Objectivity and Skepticism:
Davidson versus Zhuangzi
(Revised Version)
Yiu-ming Fung
Visiting Professor
Department of Philosophy
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Davidson’s Realism
• Davidson says that his form of realism seems to be
neither Hilary Putnam’s internal realism nor
metaphysical realism.
• (1) Not internal realism, because internal realism
makes truth relative to a scheme, and this is an idea
presupposes the unintelligible dualism of a conceptual
scheme and a “world” waiting to be coped with.
• (2) Not metaphysical realism, for it is characterized by
being “radically non-epistemic,” which implies [a
thesis of skepticism] that all our best-researched and established thoughts and theories may be false. He
thinks that a coherence theory cannot allow that all of
them can be wrong. (SIO 139-40)
Davidson’s Externalism
First, truth is correspondence with the way things are. (There is
no straightforward and nonmisleading way to state this; to get
things right, a detour is necessary through the concept of
satisfaction in terms of which truth is characterized.) So if a
coherence theory of truth is acceptable, It must be consistent
with a correspondence theory.
Second, a theory of knowledge that allows that we can know the
truth must be a nonrelativized, noninternal form of realism. So
if a coherence theory of knowledge is acceptable, it must be
consistent with such a form of realism. (SIO 139)
(1) Truth in terms of satisfaction can be helpful for a coherence
theory to be consistent with a correspondence theory.
(2) Nonrelativized because of correspondence without
confrontation [without presupposing the dualism].
(3) Noninternal because of dependence on causality, not on
evidence.
Correspondence without
Confrontation
• If meanings are given by objective truth conditions,
there is a question how we can know that the
conditions are satisfied, for this would appear to
require a confrontation between what we believe
and reality; and the idea of such a confrontation is
absurd.
• But if coherence is a test of truth, then coherence is
a test for judging that objective truth conditions are
satisfied, and we no longer need to explain meaning
on the basis of possible confrontation.
• (SIO 137-8)
Davidson’s Middle Way
• Davidson wants to find a middle ground between the
epistemic and the non-epistemic approaches to objective
truth. His idea of “correspondence without confrontation”
seems to give him a way to narrow or transcend the gap
between the correspondence theory and coherence theory
of truth.
• His idea of “triangulation” based on the social practice of
communication seems to tie truth with meaning and belief
and to stands in the way of global skepticism.
• So he said that: “Given a correct epistemology, we can be
realists in all departments. We can accept objective truth
conditions as the key to meaning, a realist view of truth,
and we can insist that knowledge is of an objective world
independent of our thought or language.
Davidson vs. Quine 1
• There is, as I noted above, a key difference
between the method of radical interpretation I
am now recommending, and Quine's method of
radical translation. The difference lies in the
nature of the choice of causes that govern
interpretation. Quine makes interpretation
depend on patterns of sensory stimulation, while
I make it depend on the external events and
objects the sentence is interpreted as being
about. (SIO 151)
Davidson vs. Quine 2
• Thus Quine's notion of meaning is tied to sensory criteria,
something he thinks can be treated also as evidence.
This leads Quine to give epistemic significance to the
distinction between observation sentences and others,
since observation sentences are supposed, by their direct
conditioning to the senses, to have a kind of
extralinguistic justification. This is the view against
which I argued in the first part of my essay, urging that
sensory stimulations are indeed part of the causal chain
that leads to belief, but cannot, without confusion, be
considered to be evidence, or a source of justification,
for the stimulated beliefs. (SIO 151)
Davidson’s Criticism of Quine 1
• According to Quine, science tells us that “our only source
of information about the external world is through the
impact of light rays and molecules upon our sensory
surfaces.”
• Davidson’s worry is how to read the words “source” and
“information.” He agrees that events and objects in the
external world cause us to believe things about the
external world, and much, if not all, of the causality takes
a route through the sense organs. The notion of
information, however, applies in a nonmetaphorical way
only to the engendered beliefs. So “source” has to be
read simply as “cause” and “information” as “true belief”
or “knowledge.” Justification of beliefs caused by our
senses is not yet in sight. (SIO 143)
Davidson’s Criticism of Quine 2
• It should be obvious that no appeal to perception can clear up
the question what constitutes a person's ultimate source of
evidence. For if we take perception to consist in a sensation
caused by an event in the world (or in the body of the
perceiver), the fact of causality cannot be given apart from
the sensation, and the sensation cannot serve as evidence
unless it causes a belief. But how does one know that the
belief was caused by a sensation? Only further beliefs can
help. If perception is expressed by locutions like 'A perceives
that there is a black raven', then this can certainly serve as
evidence. This does not solve the problem, it only transfers it
to the concept of perception, since to perceive that there is a
black raven is to be caused by a raven, and in the right way, to
believe that there is a black raven. (SIO 164)
The Problem of Justification
• For Davidson, Quine’s approach to the problem of
justification must be wrong.
• If a person has all his beliefs about the world, how can he tell
if they are true, or apt to be true? This is possible, we have
been assuming, only by connecting his beliefs to the world,
confronting certain of his beliefs with the deliverances of the
senses one by one, or perhaps confronting the totality of his
beliefs with the tribunal of experience.
• But No such confrontation makes sense, for of course we
can’t get outside our skins to find out what is causing the
internal happening of which we are aware. (SIO 143)
• My interpretation: It means that the external cause has to
be identified in our mind.
The Event Is Not Evidence
• Neurath was right in rejecting the intelligibility of comparing
sentences or beliefs with reality. We experiment and observe,
but this is not 'comparing' in any but a metaphorical sense, for
our experimentation bears no epistemological fruit except as
it causes us to add to, cling to, or abandon our beliefs. This
causal relation cannot be a relation of confirmation or
disconfirmation, since the cause is not a proposition or belief,
but just an event in the world [1st sense] or in our sensory
apparatus [2nd sense]. Nor can such events be considered in
themselves to be evidence, unless, of course, they cause us to
believe something. And then it is the belief that is properly
called the evidence, not the event. (SIO 173)
Intermediaries Doesn’t Help
• Introducing intermediate steps or entities into the
causal chain, like sensations or observations, serves
only to make the epistemological problem more
obvious.
• For if the intermediaries are merely causes, they don’t
justify the beliefs they cause, while if they deliver
information, they may be lying. The moral is obvious.
Since we can’t swear intermediaries to truthfulness,
we should allow no intermediaries between our
beliefs and their objects in the world. Of course there
are causal intermediaries. What we must guard against
are epistemic intermediaries. (SIO 143-4)
Open the Door to Skepticism
• Quine and Dummett agree on a basic principle, which is that
whatever there is to meaning must be traced back somehow
to experience, the given, or patterns of sensory stimulation,
something intermediate between belief and the usual
objects our beliefs are about. Once we take this step, we
open the door to skepticism.
