Today I assert that naming and desire depend on one another. I mean to say that designating, delineating, the most basic forms of conceptualization, come from a desire to carve the world into discrete objects. At the same time, desire can only arise dependent on a division, between “self” and “other.”1
Desire requires division
Any desire requires at least the basic division between “self” and “other.”
But I don’t mean anything like a “self-conscious human self.” By “self” I mean any organism, or really anything we consider as separate from its environment. That’s where the trouble begins.
The desire for nourishment, which we share with all life, requires and produces this division. For a cell to take in and retain nutrients, it must be bounded by a membrane. But to be bounded by a membrane produces the basic “self” and “other” divide. Viruses, which lack such a membrane, are even more dependent on “other” to replicate “selves.”2 Like the cells which make us up, our bodies are bounded with skin. But we also have boundaries which extend us into our environment — our homes, possessions, and online spaces.
More complex objects of desire than nutrients operate in the same way that the desire to be nourished does. At a fundamental level, any human desire — for food, shelter, sex, travel, a Ferrari, or spiritual growth — depends on making a division between what is “self” and what is “other.”
The desiring “self” starts in one state. That “self” then undertakes the rearrangement of affairs between “self” and “other” such that the relationship between the original internal state (“self”) and “other” changes.3 This produces a new “self.”
The original state is unsatisfactory — from hunger, cold, lust, wanderlust, gadget-lust, or misery, respectively — compared to the predicted new state.
Desire (which is closely linked with suffering) leads to an attempt to end this unsatisfactory state, through some series of actions. The hungry “self” finds food and is fed, becoming a new fed “self,” and so on. If this striving satisfies the original drive for a long enough period of time, it is usually not addictive.
Even spiritual growth, which is apparently only a rearrangement of internal states, requires seeking in the external world and the undertaking of a series of actions. It rearranges the relationships between “self” and “other” in a different way from obtaining a Ferrari, but it nonetheless follows the same pattern, and is driven by the same underlying structural desire.4
Its effects are different, though, of course. To simplify, I could say that in the case of spiritual growth, the new “self” has fewer or different desires; whereas after obtaining most other objects, like the Ferrari, the new “self” quite likely has more desires — the insatiable will for more.
Once “other” is differentiated from “self,” further division picks what is desirable and undesirable, often on the basis of pleasure and pain. In other words, desire leads to division, and for humans, that means names.
The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal name
The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth
The named is the mother of myriad things
Thus, constantly free of desire
One observes its wonders
Constantly filled with desire
One observes its manifestations
These two emerge together but differ in name
The unity is said to be the mystery
Mystery of mysteries, the door to all wonders
— Tao 1 (Derek Lin)
Division requires desire
To want something requires it to be named, to specify it, to delineate it, to carve it out, to pick it out of a number of options.
For a cell, this may mean selecting a nutrient by moving toward it, or by producing a gradient which makes it more likely an ion will move in one direction or the other. For humans, this often means naming. This stabilizes an object of desire.
Are there not desires for nameless things? Yes, there are. But notice that, sitting in nameless desire, the desire to define it — to name it — arises.
To name something is driven by a desire to reduce uncertainty. It solves some problems, for the flux of experience provides few footholds. But it also produces problems, for the new stability can mislead us later.
The act of naming seeks to reduce uncertainty and indistinctness about something, to reify it, to distinguish it, to “make it a thing,” to objectify it, so it can be pursued or treated like a stable object. But even stable objects (a book, a painting, a sculpture) can never experienced in the same way twice.
If it were only rivers, we could simply stop stepping into them — but everything flows, including we ourselves. Our modern ability to play the “same” song twice (a vinyl record, say, as opposed to a live musical improvisation) depends on vast technological affordances. And even if we play the same recording twice, we have changed in the interim.
Our experience does not come cleanly categorized for us. It can only appear to do so in a straightforward manner when we are surrounded by technological objects contained by man-made categories with which we are already familiar.
“All affairs are undifferentiated,” to paraphrase Pyrrho of Elis (360–270 BC). It is our desire for certainty — which is the same as an intolerance of uncertainty or anxiety — which first differentiates objects. The objects themselves have no pre-existing divisions.
