Taoism Essay, Research Paper
Classical Chinese theory of mind is similar to Western "folk
psychology" in that both mirror their respective background view of
language. They differ in ways that fit those folk theories of language. The core
Chinese concept is xin (the heart-mind). As the translation suggests, Chinese
folk psychology lacked a contrast between cognitive and affective states
([representative ideas, cognition, reason, beliefs] versus [desires, motives,
emotions, feelings]). The xin guides action, but not via beliefs and desires. It
takes input from the world and guides action in light of it. Most thinkers share
those core beliefs. Herbert Fingarette argued that Chinese (Confucius at least)
had no psychological theory. Along with the absence of belief-desire explanation
of action, they do not offer psychological (inner mental representation)
explanations of language (meaning). We find neither the focus on an inner world
populated with mental objects nor any preoccupation with questions of the
correspondence of the subjective and objective worlds. Fingarette explained this
as reflecting an appreciation of the deep conventional nature of both linguistic
and moral meaning. He saw this reflected in the Confucian focus on li (ritual)
and its emphasis on sociology and history rather than psychology. The meaning,
the very existence, of a handshake depends on a historical convention. It rests
on no mental acts such as sincerity or intent. The latter may accompany the
conventional act and give it a kind of aesthetic grace, but they do not explain
it. Fingarette overstates the point, of course. It may not be psychologistic in
its linguistic or moral theory, but Confucianism still presupposes a psychology,
albeit not the familiar individualist, mental or cognitive psychology. Its
account of human function in conventional, historical society presupposes some
behavioral and dispositional traits. Most Chinese thinkers indeed appear to
presuppose that humans are social, not egoistic or individualistic. The xin
coordinates our behavior with others. Thinkers differed in their attitude toward
this natural social faculty. Some thought we should reform this tendency and try
harder to become egoists, but most approved of the basic "goodness" of
people. Most also assumed that social discourse influenced how the heart-mind
guides our cooperation. If discourse programs the heart-mind, it must have a
dispositional capacity to internalize the programming. Humans accumulate and
transmit conventional dao-s (guiding discourses?ways). We teach them to our
children and address them to each other. The heart-mind then executes the
guidance in any dao it learns when triggered (e.g., by the sense organs). Again
thinkers differed in their attitude toward this shared outlook. Some thought we
should minimize or eliminate the controlling effect of such conventions on human
behavior. Others focused on how we should reform the social discourse that we
use collectively in programming each other?s xin. Typically, thinkers in the
former group had some theory of the innate or hard-wired programming of the xin.
Some in the latter camp had either a "blank page" or a negative view
of the heart-mind?s innate patterns of response. For some thinkers, the sense
organs delivered a processed input to the heart-mind as a distinction: salty and
sour, sweet and bitter, red or black or white or green and so forth. Most had
thin theories, at best, of how the senses contributed to guidance. While it is
tempting to suppose that they assumed the input was an amorphous flow of "qualia"
that the heart-mind sorted into categories (relevant either to its innate or
social programming). However, given the lack of analysis of the content of the
sensory input, we should probably conservatively assume they took the na?ve
realist view that the senses simply make distinctions in the world. We can be
sure only that the xin did trigger reactions to discourse-relevant stimuli.
Reflecting the theory of xin, the implicit theory of language made no
distinction between describing and prescribing. Chinese thinkers assumed the
core function of language is guiding behavior. Representational features served
that prescriptive goal. In executing guidance, we have to identify relevant
"things" in context. If the discourse describes some behavior toward
one?s elder, one needs a way correctly to identify the elder and what counts
as the prescribed behavior. Correct action according to a conventional dao must
also take into account other descriptions of the situation such as ?urgent?,
?normal?, etc. These issues lay behind Confucian theories of
"rectifying names." The psychological theory (like the linguistic) did
not take on a sentential form. Classical Chinese language had no
"belief-grammar", i.e., forms such as X believes that P (where P is a
proposition). The closest grammatical counterpart focuses on the term, not the
sentence and point to the different function of xin. Where Westerners would say
"He believes (that) it is good" classical Chinese would either use
"He goods it" or "He, yi (with regard to) it, wei (deems:regards)
good." Similarly zhi (to know) takes noun phrases, not sentences, as
object. The closest counterpart to propositional knowledge would be "He
knows its being (deemed as) good." The xin guides action in the world in
virtue of the categories it assigns to things, but it does not house mental or
linguistic "pictures" of facts. Technically, the attitude was what
philosophers a de re attitude. The "subject" was in the world not in
the mind. The context of use picked out the intended item. The attitude
consisted of projecting the mental category or concept on the actual thing. We
distinguish this functional role best by talking about a disposition rather than
a belief. It is a disposition to assign some reality to a category. The
requisite faculty of the heart-mind (or the senses) is the ability to
discriminate or distinguish T from not-T, e.g., good from bad, human being from
thief. We might, alternately, think of Chinese ?belief? and ?knowledge?
