Logic: Chinese Paradox
In China, we find Daoists, Logicians and Zen monks (Chan in Chinese) showing the skeptical side of logic and human thought that we have already seen in India (Jainism & Buddhism) and Greece (Heraclitus, Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus).
DAOISM: LAOZI & ZHUANGZI
The Dao De Jing (formerly the Tao Te Ching under the old Wade-Giles system from the 1800s) is the book by the first Daoist patriarch Laozi (600 BCE) according to tradition. This book and the book of the second Daoist Patriarch Zhuangzi (370-300 BCE) have many excellent examples of some and some not, paradox and contradiction. We will consider some of these before the paradoxes of the Chinese logicians Hui Shi and Gongsun Long.
Chapter 11 of the Dao is one of my favorites. It tells us that a wheel is only useful because of the hole in the center. The same is true of a jar made of clay, and the space in a room as well as the doors and windows. We naturally think of things as positives, as beings, but non-being, the holes and emptiness, goes hand in hand with the being to make it what it is. This is quite similar to the example of the pot found in Jain and Buddhist logic. Things both are and are not in very specific ways to be what they are. The wheel is both solid and empty at the same time, but not in all of its parts equally. Positive and negative, being and non-being, work together to make things what they are. In a similar way, as we saw with Heraclitus, things must not be, then become what they are, and then stop being what they are to be an individual thing. Being, non-being, becoming, and unbecoming must all happen continuously for a thing to be what it is.
There is a Buddhist koan that says at first we see a thing as a thing, then after practice and contemplation we see the thing as a non-thing (a concept, or illusion), and then after further practice and contemplation we again see the thing as a thing (but also, in this third stage, as also a non-thing, our conception). Hegel, whose logic we will learn later, sees this same three-fold process in every stage of individual thought and history of philosophy. At first, if asked, the wheel is a thing, not a nothing or non-thing. Then, we see the hole when it is pointed out to us. Finally, we can see that the solidity and the emptiness of the wheel are both necessary and essential to the wheel being what it is together.
In the Zhuang Zi there are many excellent passages. There are many parts of the text that are almost identical to fragments of Heraclitus. Both Zhuang Zi and Heraclitus say that things can be good to some and bad to others at the same time, dependent on the perspective of the viewer. Heraclitus says that salt water is poisonous for us to drink, but not for the fish who require it to live and breathe. Heraclitus also says that pigs like to bathe in filth. Zhuang Zi asks us which animal knows what tastes good if each eats something different? He says that birds like to sleep in trees, but humans certainly do not. Both thinkers say that humans are ugly to non-humans. Zhuang Zi says that the legendary beautiful women Lady Mao and Lady Qiang frightened minnows, deer and birds when they walked through the forest. Clearly, human beauty is of no matter to animals who find us frightening and ugly. Another passage asks if words say something or nothing and compares them to the peeps of baby birds. Our words relatively say things, but may mean nothing in a thousand years. This does not prevent them from meaning something powerfully today to many people.
Another of my favorite passages tells us, “A sage too has a this and a that, but his that has a this, and his this has a that.” Speaking of the Confucians and the Moists (two competing schools of Chinese thought at the time the text is being written) it says what one school calls right the other school calls wrong, but if we want to right their wrongs and wrong their rights, the best thing to use is clarity. Notice how similar this is to Jain and Buddhist logic’s conception of attachment to partial viewpoints. It suggests that a sage would see the wrong to a right and the right to a wrong, would see how something said is both meaningful and yet meaningless, and thus have more ability to mean many different things.
Another passage which is important for the two logicians to follow says that among the 10,000 things (the number 10,000 means ‘everything’ in the Chinese tradition, much as we would use the word ‘million’ or ‘billion’ today) there are none that are not big, small, right, wrong, useful and useless. If we consider relativity, any particular thing must be bigger that some other thing and smaller than some other thing. If right and wrong, useful and useless are similarly relative, then the sage should see the back and forth, the some and some not to each of these in considering each individual thing.
