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Antares
03-26-2008, 01:55 AM
Does the noun 'logic' exist in Chinese language? Because 逻辑 sounds almost exactly like 'logic', and logic originated from logos, which is a Greek word. Did Ancient Chinese ever refer to logic as a noun? Or did the West bring it in? Pathos, emotions, have a separate Chinese character for it; 情, but not logos. If you separate the characters of the word, the separate characters would make no sense.

thod
03-26-2008, 06:02 AM
Did ancient China have the wests fascination with dichotomy? Statements are true of false. Seems to me the they operated a more analogue system rather than the digital one.

AgentofGaming
03-26-2008, 09:09 AM
How about 道理 as in reason?
理 as in reason; cause; truth; understanding, sounds consistent with logic.

Although I must say the word in itself can have 8 different but meanings in English
Cross cultural terms aren't so 1:1 not to mention the different values.

A sidenote to Ancient Chinese Philosophy
The age of philosophy was pretty much over after the Qin dynasty (they went and killed all the philosphers and burned their books too).
After the Qin all the remaining schools of thought had been firmly established and we have confucianism, and taoism and legalism.

Wikipedia probably answers the difference better than I can
The focuses of Western and Chinese philosophy are radically different, thus they have a considerable effect on mentalities of both societies. Western philosophy emphasizes ambition, individualism, rationality, power, and liberty, while Chinese philosophy emphasizes benevolence, harmony, wisdom, family, and honoring one's ancestors. Chinese philosophy primarily focuses more internally, while Western philosophy focus is more external.
Instead of logos, ethos and pathos, we have different concepts like
道 The way, the path, the mthod
德 Virtue, morality, integrity
禮 Ettiquette, proper behaviour

ShaiGar
03-26-2008, 06:20 PM
This is why I am an advocate of combining all the lexemes from all the lexicons on earth. there are always words with different meanings. To get across everything in the mind we'd need to use a specific word with a specific meaning for everything.

Rather than: that's like infinitely literal ya know?
THAT'S NOT HOW YOU USE THOSE WORDS!!!!!! BE AN HERO!!!