as predicate attitudes rather than propositional attitudes. Predicate attitudes
are the heart-mind?s function. A basic judgment is, thus, neither a picture
nor representation of some metaphysically complex fact. Its essence is picking
out what counts as ?X? in the situation (where ?X? is a term in the
guiding discourse). The context fixes the object and the heart-mind assigns it
to a relevant category. Hence, Chinese folk theory places a (learned or innate)
ability to make distinctions correctly in following a dao in the central place
Western folk psychology places ideas. They implicitly understood correctness as
conformity to the social-historical norm. One of the projects of some Chinese
philosophers was trying to provide a natural or objective ground of dao. Western
"ideas" are analogous to mental pictographs in a language of thought.
The composite pictures formed out of these mental images (beliefs) were the
mental counterparts of facts. Truth was "correspondence" between the
picture and the fact. Pictures play a role in Chinese folk theory of language
but not of mind. Chinese understood their written characters as having evolved
from pictographs. They had scant reason to think of grammatical strings of
characters as "pictures" of anything. Chinese folk linguistics
recognized that history and community usage determined the reference of the
characters. They did not appeal to the pictographic quality or any associated
mental image individuals might have. Language and conventions are valuable
because they store inherited guidance. The social-historical tradition, not
individual psychology, grounds meaning. Some thinkers became skeptical of claims
about the sages and the "constancy" of their guidance, but they did
not abandon the assumption that public language guides us. Typically, they
either advocated reforming the guiding discourse (dao) or reverting to
"natural," pre-linguistic behavior patterns. Language rested neither
on cognition nor private, individual subjectivity. Chinese philosophy of mind
played mainly an application (execution of instructions) role in Chinese theory
of language. Chinese theory of language centered on counterparts of reference or
denotation. To have mastered a term was for the xin and senses working together
to be able to distinguish or divide realities "correctly."
?Correctly? was the rub because the standard of correctness was discourse.
It threatened a regress?we need a discourse to guide our practical
interpretation of discourse. Philosophy of mind played a role in various
attempted solutions. Chinese philosophers mostly agreed (except for innatists)
that actual distinguishing would be relative to past training, experience,
assumptions and situation. However, they did not regard experience as a mental
concept in the classic Western sense of the being a subjective or private
content. An important concept in philosophy of mind was, therefore, de
(virtuosity). One classic formulation identified de as embodied, inner dao. De
though "inner," was more a set of dispositions than a mental content.
The link seemed to be that when we learn a dao?s content, it produces de. Good
de comes from successful teaching of a dao. When you follow dao, you need not
have the discourse "playing" internally. We best view it as the
behavioral ability to conform to the intended pattern of action?the path
(performance dao). It would be "second nature." We may think of de,
accordingly, as both learned and natural. We can distinguish Chinese thought
from Indo-European thought, then, not only in its blending affective and
cognitive functions, but also in its avoiding the nuts and bolts of Western
mind-body analysis. Talk of "inner" and "outer" did
distinguish the psychological from the social, but it did not mean inner was
mental content. The xin has a physical and temporal location and consists of
dispositions to make distinctions in guiding action. It is not a set of
inherently representational "ideas" (mental pictograms). Similarly, we
find no clear counterpart to the Indo-European conception of the faculty of
reason. Euclidean method in geometry and the formulation of the syllogism in
logic informed this Indo-European concept. Absent this apparatus, Chinese
thinkers characterized the heart-mind as either properly or improperly trained,
virtuous, skilled, reliable, etc. Prima facie, however, these were social
standards threatened circularity. The heart-mind required some kind of mastery
of a body of practical knowledge. Chinese thinkers explored norm realism mainly
through an innatist strategy. Innatists sought to picture the heart-mind?s
distinctions as matching "norms" or "moral patterns"
implicit in the natural stasis or harmony of the world. Return to Outline
Historical Developments: The Classical Period Confucius indirectly addressed
philosophy of mind questions in his theory of education. He shaped the moral
debate in a way that fundamentally influenced the classical conception of xin
(heart-mind). Confucius? discourse dao was the classical syllabus, including
most notably history, poetry and ritual. On one hand, we can think of these as
"training" the xin to proper performance. On the other, the question
of how to interpret the texts into action seemed to require a prior interpretive
capacity of xin. Confucius appealed to a tantalizingly vague intuitive ability
that he called ren (humanity). A person with ren can translate guiding discourse
into performance correctly?i.e., can execute or follow a dao. Confucius left
open whether ren was innate or acquired in study?though the latter seems more
likely to have been his position. It was, in any case, the position of China?s
first philosophical critic, the anti-Confucian Mozi. Again concern with
philosophy of mind was subordinate to Mozi?s normative concerns. He saw moral
character as plastic. Natural human communion (especially our tendency to
"emulate superiors") shaped it. Thus, we could cultivate utilitarian
behavioral tendencies by having social models enunciate and act on a utilitarian
social discourse. The influence of social models would also determine the
interpretation of the discourse. Interpretation takes the form of indexical pro
and con reactions?shi (this:right:assent) and fei (not this:wrong:dissent).
