to treat every word as a variable, with no intrinsic meaning or value — wuliheron

You'll forgive me if I find the idea of writing a book with such parameters as both absurd and futile.

You've obviously never read the Tao Te Ching or the work of Wittgenstein. Words only have demonstrable meaning according to their function in specific contexts. Someone can say something like, "She's Hot!" and could be referring to anything from a good looking woman to a gerbil with a fever.

I agree with Barry - for the following reason. You don't only want to write a book about meaning, or about value. You want to write one that reconciles classical physics, with modern physics, and with logic - you want a Theory of Everything. That's precisely why it is a somewhat vague endeavour. I suggest that you focus your efforts on a more specific topic.

As for there being no intrinsic meaning - well that statement too has no intrinsic meaning ;)

Well, you're certainly ambitious.

But I don't know why our existence is a paradox. That fact we exist doesn't seem to me to lead to a self-contradictory, logically unacceptable or senseless conclusion, unless we make certain additional assumptions (and I don't). Similarly, we need not take everything "on faith" unless, again, we make certain assumptions or engage in faux doubt.

Its a childhood obsession I never outgrew. :)

The contradiction is that we both exist and don't exist simultaneously because everything is apparently context dependent. The most common example I give of context dependence is that from the ground the earth can look flat, from orbit round, from far away its a dimensionless point, and from the other side of the universe its as if it had never existed. This reflects what is called the "Hubble Horizon" in physics which is fundamental to modern quantum field theory which is the basis of the accepted Standard Theory.

Everything being context dependent doesn't mean we can know for certain if it is actually a paradox. Proving the existence of a paradox is impossible according to classical logic and all we can do is infer the existence of one by examining the statistical evidence, which is exactly what quantum mechanics has demonstrated for the last sixty years. What a paradox of existence would display is a universal recursion in the law of identity where, ultimately, knowledge and awareness, fate and free will, would become indistinguishable. Like quantum mechanics, the implication is that our universe is acausal or magical and we simply have no choice but to decide for ourselves whether we have free will because the physical evidence would support both a fated and random universe.

everything is apparently context dependent. — wuliheron

So is this context dependant too? >:O Good - because then there is a context in which it is not true.

It's not a vague endeavor to produce a self-organizing systems logic that can reconcile quantum mechanics and Relativity. Its metaphoric logic which was first established 12,000 years ago and crucial to next generation Intuitionistic mathematics.

As for the irony of my own words having no meaning it hasn't escaped me. While the idea of a "humorous logic" might sound like a complete oxymoron the first quantifiable theory of humor has already established that humor involves perceptions of something having low entropy. In other words, its now possible to earn a doctorate in comedy and, this year, the US government finally admitted that have classified a few jokes as "Vital to the National Defense" and hinted that congress is investigating and, of course, they have no comment.

Systems logic like the one I am developing can have everything including their own logic go down the nearest convenient rabbit hole or toilet of your personal preference. For over half the planet beauty and humor, logic and bullshit, are indivisible "complimentary-opposites" and, for example, some of the poems I write are famous for being both normally quite beautiful and funny as hell when read in specific contexts.

Exactly, there is a context in which it is complete and utter B.S. just as knowing things like quantum mechanics will not help me teach a child how to tie their shoes.

It's not a vague endeavor to produce a self-organizing systems logic that can reconcile quantum mechanics and Relativity — wuliheron

Mathematics, not logic, is needed to reconcile QM and Relativity. Actually not even that, but rather a new, more general theory, expressed in mathematical form, out of which results, in specific cases, either QM or Relativity.

Systems logic like the one I am developing can have everything including their own logic go down the nearest convenient rabbit hole or toilet of your personal preference. For over half the planet beauty and humor, logic and bullshit, are indivisible "complimentary-opposites" and, for example, some of the poems I write are famous for being both normally quite beautiful and funny as hell when read in specific contexts. — wuliheron

Well if it's just about giving people what they like (not necessarily what is true) - a business - then sure - there's a wide market for it.

Exactly, there is a context in which it is complete and utter B.S. just as knowing things like quantum mechanics will not help me teach a child how to tie their shoes. — wuliheron

So there is a context in which it is FALSE (not BS, but false - take note of this)? Can you specify the context please?

The contradiction is that we both exist and don't exist simultaneously because everything is apparently context dependent. The most common example I give of context dependence is that from the ground the earth can look flat, from orbit round, from far away its a dimensionless point, and from the other side of the universe its as if it had never existed. This reflects what is called the "Hubble Horizon" in physics which is fundamental to modern quantum field theory which is the basis of the accepted Standard Theory. — wuliheron

I'm probably too context dependent to understand what you're saying, but it seems to me that this is merely an example of the unsurprising fact that how an object appears to us will vary with our distance from the object and our location relative to the object. I don't see how this establishes we, or the object, both exist and don't exist, simultaneously.

