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School #40

Taoism

Laozi, Zhuangzi

Taoism holds that all reality flows from and returns to the Tao — the nameless, ungraspable source and pattern of all things, prior to heaven and earth. The 'Tao Te Ching' ('Daodejing'), attributed to Laozi (c. 6th-4th century BCE), opens with the paradox that defines the tradition: "The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name." In eighty-one brief, poetic chapters, it teaches wu wei (non-action or effortless action) — moving with the natural flow of reality rather than imposing artificial structures upon it. The 'Zhuangzi' (c. 3rd century BCE), attributed to Zhuang Zhou, extends this through parables, paradoxes, and wild humor: the famous "butterfly dream" asks whether Zhuangzi dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly is now dreaming it is Zhuangzi, dissolving the boundary between self and world. Language and concepts cannot capture the Tao; yin and yang cycle continuously; the ten thousand things arise, flourish, and return to the root.

Compare this school

Worldview

The Taoist experiences reality as an inexhaustible, flowing whole that cannot be captured by concepts, names, or deliberate effort. To hold this ontology is to feel oneself as a ripple in a vast current — not separate from the world but an expression of its ceaseless movement. The fundamental orientation is wu wei, effortless action: not passivity but a yielding responsiveness that moves with the grain of things rather than against it. Language and categories are understood as useful fictions that inevitably distort the nameless source. The mood is one of wonder tempered by humor, as exemplified by Zhuangzi's playful paradoxes — a lightness born of releasing the need to control. The framework classifies this as Cosmic-ordering metaphysical agency: the Tao is an impersonal generative principle (the way things spontaneously unfold) rather than a personal deity who hears and acts; it orders without ruling. The framework reads this as Experience-grounded moral authority: 'the Tao that can be named is not the Tao' — texts and rites are pointers, but the final test is direct attunement (ziran, wu-wei) in which right action arises from immediate accord with the Way rather than from any codified source.

Moral Implications

Taoist ethics emerges not from codified rules but from attunement to the natural order. The virtuous person acts spontaneously from inner harmony rather than from duty or calculation, and the highest good is te (virtue, power) — the effortless expression of the Tao through one's being. Moral failure arises from forcing, from imposing rigid categories of right and wrong onto the fluid reality of life. Compassion, frugality, and humility are valued not as obligations but as natural expressions of a life aligned with the Tao. The ethical imperative is to let go of the ego's insistence on control and to trust the self-organizing wisdom of nature.

Practical Implications

In daily life, Taoism counsels simplicity, moderation, and sensitivity to natural rhythms. Technology and social structures are valued only insofar as they harmonize with the natural world rather than dominating it, making Taoism a rich resource for ecological thought. Governance is ideally minimal and non-coercive — the best ruler governs so lightly that the people barely know governance exists. Health practices such as tai chi, qigong, and traditional Chinese medicine reflect the Taoist emphasis on cultivating and balancing qi. The Taoist approach to decision-making favors patience, observation, and responsiveness over aggressive planning and intervention.

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I. Time

Time is relational and infinite — it is the natural rhythm of the Tao, the eternal cycling of yin and yang. Time is cyclical and non-directional: the ten thousand things arise, flourish, and return to the root in endless alternation. The sage moves with time's natural flow (wu wei) rather than imposing artificial temporal structures. Time is continuous because the Tao flows without interruption or beginning.

Attributes
Extent: Infinite Ontological Status: Relational Grain: Continuous Freedom: Non-Deterministic Traversability: Cyclical Dimensionality: One Direction: Non-directional
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II. Space

Space is relational and infinite — it is the expanse in which the Tao operates, not an independent container. Space is curved in the sense that the Tao's flow follows natural contours rather than straight lines. It is local and three-dimensional as experienced by beings embedded in the natural world.

Attributes
Extent: Infinite Ontological Status: Relational Curvature: Curved Dimensionality: Three Locality: Local
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III. Matter

Matter is relational and finite — the ten thousand things arise from the Tao and return to it. Matter is conserved in the cycle of arising and returning: nothing is truly created or destroyed, only transformed. It is local: all things are concretely situated in the natural landscape. The Taoist values simplicity and naturalness in one's relationship to the material world.