THE SCHOOL OF NAMES LOGICIANS: HUI SHI & GONGSUN LONG
Hui Shi (380-305 BCE) is famous for his ten paradoxes which are very similar to those of the ancient Greek thinker Zeno, paradoxes of size, location and motion. Hui Shi appears as a friend and fellow philosopher in the Zhuangzi many times, where he is also called Huizi, ‘Master Hui’. In one passage, while passing the grave of Hui Shi’s grave Zhuangzi laments that he has no one he can talk to anymore. In another, the two are walking together by the Hao river dam when Zhuangzi remarks that the fish love to dart back and forth. Hui Shi replies that he can not know that, because he is not a fish. Zhuangzi replies that Hui Shi is not himself, so how does he know he does not know that? Hui Shi maintains that he can’t know about what fish like, so Zhuangzi points out that Hui Shi asked him, “How do you know that?”, so Hui Shi assumed that he knew it already, and as far as ‘how’, he knows it by standing by the Hao river dam. The two disagree, but they are clearly friends who enjoy arguing together.
Hui Shi’s second paradox says that that which has no thickness cannot be piled up but can be a thousand li (measure of distance) in dimension. He seems to have a line or surface in mind, which is one or two dimensional over any length yet lacking second or third dimensional width.
Hui Shi’s third paradox says that the heavens are as low as the earth and mountains and marshes are on the same level. Indeed, at the horizon the heavens are as low as the earth and mountains must meet the marshland to rise above it as they do.
His fourth paradox says that the sun at noon is the sun setting, and the thing born is the thing dying. The sun does begin setting right at noon, and as soon as something is born it is transforming and moving towards its death, thus constantly dying.
His fifth paradox says that the lesser similarity is that great similarity is different from small similarity, but the greater similarity is that all things are similar and different from one another. Consider a bowl of apples and oranges. All are round, all are fruit, and all are edible, yet it is easy to see that the apples are more similar to each other than the oranges. It is easy, and thus it is lesser, to see that apples are not oranges and oranges are not apples. It is difficult, obscured by this easy judgement and thus greater, to see that no two apples or oranges are alike and, at the same time, all contents of the bowl are alike. It is easier to see the categories of apples and oranges than it is to see that similarity and difference do not stop at the categories they create for us, but go clear beyond them to unite everything in similarity and difference.
When he says one goes to the state of Yueh today and arrives there yesterday, this is a famous puzzle that is quite like the wisdom tales we read in the beginning of the semester. If one crosses the border of Yueh at the stroke of midnight, then one was in Yueh and not in Yueh both today and yesterday, so one could say that one was going there today and arrived yesterday. We can also say that we were going to Yueh today and yesterday, and arrived there today and yesterday, but you can select the parts to say that are most paradoxical. This is very similar to Gongsun Long’s ‘A white horse is not a horse’ argument.
Gongsun Long (325-250 BCE) also appears in the Zhuangzi, where he says:
“When I grew up, I understood the practice of kindness and duty. I united the same and different, separated hard from white, made so the not-so and admissible the inadmissible. I confounded the wits of the hundred schools and exhausted the eloquence of countless speakers. I took myself to have reached the ultimate.”
Gongsun’s writings are now lost, but his famous ‘A White Horse Is Not A Horse’ argument lives on. Many say that this argument is faulty, but if we follow the thinking of the Daoists and Hui Shi we can see that they are quibling, and Gongsun is showing us the two types of ‘is’ we saw earlier in Buddhist Logic and that we will see again with Wittgenstein. Gongsun does not mean that a white horse is not in any way a horse, but that in one particular way “a white horse” is not the same thing as “a horse”. He argues that if one brings a yellow horse, it would not fit the description “a white horse” but it would do fine for the description “a horse”. The two are thus different sets and are not identical though one set is a subset of the other. This means that “a white horse” is and is not “a horse” (in one way “is” and in another way “is not”), and so he can truly say that “a white horse is not a horse”, like Hui Shi saying the parts of the full truth that sound most paradoxical when said side by side.
