Abstract

(Uncorrected OCR) Abstract of thesis entitled Similarity and Standards: Language, Cognition, and Action in Chinese and Western Thought Submitted by Christopher J. Fraser for the degree of Ph. D. (Philosophy) at the University of Hong Kong in March 1999 Early Chinese philosophical texts contain numerous passages that depict the perfected human life as a flow of immediate, automatic responses to the environment, occurring without thought, deliberation, or conscious intention. For readers versed in the Western philosophical tradition, this perfectionist vision is puzzling, for it assigns no role to activities we usually think of as quintessentially human, such as theoretical contemplation, abstract reasoning, and know ledge of universal truths. The aim of this dissertation is to explain why early Chinese writers advocated the views expressed in these passages. Toward this end, I present a unified interpretation of the theoretical framework underlying classical Chinese philosophy of language, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and theory of action. I contend that the major philosophical concern in early Chinese thought is correct performance of dcw i!1[ (way, norms). Along with this focus on dcw performance, I argue, early Chinese philosophers hold non-mentalistic theories of meaning, knowledge, and cognition, in which the central explanatory notion is a type of pattern recognition: the behavioral ability to distinguish similar kinds of things by comparing them to public standards. In semantic theory, Chinese philosophers explain the communicative function of language by appeal to speakers' behavioral conformity in distinguishing the extension of terms. In epistemology, they explain knowledge as knowing how to distinguish and name things correctly, according to the norms of dcw. Copyright �1999 Abstract ii Reasoning is not explained in terms of drawing inferences between propositions, but as a process of examining things and distinguishing similarities and differences between them. Human action is guided by recognizing objects as certain kinds of things, thus invoking the normatively proper behavioral responses to them specified by diw. Practical reasoning occurs mainly when the agent encounters difficulty in executing dao and needs to deliberate over how to draw a distinction. A highly intelligent, knowledgeable agent rarely needs to engage in ratiocination or deliberation, but instead draws all distinctions directly as part of the process of perceptual recognition. In this theoretical context, the perfected human is one whose every activity smoothly and flawlessly conforms to dao. Following dao is similar to performing a skill. In the masterful performance of skills, conscious deliberation and ratiocination typically vanish. Similarly, for the ideal performer of dao conscious thought subsides, leaving only a stream of immediate, skilled behavioral responses to the environment. A more detailed overview of the dissertation is given in �1.1. 4 (p. 16). Copyright �1999