It seems to me like you’re claiming that there are only two points of view (or maybe a single one-dimensional axis of points of view) in situations where I see no reason to expect that. For example:
Some people are born with major disadvantages and we need to be sympathetic to them. At the same time, people can act in a way which makes their decisions better or worse and we need to encourage personal responsibility. If we’re too harsh, we don’t give them the help that they need, if we’re too sympathetic, we simply enable people to ruin their own lives. We need to find a balance between the two
There seem to me to be a bunch of implicit claims in this paragraph I don’t agree with, like “sympathy doesn’t help people,” “personal responsibility is the only way to change people’s behavior,” and also this thing about balance.
My own point of view here is neither of these two points of view, and it’s not a balance between them either. I want to help people, but I basically don’t want to use the concept of responsibility at all to do it. Generally I try to help people by updating their beliefs about me, them, and/or the world (I mean this in a pretty broad sense, e.g. the update might be “I like you and don’t want to hurt you” and I might tell them this using my body language, not words), and teaching them important skills like how to access their actual feelings. I don’t want people to do things because they feel responsible to themselves, I want them to do things because they want to do them. (If they want to feel responsibility then that’s their business, but I don’t want to impose it on them.)
I also have reservations about your use of the word “duality,” but based on my experiences from how it’s used in mathematics as opposed to mysticism.
“Also, undoubtedly there are times when you want to synthesise more than two ideas. I don’t have a word for this, but it is much less common.”—It’s very common to have one main axis with which you are concerned, but in any case, two ideas is sufficient to demonstrate this in general.
In general though you can always pick a single dimension along which to work. It may not, as you get at, describe reality in all its richness, and it will definitely confound ideas, but it will also always create a dialectic where one can find balance between one side and the other. I think maybe this is more how this is useful, as a way of exploring an idea, rather than as an ontology to depend on.
It seems to me like you’re claiming that there are only two points of view (or maybe a single one-dimensional axis of points of view) in situations where I see no reason to expect that. For example:
There seem to me to be a bunch of implicit claims in this paragraph I don’t agree with, like “sympathy doesn’t help people,” “personal responsibility is the only way to change people’s behavior,” and also this thing about balance.
My own point of view here is neither of these two points of view, and it’s not a balance between them either. I want to help people, but I basically don’t want to use the concept of responsibility at all to do it. Generally I try to help people by updating their beliefs about me, them, and/or the world (I mean this in a pretty broad sense, e.g. the update might be “I like you and don’t want to hurt you” and I might tell them this using my body language, not words), and teaching them important skills like how to access their actual feelings. I don’t want people to do things because they feel responsible to themselves, I want them to do things because they want to do them. (If they want to feel responsibility then that’s their business, but I don’t want to impose it on them.)
I also have reservations about your use of the word “duality,” but based on my experiences from how it’s used in mathematics as opposed to mysticism.
Just adding an additional comment. The mathematical definition is not well-known enough for me to avoid using this word in general conversation.
“Also, undoubtedly there are times when you want to synthesise more than two ideas. I don’t have a word for this, but it is much less common.”—It’s very common to have one main axis with which you are concerned, but in any case, two ideas is sufficient to demonstrate this in general.
In general though you can always pick a single dimension along which to work. It may not, as you get at, describe reality in all its richness, and it will definitely confound ideas, but it will also always create a dialectic where one can find balance between one side and the other. I think maybe this is more how this is useful, as a way of exploring an idea, rather than as an ontology to depend on.