More Mencius and Mozi

Here’s some more of the argument for Mencian consequentialism that I’m working on. I’m happy to hear comments…

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The evidence that Mencius takes consequentialist reasoning for granted in his critique of Mohism is somewhat subtle, for two reasons. First, it occurs in passages which do not explicitly mention Mozi or his followers, but which do involve the term that is prominent in the Mohist views:  li 利, ‘profit’ or ‘benefit’. Second, there is subtlety in those passages because Mencius ostensibly argues against someone’s acting for the sake of benefit. But if we look at the passages, it is clear that Mencius considers the consequences of acting consciously for the sake of benefit to be counter-productive of the goal of attaining benefit and that is the reason not to act with that motive. In 1A1, Mencius visits King Hui of Liang and is greeted by the king with the suggestion that Mencius has come all this way with counsels “to benefit my kingdom” (li wu guo 利吾國). To this Mencius replies:

Why must the king say “benefit”? One may also simply have benevolence [li 仁] and propriety [yi 義]. If the king wonders, “How will I benefit my kingdom?” the superior officers will wonder “How will I benefit my clansmen?” The scholars and the many will say “How will I benefit myself?” Those above and those below will struggle with each other for benefit and the kingdom will be endangered. . . . There was never one who had benevolence but neglected his family. There was never one who had propriety but put himself past his lord. The king may also simply speak of benevolence and propriety. Why must he say “benefit”?

Likewise, in 6B4, Mencius corrects a fellow scholar, Song Keng, who is about to try to stop the kingdoms of Qin and Chu from their hostilities. Song Keng tells Mencius that his plan is to try to persuade the rulers of the two kingdoms that warfare between them is “not to their benefit” (qi bu li ye 其不利也]). Mencius responds:

Your aim is great, but your plan is inadvisable. If you speak of benefit to the kings of Qin and Chu, the kings will be pleased with the thought of benefit and stop their armies . . .. Then this will make the ministers [of those kingdoms] to serve their lords while harboring desire for benefit; it will make sons to serve their fathers with thoughts of benefit. . . . Because of this, lords and ministers, fathers and sons, and elder and younger siblings will discard benevolence and propriety and cherish benefit in their interactions. In such a state, there has never been a kingdom that did not fall to ruin.

Mencius thinks that the widespread adoption of benefit as the goal of action is to the detriment of the social fabric. His argument seems to rest on an empirical claim which may or may not seem plausible–namely that once people start thinking in terms of benefit, they will end up acting largely for the sake of personal benefit and hence will start to disregard their duties and other moral concerns. But whether or not the latter is plausible, it is clear that Mencius’s objection to acting for the sake of benefit is that it produces bad consequences; far from producing benefit it produces social chaos by breaking down important hierarchic relationships.

But Mencius does not stop there. In addition to objecting to acting for the sake of benefit because of its bad consequences, Mencius goes further in 6B4 to recommend acting from benevolence and propriety because doing so brings about good consequences:

Take benevolence and propriety and speak to the kings of Qin and Chu about them. Then the kings, taking delight in the benevolent and appropriate, will stop their armies . . .. This will cause ministers to serve their lords while cherishing benevolence and propriety, [etc.] . . .. So lords and ministers, fathers and sons, and elder and younger siblings will put aside thoughts of benefit and cherish benevolence and propriety in their interactions. In such a state, there never has been an unsuccessful sovereignty. Why must anyone speak of benefit?

Benevolence and propriety are important because they sustain the relationships that Mencius thinks important for the well-being of a kingdom. They are motives derived from valuable emotional responses, as Mencius 2A6 tells us:  “The heart of compassion is the tip of benevolence; the heart of shame and disgust is the tip of propriety. . . .”

The proper contrast for Mencius between acting from benevolence and acting with the goal of benefit must lie in the difference between, on the one hand, responding to some other particular person or group of people’s needs and, on the other hand, taking benefit as such as the end for which one acts. This would explain why Mencius thinks taking li as one’s motive would make one think of one’s own benefit. For example, if one takes benefit as such as the goal, it may not matter from the point of view of the agent whether her own benefit is sought or that of another. Propriety, yi 義, bears a more straightforward contrast to the motive of benefit. Shame or disgust at the impropriety, say, of groveling for one’s life is the motive for choosing one’s own death in this example from Mencius 6A10:

Life is . . . something I desire, as also is propriety; if these two are offered but I cannot have both, I will forgo life and take being proper. . . . If among the things people desire there were nothing they desired more than life, then what would prevent them from using any means whatsoever to keep their lives? . . . But in fact there are means that they will not use for the sake of life and there are things they will not do to avoid peril.