The attitudes when associated with terms pick out the reality (object, action,
etc.) relevant to the discourse guidance. We thus train the heart-mind to make
distinctions that guide its choices and thereby our behavior?specifically in
following a utilitarian symbolic guide. Utilitarian standards also should guide
practical interpretation (execution or performance) of the discourse. At this
point in Chinese thought, the heart-mind became the focus of more systematic
theorizing?much of it in reaction to Mozi?s issues. The moral issue and the
threat of a relativist regress in the picture led to a nativist reaction. On the
one hand, thinkers wanted to imagine ways to free themselves from the implicit
social determinism. On the other, moralists want a more absolute basis for
ethical distinctions and actions. Several thinkers may have joined a trend of
interest in cultivating the heart-mind. Mencius? theory is the best known
within the moralist trend. He analyzed the heart-mind as consisting of four
natural moral inclinations. These normally mature just as seeds grows into
plants. Therefore, the resulting virtues (?benevolence?, ?morality?,
?ritual?, and ?knowledge?) were natural. Mencius thus avoided having to
treat the ren intuition as a learned product a social dao. It is a de that
signals a natural dao. This view allowed Mencius to defend Confucian ritual
indirectly against Mozi?s accusation that it relied on an optional and, thus,
changeable tradition. Mencius? strategy, however, presupposed that a
linguistic dao could either distort or reinforce the heart-mind’s innate
program. In principle, we do not need to prop up moral virtue educationally.
Linguistic shaping, other than countering linguistic distortion, therefore, ran
an unnecessary risk. It endangered the natural growth of the moral dispositions.
The shi (this:right:assent) and fei (not this:wrong:dissent) dispositions
necessary for sage-like moral behavior should develop "naturally." His
theory did not imply that we know moral theory at birth, but that they develop
or mature as the physical body does and in response to ordinary moral
situations. The heart-mind functions by issuing shi-fei (this-not this)
directives that are right in the concrete situations in which we find ourselves.
It does not need or generate ethical theory or hypothetical choices. The xin?s
intuitions are situational and implicitly harmonious with nature. A well-known
advocate with the natural spontaneity or freedom motivation was the Taoist,
Laozi. He analyzed the psychology of socialization at a different level.
Learning names was training us to make distinctions and to have desires of what
society considered the appropriate sort. Both the distinctions and the desires
were "right" only according to the conventions of the language
community. Learning language not only meant losing one?s natural spontaneity,
it was and subjecting oneself to control by a social-historical perspective. We
allowed society to control our desires. His famous slogan, wu-wei, enjoined us
to avoid actions motivated by such socialized desires. We achieve that negative
by forgetting socially instilled distinctions?by forgetting language! His
implicit ideal had some affinities with that of Mencius except that his
conception of the "natural" realm of psychological dispositions was
considerably less ambitious in moral terms. Interpreters usually suppose that he
assumed there would be a range of natural desires left even if socialized ones
were "subtracted." These would be enough to sustain small,
non-aggressive, agrarian villages. In them, people would lack the curiosity even
to visit neighboring villages. This "primitivism" still requires that
there is a natural level of harmonious impulses to action, but not nearly enough