Participation alert: Chris (of A Ku Indeed! ) and Peony (of Tang Dynasty Times) are running a reading group over on Chris’s blog and Peony’s (simultaneously) on Daniel Bell’s book East Meets West. Here is the link to their announcement: http://oolongiv.wordpress.com/2008/11/25/reading-group-east-meets-west/. Sounds great! I’ll have to squeeze in Bell’s book somewhere in my end of term grading festivities. (Actually, their posts and comment strings will run gradually, chapter by chapter, so that should make joining in relatively easy.)

David Chalmers and David Bourget are working on a taxonomy of philosophy:

“…part of the project is a classification scheme, under which any paper in philosophy can be classified in up to three areas. …Philosophy is divided up into five clusters (Metaphysics and Epistemology, Value Theory, Science Logic and Mathematics, History of Western Philosophy, Other Philosophical Traditions).  Each cluster is divided into six or more fields (in M&E, for example, these are Epistemology, Metaphilosophy, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Action, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Religion).  Each field is divided into 5-10 areas (in Philosophy of Mind, for example, these are Consciousness, Intentionality, Perception, Metaphysics of Mind, Epistemology of Mind, Mental States and Processes, and Misc).”

After more detailed explanation, the Davids state:

“At the moment, the various areas of M&E (apart from philosophy of religion) are developed to a fair degree of detail, though there is still work to be done.  Value Theory and Science/Logic/Mathematics are more patchy.  Some fields in these clusters (such as Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality, Philosophy of Education, and Philosophy of Social Sciences) are hardly subdivided at all, while other areas (such as General Philosophy of Science, Social and Political Philosophy, and many other areas in these clusters) are extremely patchy and incomplete.  As for History of Philosophy, we’ve decided not to subdivide this for now beyond a few obvious groupings, and then categories for a few individuals in each period (these were settled by mechanically choosing those with more than n entries with their name in the title in the database, followed by a small amount of tweaking), although we may well subdivide these further eventually.  And we haven’t made any attempt to subdivide the Other Philosophical Traditions.” (emphasis added)

Anyone interested in attempting to subdivide Chinese philosophy so that papers on it can be further classified? Have at!

Maybe at the end of the discussion, if we’ve been careful to follow their stipulations, we could send it off to Chalmers and Bourget for inclusion.

I’m working on a couple of new pages to replace the “shameless” duo, Shamelessly Brief Book Reviews and Shameless Self-Promotion. Not out of shame, but because they were catchier more than useful. In their stead, there will be a page with a list of research resources: electronic dictionaries/concordances and electronic text sites. There will also be a graduate-study-in-Chinese-and-comparative-philosophy reference page (yes; the one I promised to provide in “early” autumn).

Of course “working on” means lots of things; in this context it means I’m trying to think about the design and features of these pages in between things I’m under moral compunction to do this weekend (entertaining my immediate progeny, grading, actually reading the things I’ll be teaching next week, writing a promised book review, refereeing an article, calling my mother, communicating with my spouse, and raking leaves–okay, a few of those aren’t morally compelling but I’d like to get to them); so I beg your patience. Meanwhile, if you’d like to suggest something for either of the new pages–even if you’re repeating something that’s already on the blog somewhere–feel free to email it to me or post it as a comment to this post. Cheers.

Also, let me add, again, that if anyone out there feels competent and willing to guest blog (how else can you think out loud and get useful feedback from people around the globe?), send me an email message with your background info and the sorts of stuff you’d like to post about; and then we’ll have to do the technicalia–signing you on as an author of the blog, etc. “Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid,” as Goethe said (At least I think it was Goethe…).

The newsletter on the state of the field of Chinese philosophy–particularly with respect to Ph.D. programs–has now been published. It contains opinions and information that should be of interest to anyone interested in joining the field or already in the field. It is edited by Amy Olberding. Contributors are Stephen Angle, Roger Ames, Donald Munro, Justin Tiwald, Bryan Van Norden, David Wong, and myself. There are also two contributions from department chairs giving their perspectives on the issues, Hugh Benson of Oklahoma and Leslie Francis of Utah.

It is available here as a PDF. Comments are open; a good discussion of the various views expressed in the newsletter should be interesting.

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.

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!