One might, for the sake of benefit, agree to some impropriety–say, giving one’s approval to a ruler for attacking and annexing a neighboring state. But if one were acting instead from shame, one could not allow oneself to do so.

What we see is that through the things Mencius says both explicitly and implicitly about Mozi’s views, the Mencian position relative to the Mohists’ is not defined by opposition to consequentialist justification for norms of action and feeling. On the contrary, it is defined by opposition to what we might call the specifically Mohist strategy for producing better consequences; and the reason for Mencius’s opposition is the ineffectiveness of that strategy for producing a better kingdom or a better world for all under Heaven. For on the one hand, Mencius doubts that people have the ability to feel inclusive love. On the other hand, he thinks acting with benefit as such as the goal is counterproductive.

(Back at it!) Mencius and Mozi

Here’s some of the stuff I was working on the past month. It’s part of a set of arguments for Mencian consequentialism as an accurate and fruitful reading of Mencius. I’ll be working next on arguments against Mencian virtue ethics as an accurate and fruitful reading, part of a larger book project on Mencius and ethical theory.

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Given the prominence of consequentialist arguments within Mohist views, it is striking that in his discussions of Mohist doctrines, Mencius expresses no objections to justifying particular teachings or practices by consideration of the consequences of adopting them. There are two main points Mencius argues in those discussions, both of which are compatible with consequentialist positions:  (a) that the Mohists have an implausible psychological element in their teachings, and (b) that taking benefit as the goal of one’s actions has bad consequences. In the case of the latter, as we will see, Mencius actually argues for the point with a consequentialist argument of his own.

Mencius’s explicit discussion of Mozi (i.e. actually referring to Mo by name) is restricted entirely to (a)—the criticism of Mozi’s doctrine of “inclusive love,” jian ai 兼愛 (or as is more commonly translated, “universal love”). This was a key element of Mozi’s view that one ought not to display exclusivity or favoritism, say, toward the members of one’s own family. What is important, on Mozi’s view, is not just that one ought to behave so, but that one ought to feel love inclusively toward all in the kingdom:

“But what is the way of universal love and mutual aid? [Mozi] said:  It is to regard the state of others as one’s own, the houses of others as one’s own, the persons of others as one’s self. When feudal lords love one another, there will be no more war; . . . when individuals love one another there will be no more injury. When ruler and ruled love each other they will be gracious and loyal . . . . When all the people in the world love one another, then the strong will not overpower the weak, the many will not oppress the few, the wealthy will not mock the poor . . .. ”

Mozi’s ethical view, then, requires love for all—not just in one’s own kingdom, but for all humankind regardless of state boundaries. Mozi explicitly contrasts partiality with the inclusivity (jian) of the love one ought to feel.  As Mencius understands it, this means that one ought to take the very same love one feels for members of one’s own family, ruler, or state, and feel that same way inclusively toward all people. Hence, by Mencius’s rendering of Mozi, one ought not to have partial feelings at all toward anyone.

This was a radical view, as far as Mencius was concerned; he thought it assumed an implausible empirical psychology, requiring a psychologically impossible task of people. It is this point that Mencius objects to in this explicit discussion of Mozi’s views.  In 3A5, Mencius discusses the actions and beliefs of a follower of Mozi’s teachings, Yi Zhi:

“[Mencius said:]  I have heard that Yi Zhi is a Mohist. In the matter of funeral arrangements, Mozi teaches that one ought to be sparing. . . .Nevertheless Yi Zhi buried his parents in a rich manner and so he served his parents in a way he disparages.

Xu Bi reported this to Yi Zhi. Yi Zhi said:  The Ruists teach that the ancients ruled like they were caring for children. What does this mean? It means that one ought to love without differences of degree. In carrying this out, the starting point is affection for family. Xu Bi reported this to Mencius. Mencius said:  Does Yi Zhi sincerely believe that a man’s affection for his brother’s child is like his affection for a neighbor’s child?”

