Abstract
This chapter develops an interdisciplinary and comparative analysis of Mencius’s moral psychology from the perspective of cognitive science. The chapter has three major objectives. First, the author explains Mencius’s moral philosophy in the broad moral psychological context of the Confucian heart-mind as an intriguing combination of reason and emotion. Second, the author surveys major approaches to moral cognition currently discussed and debated in many areas of psychology and neuroscience and compares them with Mencius’s approach to affective empathy and other-concerning emotions. Specifically, Mencius’s discussion of ceyin zhi xin (惻隱之心 the heart-mind of pity and compassion) is analyzed on the basis of recent psychological studies of empathy as perspective taking, affective sharing, and emphatic concern. Third, Mencius’s moral psychology is characterized as a theory of other-regarding, developmental, and embodied moral emotions and its uniqueness is explained by the Mencian creature (a prototypical moral agent in Mencius’s moral psychology). The distinctive characteristics of the Mencian creature are listed, analyzed, and compared against the psychological properties of the Kantian, Humean, and Rawlsian creatures in Western moral psychology. By drawing from psychological theories of affective empathy and other-concerning emotions, this chapter provides a stimulating opportunity for us to deepen our understanding of Mencius’s moral psychology and the Confucian heart-mind.
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- 1.
This interdisciplinary and comparative analysis will help us to understand Mencius’s moral philosophy in a more concrete and practical way. Mencius’s moral philosophy has been understood as a grand philosophical vision of morality, virtue, humanity, and justice in an ideal state. Through the lens of cognitive science, however, his vision can be explained in a practical and psychologically realistic manner. His discussion of the Confucian heart-mind (xin 心) and the virtue of ren (仁), for example, is not simply a speculative philosophy of morality but also a carefully developed moral psychological theory of affective moral sense, embodied moral affection, and other-caring emotion. The main objective of this chapter is to understand Mencius’s philosophy from this moral psychological viewpoint. My analysis of ceyin zhi xin (惻隱之心), for instance, gives a good example of how this type of moral psychological analysis can be developed in Chinese comparative philosophy (Seok 2020a, 2022).
- 2.
Please note that the emphasis on the interior of moral self or the inner psychological turn, discussed here, does not support Cartesian philosophy of solipsistic ego. As I will discuss further, the Confucian heart-mind is always open to others. The inner moral mind, according to Mencius, is not isolated from others’ mind. It is essentially the other-regarding and other-concerning mind.
- 3.
Zhuangzi says “spirit [qi] is empty and waits for all things. The Way gathers in emptiness alone. Emptiness is the fasting of the mind” (氣也者 虛而待物者也. 唯道集虛, 虛者心齋也) (Zhuangzi, 人間世 In the World of Men; Watson 2013: 25).
- 4.
“It is ‘mutual and universal’ which gives rise to the world’s greatest benefit (然卽之交兼者 果生天下之大利者與)” (Mozi 兼愛下, universal love III; Johnston 2010: 149).
- 5.
According to Wee (2002), even Cartesian ethics is communitarian (i.e., not solipsistic). “To those who think of Descartes as the individualist and solitary thinker of Meditations, it may come as a surprise that Descartes, in fact, maintains that one ought to put the interests of the community above one’s own interests” (Wee 2002: 193). Perhaps, it is indeed the case that Descartes proposes solipsistic ego in his metaphysics, but in ethics he proposes communitarian ego. Wee argues that Descartes and Mencius have many things in common in their moral philosophies. For Wee’s latest view on Mencius, see Wee’s chapter in this volume.
- 6.
Regarding this interpretative difference, one can quickly point out a major difference between Confucian and Mencian approach to ren 仁 (humanity or compassion). For example, Liu argues that “[…] what Mencius takes as the starting point of humane love in this doctrine is not particular filiality, but universal commiseration. From his point of view, then, it is just because one possesses the inherent feeling of commiseration that one is endowed with the virtue of humaneness by nature, and thus should love all people from one’s inner heart, even if those people have no kinship with oneself. In this way, Mencius not only satisfactorily replies the crucial question of ‘why all human beings should love one another, no matter whether there are any blood ties among them or not’, to which Confucius did not properly answer” (Liu 2001: 74).
