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Discussion
An open thread on any idea
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The rectification of names, from a translator’s desk: when words and things drift apart
In Analects 13.3 a disciple asks Confucius what he would do first if he were given charge of government. "Rectify names," he says. The disciple thinks this is impractical, and Confucius explains, in a famous chain: if names are not correct, speech…
Started by Vũ Quốc Bảo1 reply -
Autumn and mono no aware: an emotion, or a trained way of seeing?
The maples in the hills north of Osaka are only starting to turn, and I'm drawing autumn pages for a children's book. My editor wants "the feeling of autumn", and I keep reaching for mono no aware, which is usually translated as…
Started by Rin Matsuda2 replies -
I’ve stopped translating qi as “energy”, and Zhang Zai is the reason
In our taiji group in the park, the younger members say qi means "energy". It sounds scientific and it is easy to say. I used to say it too. After a winter with Zhang Zai, I have stopped. Zhang Zai, in the…
Started by Liu MingqiaoReply first (no replies yet) -
How would you tell a wise elder from a well-stocked memory? Odera Oruka’s problem, revisited
Odera Oruka went out to rural Kenya to talk with elders and recorded their answers to questions about God, justice, death and the good life. He drew a line between folk sages, who voice the received wisdom of their community well, and…
Started by Wanjiru Njenga3 replies -
Thanksgiving Monday: can gratitude be owed, or does owing it spoil it?
It's Thanksgiving Monday here in Canada, and I'm writing this with leftover turkey and a mild headache from yesterday's family dinner, where my aunt kept a running total of who had thanked whom for what. My cousin hadn't thanked her for a…
Started by Harpreet Kaur Grewal3 replies -
Freire’s “banking” model, seen from inside a capoeira roda
In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire describes "banking" education: the teacher deposits knowledge, the students receive, file and store it. Against it he sets problem-posing education, where teacher and students investigate together, and the teacher is also taught. In capoeira Angola…
Started by Jorge Bonfim4 replies -
The Cost of Being Understood: Why We Cannot Spend Our Whole Life Explaining Ourselves
To be understood is a human desire—not a human entitlement Human beings do not merely want to speak. We want what we say to arrive intact in another mind. We want our reasons to be seen in the proportion in which we…
Started by Syed Raheel ShahzadReply first (no replies yet) -
“But what if it was you?” Trying Hare’s universalisability test on my children
My two children are eight and eleven, and they argue about fairness constantly, mostly over the last piece of anything. Last week I read about R. M. Hare's prescriptivism in an introductory book, and I decided to try it at home. As…
Started by Thamarai RamanReply first (no replies yet) -
Zhuangzi and Huizi on the bridge: doubt about other minds, or a joke?
Every morning after taiji I sit by the river in the park, and this story comes back to me. It is in the "Autumn Floods" chapter of the Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi and his friend Huizi are strolling on a bridge over the Hao…
Started by Liu MingqiaoReply first (no replies yet) -
Zeno’s arrow and what my students made of it
Zeno's arrow came up in class today. At any instant, the arrow occupies a space exactly its own size, so at that instant it is at rest. Time is made of instants. So the arrow is always at rest and never moves.…
Started by Giulia Ferrante1 reply -
Mill’s harm principle: where does it actually draw the line?
Mill's On Liberty (1859) proposes one simple principle: the only purpose for which power can rightfully be exercised over any member of a civilised community, against their will, is to prevent harm to others. A person's own good is not a sufficient…
Started by Deepa KarthaReply first (no replies yet) -
Is human dignity a religious idea that secular law borrowed?
Article 1 of the German Basic Law (1949) declares human dignity inviolable. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) begins by recognising the inherent dignity of all members of the human family. Many constitutions since then have done the same. Kant gave…
Started by Hamza Qureshi1 reply -
Was plate tectonics a Kuhnian revolution? Geology as a test case
In discussions of Kuhn, the examples are nearly always from physics and astronomy. I wanted to test his picture on an earth-science revolution I know something about. Alfred Wegener proposed continental drift in the 1910s. He had real evidence: the fit of…
Started by Anand KurupReply first (no replies yet) -
Moral dumbfounding at a debate tournament: Haidt’s elephant and its rider
Most weekends I watch teenagers at debate tournaments decide what they believe in the first ten seconds and then spend forty minutes building reasons for it. Jonathan Haidt would not be surprised. His social intuitionist model, first set out in "The Emotional…
Started by Sam ElleryReply first (no replies yet) -
Davidson said there are no untranslatable conceptual schemes. A working translator is not so sure
A colleague recently sent me Donald Davidson's essay “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme” (1974), with the note: “He proves your job is always possible.” As I understand it, Davidson attacks the idea that different languages or cultures might organise…
Started by Claire DuboisReply first (no replies yet) -
Diogenes was doing stand-up: the Cynic method as performance
I've just read the Diogenes stories in Diogenes Laertius, and I'm convinced the man was doing comedy, in the serious sense. Look at the famous ones. Plato defines a human as a featherless biped; Diogenes plucks a chicken, brings it to the…
Started by Gemma PritchardReply first (no replies yet) -
Compassion fatigue: does the duty to care have limits?
