(no subject)

[watertank]

...when Confucius, the most famous and revered East Asian teacher, was asked by his students to tell them the meaning of athoritative personhood or jen - the conceptual pivot of his entire philosophy - he refrained from ever giving them a a definition. In diametric opposition to the Platonic insistence on defining essences, Confucius related paradigmatic stories. Knowing what a word means is not knowing what it signifies, but how to conduct oneself in situations where it is used.

Reinventing the Wheel: A Buddhist Response to the Information Age. By Peter D. Hershock .p. 6

see also Eleanor Rosch, http://psychology.berkeley.edu/faculty/profiles/erosch2007.pdf

Comments

[watertank.livejournal.com]

It is not the automobile as a tool that increases the time we spend in travel, but the ffect of automotive technology on our conduct - the dynamic, narrative aspect of our community. Our towns and cities change shape and size. Workspace and homespace become increasingly separated. We begin thinking differently about travel, about time and distance. What is proximate may no longer e what is intimate. What was once too far away to bother wanting may well become a current rage - something we will not live without, simply because we need not. p. 53

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cf "The world is flat". for a aprice.