Attributes
Extent: Finite Ontological Status: Emergent Conservation: Conserved Dimensionality: Three Locality: Local
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IV. Observer

The observer is an embodied being flowing within the present moment — not grasping at past or future but moving with the natural rhythm of the Tao. Situated in one place, the observer does not strive to master or totalize reality but to harmonize with it. Knowledge is immediate and intuitive rather than analytical or comprehensive; the Tao that can be fully spoken is not the true Tao. Retention of knowledge is likewise immediate — the sage holds knowledge lightly, letting go of fixed doctrines and rigid categories. The observer is passive in the deepest sense: wu wei, non-action, means yielding to the natural flow rather than imposing one's will. Multiple observers share the same Tao, each a unique expression of its inexhaustible movement.

Attributes
Time Instance: Single Space Instance: Single Extent of Knowledge: Immediate Retainment of Knowledge: Immediate Physicality: Embodied Agency: Passive Number: Plural Metaphysical Agency: Cosmic-ordering Moral Authority: Experience Theological Method: Mystical
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V. Energy

Energy is relational and infinite — the vital force (qi/chi) flows through all things as the Tao's animating principle. Conservation holds because qi circulates eternally through the cycles of yin and yang. Dispersibility is irreversible in any particular transformation, but the Tao's creative energy is inexhaustible in the long run.

Attributes
Extent: Infinite Ontological Status: Emergent Conservation: Non-conserved Dispersibility: Reversible
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VI. Information

The Tao cannot be captured in information — 'The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.' True reality transcends informational encoding. What we call information is a relational, conventional construction that fails to capture the Tao itself. It is non-conserved because all formed information is impermanent and ultimately returns to the formless. It is continuous because the Tao is an undifferentiated, flowing whole. The framework places this as non-conserved at both scales: at the cosmic scale, the Tao cannot be captured in stable information; at the personal-identity scale, the sage returns to the uncarved block — no fixed personal pattern is preserved.

Attributes
Ontological Status: Relational Cosmic Conservation: Non-conserved Personal Conservation: Non-conserved Granularity: Continuous

Films Reading Through This School (3)

Stalker
1979 · dir. Andrei Tarkovsky · 20%
The Zone follows wu wei: it cannot be forced. Direct paths are punished; the Stalker insists on circuitous routes that look superstitious and are, in …
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring
2003 · dir. Kim Ki-duk · 20%
The film carries a Taoist sensibility alongside its Buddhism: the lake, the seasons, and the movement of light are treated as the operative teachers. The …
Yi Yi (A One and a Two)
2000 · dir. Edward Yang · 15%
The film carries a Taoist sensibility in its refusal to force its events. The children's discoveries, the adults' missed chances, the mother-in-law's slow withdrawal — …

Debates Where This School Is Allied (1)

Heraclitus vs Parmenides
c. 500–450 BC · allied with Heraclitus of Ephesus
Philosopher of becoming and the Logos
← #39 Logical Positivism All Schools #41 Confucianism →

Works that name Taoism in their embodiments

Foundational texts that draw on this school, with each work's declared weight.