But what about types of trees? I would say that we must first have encountered each tree as unique, and only after much shared experience been able to distinguish them, often imperfectly, from other types of trees.
Whether these “types” exist outside the way we categorise them is one of the oldest questions in philosophy. Neither the position “Of course they do” nor the position “Of course they don’t” solves the problem; but it’s important to learn to notice if either inclination arises in you, since both amount to an intolerance of uncertainty.
The Tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.
Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.
— Tao 1 (Mitchell)
Sheaves of Reeds
My claim, therefore, is the same form of the claim that Buddhism names the “Sheaves of Reeds.”
Naming and desire arise dependent on each other; they are like sheaves of reeds leaned against one another.
They each arise dependently on each other, and therefore fall dependently on each other:
“If one were to pull away one of those sheaves of reeds, the other would fall; if one were to pull away the other, the first one would fall.”
— Samyutta Nikaya 12:67 (Buddhist Pali canon)
Naming and namelessness
Naming and desire are inseparable.
Now let’s return to the Dao. This is the third of three translations of the opening of the Daodejing. (See: Decades of Dao.)
Notice how “objectless desire” produces one mode of perception, whereas “having desires” produces another mode of perception:
Way-making (dao) that can be put into words is not really way-making,
And naming (ming) that can assign fixed reference to things is not really naming.
The nameless (wuming) is the fetal beginnings of everything that is happening (wanwu),
While that which is named is their mother.
Thus, to be really objectless in one’s desires (wuyu) is how one observes the mysteries of all things,
While really having desires is how one observes their boundaries.
These two—the nameless and what is named—emerge from the same source yet are referred to differently.
Together they are called obscure.
The obscurest of the obscure,
They are the swinging gateway of the manifold mysteries.
— Tao 1 (Ames/Hall)
I will argue that three skills in Neither/Nor are identified in this first chapter of the Dao:
Using desire to name, to think, to conceptualize, to systematize, to predict and control, to simplify.
Using objectless desire to act, to deconstruct, to try-and-err, to experience, to undermine, to complicate, to perceive.
Tolerating the uncertainty of doing neither; in other words, neither thinking nor acting, but waiting in a conceptless and objectless state.
For now, let’s label these skills 1, 2, and 3.
I will argue that almost all Western philosophies and worldviews predominately use skill 1. Not exclusively, but they are inclined to go that way whenever they can.
Parts of Buddhism use skill 2 against skill 1.
Pyrrhonism uses skill 3.
Neither/Nor identifies these skills, often misidentified as philosophical “positions,” and suggests how they can be independently trained.
Bryan
In software, this is called a circular dependency. It’s also captured in the chicken-and-egg problem. Such “problems” pervade evolutionary biology so thoroughly that for the purposes of this post, it makes more sense to regard it as a “pattern” to observe rather than a “problem” to solve.
Some viruses also use capsids or envelopes to divide “self” from “other.”
The question of whether the self which acts in pursuit of a desire is the same self which receives the results of that action leads to an apparent paradox described in some of Plato’s dialogues.
The paradox is also addressed by the Buddha in SN 12.17, one of the sources for the idea of the “Middle Way”:
“[I]f one thinks, ‘The one who acts is the same as the one who experiences the result,’ then one asserts with reference to one existing from the beginning: ‘Suffering is created by oneself.’ When one asserts thus, this amounts to eternalism. But, Kassapa, if one thinks, ‘The one who acts is one, the one who experiences the result is another,’ then one asserts with reference to one stricken by feeling: ‘Suffering is created by another.’ When one asserts thus, this amounts to annihilationism. Without veering towards either of these extremes, the Tathagata teaches the Dhamma by the middle…”
"For humans, this often means naming. This stabilizes an object of desire." - the stabilisation of an object of desire through naming implies a necessary act of projection from the person doing the naming, and goes towards explaining why we fall in love with fantasies or oversimplifications of things. They're the conceptual scaffolds we rest on, but in truth by leaning on them we're not touching reality, we're just attributing or projecting a meaning on reality which may not really exist.
There is a lot to chew on in here. Thank you!