Author: mutemaler (---.e.pppool.de)
Date: 03-22-06 16:40
Hallo oldFriend,
"What is the Chinese alternative to mind-as-bucket?"
***
There is a text on my drive that I ran across once, James Dennert writing on Hansen. I couldn't find it on the internet so I will just post it here. I have the one book by Hansen by the way, a very good one.
I have an example of complex social behaviour in animals which is better explained to me by something along the lines of what is being talked about here (just search the forum here for "vampire bats"). Where they "get along just fine without 'ideas'" as Dennert says.
I'd like to just toss out though the my toe just hit the door argument (about existence) as irrelevant here. It is more an argument which takes place in our own tradition (with its sense scepticism and brain in a vat theories), not in the chinese. Their scepticism centers around not the senses or object constancy (our tradition), but rather constancy in language, in naming. It is not about that we the organisms in the world, about doubting this. The question never would have occurred to them.
Interesting look at things in any case, from a different way of seeing. Lots of points in it which are inviting to comment upon.
mute
***
From: James Dennert
Peter asked for expansion on my aside that strands of Chinese philosophy
do not fall into the subjectivist trap. I am no expert on Chinese
philosophy; I am not even a well-read @!#$. I have run across two
books by one author which provide an interpretation of Chinese philosophy
which I find quite congenial to Popper, and particularly to the
development of Popperian ideas which Peter Munz has carried out.
Chad Hansen has written, among other things, two books which are extremely
interesting. One is *Language and Logic in Ancient China*, the other is
*A Daoist Interpretation of Chinese Philosophy*. What I intend to do here
is to begin an account of *Language and Logic in Ancient China* with some
comments of my own relating this to Popper and Munz.
Hansen begins his book with some "Methodological Reflections", in which he
lays out his approach to interpretation of the relevant Chinese
philosophical texts. His account accords well with Popperian ideas,
though he does not mention Popper. For example:
An interpretation, then, is a theory. Like other scientific
theories, we judge the interpretation by how well it "fits" the
facts to be explained. There is no exhaustive and definitive
criteria of the "best fit" of a theory to a body of data... the
test of an interpretive theory...is not a matter of comparing that
theory with either the "original" or the psychological facts (what
Confucius actually believed). We have no acces to either fact
*except* via the theories. What we must do is compare rival
interpretive theories as we compare rival versions of the text.
Anyone who rebuts an interpretive theory with the claim that the
philospoher did not believe what the interpretation gives as the
theory of the text has begged the question...
Usually the test of theories accounting for unique events involves
the comprehensiveness of the theoretical account. Analogously, one
of the criteria of a good interpretive theory is its coherence with
more comprehensive theories...
I think the similarities with Popper here are apparent.
Hansen takes to task certain approaches which he terms "The Chinese Mind
and Special Logic" approach. Briefly, such an approach says that the
"Chinese Mind" is different than the Western mind, and utilizes a "special
logic" which is different than Western logic.
Hansen notes that this is not a view which is empirically testable;
rather, it is a methodological approach which *precludes* any
interpretation of Chinese philosophy.
If Western minds are incomensurably different from Chinese minds
then we could not discover anything at all about Chinese thought
--- including the actual details of the "logic" of Chinese.
The "Chinese Mind and Special Logic" view reminds me of Kuhn's paradigms,
or the language games of Wittgenstein. They provide what Peter Munz calls
"Closed Circles", that is, incommensurable world views. Popper calls such
views the "Myth of the Framework."
Hansen's entire chapter repays a close reading by those interested in
Popper, for Hansen seems to apply Popperian principles to his examination
of Chinese philosophy without apparently being aware that he is following
Popper in doing so. I will cite one further example, before broaching the
subject which started this note, namely, that Chinese philosophy does not
fall into the 'subjectivist trap.'
Hansen writes
...that Chinese logic is logical in something like a dispositional
sense is not a discovery but a decision. It is a decision to
propose, criticize, and defend interpretations in a particular way,
using consistency and coherence as critical standards...
...We may find that interpretations following the rule of coherence
and consistency are possible, enlightening, more informative about
the culture, or suggest many new hypotheses and provoke deeper
insights...
This reflects Popper's emphasis on centrality of making decisions to
scientific discovery.