- 7.
For a general introduction to Mencian scholarship and interpretative traditions, see Makeham (2001).
- 8.
According to Liu (2002, 2003) both Mencius’s and Hume’s moral philosophy share the same foundation of moral sensibility: “Mencius insists that moral qualities are as real as secondary qualities. He frequently compares the mind-heart’s (xin) enjoyment of moral qualities to the eye’s enjoyment of certain colors, the ear’s enjoyment of certain sounds, the mouth’s enjoyment of certain flavors (Mencius 6A4, 6A7, 6A16). In this regard (and in many others), Mencius is similar to Hume. Hume states, ‘Vice and virtue … may be compared to sounds, colors, heat and cold’ (A Treatise of Human Nature, p. 469)” (Liu 2002: 75).
- 9.
Nichols rightly emphasizes the centrality of emotion in the Analects and the Mencius (Nichols 2011: 613). He also adds the two major characteristics of the two early Confucian texts: development of emotions as features of our human nature and intrinsic connection between the cultivation of emotions with moral practice (Nichols 2011: 616). For this reason, Mencius’s moral philosophy is clearly different from that of Immanuel Kant. Regarding Kantian orientation towards universal moral rules, Churchland states that “Kant’s conviction that detachment from emotion is essential in characterizing moral obligation is strikingly at odds with what we know about our biological nature” (Churchland 2011: 75). Perkins also states, “To briefly explain Kant’s framework, our true self is our self as intelligence. Emotions are not even part of who we really are” (Perkins 2002: 209).
- 10.
For example, Xiao argues that in Mencius’s moral philosophy there exists a dualism of rational and moral agency – that is, both the discussion of rational justification (justification) and affective empathic drive (motivation) exist in Mencius’s philosophy but they play their respective roles in Mencian moral discourse (Xiao 2009). Xiao states that “…the justification and the motivation are differentiated, that is, the justification is a rational one, whereas the motivation is a moral one. I call this idea Mencius’s ‘dualism of justification and motivation.’ To make better sense of it, let us imagine what would happen if the ruler’s motivation is the same as the justification. That is to say, let us imagine that the ruler’s moral agency is identical with his rational agency — namely, the ruler’s virtuous action is motivated by his desire to win the Empire. According to Mencius, such a purposive action would not have the kind of transforming power that an expressive action motivated by empathy has” (Xiao 2009: 638).
- 11.
From the perspective of moral psychology, Mencius’s moral philosophy can be interpreted as a form of moral sentimentalism or a sentimentalist virtue theory, but, as I will explain shortly, his is a unique form of moral sentimentalism.
- 12.
Here, Mencius’s ceyin zhi xin combines two wings of empathy, i.e., affective resonance and empathic concern, in the heart-mind of sadness, pity, and compassion. The moral psychological details of Mencius’s ceyin zhi xin will be explained in the following sections.
- 13.
According to Møllgaard (2010), this idealistic or essentialist moral nativism can become an anthropological machine that draws a dividing line between humans and non-humans based on certain moral abilities. This type of distinctions can be used to justify discriminatory (non-human) treatment of individuals with sociopathy, schizophrenia, or other neurological/behavioral disorders.
- 14.
A full analysis of the relation between neuroscience (empirical science) and ethics (normative philosophy) is developed in my recent work (Seok 2020b) where three models (mutual independence, limited collaboration, and constructive integration) are proposed and discussed. In this chapter, I assume that empirical studies of the mind can collaborate with or integrate into moral theories.
- 15.
- 16.
