wandelaar

The Dao Bums
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Everything posted by wandelaar

  1. The perfect square has no corners?

    So you think Lao tzu was simply wrong here?
  2. The perfect square has no corners?

    So what is your interpretation of the sentence this topic is about?
  3. Yin Yang: In Classical Texts

    How the ideas of Yin and Yang originated, and how and where those words were first used. (As far as currently known of course. )
  4. The Tao of disappointment

    There is also the last resort option of placing someone who continually irritates you on your personal list of "Ignored Users".
  5. The Tao of disappointment

    @ steve & OldDog Very good! Let me add one more consideration: criticizing usually backfires! See: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Backfire_effect So when you see you are dealing with a believer or fundamentalist who obviously is not interested in facts or arguments against his own position, the best thing you can do is leave them alone. Note: I still sometimes ignore my own advise, because it is a difficult thing to follow.
  6. Lao tse or Lao tzu; Chuang tse or Chuang tzu

    I would be happy to use "tzu" instead of "tse". But pinyin would be a problem because as a philosophical Taoist I prefer to study and read the old sinologists above the modern ones that focus on the religious and magical aspects of Taoism. Besides, I don't like to change because of a change in the party line.
  7. @ thelerner One can have both: a deep philosophy and acknowledging everyday reality, it's accomplished by the Buddhist doctrine of the two truths.
  8. Einstein and zhuangzi

    Here is a more explicit version: Source: https://ctext.org/zhuangzi/floods-of-autumn/ens Indeed Stosh, that makes a lot more sense! Thanks for the tip.
  9. Taoist logic?

    Raymond Smullyan: https://books.google.nl/books?id=BVyl7wZgkFAC&pg=PA57&lpg=PA57&dq="a+paradoxical+rationalist"&source=bl&ots=WKtpK2oYDh&sig=4MtoBRzKMF8S-83x_t_xzIzKi_8&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjqgfe_96DbAhVOkRQKHUVeBYkQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q="a paradoxical rationalist"&f=false
  10. Taoist logic?

    Let's see:
  11. Taoist logic?

    Great! This topic didn't answer my question, but I have decided to read at least one book on Tibetan Buddhist debate. There was also an earlier post on that.
  12. Taoist logic?

    Yes - it's completely useless to post such texts on a site about Taoism. Much too difficult! Further there is no explanation at all about the meaning of the scientific terms used. I am also an active member of a scientific internet forum, and I can tell you that even there most people wouldn't understand the posts of voidisyinyang. It would take me days to verify whether what he writes is correct. But as I have seen some large mistakes on formal logic and the foundations of mathematics already, I don't think it would be a useful investment to study his posts. Besides - as you say - it isn't even clear what he is trying prove.
  13. Taoist logic?

    I think it is very unfortunate that modern science is here represented by voidisyinyang. Voidisyinyang is at best fringe science. Personally I think the general picture of nature in philosophical Taoism resembles the findings of modern physics. Not in detail, but close enough for me to be able to appreciate both philosophical Taoism and modern physics.
  14. Taoist logic?

    Looking at Wikipedia I find that there actually is a Quantum Zeno Effect. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Zeno_effect But I don't know how it relates to consciousness. The posts of voidisyinyang generally consist of snippets of legit science haphazardly pasted together until they form massive incomprehensible posts.
  15. Taoist logic?

    @ steve I never said logic could take the place of spiritual practice, but people apparently don't read my posts but just emotionally overreact to the word "logic" as they previously did to the expression "rule of thumb". There is no real discussion going on. They are attacking a straw man. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man (Oh good heavens, that's a link about logic. For Tao's sake please don't read it!)
  16. Einstein and zhuangzi

    And in this case Hui tsu was right: the claim of Chuang tse to know doesn't prove he did know. It was just an educated guess. But Taoists usually think they don't need logic to sharpen their power of reasoning, because they already know better. That's why Chuang tse in their eyes appeared to have won this battle.
  17. Taoist logic?

    And the fallacies go on and on. If computers and quantum physics are such a great thing (or even amount to "Taoist logic at work") , than why didn't the Taoists develop them way before western science? Well - probably because they didn't like reasoning and logic, and advanced forms of technology. So that's why there is no Taoist logic at work here. And things haven't changed that much, as we can see in this topic.
  18. Five-element theory and Lao & Chuang

    Maybe it is older, and maybe it's not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huangdi_Neijing#Date_of_composition Certainly not correct. Take a look at the world history of science for a comparison. But I am not going to debate this, because you would have known it if you were interested. In fact it's not very fruitful to look for a winner, because all great ancient civilizations had some forms of science. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science#Early_cultures
  19. Taoist logic?

    Did I say that meditation, or martial arts, or intuition, or wisdom, or allegorical stories, etc. are useless and need to be replaced by logic? No - not at all. Did I say that we need lots of books en massive texts to follow a Taoist path? No - not at all. But it doesn't seem to matter what I do or do not post, because as long as I periodically drop the word "logic" the bashing will go on. The same thing happened earlier with the expression "rule of thumb". The irony of all this logic-bashing is that computers and the internet (and thus The Dao Bums) wouldn't even exist without the invention of Boolean logic. But never mind, the great advantage of attacking modern logic without knowing anything about it is that one isn't hindered by any knowledge of what in our modern world does or does not depends on logic. And another useful advantage of not knowing about logic is that without some logical training one doesn't recognize what are solid arguments and what are fallacies. So if one wants to follow one's antipathy against logic without being hindered by considerations about correct argumentation then indeed not studying logic is the right thing to do.
  20. Breaking down the trigrams

    That's an interesting viewpoint. Do you have more information on that?
  21. Taoist logic?

    @ Wu Ming Jen So now you call them "scholars that dabble in the arts". Why dabble? Do you know them? This is no serious discussion, and I am not going to waste anymore time on it.
  22. Taoist logic?

    Could be one and the same person - that's why I always have someone to talk to.
  23. Taoist logic?

    Consider the following statement P: "We can not make a true statement on the Tao. If P is true, than we cannot make a true statement on the Tao. But P is a statement on the Tao, so than P must be false. Thus if P is true than P is false. This can not be the case, so we have to conclude that P is false. By this proof we have found that P has to be false. And so we have proven the following statement Q to be true: "We can make a true statement on the Tao." But what is the true statement about the Tao that we can make? Well, at least we have the statement Q that is both true and about the Tao.
  24. Taoist logic?

    That is not what I was referring to. You wrote "knowledge without application leaves one in the position of a scholar", thereby suggesting that Priest is just another armchair philosopher without any practical experience. That's why I posted the quote about his experience in the martial arts.
  25. Taoist logic?

    Did you check out on that? ( Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Priest )