75%
Tao Te Ching
Attributed to Laozi (Lao Tzu); likely composite, possibly c. 4th–3rd century BC · c. 4th century BC (received text); Guodian bamboo slips c. 300 BC
 60%
Daodejing (Early)
Laozi (trad. attrib.) · 4th c. BCE (composite text; trad. attrib. Laozi 6th c.)
 55%
Zhuangzi — Inner Chapters
Zhuang Zhou (with later editorial layers; Inner Chapters most likely by his hand) · c. late 4th century BC
 40%
Zhuangzi
Zhuangzi (Zhuang Zhou) · c. 4th-3rd c. BC (Inner Chapters by Zhuang Zhou; Outer and Miscellaneous Chapters by later hands)
 25%
I Ching
Anonymous / composite (traditional attribution to King Wen and Confucius; the Ten Wings to the Confucian school) · c. 9th–8th c. BC (core hexagrams); c. 4th c. BC (Ten Wings); standard form c. 200 BC
 25%
The Importance of Living (Mid)
Lin Yutang · 1937
 25%
I Ching (Book of Changes, attributed arrangement)
King Wen of Zhou (traditional attribution) · c. 1050–800 BCE (core hexagram and judgment layers; commentaries later)
 20%
The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch
Hui-neng (638–713), as transmitted by Fa-hai · c. 780 AD (Dunhuang manuscript); refined recensions through 13th century
 20%
The Art of War (Early)
Sun Tzu (Sunzi) · 5th c. BCE (Warring States era)
 20%
The Book of Changes (Yi Jing) (Early)
Anonymous (traditionally Fu Xi for hexagrams; King Wen and Duke of Zhou for line-statements; Confucius for the Ten Wings commentaries) · Hexagrams: legendary, pre-1000 BCE; line-statements: c. 1000-750 BCE; Ten Wings commentaries: c. 500-100 BCE
 15%
A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (Mid)
Fung Yu-lan (Feng Youlan) · 1948
 15%
Han Feizi
Han Feizi · c. 240–233 BCE
 10%
Walden (Mid (Thoreau's major prose statement))
Henry David Thoreau · 1854 (drawing on Thoreau's 1845-47 residence at Walden Pond)
 10%
The Great Learning and Doctrine of the Mean
Confucius (Kongzi) · Originally chapters of the Book of Rites (Li Ji, c. 1st c. BC); elevated to the Four Books by Zhu Xi (1130-1200) in the Song dynasty
 10%
The Perennial Philosophy (Late (Huxley's mature spiritual-philosophical synthesis))
Aldous Huxley · 1945
 10%
On Nature (Fragments)
Heraclitus of Ephesus · c. 500 BC (the fragments preserved through later authors' quotations)
 10%
Modern Man in Search of a Soul (Mid-late (mature systematic statement))
Carl Gustav Jung · 1933 (essay collection, English translation by Cary F. Baynes)
 10%
Essays in Zen Buddhism (Mid (Suzuki's major early period of Western dissemination))
Daisetsu Teitarō Suzuki · 1927 (First Series), 1933 (Second), 1934 (Third) — published in English by Rider & Co. London
 10%
Zen and Japanese Culture (Late)
Daisetsu Teitarō Suzuki · 1959 (developed from his 1938 Zen Buddhism and Its Influence on Japanese Culture)
 10%
Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Late (the major autobiographical work))
Carl Gustav Jung · 1957-61 (recorded conversations with Aniela Jaffé); published 1962
 10%
Mystics and Zen Masters (Late)
Thomas Merton · 1967
 10%
Shōbōgenzō (Late)
Dōgen Zenji · 1231-1253 (95 fascicles)
 10%
Wild Ivy (Itsumadegusa) (Late)
Hakuin Ekaku · 1765-66
 10%