Empathy can be defined from different psychological viewpoints. I give two general definitions suggested by psychologists. The first is: “Empathy can be defined as the process by which an individual infers the affective state of another by generating an isomorphic affective state in the self, while retaining knowledge that the cause of the affective state is the other” (Engen and Singer 2013: 275). The second is an “Operational definition of empathy: a witness W shows evidence of empathizing with object O (e.g., a human, animal, or object like a robot) if W shows evidence (e.g., neural or behavioral) for the (vicarious) activation of actions, sensations, or emotions that he/she would activate in O’s stead” (Keyers and Gazzola 2014: 164).
- 17.
Like King Xuan (Mencius 1A7) did to an ox, we can feel empathetic to an animal. “Despite our limited knowledge of animals minds, we often feel disturbed and empathetic toward animals in pain, whether they are biologically or psychologically close to us or not” (Seok 2015: 78).
- 18.
Mencius also discusses the reflective and the developmental sides of ceyin zhi xin. In his conversation with King Xuan (1A7), for example, Mencius suggests the king to weigh (quan 權) and measure (duo 度) a spontaneously arising sense of empathy so that the king can develop the balanced and consistent empathic concern for people in his state.
- 19.
See Chan (2002) for different interpretations of nature (xing 性) in Mencius’s philosophy.
- 20.
“Many researchers agree that empathy is something like ‘feeling what we would feel in another’s stead’. Instruments designed to measure empathy acknowledge multiple facets to empathy (e.g., cognitive vs emotional empathy, fantasizing vs perspective taking vs personal distress vs empathic concern, actions, emotions, and sensations…” (Keyers and Gazzola 2014: 163).
- 21.
Aaltola (2014), for example, provides a good survey of how empathy can be understood and used in theories of philosophical moral psychology.
- 22.
Surprisingly, many psychologists report that empathic abilities of psychopaths under certain conditions match or even surpass those of non-psychopathic population. Lishner and colleagues (2012, 1161) report that “Psychopathy was positively associated with pervasive experiences of sadness, anger, and fear, and negatively associated with pervasive experiences of happiness among nonforensic individuals.”
- 23.
These creatures are originally proposed as models (patterns) of moral judgments (Hauser 2006: 1–54). In this chapter, however, I use them broadly to explain the theoretical viewpoints of empirical moral psychology.
- 24.
Based on the tripartite division, Huebner et al. (2009: 2) provide five different models of moral psychology: pure Kantian, pure Humean, hybrid (i.e., hybrid of Humean and Kantian), pure Rawlsian, and hybrid Rawlsian.
- 25.
According to Pessoa (2008), purely cognitive circuits rarely exist in the human brain. Areas of the brain that are known as serving cognitive functions (such as attention, inhibition, and control) often interact with and integrate emotional processes in their neuronal pathways. For example, in some cognitive processes (such as response inhibition or working memory) that require executive cognitive control of attention and memory, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex known as the site of the executive cognitive control is observed to interact with emotional processes (Goldstein et al. 2007; Perlstein et al. 2002).
- 26.
Original meaning of xin 心 is the internal organ of the heart. But its central philosophical meaning in the Mencius and other Confucian texts is the cognitive and affective faculty of thinking and feeling.
- 27.
In fact, feelings/emotions, reason, mind, and human nature form a common semantic pool in Mencius’s moral philosophy. It is worth citing a long passage from Torbjörn Lodén: “The Chinese original for ‘what is genuinely in him’ [Mencius 6A6] is qi qing (其情), qi being the pronoun ‘his’ and qing meaning something like ‘true nature.’ But as we have seen, qing can also mean ‘feeling’ or ‘fact.’ In this context it definitely refers to something within human beings. While the translations of [qi qing as] ‘true nature’ and ‘what is genuinely in him’ are quite good, we may well think that the meaning here also includes ‘feeling’ or ‘true feeling.’ We may surmise that Mencius included feelings in what is genuinely in human beings. This would mean that he used one word to refer to the heart of compassion and the heart of right and wrong, although for us the former refers to a feeling, while the latter has more to do with our reason” (Lodén 2009: 610).
