S. Chopenhauer1, provided evidence today that Donald Trump is a space alien... Never mind.

Back in the early 2000s, as the Iraq War spun up, I came to an understanding that truth is just whatever you can convince people of. We've gone beyond that - now no one can convince anyone of anything. My suggested response to is to just stop trying. To the extent possible, avoid issues that are as tangled up as the UFO business. Just let it go. Don't resist. Let people get it out of their system. Of course, there are lots of issues we can't do that with, but as far as I can see, this is not one of them. Some additional thoughts, clearly not all of them are original.

I am not certain about anything related to UFOs, but the thing I am closest to being certain about is that no government agency could keep a secret like this for 75 years.

People make things up, misapprehend things, and come to believe things that aren't true. They don't have to be dishonest to get it wrong, but they might be. I recommend a book by Martin Gardner, "Science - Good, Bad, and Bogus." It's from the late 1980s, but I think the stories Gardner tells are still relevant. It's about people, both frauds and gullible but honest advocates, making claims about extraordinary phenomena that are not adequately supported by evidence. Subjects covered include UFOs, ESP, bad science, and other fringe issues. The second edition came just too late to include cold fusion. One of the main points he makes is that scientists are often more gullible than laypeople because they have such confidence in their ability to observe and reason.

I love the fact that a big part of the government's solution is to rename UFOs and start another new agency.

Of course the irony is that the government could address a lot of this by opening their files. Are their still secrets about events in the 1940s that can't be disclosed for legitimate security reasons? Perhaps. Of course, they've sort of, kind of done that by letting congress have hearings. As you note, that hasn't really resolved anything.

However, the counterargument is that the Congress members themselves are fringe cooks willing to entertain sensationalist bullshit. — schopenhauer1

I remember reading about a Congressional hearing on climate change. A NASA scientist was describing the physics, astronomy, and climate science related to global warming when he mentioned in passing, and I'm sure to his instant regret, that if the Earth were just a bit further from the sun, warming would be addressed. A Republican congressman spoke up and asked why we couldn't direct the Bureau of Land Management to move the earth a bit further out.

"Feeling and Knowing - Making Minds Conscious" by Antonio Damasio.

I've previously written about an earlier book by Damasio - "The Feeling of What Happens."

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/724418

Damasio is a cognitive scientist who has written extensively about mental processes. The earlier book, published in 1999, did include a discussion of consciousness, but in a broad context of how the mind works with a heavy emphasis on anatomy and physiology. The newer book, published in 2021, focuses on feeling and consciousness from a process and functional perspective. In it, Damasio describes the mental processes that combine to make us conscious as well as the functions that consciousness carries out in the overall process of maintaining the internal equilibrium of human and other organisms.

Damasio clearly intends the discussion to address issues related to the "hard problem" of consciousness from the "what's the big deal" point of view. I'm sure it won't be convincing to those find the idea of the hard problem compelling.

Definitely a short book for the price, but it helped me start to put words to how I have always seen this issue.

They are actually closely related. — Apustimelogist

I checked and you're right. I should be more careful when I pontificate about quantum mechanics. Thanks.

I get conflicting accounts on how it says that reality can be real or local but not both.
— Darkneos
It seems to be a positive way to express the uncertainty of quantum physics. A particle can be either located in space (position), or measured for movement (momentum), but not both at the same time. Real things can be measured both ways, so what's wrong with quantum particles? Are they not things? Are they not real? — Gnomon

As I understand it, the question of non-realism vs. non-locality is completely different and completely separate from the question of position vs. momentum, i.e. the uncertainty principle.

Quantum physics is one area where philosophy needs to stay out, since the interpretations aren't accurate reflections of what is going on. You're also citing all the weird interpretations that aren't really widely accepted either. — Darkneos

This is something I've wondered about. Is it possible to have a scientific understanding of some aspect of the world without an ontology? Without a story about what is going on? This question comes up in the context of quantum mechanics. Is that the Copenhagen interpretation? Is that enough? If there is no way, even in theory, to verify or falsify the many worlds interpretation, does it even mean anything?

But that's not the same as saying philosophy needs to stay out.