• For we must then allow that a very great many—perhaps
most—of the sentences we hold to be true may in fact be
false. It is ironical. Trying to make meaning accessible has
made truth inaccessible. When meaning goes
epistemological in this way, truth and meaning are
necessarily divorced. One can, of course, arrange a shotgun
wedding by redefining truth as what we are justified in
asserting. But this does not marry the original mates. (SIO
144-5)
Dependence of Causality versus
Dependence of Evidence
• Davidson suggests:
• We give up the idea that meaning or knowledge
is grounded on something that counts as an
ultimate source of evidence. No doubt meaning
and knowledge depend on experience, and
experience ultimately on sensation. But this is
the “depend” of causality, not of evidence or
justification. (SIO 145-6)
• My question: Is sensation the last stop (terminal)
of the causal chain?
Dilemma
• Davidson is aware that the search for an
empirical foundation for meaning or
knowledge leads to skepticism, while a
coherence theory seems at a loss to provide
any reason for a believer to believe that his
beliefs, if coherent, are true.
• We are caught between a false answer to the
skeptic, and no answer. (SIO 146)
No Real Dilemma
• The dilemma is not a true one. What is needed to
answer the skeptic is to show that someone with
a (more or less) coherent set of beliefs has a
reason to suppose his beliefs are not mistaken in
the main.
• What we have shown is that it is absurd to look
for a justifying ground for the totality of beliefs,
something outside this totality which we can use
to test or compare with our beliefs.
• The answer to our problem must then be to find
a reason for supposing most of our beliefs are
true that is not a form of evidence. (SIO 145-6)
The Principle of Charity
• The principle directs the interpreter to translate or
interpret so as to read some of his own standards of
truth into the pattern of sentences held true by the
speaker. The point of the principle is to make the
speaker intelligible, since too great deviations from
consistency and correctness leave no common ground
on which to judge either conformity or difference.
• From a formal point of view, the principle of charity
helps solve the problem of the interaction of meaning
and belief by restraining the degrees of freedom
allowed belief while determining how to interpret
words. (SIO 148-9)
Charity Maximizes True Beliefs
• It is impossible for an interpreter to
understand a speaker and at the same time
discover the speaker to be largely wrong
about the world.
• For the interpreter interprets sentences held
true (which is not to be distinguished from
attributing beliefs) according to the events
and objects in the outside world that cause
the sentence to be held true. (SIO 150)
Is It a Transcendental Argument?
• Most of the criticisms of the principle are focused on its
seemingly Kantian nature of transcendental argument or
transcendental deduction. However, Davidson seems to be
reluctant to reject this label in the beginning and unwilling
to accept it later.
• In his “In Defense of Convention T,” Davidson writes: “Tarski
is right, I think, in proposing that we think of natural
languages as essentially intertranslatable (although I don’t
see why this requires word-by-word translation). The
proposal idealizes the flexibility and expandability of
natural languages, but can be justified by a transcendental
argument (which I will not give here).” In a footnote
Davidson refers the reader to his articles “On the Very Idea
of a Conceptual Scheme” and “The Method of Truth in
Metaphysics” for this TA.
Davidson’s Response
• But later when responding to Andrew Cutrofello’s
criticism, he replies that “I don’t know if my
arguments for the principle of charity are
transcendental or not. Andrew Cutrofello does
not quote me as saying so. In any case, the
arguments he says are mine are not
transcendental, good, or mine.” In response to A.
C. Genova’s interpretation of his idea, he
mentions that “[p]eople suggested that what I
had hit on was a transcendental argument, and I
didn’t reject the idea. But was it?”
Not Purely a priori
• He gives a more concrete explanation that “[i]f
you accept the steps that lead to my version of
externalism, what Genova calls ‘semantic realism’,
then you cannot, I think, be a skeptic about the
existence of an external world much like the one
we all believe we share, nor about the existence
of other people with minds like ours. But the
considerations in favor of semantic realism seem
to depend in part not on purely a priori
considerations but rather on a view of the way
people are.”
Dependence on Facts
• Davidson mentions that the principle of charity in interpretation is
not a policy: “we might do better to think of it as a way of
expressing the fact that creatures with thoughts, values, and
speech must be rational creatures, are necessarily inhabitants of
the same objective world as ourselves, and necessarily share their
leading values with us.” Although Davidson agrees that whether a
creature “subscribes to” the basic principles of rationality, including
the principle of continence, the basic principles of logic, and the
principle of total evidence for inductive reasoning, “is not an
empirical question”, it seems he is only referring to the coherence
part of the principle of charity; as to the correspondence part, it is
obvious that the question is of a factual nature. It seems he is
expressing the same point when he replies to Thomas Nagel in
emphasizing that “[t]he conclusion [of the reasoning of charity] that
I know that the world, both in general and in many particular ways,
is as I think it is, depends on the fact [my italic] that I have just the
beliefs I do.”
Inductive Base
• The general form of Davidson’s principle of charity seems to
suggest a priori claim, but its particular examples are not. I think
this principle is in accord with our intuition of the ordinary use
of language (speaking or interpreting) and, more importantly, is
generalized from a lot of particular cases with empirical
evidence as its inductive base. This base is very stable and seems
unshakable, because we have not yet found any concrete and
obvious counter-example to the principle.
• In this sense, I conclude that the principle of charity,
“Maximizing true beliefs is a condition of having thought,” is
based on a huge amount of empirical evidence, as is the
principle of nutrition, “Maximizing nutriment is a condition of
having energy.”
• Example: the Concept of “a cat.”
How to Relate to the External World?
• The principle of charity does not guarantee that our true
beliefs are really related to the external world. It only
justifies that we share a lot of beliefs that we cannot
intelligibly recognize as false. This shared, coherent, true
beliefs is about an objective public world which is
supposed to be the external world; but there is no
convincing argument to ascertain that what we talk about
and what is the case are the same. It is still an internal play,
may not be really related to the external world or reality.
• However, Davidson’s only idea to show the relation with
the external world is based on the supposition of taking
the objects of a belief (formed in triangulation) to be the
real objects (as external causes) in the world.
External Cause 1
• Beliefs for me are states of people with intentions, desires, sense
organs; they are states that are caused by, and cause, events
inside and outside the bodies of their entertainers. (SIO 138)
• Certainly it is true that events and objects in the external world
cause us to believe things about the external world, and much, if
not all, of the causality takes a route through the sense organs. (SIO
143)
• It is impossible for an interpreter to understand a speaker and at
the same time discover the speaker to be largely wrong about the
world. For the interpreter interprets sentences held true (which is
not to be distinguished from attributing beliefs) according to the
events and objects in the outside world that cause the sentence to
be held true. (SIO 150)
External Cause 2
• What stands in the way of global skepticism of the senses is, in my view,
the fact that we must, in the plainest and methodologically most basic
cases, take the objects of a belief [A] to be the causes [B] of that
belief. And what we, as interpreters, must take them [A] to be is what
they in fact are [B]. Communication begins where causes converge:
your utterance means what mine does if belief in its truth is
systematically caused by the same events and objects. (SIO 151)
• This causal relation cannot be a relation of confirmation or
disconfirmation, since the cause is not a proposition or belief, but just
an event in the world or in our sensory apparatus. Nor can such
events be considered in themselves to be evidence, unless, of course,
they cause us to believe something. And then it is the belief that is
properly called the evidence, not the event. (SIO 173)
• My comment: The term “Cause” is ambiguous!