- 28.
It is often reported that quick, strong, and spontaneous emotions play an important role in our moral judgments (Haidt 2001; Nichols 2004; Prinz 2007). However, in Confucian tradition, as the term “the Confucian heart-mind” indicates, the integration of emotion and cognition is essentially important in the cultivation of virtue. Van Norden states that “the xin [心] combines cognitive and affective aspects. It knows and feels, perceives, and desires. We do not see here a sharp division between the cognitive and affective aspects of the mind” (Van Norden 2007: 216).
- 29.
In this regard, Ivanhoe (2013) emphasizes that Mencian moral development should be agricultural (deliberate and regulative) rather than vegetative.
- 30.
In his discussion of Mencian creature, Morrow (2009) stresses the developmental potentials of moral emotions.
- 31.
For example, Prinz (2011) argues that empathy increases towards people who are culturally and geographically close to empathizers.
- 32.
Im provides an analysis of tui (推) where he interprets it as careful and deliberate extension or shifting of one’s moral attention beyond the context of analogical reasoning; as he puts it, “To extend is not necessarily to extend judgment inferentially: It is not always judgment that is extended, and it is not always an extending through inference — either deductive or inductive. Instead, I will argue that for both Mencius and the Mohists, extending is an important pragmatic step that one takes in directing one’s attention in some particular mode toward a thing. This will, I believe, show that Mencius does not conceive of attitudes that we might call ‘emotions’ or ‘passions’ to be passive. Rather, he conceives of them as ‘modes of regarding,’ which are, in an important sense, under active control” (Im 2002: 227). McRae also argues for a non-inferential or non-rational interpretation of extension (tui 推). “I argue that extension is essentially a project in realigning the heart-mind. This project, while making use of our rational and reflective capacities, is not fundamentally (or even mostly) a process of moral reasoning” (McRae 2011: 594).
- 33.
Regarding this process of self-cultivation (from the four moral sprouts to fully developed, balanced moral dispositions), Slingerland wrote: “Although many scholars have portrayed this process of Mencian extension as a rational equation of logically similar situations, it seems more accurate to understand it as a process of ‘analogical resonance,’ involving ‘emotional resonance not cognitive similarity’ (Ivanhoe 2002: 226). In addition to his skill as a moral psychoanalyst, Mencius has at his disposal the standard tools of Confucian moral self-cultivation — ritual, music, the inspiring examples of the sage kings — which clearly involve a kind of analog, somatic-emotional prototype modeling. Moreover, it is precisely these sorts of cultural templates for thought and behavior that could be expected to ensure proper behavior in creatures guided by habit and automaticity: the absence of an all-powerful, all-knowing cognitive commander-in-chief matters little if ritual and custom are there to catch you” (Slingerland 2011: 98).
- 34.
Fodor’s (1983) study of cognitive modules (functionally specialized structures in the brain or faculties of the mind) provides the list of characteristics (such as speed, hardwiredness, and peculiar patterns of ontogeny) that helps psychologists to study innate cognitive abilities. These characteristics of cognitive modularity can be applied to innate moral orientations of the mind. I have shown how the psychological characteristics of cognitive modularity can be applied to Mencius’s and Reid’s moral philosophy (Seok 2008).
- 35.
According to its nativist viewpoint of Mencius’s moral psychology, human existence and morality can collapse onto one another. Eske Møllgaard describes Mencius’s essentialist or nativist approach in the following way: “According to Mencius, nothing could be easier than to act on one’s moral sentiments, for here willing and doing coincide. One does not have to learn to love one’s parents and respect one’s elders; one is able to do it naturally and does not even need to think before acting (Mencius 7A15). Therefore, Mencius can propose the following tautological moral maxim: ‘Do not do what you do not do; do not desire what you do not desire. That is all’ (7A17). What we do and desire follows spontaneously from our moral sentiments. It is not possible—at least for a human being—not to do it” (Møllgaard 2010: 132).