The fact that Mencius’s complaint against Mozi really is this—that it is futile to expect people to be able to feel love impartially—is further supported by the Mohists’ own description of their detractors:
But the gentlemen (jun zi) of the world say:  “So far so good. It is of course very excellent when love becomes universal. But it is only a difficult and distant ideal.”

In the two other places where Mozi is specifically referred to by name,  Mencius identifies in passing the objectionable part of Mozi’s view by referring to Mozi’s principle of inclusive love, jian ai—not by referring to the motive of benefit, li 利. So it is clear that Mencius was dubious about the plausibility of humans being able to love impartially. He does not seem concerned, at least explicitly, with Mozi’s consequentialist standards of justifying or criticizing feelings and actions that center on benefit.

It might be thought that Mencius was content only to address the doctrine of inclusive love and not worry about addressing Mozi’s consequentialism, because the latter is founded on the former. Hence, if Mencius can argue against the psychological underpinnings of Mozi’s consequentialism, he would undermine it. But there are two obstacles to this argument. First, it is clear that it is the other way around: Mozi’s consequentialism underwrites his view about what one ought to feel. Mozi actually gives a consequentialist justification for the view that one ought to feel love inclusively. Each of the three chapters on inclusive love compiled in the text of the Mozi begins with an analysis of the cause of disorder and argues that the cure for disorder is impartial love. In chapter 16 we find a nice summing up of the argument of Mozi:

“When we come to think about the several benefits [to the world] in regard to their cause, how have they arisen? Have they arisen out of hate of others and injuring others? Of course we should say no. We should say they have arisen out of love of others and benefiting others. If we should classify one by one all those who love others and benefit others, should we find them to be partial or universal? Of course we should say they are universal. Now, since universal love is the cause of the major benefits in the world, therefore [Mozi] proclaims universal love is right . . .. We have found out the consequences of universal love to be the major benefits of the world and the consequences of partiality to be the major calamities in the world; this is the reason why [Mozi] said partiality is wrong and universality is right.

So on Mozi’s view, one ought to feel love inclusively because that would result in benefit for the world, i.e. better consequences; and one ought to bring about the better consequences. Mozi does not run his argument in the other direction–that one ought to bring about the better consequences because one ought to feel love impartially.  So Mencius would have to have terribly misunderstood the Mohists’ position if he thought that he would undermine their consequentialism by arguing against the inclusive love doctrine. Of course he might have been so confused. But here is where the second obstacle to this argument is relevant. Mencius doesn’t actually display any objections toward the view that one ought to bring about the better consequences. On the contrary, he himself takes for granted that one ought to do so…

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As always, comments are welcome!

Preview of Upcoming APA Newsletter on State of the Field

Amy Olberding, who is in the Philosophy Department at University of Oklahoma, has edited an APA Newsletter due out this Fall in which several people in my field address the state of the field, particularly with respect to Ph.D. training. Here’s the list of contributors: Stephen Angle, Roger Ames, Donald Munro, Justin Tiwald, Bryan Van Norden, David Wong, and myself. There are also two contributions from two department chairs giving their perspectives on the issues, Hugh Benson of Oklahoma and Leslie Francis of Utah.

In addition, Olberding has compiled a list of Ph.D. granting institutions in the U.S. who have faculty, in any department or program, who specialize in Asian philosophy. The list includes the names and disciplines of those faculty, so it should be very useful indeed for prospective graduate students. Olberding has also compiled the numbers and percentages of job listings for the past five years in the APA’s Jobs for Philosophers for non-Western specializations of various types. Yeoman service!

I’m not sure exactly when the issue will be out, but when it is, it should be available at this link. In the interim, I’ve pasted below about half of my contribution to the newsletter. Comments are welcome, of course. I’ll re-announce the link and welcome comments on the whole document once it is out.

(Also, I will be getting back to more philosophical/textual stuff soon; I’m just busy with beginning of term things–teaching one new course and two sections of a totally revamped intro!)