• (Internal [A] or external [B]?)
External Cause 3
• For the sentences that express the beliefs, and the
beliefs themselves, are correctly understood to be
about the public things and events that cause them,
and so must be mainly veridical. Each individual knows
this, since he knows the nature of speech and belief.
This does not, of course, tell him which of his beliefs
and sentences are true, but it does assure him that his
overall picture of the world around him is like the
picture other people have, and is in its large features
correct. (SIO 174)
• If “the public” is not meant what is sensed about
reality but what is in reality, we cannot identify any
relevant objects or events of reality functioned in
causation.
External Cause 4
• The simplest cases are those where a sentence such
as “That's a book” or “This is yellow” is caused to be
held true by the conspicuous presence of books or
yellow things. This is evidence that these sentences
are true just when books or yellow things are present;
the reason is that what determines the meaning of
such sentences is what routinely makes them true.
(SIO 189)
• My comment: What is presented, which causes our
belief, is still in experience; it is not what is in reality
playing the causal role.
External Cause 5
• Davidson says: Transcendental Argument
• If nothing is systematically causing the experiences,
there is no content to be mistaken about. To quote
myself: “What stands in the way of global skepticism
of the senses is, in my view, the fact that we must, in
the plainest and methodologically most basic cases,
take the objects of a belief to be the causes of that
belief.” (SIO 201)
• But, how can we identify the objects in our experience
with what is something in reality? What is the external
relator which causes our words? Is it something mindindependent in reality, or is it only the objects in our
experience?
External Cause 6
• Each time a mouse appears nearby in good light and with the
speaker oriented in the direction of the mouse, etc., the speaker
utters what sounds to the interpreter like the same expression:
'Raton'. When the lighting is poor or the speaker inattentive, the
response is less firmly correlated with mouse appearances. I
think that unless there is a host of evidence against such an
interpretation, the competent interpreter will take the speaker
to mean by his words, and to believe, that there is a mouse
present. What recommends this interpretation is the fact that
the presence of a mouse has apparently in each case caused the
speaker intentionally to utter the same expression, 'Raton', and
to utter it in an affirmative spirit. (SIO 196)
External Cause 7
• A sentence which one has been conditioned by the
learning process to be caused to hold true by the
presence of fires will (usually) be true when there is a
fire present; a word one has been conditioned to hold
applicable by the presence of snakes will refer to
snakes. Of course very many words and sentences are
not learned this way; but it is those that are that
anchor language to the world. (SIO 44-5)
• If words and thoughts are, in the most basic cases,
necessarily about the sorts of objects and events that
commonly cause them, there is no room for Cartesian
doubts about the independent existence of such
objects and events. (SIO 45)
External Cause 8
• Involved in our picture there are now not two but three similarity patterns.
The child finds tables similar; we find tables similar; and we find the child's
responses in the presence of tables similar. It now makes sense for us to
call the responses of the child responses to tables. Given these three
patterns of response [table1→child’s R1/table2→my R2/child’s R1→my
R3//(B1) I take R1 and R2 to be similar, and I also take table1 in the
child’s B=table2 in my B. ///(B2)I take both to be the common external
cause (which is not a mind-dependent entity.] [(B1) supports (B2)] we
can assign a location to the stimuli that elicit, the child's responses. The
relevant stimuli are the objects or events we naturally find similar (tables)
which are correlated with responses of the child we find similar. It is a
form of triangulation: one line goes from the child in the direction of the
table, one line goes from us in the direction of the table, and the third line
goes between us and the child. Where the lines from child to table and us
to table converge, 'the' stimulus is located. Given our view of child and
world, we can pick out 'the' cause of the child's responses. It is the
common cause of our response and the child's response. (SIO 119)
Presence or Absence of Objects
•
•
Consider how we discover what some simple sentence means, say There's a
table' or 'Here's a piece of green paper'. Our basic evidence is that the speaker
is caused to assent (not just on this occasion, but generally) to these sentences
by the presence of tables or pieces of green paper, while the absence of
these objects causes him (generally) to dissent from the same sentences. I do
not think of assent and dissent as overt speech acts, but as attitudes towards
sentences sometimes revealed in speech and sometimes in other ways. My
main point is that our basic methodology for interpreting the words of others
necessarily makes it the case that most of the time the simplest sentences that
speakers hold true are true. It is not the speaker who must perform the
impossible feat of comparing his belief with reality; it. is the interpreter who
must take into account the causal interaction between world and speaker in
order to find out what the speaker means, and hence what that speaker
believes. (SIO 174)
My comment: Here, the “presence or absence of objects” means the
presence or absence of objects in sensation.
How to Solve the Ambiguity of Cause?
•
Social interaction, triangulation, also gives us the only account of how experience
gives a specific content to our thoughts. Without other people with whom to share
responses to a mutual environment, there is no answer to the question what it is
in the world to which we are responding. The reason has to do with the ambiguity
of the concept of cause. It is essential to resolve these ambiguities, since it is, in
the simplest cases, what causes a belief that gives it its content. In the present
case, the cause is doubly indeterminate: with respect to width, and with respect
to distance. The first ambiguity concerns how much of the total cause of a belief is
relevant to content. The brief answer is that it is the part or aspect of the total
cause that typically causes relevantly similar responses. What makes the responses
relevantly similar in turn is the fact that others find those responses similar; once
more it is the social sharing of reactions that makes the objectivity of content
available. The second problem has to do with the ambiguity of the relevant
stimulus, whether it is proximal (at the skin, say) or distal. What makes the distal
stimulus the relevant determiner of content is again its social character; it is the
cause that is shared. The stimulus is thus triangulated; it is where causes converge
in the world. (SIO 129-130) [the social sharing of reactions from mind to reality!]
Identifying the Right Cause in
Interpretation
• The best we can do is cope with error holistically,
that is, we interpret so as to make an agent as
intelligible as possible, given his actions, his
utterances, and his place in the world. About
some things we will find him wrong, as the
necessary cost of finding him elsewhere right. As
a rough approximation, finding him right means
identifying the causes with the objects of his
beliefs, giving special weight to the simplest
cases, and countenancing error where it can be
best explained. (SIO 152)
Relevant Causes
• It is we who class cow appearances together, more or less naturally,
or with minimal learning. And even so, another classification is
required to complete the point, for the class of relevant causes is in
turn defined by similarity of responses: we group together the
causes of someone‘s responses, verbal and otherwise, because we
find the responses similar. What makes these the relevant
similarities? The answer again is obvious; it is we, because of the
way we are constructed (evolution had something to do with this),
who find these responses natural and easy to class together. If we
did not, we would have no reason to claim that others were
responding to the same objects and events (i.e. causes) that we are.