Consider that your finger is you but also is not you. If we use “is” in terms of strict identity (like Clark Kent is Superman) then your finger is not you because you are much more than a finger. However, if we use “is” to mean a part incorporated within a thing (like a tree is green, or trees are green things) then your finger is you because it is part of you. Bill Clinton famously tried explaining this with his “that depends what your definition of ‘is’ is”, which did not gain him much sympathy. Being an individual human, you are and are not humanity. In fact, you are only one human out of quadrillions so far, so you are not very much of humanity at all, but what are you more than a human?
THE ZEN PATRIARCHS HUI-NENG & JOSHU
Hui-Neng (683-713 CE) became one of the central patriarchs of the Zen Buddhist tradition by outdoing his fellow student in a poetry competition to see who had the superior understanding and would succeed the master. Hui-Neng was illiterate as well as a southerner from Canton who was considered an inferior barbarian by his fellow monks. The head monk, who everyone expected to be the next master wrote:
The body is the Bodhi Tree
The mind is a clear mirror on a stand
Take care to wipe it continuously
Never letting dust cling
Late at night, Hui Neng had a boy read the verse to him and write the following reply:
There is no Bodhi Tree
Nor is there a stand with a mirror
All things are originally empty
Where can the dust cling?
The master called Hui-Neng and said that this verse showed the superior understanding. Consider the similarity of this exchange to chapter 11 of the Dao. The head monk used traditional Buddhist metaphors, but Hui Neng supplied their complimentary meaning.
Joshu (780 CE) is my favorite Chan/Zen thinker. Many of his short quotes became focal koans for study by students of Zen and are featured prominently in the two most famous koan collections of medieval China, The Gateless Gate and The Blue Cliff Record. Here are some of my favorites.
Joshu said to the assembly, “The ultimate way is without difficulty. Just avoid picking and choosing. As soon as there are words spoken, ‘this is picking and choosing’, ‘this is clarity’. This old monk does not abide in clarity. Do you still preserve anything or not?”
A monk asked, “Since you do not abide within clarity, what do you preserve?”
Joshu replied, “I don’t know either.”
The monk asked, “Since you don’t know, why do you say that you do not abide in clarity?”
Joshu said, “It is enough to ask about the matter. Bow and withdraw.”
A monk asked, “The many things return to the one. Where does the one return to?”
Joshu said, When I was in the state of Chou, I made a hempen shirt. It weighted 7 pounds.”
A monk asked, “What is the Buddha’s true experience of reality?”
The master said, “Is there anything else you don’t like?”
A monk asked, “What is that which is spiritual?”
The master said, “A puddle of piss in the Pure Land.”
The monk said, “I ask you to reveal it to me.”
The master said, “Don’t tempt me.”
A monk asked, “What is the fact that I accept responsibility for?”
The master said, “To the ends of time you’ll never single it out.”
A monk asked, “I have just come here and know nothing. What are my duties?”
The master said, “What is your name?”
The monk said, “Hui-han.”
The master said, “A fine ‘knowing nothing’ that is.”
A monk asked, “It’s not yet clear to me, who is the patriarch of this land?”
The master said, “Bodhidharma has come, so here we are all patriarchs.”
The monk said, “What number generation are you?” (What position in the Zen lineage?)
The master said, “I do not fall into any position.”
The monk said, “Where are you?”
The master said, “Inside your ears.”
Doctor Ts’ui asked, “Does an accomplished person go to hell or not?”
The master said, “I entered at the head of the line.”
The doctor asked, “You are an accomplished person. Why do you go to hell?”
The master said, “If I had not gone, how could I have met you?”
A monk asked, “What is the perfect question?”
The master said, “Wrong!”
A monk asked, “What are honest words?”
The master said, “Your mother is ugly.”
A monk asked, “Two mirrors are facing each other. Which is the clearest?”
The master said, “Your eyelids hang over Mount Sumaru.”
A monk said, “I don’t have a special question. Please don’t give a special reply.”
The master said, “How extraordinary.”
The master and an official were walking the the garden and saw a rabbit run away.
The official said, “You are a great and accomplished person. Why did the rabbit run away?”
The master said, “Because I like to kill.”
A monk asked, “What is the unending depth of the deep?”
The master said, “Your questioning me is the unending depth of the deep.”
