Historical Developments: Han Cosmology

Historical Developments: The Buddhist Period

Historical Developments: The Neo-Confucian Period

Introduction: Conceptual and Theoretical Matters

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 wi

XUNZI also concentrated on issues related to philosophy of mind though in the context of moral and linguistic issues. He initiated some important and historically influential developments in the classical theory. His most famous (and textually suspect) doctrine is "human nature is evil." While he clearly wanted to distance himself from Mencius, the slogan at best obscures the deep affinity between their respective views of human nature and mind.

Chan, Wing tsit. 1986 Neo-Confucian Terms Explained (New York: Columbia University Press) pp. xi-277.

Graham, Angus. 1967 "The Background of the Mencian Theory of Human Nature," Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies 6/1, 2 pp. 215-274.

The most successful schools were those that seemed to eschew theory of any kind-like Zen (Ch'an) or Pure Land Buddhism-or those that opted for intuitive, mystical simplicity (Tian T'ai and Hua Yen). The most important conceptual legacy of Buddhism, therefore, seems to be the changed role and importance of the character li (principle). In Buddhism it served a wide range of important sentential and mental functions. It facilitated the translation of 'law', 'truth', and 'reason'. Neo-Confucianism would take it over (with notoriously controversial implications) as key concept in its philosophy of mind.

Graham, Angus. 1989 Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (La Salle, IL: Open Court) .

Hansen, Chad. 1993 "Term Belief in Action," in Lenk et al (ed.), Epistemological Issues in Chinese Philosophy (Buffalo: SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Cu) pp. 45-68.

Schwartz, Benjamin. 1985 The World of Thought in Ancient China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press) .

Wang Ch'ung's skeptical, reductive application of qi theory focused on shen (spirit-energy). He did not view its consequences for heart-mind as particularly iconoclastic. It still lacked a notion of "consciousness" independent of zhi (know). (Our zhi, he argued, stops when we are asleep and so almost certainly it does when we are dead.) His arguments that nature had no intentional purposes illustrated his reductive behaviorism-if it has neither eyes nor ears, then it cannot have zhi (purposes or intentions). This argument would hardly make sense if he had the familiar Western concept of consciousness. Similarly, he argues that the five virtues are in the five organs so when the organs are dead and gone, the virtues disappear with them.

Fingarette, Herbert. 1972 Confucius The Secular as Sacred .

Again, the obvious failure in the face of irrational theoretical optimism has produced a general antipathy to idealizations. One can guess that the next phase, like the Buddhist phase, will be one of borrowing and blending. However, the current skepticism about the general outlines of folk psychology in the West and its essentially alien character probably will keep Chinese theory of heart-mind distinctively Chinese.

Presumably, the latter ability is unique among animals with knowledge because it is short-hand for the ability to construct and abide by conventions-conventional distinctions or language. One of Xunzi's naturalistic justifications for Confucian conventional rituals is economic. Ritual distinctions guide people's desires so that society can manage scarcity. Only those with high status will learn to seek scarce goods. His departure from Mencius thus seems to lie in seeing human morality as more informed or "filled-out" by historical conventional distinctions. These are the products of reflection and artifice, not nature.

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