I can bet not many of you know this, but the Western format of philosophical discussion is radically different from the original Eastern style. Eastern philosophy is often a matter of using one's life as an example of one's teachings and beliefs; prominent philosophers would only reveal philosophical secrets and discoveries of theirs when asked, and even then it depended whether they felt said secrets could be conveyed verbally. Even figures well-known in the West have been guilty of this before; Bruce Lee comes to mind. His speech was often cryptic, but dense with wisdom, and on many occasions the full scope of his ideas only came out in response to a question. More importantly, in many cases of open dialogue between Eastern philosophers there is absolutely no element of debate. The practice of bouncing opposing viewpoints off of each other is entirely Western. Furthermore, we often see a necessity for one side to be right and the other to be wrong; even if we believe both sides have valid points, there is an inescapable inclination towards one or the other side. It's duality, and it's how we all must view the world; something only has meaning for us when it can resonate with other things that do not have the same meaning, and specifically something that is its equal opposite. But this is all an illusion. The world does not care about our names for things or that we see certain things as opposites. So some would suppose, at least. Look at any topic in the Debate Corner, especially one where the two sides are fiercely divided. Have you ever considered the possibility that both sides are equally correct? That they are both right, not just valid, and for all the reasons each side describes? Does this seem contradictory to you? Why? This is an idea my philosophy club has been tossing around at length lately, and I wanted to pass it on to you. Let's hear your thoughts: What do you think of duality?
I really have no strong opinions either way but like you had said westerners usually have to have total opposites but usual as long as a point has validity i usually wont throw it out as wrong. (usually because im on the minority side to start with)
Well, it makes sense when you're dealing with philosophical principles. There can't truly be a right or wrong answer, just different viewpoints. A popular one is the topic of abortion. If I said abortion was something that a woman had a right to, then there'd be no way of anyone saying that isn't true as much as they say it is against their beliefs. If I said the opposite, it can't be proven wrong either. Morals themselves are something subject to change from person to person. Anything we come up with will have its critics. It's only when we say something is "right" when it becomes socially acceptable. There are opposites that exist but those are for (nearly)all intents and purposes, absolute and have no basis fixed in human concepts.
If it's something that has no basis in human concepts, can it be said to have opposite sides? Opposition is a human concept as well. I'm curious about what you mean by that. Of what sort of opposites do you speak?
I'll admit that I don't know much in Eastern Philosophy. (My high school didn't offer any philosophy so I'm just beginning to study it). However we have briefly covered two of the three fathers of Western Philosophy. Socrates and Plato. Honestly I find it ironically sad how Western Philosophy has changed. Socrates and Plato never cared about being right, they cared about finding the truth and that it was what led them to being right more often. In fact in that day there were people called Sophists that made being wise into a profession. In truth most were just knowledgeable in rhetoric and could get people to agree with them more easily. Given the right price would teach rhetoric to others, mostly nobles. So Socrates first said he was a Philosopher in order to separate himself from the Sophists. Sophist meant "One who is wise" while Philosopher meant "Lover of Wisdom" It was incredibly rare for Socrates to say what he thought on a subject, he would instead question a subject until they found an answer on their own. This is where we get today's Socratic method. He even refused to accept pay for his services because he maintained that he did not teach anything, he simply assisted people in finding their own answers. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that there are so many people that study ancient philosophers and don't really think for themselves. And even more people that claim to have the answers to things. I think so many people who claim to be philosophers today are actually closer to the original sophists. In a true philosophical discussion there is no fighting to find who is right. There is no winner or loser. Both sides come together presenting what they know and speculate to be truth, and they would judge their own ideas just as harshly as the other's ideas so that in the end they could both be confident in what they found. This is not debating and is likely similar to what you mentioned in your second post. Now to actually get into the point of duality. It is true that whole of existence is unaffected by what we name things, how we give them value, or what we perceive to be an opposite. But that doesn't make a duality true or false, real or illusive, all on its own. The relationship is one-sided. The problem we have in today’s philosophy is that things have become more complicated. The base of all knowledge can largely be broken down into a four step process. 1) Perceiving phenomena 2) Assigning terms to phenomena (otherwise we couldn’t communicate them) 3) Combining concepts together into claims 4) Creating arguments from existing claims to create new claims But the system falls apart. Invalid arguments are made, making false claims. Terms are made for things that aren’t phenomena (good luck experiencing “wrong” with any of your five senses), making squishy claims and arguments. People think for themselves, resulting in claims that seem impossible to coexist because we don’t have the full story. These are just a select few of very many problems. And over time the system seems to crumble more rather than reconcile the flaws. So today philosophy is harder than ever. One can hardly accept anything as truth or lies. Almost everything we think about today has been “infected” so to speak by the flaws of the system. So how are we to continue? Do we void all we know and try to build anew? Do we sort through what is before us like a jigsaw puzzle? It’s hard to say, but these illusions you speak of all seem to me to stem from this issue. We can't truly "measure" the validity of any argument anymore because they are based on claims that we can no longer prove are true or false.
