Find all my publications on my website: https://protesilaos.com.

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I had no plan to make this video as I spend most of my time studying in the hope of improving my chances at the labour market. The reason I decided to record this video presentation is because I received three books as a gift from a person in China I correspond with. One of those books is _Dao De Jing_ by Lao Zi.

I apply with my own philosophy and concepts to understand the first statement of _Dao De Jing_:

"The Dao that can be articulated is not the eternal Dao; the name that can be named is not its eternal name."

The translator explains that "Dao" is interpreted in other cultures as "God" and variants thereof and how Lao Zi uses it to mean the "Mother of all".

My points in brief:

* Analysis of the Yin-Yang symbol. Specifically, a comprehensive take on how black and white are opposites but also how they can be understood as the same.
* This analysis provides insight into what I call _the scope of application_, namely how the given level of abstraction substantiations the concepts/words.
* The scope of application makes us reason about---and always account for---the way in which something is, else its _modality_ (mode of being) or _Tropos_.
* More analysis of Yin-Yang using the new concepts.
* From there we understand how Tropos has multiple strata; how there exist many levels of abstraction in each of which there emerge phenomena that are specific to the given level. I call this the _stratification of emergence_.
* Examples of the stratification of emergence, such as how happiness and sadness are different at the stratum of the conscious person, but are the same insofar as they both are biochemical phenomena.
* Explanation of the idea that concepts exhibit a triadic relations between the instances and their greater abstraction. By finding the common in the multitude between two instances at a given level of abstraction we arrive at the third magnitude, which is that which they have in common.
* That which can be named is that which can be described and that which can be described is that which has Tropos.
* The Dao, which I explain in the video as "Being", is that which is common to all, hence that which necessarily has no Tropos. If it has Tropos, then it is the same as all other presences that have Tropos, insofar as they have Tropos.
* Long comment on Confucius' famous quote whether Lao Zi is a dragon (I mentioned the quote in the introduction and this long exposition served to answer the question). In short, no Lao Zi was a human to whom we can relate. His wisdom is not a secret because we can understand it. All sages are human and treating them as "dragons", as decisively alien, harms both us and them.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6y27r5ZcsQ