It may be that not even plants could survive in our world if they did
not to some extent react in ways we find similar to events and
objects that we find similar. This clearly is true of animals; and of
course it becomes more obvious the more like us the animal is. (SIO
202)
Which Stimulus/Cause?
• Many of my simple perceptions of what is going on in the world are
not based on further evidence; my perceptual beliefs are simply
caused directly by the events and objects around me [which is in my
sensation]. (SIO 205)
• It should now be clear what insures that our view of the world is, in its
plainest features, largely correct. The reason is that the stimuli (= the
whole or a part of external world) [cause our senses first, and then
what is in sensation is the objects or events] that cause our most basic
verbal responses also determine what those verbal responses mean,
and the content of the beliefs that accompany them. (SIO 213)
• What I proposed was that seeing or otherwise sensing things often
causes us to have true beliefs about them. In such standard cases of
perception there are no epistemic intermediaries: I look and I believe.
(“Responses to Stroud, McDowell and Burge’” p. 695)
Epistemic Priority of Triangulation over the
Objects or the Objects of Thought
•
•
•
•
•
The identification of the objects of thought rests, then, on a social basis. Without
one creature to observe another, the triangulation that locates the relevant
objects in a public space could not take place.
The presence of two or more creatures interacting with each other and with a
common environment is at best a necessary condition for such a concept. Only
communication can provide the concept, for to have the concept of objectivity,
the concepts of objects and events that occupy a shared world, of objects and
events whose properties and existence is independent of our thought, requires
that we are aware of the fact that we share thoughts and a world with others.
(SIO 202)
Epistemic dependence: The identification or locating of the relevant objects (of
thought or a belief) [or the concept of objects] requires communication.
[2 senses of “O of T”: (1) noema1/intentional object; (2) noema2/intended object.]
My question: How can we make sure that the identified objects of thought are the
same things in the external world. [or how can we make sure that the
conceptualized objects are really the external objects or external something?]
Epistemic Priority of the Objects or the Objects
of Thought over Triangulation
• [T]he fact that states of mind, including what is meant by a
speaker, are identified by causal relations with external
objects and events is essential to the possibility of
communication, and it makes one mind accessible in
principle to another; but this public and interactive aspect
of the mind has no tendency to diminish the importance of
first person authority. (SIO 52)
• My question: Before the identification of states of mind, is
there a need to identify the external objects and events
which are understood as a causal factor for identifying the
states of mind? So, epistemologically speaking, the external
and the internal are mutually dependent on each other.
• But, ontologically speaking, the ontological status of the
external cause or reality is still a problem.
Transcendental Argument for the External
World/Reality
• The triangular relationship between agents and an
environment to which they mutually react is, I have argued,
necessary to thought. It is not sufficient, as is shown by the
fact that it can exist in animals we do not credit with
judgement. For this reason we are in a position to say
something about a situation that must exist if thought does,
but it is a situation that can exist independently, and so can
precede thought in the order of things. It can exist first, and
it surely does. Thus we can say that a certain kind of primitive
social interaction is part of the story of how thought emerged.
(SIO 130)
• This is a transcendental argument. Based on this TA,
Davidson seems to believe the external cause is ontologically
prior to the internal thought [though, epistemologically
speaking, they are mutually dependent on each other].
Objects Are What Is Objectified from Reality by
Our Epistemic Machine
• A much more accurate description is: First, a
stimulus or some unconceptualized (or not-yetconceptualized) x (or c in the chaotic state of the
world or as the world of chaos) in or of the
external world causes my sensation; and then,
this sensation causes my perceptual belief. Later
on, I use my conceptual thinking, which are
learned in a social context, to identify or classify x
(or c) as an object or event under such and such a
concept (say, a tree or a mouse).
No External Factor Can Be Identified
without the Mental Act on It
• This popular conception holds that, the subjective is
prior to the objective, that there is a subjective world
prior to knowledge of external reality. It is evident that
the picture of thought and meaning I have sketched
here leaves no room for such priority since it
predicates self-knowledge on knowledge of other
minds and of the world. The objective and the
intersubjective are thus essential to anything we can
call subjectivity, and constitute the context in which it
takes form. (SIO 219)
• Q: But, how to identify the external factor?
• A: The social communication.
Davidson vs. Rorty
• Rorty believes that “nothing counts as
justification unless by reference to what we
already accept, and there is no way to get
outside our beliefs and our language so as to
find some test other than coherence.”
• Davidson, on the other hand, thinks that we can
have knowledge of, and talk about, an objective
public world which is not of our own making. He
thinks this question does remain, while he
suspects that Rorty doesn’t think so. (SIO 141)
The World Well Lost
• Rorty’s polemic against Kant, in “The World Well Lost”
and elsewhere, plays a central role in his critique of the
traditional philosophical conception of “the world.”
Rorty seeks to do away, once and for all, with the
notion of a world to which experience is related only
passively. The world which is well lost, according to
Rorty, is one which leaves its imprint on the mind’s
passive faculty, which then in turn, in cooperation with
an active faculty, produces “experience.” Rorty ascribes
this conception of “the world” to Kant and proposes to
undermine it by presenting a dilemma whose
conclusion “casts doubt on the notion of a faculty of
receptivity” (“The World Well Lost,” p. 4).
Rorty’s Idea of Coping
• Denying that we can identify languageindependent facts is not the same as denying
language-independent facts themselves.
Language-independent facts are not denied by
Rorty either. His only claim is that without
identification, it is senseless to talk about them
but it is much better to cope with them. There is
no need to talk about “how the world really is”
because we can cope with our environment
without such theories quite well.
• [莊子：不譴是非以與世俗處]
My Question: What Is Reality?
• The difficulty of Davidson’s triangulation is that Davidson’s concept
of an external world is not clear, if not unintelligible.
• For example, his view that “Words and thought refer to what
causes them” is misleading. Because it means either that what
causes words and thought is what appears in sensation or is what is
in reality in the sense that it is located outside before any sensation
happens.
• Davidson gives up Quine’s view of empirical evidence and reserves
an external world (or parts of the world, i.e., objects and events) in
his dictionary to play a causal role in his interpretation theory. But
how can we identify the objects or events in our experience with
something in reality? What is the relator which causes our words
and thought? Is it something mind-independent in reality, or is it
the objects or events which only appear in our experience?
How to Identify the Mind-independent Reality?
• If our only way to access the external world (or mindindependent reality) is through sensation and to
identify reality is based on conceptualization within a
social interaction, how can we assure that what is given
in sensation and identified in conceptualization is the
reality per se?
• So, I think Stroud is right to say that:
• I believe the problem [about our knowledge of the
world around us] has no solution; or rather that the
only answer to the question as it is meant to be
understood is that we can know nothing about the
world around us.
• (Barry Stroud, The Problem of External World, SPS, 1)
Mark Johnston’s Remark
•
•
•
I shall suggest that acquaintance with perceptible properties is something
we non-derivatively want from perception, and show that perception seems
to provide just such acquaintance. Unfortunately, upon examination,
perception's promise to acquaint us with properties of external things seems
to be utterly fraudulent. (p. 185)
We too can only check our experiences against other experiences. It is no
more possible for us to attempt to match our experience against external
reality as it is in itself, as it is independently of how it is experienced by us.
