溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
How Do I Know the Joy of the Fish?
The mind of a being that is not I — how can I know it?
You are not the fish — how do you know the joy of the fish?
The debate on the Hao has thrown the question "can we know another mind?" for over two thousand years. For Zhuangzi it led not to logical victory but to the Daoist insight that, in the state where all things interpenetrate, the very border of knowing and not-knowing dissolves. In the West the same question sharpened much later: when Descartes drew the mind as a private theater only its owner can view, another's mind became a riddle never directly seen. Hume and Mill tried to cross the gap by analogy, others by empathy. How we reach a mind not our own still flows, judgment suspended, over Zhuangzi's bridge.
The more we must gauge minds beyond a screen, the closer Zhuangzi's question comes — do we truly know a mind not our own?
When Zhuangzi says on the bridge, "how joyful the fish are," the logician Huizi retorts: you are not the fish, so how do you know their joy?
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
When Zhuangzi says on the bridge, "how joyful the fish are," the logician Huizi retorts: you are not the fish, so how do you know their joy? Zhuangzi returns: you are not I, so how do you know that I do not know the fish? I sense this seemingly playful exchange holds the deepest question. Knowing a mind not my own cannot be reached by proof, yet is not wholly closed either. Before another mind, I stand on this ancient bridge too.
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