************************************************************************
Hansen's view of Chinese philosophy can be roughly summed up by saying
that he finds that certain questions which have exercised Western
philosophers, and which to a Western mind define the core of philosophical
investigation, never even occur to Chinese philosophers, and this due to
the structure of the Chinese language. It is not, as some would have it,
that Chinese is incapable of asking these questions, or providing possible
answers. Rather, it is that there is no motivation to ask them in the
first place.
Specifically, Hansen notes that "[t]here is no role in Chinese
philosophical theories like that played by terms such as 'meaning',
'concept', 'notion', or 'idea' in Western philosophy." Further
Interest in metaphysics, epistemology, and logic, topics which have
virtually defined "philosophy," do not dominate Chinese thought.
It had social-political theory, ethics, philosophical psychology,
and philosophy of language.
Hansen traces this difference, in the first place, to the hypothesis that
Chinese has 'mass nouns' rather than 'count nouns.' (Mass nouns are nouns
like 'water', 'rice', 'furniture'' count nouns are nouns like 'bottle',
'apple', or 'cat'.) This leads to a particular view of the relations
between language and the world and between language and the mind.
...[w]e can characterize Chinese semantic theories as a view that
the world is a collection of overlapping and interpenetrating
stuffs or substances. A name... denotes (refers to, picks out...)
some substance. The mind is not regarded as an internal picturing
mechanism which represents the individual objects in the world, but
as a faculty that discriminates the boundaries of the substances or
stuffs referred to by names. This "cutting up things" view
contrasts strongly with the traditional Platonic philosophical
picture of objects which are understood as individuals or
particulars which instantiate or "have" properties (universals).
In a Platonic scheme the concrete instances of any abstract
property stand in a one-many relation to words which stand for or
"have as a meaning" the universal or repeatable abstract component
(property, esence, or attribute). Similarly, the Platonic view of
the mind is one in which the mind knows (has or contains) these
"meanings" or intelligible abstract objects. Chinese philosophy
has no theory either of abstract or of mental entities. The
"individuals" in Chinese theories of language are "unit parts" of
the "stuffs" picked out by names.
Thus, the Chinese view is that 'mind' denotes a faculty or ability to
discriminate or delimit things, which things are not copies of an ideal
Form or abstract entity, nor repositories of properties or qualites, but
are rather parts of a whole.
Naming is not grounded on the notion of an abstract concept, a
property, an essence, or an ideal type, but rather on finding
"boundaries" between things. Accordingly, Chinese philosophers
view minds not as repositories of weird objects called ideas, but
as the faculty encompassing the abilities and inclinations to
discriminate stuffs from each other.
This view is quite similar to the view which Peter Munz expounds in
*Philosophical Darwinism*; indeed, this Chinese view fits quite well with
an evolutionary approach. Animals get along quite well without 'ideas';
but they are quite adept at discriminating 'stuffs' from each other. Such
an ability is crucial to survival: an organism which cannot discriminate
'food stuff' from 'enemy stuff', for example, would not last long and
would not pass its genes on to future generations.
On this view, there is no need, nor even temptation, to posit 'ideas' or
'mental representations' as standing between the real world and language.
Words can be seen as hypotheses which we attach to what we experience,
conjectures about how to divide up the 'stuff' of which the world is made.
The world is unlabelled, as Gerald Edelman notes; when we attach labels to
things in the world we do so hypothetically.
...we can satisfactorily interpret Chinese philosophical writings
without attributing a philosophical commitment to abstract or
mental entities. To know a word is simply to be able to
discriminate.
[and]
In the Chinese scheme...knowing a word is having the ability to
discriminate or divide according to the conventional practices
associated with that word and to evaluate the division in guiding
action. Lacking the Platonic "knowledge as representation" model,
Chinese philosophers had no motivation to explain the ability to
discriminate as the mind's comparing objects to ideas.
This is reminiscent of Popper's distinction between mind as 'bucket' and
mind as 'searchlight'. The Platonic view, and the view which has
dominated Western thought, is of the mind as a bucket, a repository of
the ideas which sense impressions engender. The mind is, to a large
extent, passive.
The Chinese view is akin to Popper's searchlight, an active searching out
of the boundaries between various stuffs, which we then label. There are
no eternal Forms against which we compare our sense impressions in order
to determine the 'correct' label: there is no 'correct' label in that
absolute sense.
