A Bowl is Most Useful When it is Empty

"Laozi, I don't mean no disrespect, but you need to fill your bowl with shit that makes some sense!" said Sun Tzu in the Eastern Philosophers vs Western Philosophers episode of Epic Rap Battles of History. 

Except it makes a lot of sense. The function of a bowl is to hold something. If it has already been filled, then it ceases to be useful. Taoism (of which Lao Tzu was the founder) is, in many ways, about Emptiness. Chapter 11 of the Tao Te Ching, its central text, reads:

Thirty spokes are joined together in a wheel, but it is the center hole that allows the wheel to function. We mold clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that makes the vessel useful. We fashion wood for a house, but it is the emptiness inside that makes it livable. We work with the substantial, but the emptiness is what we use.

Philosophical Taoism concerns itself with understanding and living the Tao or the Way. The problem is that the Way is full of apparent contradictions and paradoxes that make it very difficult to "get" from the perspective of Western thinkers. Where Aristotle would say that things could only be true or false, a Taoist might say that things may be both true and false, or neither true nor false.

The first chapter of the Tao Te Ching says "The way that can be described is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be spoken is not the eternal Name." It can be said, therefore, that the entire book is completely useless, as everything it purports to say about the eternal Tao should be disregarded. Saying that the eternal Tao cannot be described is, itself, a description of the eternal Tao.

Remember when I said that a Taoist would say that things may be both true and false? That's an example. If it is true that "any description of the eternal Tao is false," then that description is false. But if the description is false, then it is true. What the f*ck, right? 

This is what's known as a self-referential paradox. So when those annoying kids ask you "True or false? This statement is false," they're actually doing some very interesting philosophy work. Do kids still do that? Or was it just me? When a sentence refers to itself like this, concepts like truth and logic get a bit wonky. 

In math, there's this concept called the Incompleteness Theorem. It was first written about by Kurt Godel in 1931. The relevant concepts here are 'axioms' and 'completeness.' An axiom is a supposition, postulate, premise that is taken to be true. In the context of a computer program, we would say that axioms are the rules that govern the program. On the other hand, 'completeness' is and adjective that we can use to describe a perfectly rational set of axioms. According to Godel, a set of axioms or principles is complete if any axiom in the set can be proven from the other axioms in the set. The Theorem states that it is impossible to make a complete set of axioms. There will be some rules that cannot be proven from within the set. For example, a computer might know that "a triangle is a shape with three sides," but it wouldn't know why the triangle is a shape with three sides. The program cannot answer that question because even as it searches for answers within the system, it ultimately goes back to the same assertion that "a triangle is a shape with three sides." The question of why some axioms are the way that they are will forever elude a program whose rationality is built on supposedly unquestionable truths.

Hold on. This is starting to sound like the Matrix. Yes, it does. The Matrix is all about the inability of a computer system (the Matrix) to understand the ineffable-- human choice. Even humans themselves, the ones with the ability to choose, cannot quite understand why they choose the way they do. Why they would choose love over the extermination of their race (see Matrix Reloaded). We are more free than the machines that run the Matrix, but we are still trapped by something we can't quite put our finger on.

Back to Taoism. "The tao that can be explained by words is not the eternal Tao" is hard for computer logic to understand (which is why Western philosophers choose not to try altogether. I said what I said.) because it points out the limits of our language and of our reason. And the limits of my language are the limits of my world.

In truth, the Tao is conceptually empty. Anything you can say about It is wrong. That's not what It is. If nothing can describe the Tao, then the Tao must be Nothing. It is not like anything we can think of. It is transcendent. It is ontologically transcendent, meaning that It's being and nature is something that we cannot comprehend. It is epistemologically transcendent, meaning that It exceeds our capacity to understand. It is linguistically transcendent, meaning that It cannot even be spoken about without falling into self-referential paradoxes.

The Tao is the placeholder for all things that we cannot put into words. For all things that we cannot contain within the confines of our logic or language. So, although it is empty, it does not mean that it does not contain anything. The opposite, actually. Its emptiness allows it to be infinitely full, infinitely expanding, with limitless potential. Says the Tao Te Ching:

The Tao is like an empty container: 

it can never be emptied and can never be filled. 

Infinitely deep, it is the source of all things.  

In other words, by being Nothing, the Tao can be greater than Everything. 

(PS: This kind of negative theology, also known as apophaticism, was very prominent in western medieval philosophy as well. However, it's not that popular anymore. Probably because western philosophers, at some point, wanted to unite rationalism and theology. So, they rejected paradoxical mumbo jumbo like apophaticism and focused more on positive theology. See Thomas Aquinas.)