QuestionsCan we be certain of anything?The Dao that can be named is not the true Dao
Can we be certain of anything?What escapes words

The Dao that can be named is not the true Dao

Laozi c. 579 BC · c. 500 BCFollow the Way (Dao) through non-action.
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What it claims

The Way that can be spoken is not the constant Way: whatever we say of it is only a makeshift name.

Why

The Dao comes before all distinctions, and words only serve to distinguish: they cannot grasp it as it is.

In short

"The Dao that can be named is not the true Dao" is an argument by Laozi (Daodejing, 1, 2 and 25) on the question "Can we be certain of anything?" (answer: what escapes words). Its claim: The Way that can be spoken is not the constant Way: whatever we say of it is only a makeshift name. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P3). AskPhilosophy presents 2 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Daodejing, 1, 2 and 25
Valid with an implicit premise

The book's first sentence may be the most famous in Chinese thought: the Way that can be spoken is not the constant Way. The text does not argue for it, it states it, in verse. We reconstruct a line of reasoning here from several chapters: this is a simplification, and turning the poem into the form P1, P2… → C is already an interpretation.

P1Our distinctions, and the names that fix them, cut the world into opposites: as soon as everyone recognises the beautiful as beautiful, the ugly appears; being and non-being, long and short arise from each other.
P2The Dao comes before these divisions: it is "something undefined", born before heaven and earth, the "nameless" origin of all things.
P3 · implicit premiseWhat comes before all distinction cannot be grasped as it is by a tool that distinguishes.
Therefore the Way that can be spoken is not the constant Way: whatever we say of it is only a makeshift name.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P3, the computer finds a case where names divide, where the Dao is before all division, and where it can nevertheless be said as it is.
With P3 the conclusion follows. Without it, nothing prevents a word that divides from still correctly designating what comes before division, as the word "everything" designates everything. P3 is not written in the text: we take it from the most famous commentator, Wang Bi (3rd c. AD), which is already an interpretation. The text itself only says "I do not know its name; to give it a title, I call it the Way".
Analogy. A map divides a territory into countries, roads, colours. It is very useful, but the land itself has no drawn borders. The Daodejing says: words are maps, useful for finding one's way, but the Way is the territory.

Objections

2

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Bai Juyi, poem "Reading Laozi" (9th c.) attacks the conclusion

"Those who speak do not know, those who know are silent." But if Laozi knew, why did he write five thousand characters? A book that claims the Way cannot be spoken contradicts itself by speaking it. Zhuangzi, though on the same side, already saw the problem: if all is one, can there be words? But since we have said it, how can there be none?

Lao-tseu replies
Lao-tseu What the text already says
The text does not claim to know the Way's name: it presents its own words as makeshift names. "I do not know its name, and I give it the designation of the Tao." And it calls it "great" only "making an effort".
The debate goes on (our summary) Bai Juyi would answer that this passage shows the text knows the limit of its words, but does not answer his question: why write, if the one who knows is silent? And a makeshift name is still a name: if five thousand characters are enough to guide towards the Way, then it can at least partly be spoken, and the first sentence overstates. Bai Juyi's poem is not yet in our corpus.
Wittgenstein 1921 · attacks premise 2

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" (Tractatus, 7). If the Dao is truly unspeakable, then sentences like "it is the nameless origin of all things" are not imperfect truths but sentences without content. One cannot both say that something escapes words and describe it (mother, emptiness, origin). Wittgenstein does grant, though, that the inexpressible "shows itself" (6.522).

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
No reply possible: objection raised in 1921, after the author's death (-500).