Attaining Enlightenment in This Very Existence (Sokushin Jōbutsu Gi) (Early)
Kūkai (Kōbō Daishi) · c. 817
 10%
Inquiry on the Great Learning (Daxue Wen) (Late)
Wang Yangming · 1527
 10%
Zhuzi Yulei (Conversations of Master Zhu, Arranged Topically) (Late)
Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi); compiled by Li Jingde · Conversations 1170-1200; compiled 1270
 10%
Intellectual Intuition and Chinese Philosophy (Zhi de zhijue yu Zhongguo zhexue) (Late)
Mou Zongsan · 1971
 10%
Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies (Dongxi wenhua ji qi zhexue) (Early)
Liang Shuming · 1921
 10%
Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch (Liuzu Tanjing) (Early)
Huineng (attributed; compiled by disciples) · c. 780 (earliest Dunhuang manuscript; text attributed to Huineng, d. 713)
 5%
The Analects
Compiled by Confucius's disciples and their disciples · Compiled c. 5th–3rd century BC; core sayings reflect Confucius (551–479 BC)
 5%
Mencius
Meng Ke (Mencius); compiled by his disciples · c. late 4th century BC (compiled shortly after his death c. 289 BC)
 5%
The Doors of Perception (Late)
Aldous Huxley · 1954 (essay-length; often published together with the 1956 Heaven and Hell)
 5%
Tales of the Hasidim (Late (Buber's mature engagement with the Hasidic tradition))
Martin Buber · 1947 (The Early Masters); 1948 (The Later Masters); compiled over decades of Buber's engagement with Hasidism
 5%
Gitanjali (Mid (the Nobel-winning collection))
Rabindranath Tagore · 1910 (Bengali original); 1912 (Tagore's own English prose translation)
 5%
Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism (Early (Suzuki's first major book; preceding the Essays in Zen Buddhism by twenty years))
Daisetsu Teitarō Suzuki · 1907 (Suzuki's first major book in English, written during his work with Paul Carus at the Open Court Press)
 5%
The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Late (the mature systematic statement of archetypal psychology))
Carl Gustav Jung · 1934-55 (essays composed across two decades); 1959 (compiled as Volume 9, Part 1 of the Collected Works)
 5%
Vom Abgeschiedenheit (On Detachment) / Counsels on Discernment (Early)
Meister Eckhart (Eckhart von Hochheim) · c. 1295-98 (Eckhart's early German-vernacular work, written for the religious community at Erfurt)
 5%
Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist (Late)
Daisetsu Teitarō Suzuki · 1957
 5%
Psychology and Alchemy (Late)
Carl Gustav Jung · 1944
 5%
Island (Late)
Aldous Huxley · 1962
 5%
An Inquiry into the Good (Zen no Kenkyū) (Early)
Nishida Kitarō · 1911
 5%
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (Late)
Shunryu Suzuki (Suzuki-rōshi) · 1970
 5%
Religion and Nothingness (Shūkyō to wa nani ka) (Mid)
Nishitani Keiji · 1961
 5%
The First and Last Freedom (Mid)
Jiddu Krishnamurti · 1954
 5%
Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation (Late)
Tu Weiming · 1985
 5%
A Vision (Late)
W.B. Yeats · 1925 (1st edn); 1937 (rev. 2nd edn)
 5%
The Dispossessed (Late)
Ursula K. Le Guin · 1974
 5%
An Introduction to Zen Buddhism (Mid)
Daisetsu Teitarō Suzuki · 1934 (Japanese-published English ed.); 1949 (Rider ed. with Jung foreword)

