Contradiction Is Not Only Necessary But Beneficial

Contradiction in TaoChia is discussed in ContradictionInTaoism.

Please post here only possitive arguments about contradiction. All discussion should go into ContradictionInTaoism.

One example of contradiction in Taoism:

1. The glass is half empty or half filled. Both say exactly the same an there are only different names. Accoring to TaoChia, the same is true for form and essence: Form is only a manifestation of the essence and essence is something that is completely defined by form, so they are two manifestations of the same thing.

Again you seem to be addressing some western gloss, not taoism. There is nothing in taoism about glasses half filled or half enpty, or about form and essence. If you could give an explicit reference to some part of either Lao or Chuang Tse here - the only 2 texts in TaoChia - perhaps I could understand what you're trying to say.

2. We benefit from a room. It is the void of the room that is beneficial. If the were no void in the room, it woul be no room. The more void in the room, the more beneficial it is. As we benefit from things that exist, we must benefit from things that do not exist. Or at least things that do not yet exist.

Ah, here's something I recognize. But you seem encumbered with a bad translation. Try http://www.chinapage.org/gnl.html#11 for one that doesn't use this nonsense about benefits.

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Neither of these are contradictions.

Agreed. I won't presume to speak for the real texts having never read them, but the Western version the italicized text references above is little more than semantics and surreptitiously sliding in one meaning of a given word for another when you're not looking.

Sure. Same is true of all text. We give you the lamp; finding the djinni is your job. The "Western" version is superior in using the word "use" - a process - rather than your word "benefit" - a judgement. If you could supply some details on the "Eastern" version you prefer, perhaps we could productively compare the two.

A "room" is both the walls defining the room, and the "space" the walls outline, among other possible definitions. Both "exist" for any meaningful definition of that word, no mystical dualism here.

Why is a room only the space the walls outline? Why isn't it also the space outside the room? Have you ever seen any room that does not have a space around it? Can you have a room without both spaces?

Now let's take a wall away from your room. Is it still a room?

• If so, take another; and then another; and keep taking them; at what point is it no longer a room?
• If not then let's take just 9/10 of a wall. Isn't that just a room with a door? What fraction of the walls is crucial for your distinction of "roomness"?

I trust you see the point; the room is distinguished by its use, not its existence or the tools used to make it up. Which is how we can have "chat rooms" with no walls at all ...

Moreover, last I checked, the "void" in the room I'm currently occupying isn't, containing both definable quantities of "space" and that complex mixture we call "air".

If you're referring to physics, of course there are no more voids any where in physics. Every iotum of physical space is abuzz with virtual particles and non-local correlations, if the physicists are to be believed. Still I have no trouble discerning that my cup is empty, nor pouring a little tea into it.

As for "air", it seems in much the same category as "room". A distinction we use to describe all the things that can be breathed. Someone else will have a different distinction.

And yet neither of the numbered statements above are contradictions. The glass is half empty and half full. Not a contradiction. We benefit from things that exist and things that don't exist. Not a contradicition.