The nature of any signal received is partly a product of the thing sending the
signal and partly a product of the signal receiver. It seems that we cannot
separate out the contribution to our experience of our own sensibility from
the contribution to our experience of the objects sensed…. Therefore,
despite the seductive offer that perception makes, we cannot take our
perceptual experiences to reveal the natures of external things. (“Is the
External World Invisible,” p. 187)
My Worry: Can Causality Help?
• Suppose something in reality is, in some sense, related
to words and thought, but we cannot identify this
relation as “cause.”
• Even if, for the sake of argument, we agree this is the
cause in reality, it would turn out to be something like
the Kantian “thing-in-itself” or Santayana’s “Efficacious
Reality” (i.e., “God”). Both are related to God’s power.
• But this kind of candidates cannot play any role in
causality. It is because to treat a transcendent or
transcendental entity as the cause of a nontranscendent or non-transcendental entity is
unintelligible.
Kant’s Idea of Affecting 1
• Idealism consists in the assertion, that there are none but thinking beings,
all other things, which we think are perceived in intuition, being nothing
but representations in the thinking beings, to which no object external to
them corresponds in fact. Whereas I say, that things as objects of our
senses existing outside us are given, but we know nothing of what they
may be in themselves, knowing only their appearances, i. e., the
representations which they cause in us by affecting our senses.
Consequently I grant by all means that there are bodies without us, that is,
things which, though quite unknown to us as to what they are in
themselves, we yet know by the representations which their influence on
our sensibility procures us, and which we call bodies, a term signifying
merely the appearance of the thing which is unknown to us, but not
therefore less actual. Can this be termed idealism? It is the very contrary.
• (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, Sect. 13, Remark II)
Kant’s Idea of Affecting 2
• And we indeed, rightly considering objects of sense as
mere appearances, confess thereby that they are
based upon a thing in itself, though we know not this
thing in its internal constitution, but only know its
appearances, viz., the way in which our senses are
affected by this unknown something. The
understanding therefore, by assuming appearances,
grants the existence of things in themselves also, and
so far we may say, that the representation of such
things as form the basis of phenomena, consequently
of mere creations of the understanding, is not only
admissible, but unavoidable.
• (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, Sect. 32)
Categories Including Causality Cannot
Apply to Thing-in itself
• For Kant the categories are a priori concepts which are necessary
for any possible cognition of objects. Since such categories are
guaranteed to apply to any possible object of cognition, they retain
a certain sort of ontological import, although this application is
limited to phenomena, not the thing in itself.
• Kant famously denied that we have access to intrinsic divisions (if
any) of the thing in itself that lies behind appearances or
phenomena, he held that we can discover the essential categories
that govern human understanding, which are the basis for any
possible cognition of phenomena. Thus, as H. J. Paton puts it, for
Kant “We can have a priori knowledge by means of the categories,
only if the categories are due to the nature of the mind and are
imposed by the mind on the objects which it knows” (1936, 258).
Trilemma
• (1) Noumenal affection: The affecting object is
thing-in-itself. But categories cannot apply to
thing-in-itself. How can a transcendental entity
cause our sensibility?
• (2) Empirical affection: The affecting object is an
object in space. But it is an entity under certain
description, an entity already in our experience.
How can it play the role of objective origin?
• (3) Double affection: There is no evidence in
Kant’s text.
Kant’s Problems
• (1) How can the unknowable non-physical things
(i.e. things-in-themselves) cause our senses?
• (2) How can we individuate these invisible nonphysical things? Or how can we divide its parts if
there are parts of reality?
• (3) To treat things-in-themselves as created by
God’s intellectual intuition would lead to
skepticism about the external world/ultimate
reality.
McDowell’s Neo-Kantian Idea of “the Given”
• On John McDowell’s understanding of the matter, then,
what is given in intuition is not some pre-conceptual
“bare” impression but a conceptually structured fact,
formally expressible by phrases such as “that things are
thus and thus.” This is indeed, as McDowell claims, “a
different notion of givenness.” (Mind and World 10)
• What is “given” in a McDowellian intuition is already of a
conceptual nature and hence pertains to the logical
space of reasons. There is no longer, as in the empiricist
idea of the bare sensory given, a discrepancy between
the space of the conceptual and that of the real.
Conceptualist Interpretation of Kant
• Intuition and concepts … constitute the elements of all our
cognition, so that neither concepts without intuition corresponding
to them in some way nor intuition without concepts can yield a
cognition. Thoughts without [intensional] content (Inhalt) are
empty (leer), intuitions without concepts are blind (blind). It is,
therefore, just as necessary to make the mind's concepts sensible—
that is, to add an object to them in intuition—as to make our
intuitions understandable—that is, to bring them under concepts.
These two powers, or capacities, cannot exchange their functions.
The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing.
Only from their unification can cognition arise. (A50–51/B74–76)
• Based on this passage, Sellars 1963, Sellars 1968, McDowell 1994,
and Abela 2002 deny the cognitive and semantic independence of
intuitions: intuitions without concepts either simply do not exist or
else are wholly meaningless (i.e., neither objectively valid nor
rationally intelligible) even if they do exist.
Non-conceptualist Interpretation of Kant
•
•
•
•
•
•
But even so, this cannot be a correct interpretation of the famous texts at A50–51/B74–
76, because of what Kant says in these texts:
Objects can indeed appear to us without necessarily having to be related to functions of
the understanding. (A89/B122)
Appearances can certainly be given in intuition without functions of the understanding.
(A90/B122)
Appearances might very well be so constituted that the understanding would not find
them in accordance with the conditions of its unity…. [and] in the series of appearances
nothing would present itself that would yield a rule of synthesis and so correspond to
the concept of cause and effect, so that this concept would be entirely empty, null, and
meaningless. Appearances would none the less present objects to our intuition, since
intuition by no means requires the functions of thought. (A90–91/B122–123)
The manifold for intuition must already be given prior to the synthesis of the
understanding and independently from it. (B145)
According to these last four texts, intuitions are essentially non-conceptual cognitions,
that is, rational human cognitions that exist and are objectively valid both over and
above concepts and also without requiring concepts.
Ill-behaved or “Rogue” Objects of
Human Intuition
• According to Kant’s B Deduction, it was noted that Kant's
argument for the objective validity of the categories will go
through only if all the objects of human intuition are necessarily
also objects of human experience, that is, are necessarily also
objects correctly represented by true judgments of experience,
that is, are necessarily also objects falling under all of the
categories, or at the very least under the principle of the Second
Analogy of Experience, which provides the criterion of the
objectivity of objects of experience. But if this claim fails, then
there can in principle be nomologically ill-behaved or “rogue”
objects of human intuition that fall outside the scope of
judgments of experience and thus also outside the categories, or
at least outside the scope of the Second Analogy.