Personas with Taoism as a declared influence

75%  Laozi (Lao Tzu) 40%  Zhuangzi (Zhuang Zhou) 25%  King Wen of Zhou 15%  Han Feizi 10%  Confucius (Kongzi) 10%  Wang Yangming 10%  Mencius (Mengzi) 10%  Mozi 10%  Zongmi 10%  Huineng

How Taoism resolves each dilemma

57 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 31 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way.

Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.

Time · 9 dilemmas · 5 distinctive

Persistence, the future, and the direction of becoming.

Distinctive · only 6% of schools agree (12/208)
Do you really choose?
If the brain is a physical system and physical systems are governed by laws, then every choice is also a chain of causes — which raises the question of what was really left to choose.
Even if the universe is undetermined, you are not the chooser.
On this view, the indeterminacy of the universe — whether from quantum mechanics, sheer contingency, or something else — does nothing to recover meaningful choice. A coin-flipping brain is not a deliberating brain; randomness in the underlying physics doesn't translate into power for the observer. …
Roads not taken The future is open and you are a genuine origin of it. (69%) · Choice is structural illusion — every event is fixed by the prior state. (10%) · Choice is real within a determined order — agency and determinism aren’t opposites. (10%)
Distinctive · only 6% of schools agree (12/208)
Are addicts responsible for their addiction?
Addiction looks from one angle like the textbook case of agency failing — a person doing what they don't, in any meaningful sense, want to do. From another angle it looks like agency at work in hard conditions. Which it is depends on what agency is.
Even if the universe is undetermined, the addict isn't the chooser.
On this view, the indeterminacy of the universe does nothing to convert an addict's brain into a responsible chooser. Randomness is not freedom. The addict is being acted on by neurochemistry, by environment, by craving; the appearance of agency is downstream of these. Compassion is …
Roads not taken The addict could have chosen otherwise — that's why recovery is real. (69%) · The addict's behaviour is the outcome of causes; 'responsibility' is a useful fiction, not a metaphysical fact. (10%) · The addict is genuinely responsible within a determined order. (10%)
Distinctive · only 6% of schools agree (12/208)
Should we hold AI systems responsible for what they do?
When an autonomous AI takes an action that harms someone, the question of who or what is responsible — the developer, the operator, the model itself — turns on whether the model is the kind of thing that can be a responsible agent.
Neither AIs nor anyone else are the locus of free agency; the question is the wrong one.
On this view, the same reasons that undermine ordinary claims of human agency apply with equal force to AI. The brain is a coin-flipping organ; the model is a function on inputs. Neither is the kind of thing that can be the source of action …
Roads not taken An AI without a free will is not the kind of thing that can be responsible. (69%) · An AI's behaviour is fully determined by training and input; 'responsibility' applies if at all to its makers. (10%) · The AI can be a genuine agent within determined conditions — and therefore genuinely responsible. (10%)
Distinctive · only 18% of schools agree (38/208)
How much weight do future people deserve?
If a billion people will exist in the 25th century, do their interests count for as much as the interests of a billion people alive now? The answer turns on what kind of reality the future has.
Past, present, and future are bound in cycles — duties span generations as a matter of course.
On these views, time is not a one-way arrow but a structure of return: cosmic cycles, karmic cycles, the seasons, the succession of generations. To act now is always also to act for the ancestors who shaped your inheritance and for the descendants who will …
Roads not taken Future people are as real as you are — and their interests count for as much. (47%) · Time arises from events or from a deeper substrate — the future is not yet. (31%) · The future branches — what we owe depends on which branch we create. (2%)
Distinctive · only 18% of schools agree (38/208)
Is regret rational?
If the past is fixed and unchangeable, what kind of mental act is regret? An error, a duty, a lesson, a perspective on a moment that is still in some sense present?
The past is part of a cycle one keeps returning to; regret is one of the gates of the cycle.
On cyclical views, the past is not a fixed thing behind you — it is part of the ongoing structure of return: karmic cycles, cosmic cycles, the cycle of seasons and generations. Regret, on these views, is less about an unchangeable past and more about …
Roads not taken The past is as real as the present; regret is a real attitude toward a real thing. (47%) · The past is not a thing now; regret is the present holding what is no longer. (31%) · Other branches exist; regret tracks roads not taken that are nonetheless real. (2%)
4 mainstream positions
Do we owe extinct species something we cannot give them? Past beings are part of the cycle; we owe them what we owe ancestors. 18% Is the universe running out of usable energy? Time is unbounded but matter is finite; usable energy can fail without time failing. 47% Are natural resources fundamentally finite, or only practically so? Time goes on but matter is bounded; we are eventually constrained even with infinite time. 47% Could we owe future generations more than is materially possible to provide? Time is unbounded but matter is not; we can owe more across long time than the matter can provide. 47%