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Taking Stock: A State-of-the-Field Impression

Two years ago, I was struck by the possibility of an impending crisis in doctoral-level training for Chinese philosophy. Thanks to Brian Leiter’s posting of my concerns on his Leiter Reports blog, those who shared my concerns continued the discussion at a variety of levels. The invitation extended by Amy Olberding to contribute to this newsletter provides an excellent opportunity for me not only to take stock of my impressions of the state of the field two years thence, but also to discuss some important aspects of graduate training in Chinese philosophy that have come up in relevant discussions with colleagues since. Two caveats: First, I don’t pretend to know enough about the field of South Asian, or Indian, philosophy to have any informed impressions about “Asian” philosophy or “non-Western” philosophy; my comments here are limited to what I can say with relative confidence about Chinese philosophy specifically. Second, much of what I have to say is by way of impressions based on personal experience and conversation; so I’m sure there are empirical issues that I end up taking for granted which could and should be investigated better.

As far as I can tell, not much has changed with regard to the state of the field, at least institutionally speaking. A vacuum still exists here where very high-profile scholars have left their positions at the most highly regarded philosophy programs, either through retirement or lateral moves ultimately to Hong Kong (more about Hong Kong below). In that sense, the aspects of the field that concern me have not changed in the past two years, nor has there been any word, official or otherwise, that it will in the near future. The lone stalwart in terms of a Ph.D. program in philosophy, with high-profile scholars solidly in the field of Chinese philosophy (Roger Ames and Chung-ying Cheng), remains the University of Hawai’i. If not for Hawai’i there would be no well-established Chinese philosophy program right now, period. By “well-established” I mean one that has a relatively long track record of having productive faculty and training successful scholars in the field, and hence having an associated, high reputation. I should qualify this by saying that I’m thinking only of the past 30-40 years or so. In the course of conversation with others in the field, live and in blogs, I’ve faced two, related objections to what I have claimed about the field.

On the one hand, some have objected that there couldn’t really be a crisis-level problem here since, by my accounting, there really only ever were three such programs—Hawai’i, Stanford, and Michigan. But in fact, I think that makes the the loss of two of them much more prominent; and gaining back one or both of them would have proportionally significant impact.

On the other hand, some have objected more strongly, from the other direction: there couldn’t really be a crisis because there have always been, and continue to be, numerous well-established Ph.D. programs in the English speaking world in Asian literature, history, language, or other disciplines; and training in Chinese philosophy may be gained at them. Likewise, as others have chimed in, there are numerous Ph.D. level programs in the Chinese-speaking world that are well-established in my sense, though perhaps they either do not have or do not produce scholars who publish primarily, if at all, in English. But it is Chinese philosophy after all, why should I privilege English language scholarship? This is a formidable objection, or set of objections. I will not be able to respond to it to everyone’s satisfaction because the objection brings up issues about methodological and disciplinary differences that are not really appropriate to “resolve” as much as to let such differences exist. There are also sociologically contingent facts about philosophical inquiry and English, or European languages more generally, that are not necessarily binding but that are difficult to overcome. So, I’ll say what I can; I think the objection forces me to make certain concessions and qualifications but for the most part I stand by my impression of the vacuum at the top of my field.

It may seem parochial or imperialistic to think that scholarly training in Chinese philosophy has been centered in the United States, in philosophy departments more specifically. I don’t desire either of those epithets so I remain open to discussion that may change my mind. But my belief is based on what I, and some others with whom I’ve discussed this, regard as two important contemporary aspects of “the field” as we conceive it.

First, although Chinese philosophical literature may be approached from any number of disciplinary interests, a distinctively philosophical approach takes “truth-directed” engagement with the claims, tacit assumptions, and theories found in the literature to be primary. So, historical, linguistic, or cultural accuracy and plausibility of the interpretation one gives is important, but aiming for them is undertaken for the sake of the further activity of philosophical evaluation, assessment, or some philosophical use of the views one interprets. Such use may take the form for example of adoption, perhaps in some suitably modified form, as an ethical, political, or metaphysical view. Or, one may use the understanding of a view that is not a contemporary option but that is internally coherent, to gain some kind of understanding of the situated nature of a corresponding contemporary philosophical view; that kind of distancing via comparison might produce improvements to how one thinks about a contemporary view. Or, perhaps there are other philosophical uses in the offing. Minimally, a philosophical approach aims to provide a truth-assessable account of the literal meanings of the sentences in the text for some philosophical purpose or other. These are generally the approaches that have been taken by scholars trained at Hawai’i, Stanford, and Michigan in the philosophy programs there.