Its not merely an effect of scale but, more fundamentally, one of juxtapositions. For example, the shade of a tree can save someone's life in the desert and, therefore, can be described as acausally becoming greater than any mere sum of its parts because the shade has no demonstrable identity independent from the light. People can argue all they want that its just utter nonsense and that the world must be causal, however, over fifty years of quantum mechanics indicate otherwise and now other branches of the science are beginning to support their conclusions as well.

In a paradox of existence everything, including the laws of physics, would organize around what's missing from this picture rather than merely obeying some sort of metaphysical rules and this is exactly what all the evidence is pointing towards. The visual centers of the brain, for example, are organized around searching for what's missing from this picture because analog logic rules the universe and shadows, for example, can be the fastest, easiest, and most reliable way to tell if an animal is moving.

The implication is that yin-yang dynamics apply because of a universal recursion in the law of identity which means, among other things, that its just as nonsensical to talk about light existing without a shadow as it is to talk about shadows existing without some sort of light to cast them. In fact, photons are instantly emitted and absorbed, experience isomorphic space-time, and otherwise have no known independent identity of their own merely conveying any energy and information with perfect fidelity which, just so happens to be the same description of a shadow.

For example, the shade of a tree can save someone's life in the desert and, therefore, can be described as acausally becoming greater than any mere sum of its parts because the shade has no demonstrable identity independent from the light — wuliheron

Quite apart from the small fact that there aren't a lot of trees in the desert and the degree of change of temperature which the shadow of a tree in the desert causes is extremely unlikely to save anybody as it's dehydration that kills you, this is little more than romanticism. The fact that something proves to be convenient for a human doesn't suddenly transform its standing in the Universe. It was just a tree blocking part of the light before anyone crawled into the area. It's just a tree blocking part of the light afterward.

Not according to quantum mechanics and roughly sixty percent of the human race. You can complain all you want and argue otherwise all you want, but the evidence says you are wrong and the tree blocking the light has no meaning outside of the context of the shadow it casts anymore than the shadow has any meaning outside of the context of the light.

It's based on the assumption that existence is ultimately paradoxical from a mere mortal perspective... — Wuliheron

You should acquaint yourself with John Scotus Eriugena's Periphyseon

...an affirmation concerning the lower (order) is a negation concerning the higher, and so too a negation concerning the lower (order) is an affirmation concerning the higher. (Periphyseon, I.444a)

According to this mode, the affirmation of man is the negation of angel and vice versa

This mode illustrates Eriugena's original way of dissolving the traditional Neoplatonic hierarchy of being into a dialectic of affirmation and negation: to assert one level is to deny the others. In other words, a particular level may be affirmed to be real by those on a lower or on the same level, but the one above it is thought not to be real in the same way. If humans are thought to exist in a certain way, then angels do not exist in that way.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scottus-eriugena/#3

Eriugena lived in the 9th c AD, a neo-platonist who utilised the ideas of the 'Celestial Hierarchy' from the writings of the anonymous monastic, 'pseudo-Dionysius'. 500 years later Duns Scotus was to overthrow the hierarchical nature of reality by declaring that 'the difference between God and creatures… is ultimately one of degree'. This has turned out to be a momentous, and in my understanding, calamitous development.

Evidence? What evidence? Evidence of what? And what has any of this to do with quantum mechanics? I'm really getting fed up with people saying 'quantum mechanics' as though it were the clincher to every argument that ever existed!

the tree blocking the light has no meaning outside of the context of the shadow it casts anymore than the shadow has any meaning outside of the context of the light — wuliheron

I have literally no idea what you are talking about!

That you have no idea of what I'm talking about is not surprising. They say the first thing you learn about systems logic is that half the planet doesn't even know such a thing is possible. Read over what I've already written and then see if you can ask a meaningful question other than saying you have no clue what I'm talking about.

Thanks for the heads up about Eriugena, but I am a master of the Tao Te Ching and Pakua and rather busy right now in my fourth year of writing a 600 page book entirely composed of recursive logic. Metaphoric logic is my specialty and reading dry western philosophical interpretations is just not what I need to be doing right now.

Eriugena is definitely not mainstream, not 'dry', and there is convergence between him and your work. That's why I mentioned it. Oh, and what is 'Pakua'?

You might want to consider dialectical monism.

Dialectical monism is an ontological position that holds that reality is ultimately a unified whole, and asserts that this whole necessarily expresses itself in dualistic terms. For the dialectical monist, the essential unity is that of complementary polarities, which, while opposed in the realm of experience and perception, are co-substantial in a transcendent sense.

The concepts of the Tao may be compatible with this viewpoint.

Plato dialogues are dialectical but he has been described as a priority monist.

Priority monism also targets concrete objects but counts by basic tokens. This is the doctrine that exactly one concrete object token is basic, and equivalent to the classical doctrine that the whole is prior to its (proper) parts.