A therapist, who just might suggest "euthanasia as a treatment option" — baker

Unlikely

@Baden, @Jamal, @fdrake,

Will you please put an end to this discussion.

This is a really inappropriate post.

This discussion doesn’t belong here. You should talk to a therapist, not listen to a bunch of socially awkward, pseudo philosophers. You won’t find appropriate answers here and the consequences could be serious.

“To be is to be the value of a bound variable” — J

I think that's a wonderful definition even though I have no idea what it means.

[Edited for aesthetic reasons]

(First) the number 2 (Second) the first even prime greater than 100...The second statement refers to something which, I think we all agree, doesn't exist. — Art48

Well, no. We certainly don't all agree. "Existence" and "reality" mean different things to different people in different contexts, but you haven't defined what it means to you in this particular situation. We've had this discussion many times here on the forum and it usually derails for the lack of an agreed on definition.

There will be more of us once we unveil the new Thanksgaining mascot, Pizza the Hutt. People will drop their dry turkey in no time. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm sure that's true. I also neglected to mention every Native American ever.

local reality isn't true, and I googled it to find the that Nobel Prize went to 3 scientists who had proved that in 2022 — Darkneos

If I understand the Scientific American article referenced in the linked article, which, as predicted by Clark's uncertainty principle, is a 50/50 proposition, the work of the Nobel winners was a new and important verification of Bell's theorem. So - it was new polish on a mint 1964 Ford Mustang - not new news but an update of old news. Exciting for particle physicists, but ho hum for those of us primarily interested in events greater in diameter than 10^−9 meters. That's 6.213712 x 10^-12 miles for us Americans. Or 5.87613 x 10^-8 smoots.

is it just me — FrankGSterleJr

Yes, it’s just you. And @Count Timothy von Icarus apparently.

I have assumed that something cannot come of nothing. Correct. Because I'm at a loss as to how that would be possible logically speaking.

If you can posit a way in which everything can arise from nothing (a state devoid of all potency, property, ability and/or agency) then have at it. — Benj96

It is not a matter of logic whether something can come from nothing. It's either a metaphysical assumption or a matter of fact, probably the first. For that reason, I don't have to "posit a way in which everything can arise from nothing." If it's a matter of fact, I don't have to provide an explanation, I only have to make an observation. If it's a metaphysical assumption, there is no explanation.

I then went on to describe something that could "appear like true nothingness" (dimensionless and immaterial) without in fact being Nothing. Which is the next best thing, by the principle of occams razor the next simplest possibility.

So actually I do think I explained a lot, despite you not thinking so. — Benj96

Just because you can describe something doesn't mean it exists. Describing isn't the same as explaining.

Why use a term like God which is so heavily loaded and ranges from everything between a bearded man in the clouds to just about every other conception out there when Potential is much more open to a logical discussion and exacting definition as a physical law rather than an anthropomorphised entity. — Benj96

As Phil Conners said in "Groundhog Day," I'm talking about a god, not the God. So then, do you acknowledge that your "potential" is just another word for "a god" that you like better? Yes, of course I know that's not what you mean. It isn't a physical law unless you can at least suggest a way of testing it empirically.

True nothingness cannot exist. So the question itself -why cam something come from nothing is no less absurd than saying why can +1 come from -1. — Benj96

How do you know true nothingness can't exist. I'm not even sure it can be defined. If you're right, your question - "Why there is something rather than nothing?" - has been answered and you don't need to propose a new entity called potential.

So the real question for me is what could exist - that is the simplest existant neccesary to derive all subsequent ones ie a "nothingness" that isn't actually nothing, it just seems so from the perspective of the material world and everything relative to it. — Benj96

Modern physics describes what is known as a quantum vacuum state.

...According to present-day understanding of what is called the vacuum state or the quantum vacuum, it is "by no means a simple empty space". According to quantum mechanics, the vacuum state is not truly empty but instead contains fleeting electromagnetic waves and particles that pop into and out of the quantum field..." — Wikipedia - Quantum vacuum state

I don't think that's what you're talking about, but if it is, we don't need a new concept.