However, unless I have been meeting all the wrong people at AAAS meetings, scholars in other disciplines by and large do not find this sort of engagement with the literature interesting. Based on personal experience, I expect many to have mild to strong disdain for it (“Surely you don’t take any of Mencius’s arguments seriously, do you?” I’ve had one prominent historian say to me.) Because of this disciplinary difference, philosophical study of Chinese philosophy in, for example, the East Asian Languages and Cultures program at Columbia University will be very difficult to pursue with much enthusiasm on the part of the faculty currently active therein. Secondly, general philosophical training at a graduate level will also be very difficult to gain in such a department. Finally, it will be that much more difficult to gain employment within a philosophy department with such a degree and with the sorts of letters of recommendation one is likely to acquire. There may be exceptions and of course difficulties can be overcome; nonetheless, I think these considerations speak loudly on behalf of at least half of my claim—that study of Chinese philosophy has been and probably will continue to be centered, if at all, in philosophy departments.

But why think that the other half of the claim is true—that it has been centered in philosophy departments in the U.S. rather than, say, in China or Japan (which has produced some of the best Sinological work on philosophical texts)? This is a more complicated issue and I make the following points with varying levels of confidence. I am fairly confident that the aforementioned philosophical approach to the texts has nearly exclusively been written in English language publications. That is no accident; the style of analysis is one drawn from the approach favored by English speaking philosophers who specialize in the history of Western philosophy, particularly of Ancient Greek philosophy. There is a similar approach that is more prevalent in the contemporary Chinese-speaking world but that differs in important ways…

Summer Project: Chinese Philosophy M.A. and Ph.D. Program Non-Rankings

[I’m bringing this up to the front for those people who had intended to add–but let slip during the summer–what they know about the programs they are or have been affiliated with. I’m still compiling more information behind the scenes and will try to have a relatively complete draft of programs by end of September. You can send me attachments of documents or confidential (or otherwise sensitive information) via email; or you may simply post your comments–questions too!–on this string.]

I thought it would be a useful and beneficial service to the academic study of Chinese philosophy for this blog to offer a non-ranked informational list of Ph.D. and M.A. programs (or the relevant graduate equivalents) that offer training to research and teach Chinese philosophy.

To make the list as useful and non-political as possible, I propose—at least—the following protocols:

Information and/or evaluation will be provided in two ways (both moderated and edited for blog presentation, by me):

1. By people who are directly or indirectly involved in administering those programs. They may provide any sort of information they see fit, promotional or otherwise, so long as it does not involve ranking of their programs relative to other programs. These people will not be anonymous.

2. By people who have experienced those programs as participants. These people may be granted blog-anonymity if they have a good rationale for it, though they cannot be anonymous to me. I’m not involved in administrating any M.A. or Ph.D. program, nor do I have any stake in raising or lowering the reputation of any particular one, so I think I can have this type of moderation-control without conflict of interests.

I’d like to generate a good deal of information over the Summer before posting the results on this blog, in the Fall when it will be most useful for those applying to programs.

I welcome any suggestions or additions in terms of the type of information I should try to collect and include. You can simply comment in response to this post or send me an email.

I’ll move this post up to the front from time to time to get more feedback and to try to get the word out about the information we need. I’ll try to post a “results” page in the Fall, around mid-September.

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This is really a follow-up to the discussion I initiated a couple of years ago on Brian Leiter’s Leiter Reports blog about the state of Chinese Philosophy training in the English-speaking world.

Some issues that came up in that discussion perhaps worth revisiting on this post’s comment string, are:

  • considerations relevant to choosing between Philosophy programs and Asian Studies, Asian Literature, or Asian History programs;
  • considerations relevant to choosing between programs in the U.S., Canada, Australia and those in Asia (principally, in Hong Kong, Singapore, China (PRC), or Taiwan (ROC)–perhaps in other countries as well? let me know!);
  • considerations relevant to choosing and getting a degree from a program that does not actually have a specialist in Chinese philosophy, but working-at-a-distance with specialists at other institutions.

Please feel free to comment (in whatever capacity this matters to you)!