The Big Trouble of “Rough” Objects
• As several Kant-interpreters have pointed out, given the possibility of
essentially non-conceptual intuitions, then the B Deduction is in big
trouble (Kitcher 1990, Hanna 2011). More precisely, Kant's nonconceptualism entails that there can be objectively valid empirical
intuitions that are both autonomous from and also independent of
concepts, and thereby directly refer to objects. Since the cognition of
these objects does not require either concepts or the faculty of
understanding, and since these intuitions consciously represent objects
over and above any conceptual content whatsoever, then some of these
intuitions can pick out rogue objects that fall outside the constraints of all
the categories, and thereby outside the constraints of the Second Analogy
in particular. So it is not true that the categories and principles of pure
understanding necessarily apply to all objects of conscious human
perception, and the categorial anarchy of at least some sensory objects is
really possible. Therefore the B Deduction is unsound.
Stoutland’s Interpretation 1
• As an anti-realist Davidson rejects the claim that
our sentences are true or false in virtue of extralinguistic objects. Although his theory of meaning
(like the realist theory) presupposes a conception
of truth, that conception is not realist. What is
presupposed is, to put it crudely, simply the
extension of “true” for the language we speak:
the range of sentences which our linguistic
community holds true…
• (Frederick Stoutland, Realism & Anti-Realism in
Davidson’s Philosophy of Language, II, 19)
Stoutland’s Interpretation 2
• Any account of that in virtue of which a sentence is true (and I do
not mean merely an account of our evidence for thinking a
sentence is true) will refer to other sentences held true (i.e. will
refer to evidence), so that this notion of “in virtue of which” must
be emptied of realist connotations. “. . . all the evidence there is is
just what it takes to make our sentences or theories true. Nothing,
however, no thing makes sentences and theories true: not
experience, not surface irritations, not the world, can make a
sentence true.” (V1CS, p. 16) Although (most) true sentences are
“about” extra-linguistic objects, they are not true in virtue of such
objects, but in virtue of their fitting in (cohering) with other
sentences held true by competent speakers of the language.
• (Realism & Anti-Realism in Davidson’s Philosophy of Language,
II, 19)
Stoutland’s Interpretation 3
• I [Stoutland] take Davidson to be squarely in the social
practice tradition; he, like the later Wittgenstein,
rejects both realism and anti-realism.
• In a letter to me, Davidson agreed that he was not a
realist but denied being an anti-realist. (On Not Being a
Realist, 109)
• But, we have two questions:
• (1) what is the role of the external/objective world in
Davidson’s philosophy?
• —— as cause, not evidence.
• (2) Would Skepticism get lost in Davidson’s philosophy?
• —— the principle of charity.
Can Davidson Ask Skeptic to Get Lost?
• Davidson believes that “to show we know enough
about the world to be able to say that it is pretty
much as we think it is” is “to show that it [i.e.
skepticism] is false,” though he agrees that “we
cannot prove it false in particular cases.” Or more
moderately speaking, “I set out not to ‘refute’ the
skeptic, but to give a sketch of what I think to be
a correct account of the foundations of linguistic
communication and its implications for truth,
belief, and knowledge. If one grants the
correctness of this account, one can tell the
skeptic to get lost.” (SIO 157)
Davidson Can Kick out Skepticism of the
Type that Doesn’t Have Thought
• Davidson is right in saying that “we could not understand
someone whom we were forced to treat as departing radically
and predominantly from all such [rational] norms. This would
not be an example of irrationality, or of an alien set of standards:
it would be an absence of rationality, something that could not
be reckoned as thought.” He is also right in making his
conclusion that “If what we share provides a common standard
of truth and objectivity, difference of opinion makes sense. But
relativism about standards requires what there cannot be, a
position beyond all standard.”
• So, according to Davidson, this kind of skepticism cannot be
understood as irrational, but non-rational. This means that it is
not about thought, therefore it cannot be either true or false.
Irrational thinking is false because it is qualified to be false; but
non-rational thinking (if it can be called “thinking”) is not false
because it is not qualified to be false.
Davidson Cannot Kick out Skepticism of the
Non-rational Type
• From Davidson’s point of view, non-rational thinking is just not
making sense. Here, I totally agree with Davidson on this point.
• However, I do not think the story ends here. Because this type
of skepticism would reply that “based on your rational
standards, you have your own right to judge that my thinking
is not making sense; but based on my non-rational or superrational standards, your knowledge of the world is illusive or
delusive. My position is not a position beyond all standard,
but beyond all the human standard.”
• Remark: No-rational thinking is a thinking through a kind of
non-sensible intuition or transcendental knowing power.
Skepticism Can Survive in the House of
External Cause
• Davidson seems to be able to kick out skepticism of the type
that most of our beliefs about the external world are false.
Because, the possibility of skepticism lies in the fact that to
identify any part of our beliefs as false is based on the ground
that the skeptic shares a lot of true beliefs with us.
• I think it is impossible for him to ask the skepticism of the
external world to get lost. Because Davidson’s external cause
is not identical with what is caused in our mind though,
based on social interaction, we identify the external objects
as the objects of a belief or to take the objects of a belief to
be the external objects. This external something may not be
included in the furniture of our experience.
Still Quine
• Based on social interaction, to take A to be B cannot exclude the
possibility that A is not B, though it can form a world of
intersubjectivity.
• To take A to be B implies that A (which is perceived and
conceptualized in our mind) is identical with B (which is out of the
mind and not yet conceptualized) presupposes that A is not B though
B can be conceptualized as A. But, how can we make sure that, based
on social interaction, the belief of taking A to be B is a better
evidence than Quine’s irritations to support our knowledge of the
external world?
• Davidson seems also treat his belief of taking A to be B as an
evidence to justify objectivity. In other word, the objective base is
not the external cause per se in triangulation, but the belief of taking
the objects of a belief to be the external cause in related to sensation.
• It may be one of the reasons that Davidson agreed, in a letter to
Frederick Stoutland, he was not a realist but denied being an antirealist. (On Not Being a Realist, 109)
Debunking the Epistemic Accessibility to Reality
• In general, the thesis of debunking (TD) is:
• There is no appropriate, non-deviant explanatory
connection between our common-sense beliefs and
intuitions about which kinds of objects exist and the facts
about which kinds of objects exist.
• But, the wording in TD is misleading:
• There is no fact in reality because reality is nothing which
cannot be identified as factual or not. “Fact” and “factual”
are concepts of our epistemic machine while reality is the
original state of the world which has not yet been “touched”
by our sense and, by definition, cannot be known as in itself.
When we encounter reality (the external) and try to sense,
think and say about it, it would be transformed into this
empirical world which is sense-bound in our mind.
The External Cause Lives Only in this
Conceptually Carved World
• If, however, there is only one world, i.e., the world of our experience,
and no world other than this one can have efficacy, there will be no
place for skepticism to live.
• If we want to use the word “reality” to name the external world as the
background of this causal world, it can be understood as the “original
state” or “natural state” of the same world. In this sense, reality is not
only not a base of correspondence, but also not an entity (object or
event in any sense) or a collection of entities which is an epistemic
target known by other beings or super-beings than humans.