Rather, we conjecture our labels, and then see how things work out. If we
are successful (e.g., if we survive as organisms to pass on our genes) we
continue with the same labels. If we are unsuccessful, we divide the
world up somewhat differently. The entire process is one of conjecture
and refutation, not comparison with an ideal, eternal, 'real' Form or
Idea.
Munz elaborates this thoroughgoing hypothetical nature of language in
*Philosophical Darwinism*. He points out that even our internal
experience of consciousness does not come labelled. When we say "I am
happy" that is a conjecture, one way of dividing up our (inner) world.
While we cannot be 'wrong' about the physical sensations that form the
object of our statement, we can very well be wrong in what label we apply.
Consciousness, and the three-dimensional language (in Munz' phrase) which
it engenders, are not necessary to survival; in some ways they are
maladaptive. But they do provide some advantages, else they would have
been selected against and no longer be present.
We do not need 'ideas' in order to use language, nor in order to negotiate
the world; we need only words and ways to use them. To add to our
knowledge does not require that we bother about subjective states, but
only about language and the world it carves up.
A particularly vivid aspect of this objective view of language is
presented in Hansen's discussion of 'semantic mediation'. Written Chinese
is unique in that the graphs of Chinese do not stand for sounds, but for
things. Thus, there is no need for a mental mediation between the
arbitrary sound of the word for a thing, and the thing it denotes: the
graph provides the link.
The traditional conception of a mental mediator to explain the
connection of names and things is developed into the classical
Empiricist account of abstract ideas by combining the semantic
mediation argument with the argument from names...
The core of this line of thought is that mental picturing must lie
at the base of language's relation to the world. But the Chinese
can rely on picturing or representing as the method of tying
language to things without having to invent a detour through the
mind and mental images. The picture is itself the linguistic
entity, the character. The written form is not a representation of
the sound but of the thing. Hence the mediation between sounds and
objects in the world is not provided by the inner, private
subjectivity (an idea or other "affectation of the soul") but by
shared social convention --- by the character. Accordingly, there
is no positing of private mental states to explain or describe
thinking or meaning. The medium of thought, in the ancient Chinese
view, is language, not ideas.
This is a very objective approach, quite reminiscent of Popper's writing
in, say, *Objective Knowledge*. Knowledge is not, and need not be, tied
to subjective states such as 'belief'. In fact, it is immaterial what or
whether an individual 'believes'. What is of interest is the public,
objective language by which an individual presents a view, a theory, a
hypothesis. This linguistic entity can be manipulated publicly,
derivations can be generated, tests can be made, and knowledge grows.
They [the ancient Chinese] never were motivated to postulate a
mental image or concept to mediate between sounds and objects;
their characters performed that function and made it clear that
language and its semantics are shared social phenomena --- not
individual, solipsistic ones.
One last remark in this very long post. Hansen contrasts our Western
story of how Baby Susie learns the word 'dog' with how Baby Mei-ling
learns 'kou' ('dog'). Susie learns to say 'doggie' in the presence of her
family's collie, the neighbors German Shepherd, and a few other examples.
When she sees Uncle Harry's Afghan hound, she says "Doggie." How does she
do this?
Hansen notes: "We tend to say she has learned to abstract from particular
examples --- learned abstract thinking. She has abstracted from all the
particular dogs she had encountered the features common to all dogs...This
classification depends on her having learned an abstract idea."
But Mei-ling, who learned to say 'kou' in the presence of the family Shih
Tzu, and the neighbor's Pekingese, also says "Kou" when she first meets
Uncle Jang's Lhasa Apso. Hansen writes: "But the story told does not
involve any abstracting. Rather one says that she has acquired the
ability to distinguish dog-stuff from non-dog-stuff. She is, in effect,
not seeing a different object, but a different part of the same stuff."
To my mind, the Chinese view as described by Hansen is much more in line
with evolutionary ideas. The ability to discriminate is available
throughout the animal kingdom (and among plants as well) whereas
abstraction is a peculiarly human ability. Jettisoning the explanation by
means of 'ideas', 'beliefs', etc. and using instead actions and abilities
like discrimination allows for a more unified view of knowledge, one that
is continuous throughout nature. It provides a more parsimonious theory,
and a more elegant one. Most importantly, it explains more, and does so
more simply.
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