Time, Timeliness (shi 時), & Passing (shi 逝)

Here are some comparative philosophy theses we could discuss, from Sarah Allan’s (1997) book, The Way of Water and Sprouts of Virtue:

“There is no Classical Chinese word equivalent in meaning to the English word time. In the Analects (IX.17), we are told that Confucius, standing by a river, said, ‘What passes is perhaps like this: day and night it never lets up.’ In this passage, the imagery of the river suggests time passing, just as it did for his contemporary Heraclitus when he said that you cannot step into the same river twice. However, a specific term for ‘what passes’ or ‘passes by’–what we call time–is noticeably absent. Nevertheless, a Chinese word, sometimes translated as ‘time,’ shi 時, is a key term in early Chinese philosophy. The original meaning of shi is “season.” By extension, it also means seasonality or timeliness and refers to doing something at the appropriate time, the time or season at which an action can succeed. Shi is meaningful in the context of a natural order to which people, as other living things including plants, must correspond in their actions if they are to flourish and achieve success in life. However, it is not equivalent to our idea of ‘time’ and it cannot be used to discuss the phenomenon of time passing for which Confucius used the metaphor of a river.” (p. 11-12)

Following up on the Analects IX.17 passage, in which the idea of time “passing” is expressed with the (different) character shi 逝, Allan makes the following analysis:

“…in the absence of a word that specifically means time passing, Confucius simply compares the passing stream with ‘passing away.’ What ‘passes’ is both that which we call time and life itself. In another passage from the Analects, shi 逝 is used explicitly with reference to the passage of time: ‘The days and months pass by (shi 逝), but the harvest is not given to me’ (XVII.1). In Classical Chinese, days and months were also literally ‘suns’ and ‘moons’ and so they could also be said to pass by in a literal sense. In later texts, shi 逝 is used as a conventional euphemism for death or dying, just as we speak of someone ‘passing away.’ … Shi 逝 is not, however, ‘passing on’ which carries the implication of another world where one goes after death.” (p. 37)

Allan makes two suggestions based on this. First, that this is reflective of a way of thinking in which individual human lives, though “bounded by birth and death” (p. 12), are also regarded as links within the continuum of the ancestral heritage. Second, that it is reflective of a trend in the “metaphoric structures” through which the early Chinese think, according to which radical distinctions between things are not nearly as much the norm but that continuity among them is. So, an example of that is the significant use of the classification wu 物 “things,” in which humans, animals and plants are all classified together–not trivially, but for important purposes. Based on these sorts of considerations and examinations of textual passages, Allan argues in the book for a set of “root metaphors” that inform the early Chinese conceptual scheme in certain ways.

There are lots of interesting things in this book, including Allan’s discussion of the water and plant metaphors, but I’d be interested in what you think about her observations about early Chinese ways to talk about time: timeliness and passing (away). I’m not as sure as Allan is that large conceptual differences arise from this.

Lighter Fare VI – "It's the blocked 氣, Stupid"?

An Associated Press “story” available here:

McCain, Obama and the Search for Good Office “Chi” [sic.]

By JULIE PACE, Associated Press Writer2 hours, 37 minutes ago

With a few simple changes in their Senate offices, both presidential candidates could improve their health, relationships and maybe even get a few more votes, says Taylor Vance, a Feng Shui consultant.

John McCain’s Senate office is eclectic and cluttered.

Barack Obama’s is clean and modern.

Feng Shui is an ancient Chinese philosophy that examines how a person’s environment affects his life.

Modern Feng Shui practitioners focus on placing objects in locations that maximize Chi, or energy.

“It’s really important to honor people’s style and their personal relationships,” Vance says. “You can’t just pick a thing, put it there and say it’s Feng Shui.”

The first thing Vance would do to make McCain’s office more Feng Shui-friendly is get rid of the clutter.

“He’s barricaded in there with so many things,” she said. “I got a feeling that he wasn’t really as available as he could be.”

Step two would be unblocking a set of large double doors. Doors are where energy enters and opportunities flow in, Vance said. But these doors are unused, and blocked by a plant and a chair.

“He may not be getting the advantage of all the opportunities that he might if he unbarricaded them,” she said.

McCain made a smart Feng Shui decision by putting his desk at the back of his office, giving him a long, expansive view that Vance said will help him expand his thoughts.

And Obama?

Some may call his office decor minimalist. Vance calls it accessible.

