---
description: >-
  Can rational judgment ever solve the post-truth condition — or does it push us
  further apart?
---

# From "Incommunicability" to "Response-able Awareness

In an era of increasing polarization, many assume that **rational judgment** — the ability to reason clearly, distinguish truth from falsehood, and arrive at sound conclusions — is the key to resolving conflict. But what if rational judgment itself is **part of the problem**?

This model interrogates how **rational judgment** — the modern, Enlightenment-informed mode of reason — may actually **exacerbate incommunicability** between worldviews, particularly in pluralistic or post-truth contexts.

***

#### 🧱 When Reason Becomes a Wall

Rational judgment tends to:

* Operate on **binary logic**: valid vs. invalid, true vs. false
* Aim at **epistemic elimination**: rejecting weaker arguments or “false beliefs”
* Frame disagreement as something to be **resolved through better knowledge**

But when people hold fundamentally different ontologies, values, or ways of knowing, judgmental reasoning often:

* Invalidates others' lived realities
* Escalates tension by imposing a hierarchy of understanding
* Produces **epistemic arrogance**, reinforcing one's own frame while obscuring its limits

The result is **post-truth polarization** — not because people reject truth, but because they reject _others’ versions of truth_ as invalid, manipulative, or dangerous. Rationality, without humility, **shuts down relation in the name of clarity**.

***

#### 🌗 Knowledge Is Always Aspective

Drawing from **critical realism** and **Daoism**, Adler emphasizes that human knowledge is inevitably:

* **Partial** — no view is total (Seeing some _aspects_ of reality)
* **Situated** — shaped by our positions, bodies, cultures, and histories (Our perceptual/cognitive capabilities are manifestations of some _aspects_ of reality)
* In other words, **aspective**— revealing only _one face_ or aspect of a deeper, multi-layered reality.

Daoist metaphysics (e.g., _Zhuangzi_, _Daodejing_) resists totalization. It sees knowing as a **relational dance**, not a fixed capture of objective reality. Each perspective embodies a slice of the Dao — real, but not complete.

As such, the problem is not disagreement, but **how we relate across irreducible differences**.

***

#### 🌿 From Judgment to Response-ability

**Response-able Awareness** is a Daoism-inspired, relational mode of knowing that embraces:

* **Non-judgmental attunement** over argumentative confrontation
* **Embodied openness** over analytical reduction
* **Situated presence** over discursive certainty

Instead of trying to eliminate conflict through “better facts” or “stronger arguments,” it cultivates:

* **Attentiveness** to others’ existential positioning
* **Humility** about one’s own limits of knowing
* **Reflexivity** in one’s mode of engagement

Inspired by Daoist practices like _fasting of the heart-mind (心齋)_, and the recognition that **all language is “dregs and sediment (糟魄)”** — valuable only until resonance is achieved — this model invites us to **discard language once its spirit has been conveyed**. Response-able Awareness seeks not to “understand” others in the rationalist sense, but to become **attuned enough to be changed by encounter**.

#### 🤝 From Incommunicability to Resonance

This mode is especially vital in cross-paradigm dialogue — between secular and spiritual actors, Indigenous and Western traditions, policy and lived experience. When applied, it can:

* De-escalate epistemic conflict
* **Embrace the depth, complexity, and discomfort of reality** by honoring more aspects without collapsing into relativism
* Enable relational repair even in the absence of agreement



## Read more

📝[Daoist Wisdom in Post-Truth Times: Rethinking Rational Judgment](http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.27950.32323)

📰[On the Limits of "Fact-Checking"-- Embracing Plurality (#plurality) Might Be the Only Way to Achieve Universality](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/limits-fact-checking-embracing-plurality-might-only-way-adler-yang/?trackingId=Sluh130gMYz5%2BPLc8t6Ixw%3D%3D)

📰\[in Traditional Chinese] ["One Abe with respective interpretations:" a "champion" or a "destroyer" of democratic peace?](https://www.sehseh.world/article/4421478)



## See also

* [post-enlightenment-horizons-of-cultural-social-and-educational-change](post-enlightenment-horizons-of-cultural-social-and-educational-change "mention")
* [east-asian-philosophies-of-science](east-asian-philosophies-of-science "mention")
* [controllability-dependence](controllability-dependence "mention")

