wandelaar

I don't know whether paranormal phenomena exist, but I just wanted to point out that ruling out fraud is more easily said than done.

There is a misunderstanding here. Demonstrating abilities before scientists and medical doctors doesn't rule out fraud. Stage magicians and illusionists can fool even scientists and medical doctors, so to get a scientific proof the demonstration has to take place in controlled circumstances and there have to be professional stage magicians and illusionists present to see whether no conjuring or illusionist tricks are performed.

There are also ordinary people in the West who manifest aspects of the Taoist sage in daily life without themselves being aware of it (or without even having heard of Taoism). A large part of being a Taoist sage consists of: 1. Having a clear picture of the world as it is, and being realistic about what can and cannot be done. 2. Knowing what does and what doesn't contribute to a life well lived. 3. Accepting the impermanence of individual things while they come and go. 4. Being able to live according to such an understanding of the world. 5. Not forcing things. This is basically plain common sense, and one should be able to train oneself in more of less following that road. This mainly consists in clearing away egocentric illusions and in learning healthy and realistic habits. How much work you will have to do depends on the type of person you are.

I'm sorry, but you are still only describing how you come to supposedly moral conclusions. You don't give any reasons why your approach should be the correct one. As I said before the Socratic Method tries to arrive at knowledge (or better: wisdom) by interrogating people who believe they have it and think they can sort of prove it. Because you avoid the issue by only describing what you do (to come to supposedly moral conclusions) instead of giving arguments why that is the right thing to do, the further application of the Socratic Method is blocked. But perhaps Zhongyongdaoist knows how to proceed in such a case?

Why not add Chuang tse and Lieh tse? Philosophical Taoism becomes much easier to understand if you study all three.

@ Stosh You are not giving reasons why you feel and think as you do. You are only expressing how you feel and think on the matter, but not telling us why that is the right way to look at it. The Socratic method can only be followed through with people who are ready and willing to give the reasons for their position because they think they know what is the truth of the matter and guess they can prove it as well.

I think it is useful background information (and valuable at that), and it is not meant to be part of our current Socratic discussion.

The idea is getting at the truth of the matter. In that light winning or losing the discussion are no longer relevant. Anyway - if we want to continue we have to focus on one thing at a time or else the method will become unwieldy. Let us focus on the amount of morality for now. You will have to be able to say whether the amount of morality increases, decreases or stays the same when eating dolphins, because only then can the reason you gave be relevant. Do you agree on that?

This came up in another topic, and has now found its own place here. The title speaks for itself.

@ Stosh It may have seemed easy but that's because we stopped before it became difficult. As I said the project of coming up with a consistent measure for the total amount of human morality would have been a very hard nut to crack...

OK - but it's now already late where I live, so I let you know what position I will defend tomorrow.

As you can see the amount of questions expands exponentially the further we get into this inquiry. If there would have been any obvious contradictions in your position that you couldn't fix that would be the end of it. And your position would than have been proven to be unfounded. But as you are smart guy you have avoided the more common mistakes and therefore it would take a thorough logical investigation to see whether your position remains consistent when we look at the further consequences of the answers you gave. My guess is that measuring the amount of morality will prove to be very difficult if not impossible, and that would directly undermine the idea that eating dolphins increases the total amount of morality among human beings. There is also the question of animal welfare and vegetarianism and how that relates to morality, and there are also ecological questions (that relate to human survival) to consider. So it would actually be a miracle if your position would also prove to be consistent when al relevant questions and their consequences were taken into account. But that would take us months of work.

No - that's not in the game. I am not defending any position, only questioning yours. It's also not up to me to overthrow your position but only to investigate if you have any good reasons for your moral position or not.

Explain please. How do you define morality and why wouldn't dolphins have any. How are those things morally relevant? It depends on how you define the amount of morality. Can you please explain: a. Can the degree of morality be measured? b. Is there automatically more morality when there are more (moral) people (is morality additive)? c. Is there a zero-point of morality so that there are people with a negative morality? There are a lot of unsubstantiated assumptions (about economics, ecology, animal welfare) contained in that one sentence. Could you expand on that to prove your point that eating dolphins is morally correct?

Thanks! That looks like a reason, but let us see if it suffices. Please answer the following questions: 1) Don't the dolphins have a morality of their own, and if so how do we compare the value of their morality to that of humans? 2) Would your life and morality suffer when you didn't eat dolphins? 3) Suppose you would die when you didn't eat dolphins, would that hurt the overall morality of humanity? 4) Would a vegetarian diet diminish your morality? Maybe there are some more questions, but lets start with the above.

It is a simple fact that your opinion is what it is. But Socratic questioning wants to find out whether your opinion amounts to knowledge. So it is up to you to give your reasons why you think hunting dolphins is morally correct.

Maybe I am getting ahead of myself because I haven't studied the method enough, but because you want to start let me play Socrates for now. When some professional is ready to take over, I will step back. Are you saying some action is morally correct whenever it accords with the values of the person who is acting?

It is perfectly possible to come to the conclusion that you don't know something. In fact clearing away the false assumption of knowledge is considered one of the basic advantages of the method.

Well, this is a Taoist forum and not a Socratic one, so we will leave it at that.

It looks strange to me that you would feel good just because of using the words "everything is good" in stead of "everything is meaningless", where the factual content of both expressions would be the same. So I think the first expression "everything is good" for you somehow points at another basic constitution of the world than the second expression "everything is meaningless".

@ Lost in Translation If the supposition of "everything being good" feels good to you, there should be some factual content to it. How else could it make you feel good, if it were only empty words?

As far as I have read the book now the issue has to be something personally relevant to one of the people involved. The others are then expected to help in critically investigating the issue. Taking personal stances is to be avoided. I don't quite see how that's possible without everyone keeping silent, but maybe that will be explained later on in the book.

Drawing the line between healthy and unhealthy desires also forms the basis of Epicurus' approach to living well. I think it's a very fundamental principle that when accepted solves many of life's problems.

The book I ordered and am reading now is largely about how to discuss within a group of people in the spirit of the Socratic method, so there are big differences with the original Socratic method that - if I have understood it well - only involves two people where one is asking the (critical) questions and the other is trying the best he can to formulate and (if possible) to develop how he thinks about a certain issue.

I don't think people can (or should) be entirely without motives, because that would go against our nature as well. We want to go on living in the everyday world even after we have seen things from the perspective of the Tao. There is a danger in entirely ignoring the differences in usefulness, because from the perspective of the Tao nothing is more valuable than anything else. I once read a Tibetan master calling it "going cuckoo" and giving the example of an enlightened monk trying to pay with pebbles on the airport for taking a flight. Whatever things are from the perspective of the Tao, in daily life some things are useful and others not depending on the circumstances.