“It’s an uncomplicated image. What you see is what you get,” she said.

What is in the office is well-placed. To the left of the door, an area that represents knowledge, Obama has a photograph of former South African president Nelson Mandela and a portrait of former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

“That tells me he’s drawing on their wisdom,” Vance said.

But Obama could enhance his office leadership by moving his desk so it doesn’t have a door behind it.

“Sometimes that can create a situation where you’re not as supported by the people in the office with you,” said Vance, who recommends putting the desk in front of a solid wall.

There’s one suggestion Vance thinks both candidates would benefit from — adding a small fountain in the back left corner of their offices, the area that relates to money and opportunities.

“That would help bring in more campaign contributions,” Vance said.

Minimal Definition and Methodology of Comparative Philosophy

(I had a chance yesterday to discuss “comparative philosophy” at Wesleyan University with Steve Angle, Michael Slote, and their NEH seminar participants. Steve had an interesting handout of a summary he wrote for a conference in Beijing. We agreed he should post it on this blog for comments and discussion. Here it is, with a little renumbering of items for ease of reference in our discussion.)

In June of 2008, the ISCWP convened its third Constructive Engagement conference, on the theme of “Comparative Philosophy Methodology.” During the opening speeches, Prof. Zhao Dunhua, Chair of the Philosophy Department at Peking University, challenged the conference’s participants to put forward a minimal definition of “comparative philosophy” and a statement of its methods. Based on the papers from the conference and the extensive discussion that ensued, during his closing reflections at the end of the conference, Prof. Stephen C. Angle offered the following ideas as a tentative synthesis of the conference’s conclusions:

It would be foolish to assert that we all agreed perfectly on what “comparative philosophy” is, and on how it should be done. However, we did discover that there was considerable agreement.

To begin with, comparative philosophy has two potential dimensions:

A1.    Use terms, ideas, or concepts from one philosophical tradition to help understand or interpret another philosophical tradition. (Note: depending on how one defines “philosophy,” often the “traditions” in question will not be only philosophical. But one can still treat a tradition as philosophy for the purposes of comparative philosophy.)
A2.    Through cross-tradition engagement, seek to advance or develop philosophy.

Not all participants agreed that comparative philosophy could successfully accomplish these goals; see below for some challenges that were articulated. In general, though, we thought that the goals could be met, and articulated some success conditions:

B1.    Success comes in either of the above dimensions when the work is constructive
B2.    Many of us agreed that success — and constructiveness — must be measured in context. That is, what counts as an “advance” will be determined from within a given philosophical tradition, rather than from a neutral standpoint above or between traditions.
B3.    Some of us believed that it was possible to judge which idea or tradition was better overall, at least in some circumstances. None of us believed that one could readily judge which tradition was the absolute best.

We identified a series of challenges to comparative philosophy:

C1.    Incommensurability. If it is impossible to compare or translate, then comparative philosophy cannot succeed. However, most of us believed that differences between concepts or languages or traditions did not make comparison impossible. Both theoretical reasons (e.g., Donald Davidson’s argument) and practical examples (of seemingly successful comparative philosophy) were offered as evidence that this challenge could be overcome.
C2.    Some said that philosophy is simply one thing; there is no room for “comparison.” When philosophy is defined very narrowly, it may be that there is not enough room for the level of different development on which the possibility of comparative philosophy depends. Few of us were convinced that philosophy is such a narrow enterprise, however.
C3.    A complementary worry is that different philosophical traditions lack adequate common concerns. Many of us argued in response that we (and others not present at the conference) have in fact found areas of common concern in our work across traditions, and were skeptical of any a priori argument that denied we could have done this. It was pointed out that “common concern” does not necessitate finding identical formulations of concepts or problems. Various specific examples were proposed to reinforce this idea.
C4.    Research and teaching of comparative philosophy lacks adequate institutional support and potential students find it difficult to acquire the needed training. On this we were all in agreement.

Finally, on the basis of this understanding of comparative philosophy, what could we say about its methodology? There was quite general agreement on the following characteristics of a minimal methodology:

D1.    Openness is fundamental, though so is the exercise of critical philosophical judgment.
D2.    Traditions are not monolithic, but internally diverse; our specific methods should take advantage of this.
D3.    The idea of family resemblance is very helpful.
D4.    A focus on concepts or problems is often more constructive than the comparison of individual thinkers, though there are many exceptions — particularly if the figure studied was him or herself engaged in comparative work.
D5.    Careful attention to issues of language and grammar is important.
D6.    Adequate training and adequate institutional support is critical.