Matter · 7 dilemmas · 5 distinctive

What stuff is — fundamental, relational, or appearance.

Distinctive · only 8% of schools agree (16/208)
What is money?
The question of what money is — a measured store of real value, an agreed-on practice, a relational ledger of debts, or just a name we apply to many different things — sits behind every argument about inflation, cryptocurrency, debt, and the state.
“Money” names a family of practices — the definition question is nominal.
On this view, gold, fiat currency, cryptocurrency, frequent-flyer miles, prison cigarettes, and the IOUs scribbled on a bar napkin are not all the same kind of thing. They share family resemblances but no common essence. Trying to define money univocally is asking a question that …
Roads not taken Money is a real institution with intrinsic features. (55%) · Money is a social practice — its content is what we make it. (16%) · Money is the ledger of obligations among real people. (14%)
Distinctive · only 8% of schools agree (16/208)
What is a nation?
Whether a nation is a real moral community with intrinsic character, a constructed legal-political artifact, a web of kinship and shared history, an imagined community, or a conventional partition of a deeper unity — these are real ontological positions with sharply different political downstream.
“Nation” names a family of practices imaginatively held together.
On this view, what we call nations are large-scale imagined communities — necessarily imagined because their members will never meet most other members, necessarily imagined as bounded and sovereign. The imagination is real and consequential; the underlying kind is not.
Roads not taken A nation is a real moral community with intrinsic character. (55%) · A nation is a constructed polity — a project, not a discovery. (16%) · A nation is the web of kinship, ancestry, and shared land that hosts a people. (14%)
Distinctive · only 8% of schools agree (16/208)
What makes someone male or female?
Whether sex is a real biological kind, a constructed social category, a relational identity, a label applied to varied phenomena, or a conventional distinction within a deeper unity is the ontological question the contemporary dispute about gender is mostly about.
“Male” and “female” are family-resemblance terms — no single essence.
On this view, the everyday categories of male and female pick out overlapping clusters of features — anatomy, physiology, social role, self-understanding, behaviour — that do not reduce to a single essence. The categories are useful but lossy; the demand for a single definition is …
Roads not taken Sex is a real biological kind with given content. (55%) · Gender is constructed; what counts as male or female reflects practice. (16%) · Sex and gender are constituted by relations of recognition. (14%)
Distinctive · only 8% of schools agree (16/208)
Should we edit the human germline?
Whether human nature is a given biological kind, a constructed category, a relational achievement, a family-resemblance cluster, or a conventional distinction within deeper unity is the ontological question the policy debate over heritable gene editing is mostly about.
'Human nature' is a cluster term without a single essence; the editing question is empirical, not metaphysical.
On this view, 'human nature' picks out an overlapping cluster of features — anatomical, developmental, cognitive, social — without a single essence the cluster reduces to. The question of whether germline editing is permissible doesn't turn on transgressing an essence (there isn't one) but on …
Roads not taken Human nature is a real biological kind given by reproductive biology or by creation; editing the germline transgresses what is given. (55%) · The categories we count as 'human' are emergent from practice; germline editing is a practice-revision like any other. (16%) · Personhood is constituted by relations of descent and kinship; germline editing reshapes the relational fabric. (14%)
Distinctive · only 23% of schools agree (47/208)
Is the world created from nothing?
Creatio ex nihilo is one of the most distinctive Western-theological claims. Whether matter was created from nothing, eternally exists, or is sustained moment-by-moment turns on what kind of thing matter is.
Matter is real but emerges from something deeper — neither bedrock nor created-from-nothing.
On this view, matter is genuinely there, but it isn't the floor of reality. It depends on something more fundamental — dependent origination, mind, divine sustaining act, computational substrate, or the structure of conditions — and is conserved only at its own level of description. …
Roads not taken Yes — matter was created and is conserved as a real substance. (56%) · Matter is constituted by relations; the question of 'from what?' presupposes substance. (16%) · Matter arises and dissolves through cosmic rounds; neither created from nothing nor eternal. (4%)
2 mainstream positions
Is the physical world fully real? Real but sustained — not mind-independent in the strict realist sense. 23% Does matter have intrinsic moral standing? Matter is morally considerable derivatively — through what it sustains. 23%