- 36.
Behuniak (2011: 508–509) notes that the famous examples of the Child at the Well (2A6) and King Xuan Spares an Ox (1A7) “may indeed suggest that altruistic tendencies are innate. They do not, however, prove that such tendencies are uniquely designed by ‘Heaven’ to grow into Confucian virtues. They might just as well lend viability to the Mohist ideal of realizing ‘universal concern’ (jianai 兼愛).” Here I provide additional pieces of evidence that may support the innate nature of the foundational moral abilities. There are different properties of innateness, but Mencius’s four beginnings have certain psychological characteristics that can justify, at least, a basic form of moral nativism. Seok (2008) discusses the details of this interpretation.
- 37.
The innate dispositions discussed in the Mencius, however, should not be understood as permanently fixed essences of the human nature. Rather they are progressively forming and transforming set of inclinations given to the moral mind. Regarding xing 性 (nature), Behuniak says that “Rather than entailing the notion of a fixed ‘nature,’ I maintain that this cosmology more readily sponsors the notion of dynamic ‘dispositions’ that ‘take shape’ in transaction with formative conditions and issue into unique qualities over the span of their development” (Behuniak Jr. 2005: xxi).
- 38.
Like Mencius, Williams believes that when we sense genuine moral impetus we feel passive and we feel something deeper than the rational part of the self. This type of deeper moral power includes “some element of passivity, some sense in which moral impulses prompt us,” and, as a result “we see a man’s genuine convictions as coming from somewhere deeper in him than his rational part of the self” (Williams 1973: 227).
- 39.
In the Guanzi (管子, 弟子職 [Disciple’s Rule]), zuo (怍) is used to refer to this type of physical changes in the face. “The face has no zuo [There is no strong or strained expression in the face]” (顔色毋怍).
- 40.
Mencius, in fact, states that a sense of shame is a very important thing for human beings (恥之於人大矣) (7A7).
- 41.
While comparing Mencius and Rousseau, Froese observes the dynamic and continuous moral development in Mencius’s moral philosophy and emphasizes the moral energy of qi flowing unceasingly from the Confucian heart-mind: “While both Mencius and Rousseau insist that our virtue never goes far enough, they hold to this view for very different reasons. For Rousseau, morality will always fall short because a return to the protohuman condition forever eludes us. For Mencius morality can never be completely driven underground because qi is the well that cannot run dry and opens up infinite possibilities for cultivating moral connectedness. The moral horizon is as vast as the unceasing flow of qi” (Froese 2008: 103).
- 42.
The neural network that supports affective interpersonal knowledge includes the anterior insula, thalamus, anterior midcingulate cortex, inferior frontal gyrus, and somatosensory cortex. The network has been consistently implicated in various functions of somatosensory resonance and shared neural representations with the pain of others (Decety et al. 2013a). Among these, the anterior insula, the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex, and anterior midcingulate cortex “have hub-like position in multiple functional networks making them ideally suited to integrate core affective information with contextual input into global feeling states and allow for the adaptive modulation of behavior by empathic states” (Engen and Singer 2013: 275). Craig (2002, 2009) provides a good introductory survey of the psychological and neurological functions of the insula.
- 43.
The contribution of the interoceptive functions of the insula to social and moral cognition is observed by psychologists. Engen and Singer (2013: 276) report that “…the formation of firsthand cortical representations about one’s own feeling states in interoceptive cortex is a necessary condition to engage in vicarious predictions about the emotions of others” (Engen and Singer 2013: 276). Hein et al. (2010) report that costly helping of ingroup members is predicted by the empathy related activity of the anterior insula.
- 44.
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Seok, B. (2023). Mencius’s Moral Psychology and Contemporary Cognitive Science. In: Xiao, Y., Chong, Kc. (eds) Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Mencius. Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27620-0_29
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