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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that The Dao is necessarily ziran (self-so/spontaneous), possessing a kind of necessity and aseity analogous to being causa sui in the Thomist tradition

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Causa sui requires reflexive self-causation in a determinate causal order, but the Dao operates prior to any causal structure whatsoever.
      ?

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    • 2.Ziran denotes absence of external constraint, not self-grounding causation—'spontaneity' and 'self-causation' are categorically distinct modal concepts.
      ?

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    • 3.Mapping Latin scholastic causality onto Daoist cosmogony imports Aristotelian substance ontology that Daoist metaphysics explicitly rejects.
      ?

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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.The Dao's origination of the ten thousand things in Daodejing ch. 40 proceeds from wu (non-being), suggesting dependence on a prior privative ground.
      ?

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    • 2.If the Dao depends on wu for generative efficacy, it cannot be causa sui in the Thomist sense, which demands unconditioned self-sufficiency with no prior ground.
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.The Dao is capable of singlehandedly originating everything
      ?

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    • 2.That which singlehandedly originates everything must be self-grounding rather than dependent on anything external
      ?

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