Observer · 37 dilemmas · 5 distinctive

Mind, agency, and the knower's relation to the known.

Distinctive · only 5% of schools agree (10/208)
What happens to "you" when you die?
Whether anything of you persists — and in what sense — depends on what you take a person to be.
The question presupposes a "you" that never was.
Selfhood was always a useful construction stitched together from experiences, narratives, and habits. "What happens to you?" mis-poses the issue: there was no unified thing to either survive or perish.
Roads not taken A soul continues into another mode of being. (38%) · Death is genuinely the end. (29%) · You were always a pattern. The pattern propagates. (18%)
Distinctive · only 8% of schools agree (16/208)
When does a person begin?
The political question of abortion sits atop an older ontological one: at what point does there exist a someone — a being with moral standing — rather than merely the materials from which one will form?
The question presupposes a fact of the matter that isn’t there.
There is no point at which an unchanging core "comes into being"; there is a stream of conditioned arising that we choose to mark, or not mark, at various places. The political and moral question of how to treat developing humans is real; the metaphysical …
Roads not taken A person exists from conception — when a new being comes into existence. (55%) · A person comes into being gradually, as the capacities of a mind develop. (16%) · Personhood is conferred by being-in-relation. (14%)
Distinctive · only 8% of schools agree (16/208)
What is marriage?
Behind every disagreement about how marriage should be defined is a prior disagreement about what kind of thing it is — a given order to be recognized, a practice to be negotiated, or a web of relations to be woven.
“Marriage” names a family of practices — the definition question is nominal.
On these views, “marriage” is a name applied to many overlapping but distinct social configurations across cultures and across history. To ask “what is marriage, really?” is to ask a question that doesn’t have a single answer — because there isn’t a single thing whose …
Roads not taken Marriage has a given form — it’s a kind of thing we recognize, not make. (55%) · Marriage is a practice we shape — its content is what we make it. (16%) · Marriage is constituted by the web of relations it creates. (14%)
Distinctive · only 10% of schools agree (21/208)
Is truth universal, tradition-bound, situated, or constructed?
What kind of thing is a true claim, and how does it relate to the standpoint from which it is made?
Truth is real but accessible only from within a tradition.
Truth is not constructed but tradition-constituted; you have to be inside the tradition to see it.
Roads not taken Truth is mind-independent, universal, accessible in principle to all. (66%) · Truth is real but always known from a perspective. (16%) · What counts as truth is constituted by language, practice, history, power. (8%)
Distinctive · only 12% of schools agree (25/208)
What is our place in nature?
Whether humans are masters of nature, members of nature, or makers of nature is not a question climate science can settle. It depends on what nature is, what we are, and what kind of relationship is possible between us.
Subject to a real natural order we did not make.
On these views, nature is a real, ordered, mind-independent reality that we are inside of but did not construct. Our fundamental posture toward it is one of observation, discovery, and humility before laws that are not ours to make. Stewardship and conservation are real obligations, …
Roads not taken Active in a real nature — we cultivate, steward, transform. (50%) · Nature is partly what we make of it — concepts, practices, and minds shape the world. (15%) · Embedded in a web — partners with the more-than-human world. (14%)
32 mainstream positions
Should we colonize space? Nature includes its limits; colonisation is bounded by what the cosmos allows. 12% Is genetic engineering of food stewardship or domination? Biology is what it is; we modify it within real biological constraints. 12% What makes someone the same person over time? There was never a fixed self to either preserve or lose. 14% Is the late-stage dementia patient still the person their spouse married? There was no fixed person to lose; care is owed to whoever is here. 14% If a teleporter copied and destroyed you, would you have survived? There was no fixed you to either survive or fail to; the question is malformed. 14% What kind of religious-theological authority does the tradition recognize? Direct experiential union is the authority. 16% Does history have a direction or meaning? History recurs in cosmic cycles. 17% Is environmental damage ever truly permanent? Loss is part of cycles; what disappears returns in another form. 18% Can a civilization recover from collapse? Civilization rises and falls in cycles; recovery is structural to history. 18% Does the second law of thermodynamics mean something morally? Local entropy increase is part of a cycle; the moral category is participation in the cycle. 18% Could causation work backwards? Time is structured as return; 'forward' and 'backward' are local features of the cycle. 18% Is the asymmetry between memory and anticipation a real feature of time, or just of us? Memory and anticipation are phases of a cycle that visits both directions. 18% Is the arrow of time a real feature of the cosmos, or only of how we describe it? Within a cycle there is a direction; across the cycle there isn't. 18% Does environmental harm in another country bind me morally? Moral obligation tracks the relations one is in; distance does matter, structurally. 50% Is reality fundamentally digital? No — continuous divine sustaining act, the Tao that knows no joints, the One's self-disclosure. 44% Are there indivisible units of experience? No — continuous divine presence; consciousness is the unbroken witness. 44% Is memory stored or reconstructed? Held in continuous divine or ancestral remembering — neither stored discretely nor purely reconstructed. 44% Can prayer for someone far away affect them? Prayer reaches because God or a cosmic ordering acts on the prayed-for. 38% Are coincidences ever more than coincidence? What looks like coincidence is providence — there is no such thing as a real coincidence. 38% Are the dead morally present to the living? The dead are present through divine memory, communion of saints, or ancestor presence. 37% Is divine omniscience compatible with human freedom? The human observer is in time, but God's vantage is not — and foreknowledge is not foreordering. 34% Does meditation reveal something genuinely timeless? Meditation participates in a real eternity — divine or cosmic — that the bounded human observer ordinarily cannot reach. 34% Does prayer change God's mind? God sees from outside time; prayer doesn't change God's mind, but it is part of how providence is enacted. 34% Who is the moral primary — the individual, the community, the cosmos, the class, or the species? The community of persons is the moral primary. 28% Should we trust expert testimony when we can't verify it? Trust expertise only insofar as it coheres with first-person experience. 17% Is religious revelation a real source of knowledge? What gets called 'revelation' is real direct experience — not a text. 17% Does an LLM 'know' the things it correctly produces? An LLM has no first-person experience, so no knowing in the relevant sense. 17% Is salvation, liberation, or fulfillment individual or communal? The community is saved together or not at all. 14% How is knowledge of reality produced? Through direct contemplative union with reality. 13% Do animals have moral standing comparable to humans? Talk of 'standing' presupposes fixed selves that animals (and we) don't have. 10% Could a fetal brain organoid in a petri dish be conscious? Asking whether the organoid is 'really' conscious presupposes a category we don't have. 10% Could an AI have a mind that matters? The question presupposes a kind of mind that never existed in the first place. 7%
Information · 4 dilemmas, all mainstream
Is anything truly lost when someone forgets? Information is lost when a mind forgets; matter and energy continue, but the pattern is gone. 50% Does deleting your data online destroy something real? Information is genuinely lost when the substrate that hosted it goes; deletion really destroys. 50% Could the dead, in principle, be brought back? The information dissipates with the substrate; restoration is in principle impossible. 50% Is forgiveness ontologically possible? The offense is locally constituted by its substrate; when the substrate dissolves, the offense genuinely passes away. 50%
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