Ontologically speaking, reality is the background or the non-epistemic
aspect of this empirical world. Reality is not the house of external
causes because the concept of “cause” can only apply to empirical
realm, period.
• I think skepticism of external world cannot survive there, because the
so-called “external world” or “reality” is nothing. (Later, I will talk
about what is “nothing” in Zhuangzi’s philosophy.)
•
Intermission
Zhuangzi’s Idea of Hun-dun
• The Fable of hun-dun 渾沌 (chaos) :
• The Ruler of the Southern Ocean was Shu, the Ruler of the
Northern Ocean was Hu, and the Ruler of the Centre was Chaos.
Shu and Hu were continually meeting in the land of Chaos, who
treated them very well. They consulted together how they might
repay his kindness, and said, “Men all have seven orifices for the
purpose of seeing, hearing, eating, and breathing, while this (poor)
Ruler alone has not one. Let us try and make them for him.”
Accordingly they dug one orifice in him every day; and at the end
of seven days Chaos died. (Zhuangzi 7: 7)
• 南海之帝為儵，北海之帝為忽，中央之帝為渾沌。儵與忽時相
與遇於渾沌之地，渾沌待之甚善。儵與忽謀報渾沌之德，曰：
「人皆有七竅，以視聽食息，此獨無有，嘗試鑿之。」日鑿一
竅，七日而渾沌死。
Hun-dun Is Not Thing-in-Itself
• I think Zhuangzi’s theory of reality (which is called
“hun-dun” 渾沌) can be regarded as a way out of
Davidson’s predicament.
• Zhuangzi does not treat reality as a correspondence
base for objective truth; nor treats it as a kind of
“thing-in-itself.” It seems that the epistemic role of
reality is suspended in a sense of phenomenological
epoche. But it is not a phenomenological reduction,
because there is nothing to suspend.
• Zhuangzi just yearns for a spiritual vision of harmonic
state through his idea of aesthetic (not ontological )
mysticism.
Zhuangzi’s Idea of Nothingness 1
• Among the men of old their knowledge reached the extreme point.
What was that extreme point? Some held that at first there was
not anything. This is the extreme point, the utmost point to which
nothing can be added. A second class held that there was
something, but without any responsive recognition
[conceptualization] of it (on the part of men). A third class held
that there was such recognition, but there had not begun to be any
expression of different opinions about it. It was through the definite
expression of different opinions about it that there ensued injury to
Dao. It was this injury to Dao which led to the formation of (partial)
preferences. (Zhuangzi 2: 7)
• 古之人，其知有所至矣。惡乎至？有以為未始有物者，至矣盡
矣，不可以加矣。其次以為有物矣，而未始有封也。其次以為
有封焉，而未始有是非也。是非之彰也，道之所以虧也。道之
所以虧，愛之所以成。
Zhuangzi’s Idea of Nothingness 2
• The sage never thinks of Heaven nor of men. He
does not think of taking the initiative, nor of
anything external to himself. He moves along
with his age, and does not vary or fail. Amid all
the completeness of his doings, he is never
exhausted. For those who wish to be in accord
with him, what other course is there to pursue?
(Zhuangzi 25: 3)
• 夫聖人未始有天，未始有人，未始有始，未始
有物，與世偕行而不替，所行之備而不洫，其
合之也若之何？
Explanation
• For Zhuangzi’s ancient perfect man, the original state is
that there has not yet been anything. (未始有物) Later,
people cannot reach this perfect vision; they think that
there is a reality as an entity which has not yet bound by
linguistic and conceptual scheme. (未始有封) Later on,
People think that the reality is bound by linguistic and
conceptual scheme; and there has not yet been conflict
in truth and falsity (未始有是非). Until there is conflict
in truth and falsity, dao as the original state of this world
(i.e., ultimate/original reality) would be lost and
prejudice as personal love would be formed.
“Nothing” Means the Original/Natural
State without Conceptualization
•
•
•
•
A path is formed by walking. A thing is to be the case by saying. (Zhuangzi 2: 6) (道
行之而成，物謂之而然。)
It means that in reality (or in the original state of this world) there is no path or,
more correctly speaking, there is no such a thing as path before people’s walking.
Similarly, there is also no such an object or event before people’s saying. In other
words, all things are reality’s being conceptually or linguistically “polluted.”
When the original state of nature is carved by a linguistic and conceptual scheme,
we would enter into a world of sameness and difference, truth and falsity, a
world in which “a path is to be formed by walking; a thing is to be the case by
saying.” In other words, dao or the undifferentiated vision of “wei-yi”為一 (being
one) would be lost.
Of course, Zhuangzi does not reject there is reality; but it is not a reality recognized
as a base of correspondence or representation. What he means by “reality” is an
undifferentiated oneness, an unknown what it is, an unsayable dao, or a kind of
hun-tun which has not yet been differentiated by conceptualization into individual
things.
Zhuangzi’s Idea of Oneness
• Heaven, Earth, and I were produced together, and all things and I
are one. Since they are one, can there be speech about them? But
since they are spoken of as one, must there not be room for speech?
One and Speech are two; two and one are three. Going on from this
(in our enumeration), the most skilful reckoner cannot reach (the
end of the necessary numbers), and how much less can ordinary
people do so! Therefore from non-existence we proceed to
existence till we arrive at three; proceeding from existence to
existence, to how many should we reach? Let us abjure such
procedure, and simply rest here. (Zhuangzi 2: 9)
• 天地與我並生，而萬物與我為一。既已為一矣，且得有言乎？
既已謂之一矣，且得無言乎？一與言為二，二與一為三。自此
以往，巧曆不能得，而況其凡乎！故自無適有，以至於三，而
況自有適有乎！無適焉，因是已。
Oneness Is an Undifferentiated Reality
• Hun-dun, nothing or oneness is an undifferentiated
oneness:
• Zhuangzi claims that the heaven, earth, and I can be
seen as being produced together and all things and I as
being one if we can transcend the relative attitude and
conceptually carving mentality. In other words, there is
no temporal priority between heaven, earth and me
and there is also no individuality of objects and no
distinction between all the things and me. When one
goes beyond the relativity of language and thinking,
one can entertain the spiritual vision of
undifferentiated and harmonic horizon.
Undifferentiated Oneness Is Not One as a Whole
• Why Zhuangzi’s “wei-yi” 為一 (being one: all is one) or
“tai-yi” 太一 (great one) is not Hui Shi’s “yi-ti” 一體 (one
body/one as a whole”: all in one)? One of the reasons is:
• Therefore his liking was one and his not liking was one. His
being one was one and his not being one was one. In
being one, he was acting as a companion of Heaven. In not
being one, he was acting as a companion of man. When
man and Heaven do not defeat each other, then we may be
said to have the True Man. (Zhuangzi 6: 1)
• 故其好之也一，其弗好之也一。其一也一，其不一也一。
其一，與天為徒；其不一，與人為徒。天與人不相勝也，
是之謂真人。
• In other words, there is no distinction between sameness
and difference in the undifferentiated oneness.
