Chapter 30 Are the fish happy?

Zhuangzi narrates a story about watching fish in Haoliang. He believes that even if people have certain rationality, they still cannot judge whether the swimming fish is happy or not. The reason is very simple, because we are not fish. Zhuangzi and Huishi were playing on the weir, and saw the fish swimming up and down in the water, freely.Zhuangzi pointed to the fish in the water and said to Hui Shi, "The fish in the water are swimming leisurely. These fish must be very happy!" Hui Shi said, "You are not a fish, how do you know that fish are happy?" Zhuangzi said: "You are not me, how do you know that I don't know that fish are happy?"

Huishi said, "I'm not you, so I certainly don't know your happiness; but you're not a fish, and you don't know the happiness of a fish. How about it? You have nothing to say!" Zhuangzi said: "Let's start from the beginning! When you asked me 'how do you know that fish are happy', you have already tacitly accepted that I know that fish are happy. (Just want to know 'how' I know ?) How do I know that fish are happy? It’s just on this bridge.” In this dialogue between Zhuangzi and Huishi, from the perspective of dialogue logic, Huishi denies that Zhuangzi can observe the happiness of fish; Experience your emotions.Huishi also believed that Zhuangzi was not a fish, so he also believed that Zhuangzi could not enjoy the joy of watching fish.On the surface, Huishi seems to be the winner of logical reasoning, but he does not involve Zhuangzi's answer to the question of why we humans can understand the emotions and wills of things.When Zhuangzi replied "You are not me, how do you know that I don't know that fish are happy?" to answer Huishi "You are not a fish, how do you know that fish are happy?" In the established circle where people and fish, and people cannot know each other.In fact, Zhuangzi's true point of view is that people and fish, and people can understand each other's emotions and wills.Therefore, Zhuangzi finally pointed out: "How do I know that fish are happy? I realized it on the bridge of Hao."

In fact, this is a big epistemological problem in philosophy, that is, between the subject of knowledge and the object of knowledge, whether human beings as the subject of knowledge can recognize the emotion and will of external things, and at the same time, it also involves the limit of human cognition to a certain extent. question.Zhuangzi is undoubtedly an epistemological relativist here.Starting from the highest ontology "Tao", he denied the cognitive ability of human beings to a certain extent.