No Assumption, No Dogma, No Rigidity, No Ego

CORE DEFINITION

The Analects record that Confucius avoided four things: no speculation without basis, no absolute certainty, no rigid attachment, and no self-centredness. The core proposition is that these four habits are the main sources of error in judgment, so suspending them keeps reasoning attached to the evidence rather than to the reasoner's preferences. The key qualification is that suspension is not the absence of a position: the instruction is to hold conclusions in a form that evidence can revise, not to refuse to conclude at all.