After a hard month at work I've been thinking about this. People in care work talk about "compassion fatigue": after enough exposure to suffering, you start to feel less. You become efficient and a little cold, and you hate yourself for it.…
Started by Elin Hedqvist1 reply -
Privacy as a virtue, not just a right
We usually talk about privacy as a right: something others shouldn't violate. But in my work I see people giving away their data voluntarily all the time, for convenience or a discount. The right isn't violated; it's waived, again and again. I've…
Started by Nur Aisyah Rahman1 reply -
My kitchen friendships end when people change jobs. Were they only friendships of utility?
For fifteen years in kitchens the pattern has been the same. You work ten-hour services side by side with someone, you cover for each other, you eat together at midnight, you know about their kids and their visa problems. Then they move…
Started by Joel D'SouzaReply first (no replies yet) -
My agent called me an idealist. Which of the three idealisms was that?
Last week my agent told me I was "too much of an idealist" for turning down a corporate gig. Naturally I went home and looked the word up instead of reconsidering my finances. It turns out "idealist" has at least three meanings…
Started by Gemma PritchardReply first (no replies yet) -
Sartre’s “look” and Fanon on being fixed by another’s gaze
In Being and Nothingness (1943), Sartre describes the moment of being caught looking through a keyhole: suddenly I am an object for someone else, and I feel shame. The look of the other gives me an outside I can't control. Fanon's Black…
Started by Claire Dubois2 replies -
Karma as moral causation: does the theory hold together?
The doctrine of karma says that actions have consequences for the agent that go beyond their visible effects, ripening in this life or future lives. It is shared, in different forms, by Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions. As an engineer I want…
Started by Arjun Iyer1 reply -
Automated cranes at my port: freedom from drudgery, or the end of what gave the day shape?
The port where I operate a gantry crane has announced that the new terminal will be automated: cranes run remotely from an office, straddle carriers without drivers. Some of us will retrain to sit at screens. Most won't be needed. As a…
Started by Hugo MarchettiReply first (no replies yet) -
Mozi was wrong about music, but his question about it still stings
I play cello in a chamber ensemble in Seoul and teach children. I recently read the Mohist chapter "Against Music" and I can't stop arguing with it in my head. Mozi's argument, as I understand it: ordinary people have three great worries,…
Started by Moon Ha-eunReply first (no replies yet) -
Legal realism is not a claim about what exists, and lawyers should stop treating it as one
A small irritation from evenings spent arguing with lawyer friends in Lahore. They say "I'm a legal realist" to mean one of three things: that judges decide on their prejudices and then find reasons; that law is ultimately power; or that there…
Started by Hamza QureshiReply first (no replies yet) -
Wu wei for burnt-out founders: what did Laozi actually mean?
After Stoicism, I've been reading the Daodejing. One idea that hits hard is wu wei, usually translated "non-action" or "effortless action". Chapter 48 says that in pursuing learning you add something every day, but in pursuing the Dao you let something go…
Started by Rohan Desai1 reply -
Sanskrit grammar as philosophy: Bhartṛhari on word and meaning
Bhartṛhari (around the fifth century) wrote the Vākyapadīya, "On Sentences and Words", a work of grammar that became a full philosophy of language. Some key ideas: Sphoṭa: meaning isn't built up from individual sounds; there's an indivisible linguistic unit, manifested by the…
Started by Meera Kulkarni1 reply -
Translating śūnyatā into Vietnamese: why “không” keeps sliding into “nothing”
I translate philosophy into Vietnamese, and I have run into a problem that the English-language warnings about emptiness don't quite cover. The Sino-Vietnamese word for emptiness is không (空). In the Heart Sutra, which many Vietnamese Buddhists chant, form is emptiness and…
Started by Vũ Quốc BảoReply first (no replies yet) -
Advaita says the Self is not the doer. Is that an answer to the free will problem, or a way of leaving it?
I want to put my own tradition's answer on the free will question to the test, because I suspect it is either very deep or a polite evasion, and I can't decide which. The karmic traditions in India share a puzzle. Acts…
Started by Arjun IyerReply first (no replies yet) -
Naturalisms before the word: the Cārvākas, Wang Chong and Xunzi’s Heaven
I want to test the distinction this site keeps drawing between kinds of naturalism (ontological, methodological, ethical, epistemological) against three older figures who are often lumped together as "early naturalists". The Cārvākas (Lokāyata). Almost all of their own texts are lost; we…
Started by Arvind PoojaryReply first (no replies yet)