Western philosophy is very divided in it's theories. One school of thought can not agree with another since fundamentally they differ and conflict. This isn't true in China, where the three differing philosophies of Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism dominate in popularity, for over 800 years these religions have lived in harmony together even though they are different in each respect. Buddhism talks about the charity you can give to the world and it's people, Daoism talks about being in touch with nature and the fundamentals of life as a way to happiness, whilst Confucianism talks about how to strive in life with politics and society dismissing divinity for a majority of the time. These clearly different beliefs all live together in harmony. A famous story where each of the fundamental leaders of these schools of thought (Buddha, Confucious and Lao Tzu) are all together and taste a pot of vinegar. One says it is salty, the other bland and the last says sweet. It says that though these men have different takes on the same thing they all experience it together. The world is rarely Black and White, and is mainly Grey, which I think also applies to schools of thought. Just because we all make different choices doesn't mean that one of us is right and one of us is wrong, simply we are each different and unique. That's what being a human is, our choices.
I'm simply talking about forces of nature. Whether we humans name them or not, opposites exist and will either attract(like in magnetism) or repel(like you're everyday forces). There are things that we humans can define in terms of our own counting system but can be universally true for any other counting system. For instance, let's say an alien race came to Earth. If we somehow found means of communicating with them, we would find that in their own mathematics system they would have the same value of pi as us. Pi is not truly a number. It is a ratio and therefore will always have the same value in any number system. I know counting has little to do with this subject but just hang on. What I'm saying is, whether we define it or not, it'll exist. Opposition will exist in some form or another in nature simply because that is how things work. As for the kind of opposition in our daily debates, you could say whatever you want. Philosophical viewpoints are just that, viewpoints. You could say there are no right or wrong and you'd probably be right.
If you don't mind, I'd like to take this a step further and say that not only can two conflicting viewpoints be right, but also that they depend on each other to to be right. Let's take the most recent abortion thread for example. There were arguments made in it that could be used to prove either side correct depending on how far the argument was taken, as demonstrated by me several times. The same could also be said about Occam's Razor being a valid disproof of God. An Atheist would probably say that it's simpler to think that the universe is guided solely by the laws of physics, whereas I say that the idea of a single intelligence guiding the universe is far simpler than the idea that dodecillions of atoms each acts independently and randomly according to a set of laws that hasn't even been completely figured out yet. Any thoughts on this?
@Keyblade Spirit On a broad spectrum there is no reason why religion and faith can't be two opposites that work together. Its the fundamentals that make them seem incompatible, in that they are there to answer the reasons of life and the unknown. But they are easily compatible if you are open to the ideas of both. I know a few people who have pursued the course of science in order to find out if their faith is true or not. Until they find the answers they simply believe. It's obvious I believe but rarely put in practice.
See, now, that's exactly how Eastern philosophy was described to me. And he's considered a father of the Western school? Interesting. But that's the thing. Valid or invalid, right or wrong, every difference is just something we've made up. It's all equally pointless, to put it in the most cynical of mindsets. Is that a flaw of the system or its inherent method of operations? Truth and lies are human constructs as much as the illusion. Philosophical open-mindedness, and in fact its great brother field of science as well, call us to never be so resolute in our beliefs that they stand unmovable, but our own sanity pleads with us to hold on to something, and from the threat of madness is born the desire for terms like "right" and "wrong" and "true" and "false." I say, accept what makes sense, deliberate what is called into question, and revise what is deemed unfit, but never cast aside the eldest beliefs, nor shut the door to ideas of the future. But that's just one answer out of as many as there are people. But would those things exist without us? Can you say with certainty that anything you haven't observed exists? In fact, do you trust your senses to tell you what exists? Have you seen the principle of magnetism in effect? Have you seen every situation where it is applicable? To address your example of a counting system: Let's take that farther. Suppose we know of an alien race who uses base 11, instead of base 10 like us. If a human and one of said aliens observe a group of six marbles, they will both say six; if they observe twelve, they will say different things, but will no doubt recognize that what they're looking at is the same number of marbles, just measured differently. But there's more that goes into that. Why do we identify each individual marble as separate? What allows us to define a group of anything as a distinct group of several separate somethings? Can you trace those definitions back to something that is concrete and assured? That is how things work according to us. We are imperfect; our scope is limited. To suppose that there is something beyond us, that there is an external force which may exist within and without us and which has hard, foundational rules is something that we are not prepared to do; even if we were, we would still be observing from our own subjective viewpoint, and thus very capable of getting wrong even that which we hold to be fundamental to our existence. Is it not conceivable that I could be neither right nor wrong? That such concepts would not even enter into such a statement, or any statement for that matter?
You see now your going past duality as an illusion and moving into the general uncertainty principle. The funny thing about uncertainty principle is that it negates every claim in every discussion it is used in, including itself. The principle itself exists in human thought, so it is as arbitrary as anything else you use it against. What it comes down to in my opinion is this. People think. Try as you might, you aren't going to change this. So then with our thought comes logic, and logic needs the ability to call something correct or in correct. If everything was left to the physical realities then philosophy would be a lot easier, but humanity tends to complicate things. Most notably ethics. Even in the simple sense, "right" and "wrong" are so malleable of terms that they can easily be used differently by different people in different situations. And it then becomes easy for people to see the same thing but have different perceptions on what that means.
You have a point. One with which I agree. I was really just posing these questions hypothetically, to see who would say what. Call it an experiment, if you will. But you've come closest to my thoughts on this.
Any "truth" is based on a postulate. I own the Matrix BluRay Trilogy, I think you' d find the special features very interesting. [video=youtube;lEr8hnvzeHU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEr8hnvzeHU[/video] [video=youtube;Sz6qunm6q30]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz6qunm6q30[/video] [video=youtube;e3tr0gSNBx4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3tr0gSNBx4&feature=related[/video]
