溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
Can I Really Know Another's Mind?
Since I am not that person, can I truly know their joy and sorrow?
Mao Qiang and Lady Li men count as beauties; but fish seeing them dive deep, birds fly high, deer bolt away. Of these four, which knows the world's true beauty?
In Zhuangzi's "On the Equality of Things," Nie Que asks his master Wang Ni, "Do you know what all things agree in calling right?" Wang Ni answers, "How would I know that?" and asks in return: men call Mao Qiang and Lady Li beauties, but fish seeing them dive deep, birds fly high, deer bolt away — of these four, which knows the world's true beauty? For Zhuangzi the question opened into the Daoist insight that for minds feeling from different places there is no single measure. Western philosophy later forged it into "the problem of other minds." Nagel asked "what is it like to be a bat?" to mark that another being's experience has an inside one can never reach from without; Wittgenstein said that if a lion could speak, we who do not share its form of life could not understand him. Yet Scheler held that empathy is a distinct power of steeping directly in another's feeling, so that a bridge does lie between mind and mind. Is another's mind an uncrossable river, or can a bridge be laid?
In an age quick to presume one another from short messages, "do I really know another's mind?" collides more often.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
I know this ancient question repeats daily between those who love. "How could you know my heart?" As Wang Ni says, before the same thing fish and bird and human each feel differently. Do I really know that person's sorrow, or only imagine I do? I am not them, so I cannot fully step into their inside. Yet that gives no ground to declare I know them not at all. Perhaps another's mind is a river one can neither fully know nor fully not-know. Without presuming I know all, and without giving up as if I know nothing, I try, carefully, to lay a bridge across that river.
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