There is of course a great deal that could be said about many of these characteristics, but for now, this outline will have to suffice. Some suggested that there was no real difference between doing what is here characterized as “comparative philosophy” and simply doing philosophy well. This may be true: perhaps all philosophy is comparative philosophy.

Some argued for a more demanding method, which entailed constructing a kind of neutrality among traditions or a perspectiveless perspective. In general the conference participants were not sympathetic to such an approach, and noted that some of those who advocated such an understanding of comparative philosophy did so in order to argue that the enterprise was impossible. Most of us felt this was attacking a straw man.

Prescriptivity, Normativity, "Oughtiness," etc. in Classical Chinese

I can’t tell whether this is an easy question to answer or a hard one. How is normativity expressed in Classical Chinese, if it is clearly distinguishable at all from “descriptivity,” for lack of better term (in my mind right now at any rate)?

(I don’t intend to engage in any future “lexical fallacy” arguments, here. I’m not sure yet where this line of questioning is heading in general. It just occurred to me…)

Guidance through Principles vs. Concepts/Terms–What's the Difference?

So, continuing some thoughts about language and theory in ethical thought, I’ve been thinking about what significant difference there is supposed to be between ethical guidance through principles as opposed to guidance through some form of “conceptual mastery” or even “skill mastery.”

One way to think of the difference, roughly, between Western and early Chinese ethical thought is to think of the former as emphasizing formulation of principles and guidance through them and the latter as emphasizing either mastery of some sort of “thick” ethical concepts or some set of “ethical skills.” Hence, dominant forms of ethical theorizing in the modern West seem concerned to formulate correct principles of right action so that people can adopt them for deciding how to act, in morally relevant contexts of choice. On the other hand, what seems of concern to early Confucianism seems to be to grasp the meaning and import of certain important terms such as ren 仁 (“humaneness”), li 禮 (“ritual piety”), and so forth; and/or to master certain sorts of “moral perception” skills that involve some kind of correct “connoisseur” responses and judgments–e.g. seeing something as ren or as failing to be li.

There are a few questions about the accuracy of these generalizations that call for some narrowing. Isn’t “Western” really just a gloss for a particular style of theoretical inquiry, largely in the modern era, that models itself on scientific inquiry or on legal reasoning? Shouldn’t something be said about the role of “manuals” of ritual and ceremony, e.g. the Zhouli (The Rituals of the Zhou) and the Liji (The Record of Ritual) for Confucian thinking about ritual piety? They seem to provide discursive action-guidance, and maybe even justification (as a set of rules) for particular ritual actions and attitudes, if not for the institution as a whole (which is something I take Xunzi to have been trying give). Also, the Mohists seem pretty clearly to be formulating an action-guiding principle–viz. to promote benefit.

But those sorts of questions aside, I wonder how different in practice competent application of principles could be from expressions of competence with respect to concept application or skill implementation. What I have in mind is that application of a principle, like application of a concept, actually requires a skill–call it a “connoisseurship of principle application”–that then subsumes the process under similar sorts of success-conditions as any other skill: there has to be something like a “correct perception” of when a principle applies to a situation, just as in the situation where one sees that a concept applies.

Those who know the later Wittgenstein views could maybe see a connection here–I’m not at all an expert on Wittgenstein and it’s been years and years since I read anything on his views, so that would be helpful if someone could speak to the connection or its lack. Those familiar with W.D. Ross should see some connection here, I think, because Ross’s intuitionism requires some kind of noetic perception of one’s true duty from the interactions among considerations of prima facie duties that apply to a situation. That sounds like a skill to me, not unlike skill in legal reasoning (?)–someone who knows about this could also speak to it better than I.

This is all to suggest, tentatively, that there really isn’t much difference when we get down to the business of ethical living between having a “principle-based” view and some more “skill-based” view. Or is there? I’m inclined to reduce principle-application and concept-application to considerations of skill, albeit some kind of mental or “perceptual” skill, but maybe there are problems with that…