I remember reading a piece by Jacob Klein that suggests otherwise, based on the early part of the Phelibus. There he divides up reality into three parts: 1) chaos and the limited, 2) the result of the mixing of these and 3) the cause of their mixing. The intellect forms the limited, which I think is basically the movement of the dialectic (where negativity shapes reality). For Plato the movement here is a becoming a generation.

He also has a bit of math in the dialogues, mostly seem to be Pythagorean not sure if they can be tied in to the Tao. I understand that Jacob Klein also has an excellently reviewed book on ancient math, I have not read it yet, more than I care to spend, and it may be too obtuse for me.

The Pakua or Bagua is the 12,000 year old metaphoric logic of Taoism that was perfected in the I-Ching. All the interpretations of it I've seen are weird mysticism or whatever, but I've mastered the fuzzy logic it contains and am attempting to extrapolate the systems logic according to Functionalist standards.

I've extrapolated about 185 out of 430 poems needed, but the rest will have to wait for the sequel to book I'm currently writing. I don't know if its ok to reference other websites here, but I've posted some of my work online elsewhere if anyone is interested and a simple search engine should turn it up. I'd post some of it here, but it contains a lot of cuss words required for the contextual vagueness and I don't know if that's permissible either. Anyway, if you saw my work you'd understand what I mean by dry. Its wild hippie dippy poetry and philosophy that might make some people blush, but that's one reason why the normal academic approach just can't do what I can.

My own philosophy is paradoxical and can accommodate both ontology and epistemology as yin and yang. The entire "Oneness" argument is a dead end if you ask me because existence is a nonsensical "singular-infinity" with everything resembling both the creative impetus of the Big Bang and the inescapable finale of a Big Crunch. Its systems logic where the identity of everything goes down the nearest convenient rabbit hole or toilet of your preference and instead of looking for metaphysical answers to anything its about finding pragmatic metaphorical ones.

Interesting. Are you translating the texts also? Tao always strikes me as so quinitessentially Chinese.

Currently I'm reading Diamond Sutra Explained by Master Nan Huai-Chin. it contains a lot of references and allegories drawn from Chinese sources as Master Nan was an esteemed scholar of Chinese philosophy. Here is his photograph, he seems a magnetic character:

I don't read Chinese and have had to study six English language translations. My personal favorite is the Peter Merel GNL Interpolation which is available online for free. Its incredibly lucid which is exactly what I need to extrapolate the systems logic precisely because English isn't nearly as metaphoric a language as Chinese.

The Diamond Sutra is really good reading, but Buddhism is too metaphysical for me. Its the metaphors that interest me and not anyone's ideas about maya or whatever.

'Maya' is a Hindu term, but never mind.

I read his major works extensively about twelve years ago. He maintains that it is impossible to become enlightened, or even to make real 'cultivation' progress without preserving the jing; that is without abstaining from ejaculation. This is a daoist idea based on extremely questionable assumptions I think.

That is straight, traditional Taoism (although in our day and age such a teaching is of course regarded as oppressive). I'm enjoying this book, although it is highly discursive and rather idiosyncratic. But I really like the references and allusions to classical Chinese philosophy, and I'm finding his exposition of the meaning of the sutra illuminating.

Enlightenment must be made of prostate cancer.

I read his major works extensively about twelve years ago. He maintains that it is impossible to become enlightened, or even to make real 'cultivation' progress without preserving the jing; that is without abstaining from ejaculation. This is a daoist idea based on extremely questionable assumptions I think. — John

Yes, when we read a conservative point of view, it is certainly based on extremely questionable assumptions! Monks have been celibate in almost all religions for thousands of years, but they must have just been idiots...

What progressives don't understand is that sex always has a spiritual side to it - there never is purely physical sex. Therefore you cannot pursue enlightenment and be engaged in sexual activities. Those who pursue enlightenment, or direct communion with God, give up their sexual pleasures. You cannot serve both God and Mammon.

The fact that abstaining from sex gives strength (and not only spiritual - but mental strength as well) is a fact, that anyone willing to be celibate can experience for themselves. Furthermore those who have been involved in too many sexual practices probably cannot ever attain enlightenment in this life regardless of what they do. That as far as I am concerned is no big loss though - us humans were never meant to attain enlightenment during our life. But those who are so short they cannot reach up to the grapes always tell everyone else that the grapes are sour.

The alternative, of course, is that it's just pseudo-scientific gobbledegook masquerading as philosophy and the reason that nobody understands it is that it has no actual meaning. Your inability to express your idea in language comprehensible to us mere mortals is not validation of anything other than reason to suspect that it is ultimately hogwash. Nor is a claim to have evidence evidence itself nor the support of some 'names' in science or philosophy proof of anything. It is always important to remember that what is rational is not measured by the number of rational persons who claim it to be so. A million people can be wrong!

Now now, it is an inforum. (Hey just thought of that.)