Graham’s Misinterpretation of
Zhuangzi’s Oneness 1
• A. C. Graham thinks that the notion of “oneness”
mentioned by Zhuangzi is Hui Shi’s idea of “oneness as
a whole” (泛愛萬物，天地一體。) which is criticized
by Zhuangzi in Qiwulun (天地與我並生，而萬物與我
為一。). Many scholars including Mei Quang (梅廣)
agree with him.
• But this is a great misunderstanding. If this
interpretation were acceptable, it would lead Zhuangzi
and Hui Shi to the contradiction of “unbound infinite”
as demonstrated by Georg Cantor. (If we give up a
realist reading to Hui Shi’s idea and use Russell’s theory
of definite descriptions to elaborate Hui Shi’s idea,
there will be no contradiction.
Graham’s Misinterpretation of
Zhuangzi’s Oneness 2
• Most importantly, the reasons why Zhuangzi’s “undifferentiated
oneness” (all is one) is not Hui Shi’s “collective oneness” (all in one)
are:
• (1) It doesn’t make sense to mention the idea of “nothing” (故自無
適有，以至於三，而況自有適有乎！) if Zhuangzi’s idea of
“oneness” is “all in one.”
• (2) It doesn’t make sense for Zhuangzi to stress the idea of “it is
only the far reaching in thought who know how to comprehend
[the differentiated 其分也] being one” (唯達者知通為一) if he
targets on Hui Shi’s idea of “oneness” and rejects it.
• (3) It doesn’t make sense for Zhuangzi to mention the fable of
“three in the morning and four in the evening” (朝三而暮四) which
is used to demonstrate people using their intellect cannot grasp the
idea of “oneness.”
“Three in the Morning and Four in the
Evening”: A Fable
• 勞神明為一，而不知其同也，謂之「朝三」。何謂「朝三」？狙公賦
芧，曰：「朝三而暮四。」眾狙皆怒。曰：「然則朝四而暮三。」眾
狙皆悅。名實未虧而喜怒為用，亦因是也。是以聖人和之以是非而休
乎天鈞，是之謂兩行。(齊物論)
• To wear out one's wits treating things as one without knowing that they
are the same I call "three every morning." What do I mean by that? When
a monkey keeper handing out nuts said, "Three in the morning and four in
the evening", the monkeys were all enraged. When he said, "In that case
four in the morning and three in the evening" the monkeys were all
pleased. With nothing left out, either in name or in fact, he found by their
pleasure or anger which course was useful; his too was an adaptive "that's
it." Therefore the sage evens things out with his "that's it, that's not," and
finds the place of rest on the potter's wheel of heaven. It is this that is
called "going with both alternatives." (Graham 153-4)
“Three in the Morning and Four in the
Evening”: Old Interpretations
• All Scholars including Guo Xiang (郭象) and Cheng Xuan-ying (成玄
英) interpret the fable as using intellect (用智) to seek for oneness
(求一/要一).
• A. C. Graham’s translation: “To wear out one’s wits treating things
as one without knowing that they are the same I call ‘three every
morning’…”
• Burton Watson’s translation: “But to wear out your brain trying to
make things into one without realizing that they are all the same this is called ‘three in the morning’.”
• But all these interpretations do not make sense. Because the
monkeys want to have much more food in the second time rather
than to seek for the sameness or oneness about food offered by the
keeper.
“Three in the Morning and Four in the
Evening”: A New Interpretation
• 諸解皆以眾狙求一或要一而不知其同，實為不通之說。
• 眾狙以朝四而暮三多於朝三而暮四而悦，表示他們要多而不要
少，要求第二次與第一次所得的不一，而非要求第二次與第一
次所得的同一但卻不知其同。
• 實義應為：他們勞神明[以求其所悅]，對[二次所得]本為一卻不
知其為同一。故原文的斷句不是：
• 勞神明為一，而不知其同也。
• 而應是：
• 勞神明，[物之]為一而不知其同也。
• [To labor your intellect, in regard to things being one, you do not
know their sameness.]
• 即事物本為一而眾狙不知其同，卻欲勞神明以求多求不一，遂
致喜怒為用。
Semantic Ground for the New
Interpretation
• Therefore, this being so, if we take a stalk of grain and a (large) pillar, a
loathsome (leper) and (a beauty like) Xi Shi, things large and things
insecure, things crafty and things strange; they may in the light of the Dao
all be comprehended as being one. It was separation that led to
completion; from completion ensued dissolution. But all things, without
treating them as completion and dissolution, may again be comprehended
their being one. it is only the far reaching in thought who know how to
comprehend them as being one. … If you follow what it is, in regard to
things being so, you do not know how it is so, this is called “dao.”
• 「為一」貫通上下文：
• 故為是舉莛與楹，厲與西施，恢恑憰怪，道通為一。其分也，成也；
其成也，毀也。凡物無成與毀，復通為一。唯達者知通為一，為是不
用而寓諸庸。庸也者，用也；用也者，通也；通也者，得也。適得而
幾已。因是已，已而不知其然，謂之道。[下接 ] 勞神明，為一而不
知其同也，謂之朝三。何謂朝三？…..
Syntactic Ground for the New
Interpretation
• 因是已， [物之]已而不知其然，謂之道。[下接 ] 勞神明， [物之]為
一而不知其同也，謂之朝三。
• 此二組句乃平行對句 (parallelism)。故
• 因是已，已而不知其然，謂之道。
• [If you follow what it is, in regard to things being so, you do not know how
it is so, this is called “dao.”]
• 與後面的
• 勞神明為一，而不知其同也，謂之道。
• 並不匹對。
• 反之，與 [A， B 而不知 C， 謂之D 。]
• 勞神明，為一而不知其同也，謂之朝三。
• [If you labor your intellect, in regard to things being one, you do not know
their sameness, this is called “three in the morning.”]
• 在語法結構上對稱，應為恰當的句讀。
• 論者如 A. C. Graham 強將此二組拆分為不連屬之二段，實在不通。
More Syntactic Evidences: “X 而不知 Y”
• 已而不知其然。(莊子齊物論)
• 端正而不知以為義，相愛而不知以為仁；實而
不知以為忠，當而不知以為信；蠢動而相使，
不以為賜。(莊子德充符)
• 逆而不知其逆也。(呂氏春秋離俗覽)
• 窮而不知其窮。(呂氏春秋審分覽)
• 為一人聰明而不足以遍照海內。 (淮南子脩務
訓)
• 一人之明不能遍照海內。 (文子自然)
Oneness Is an Ineffable Nothing
• For Zhuangzi, all things to be the case are nothing but linguistic production.
It means that in reality there is nothing in correspondence with humans’
artificial making, including language and conceptual construction.
• Here, “nothing” means the natural state of this world (i.e., reality) that is
without any saying to make a thing to be the case, a natural state of what
Zhuangzi’s ancient men know, and “something” means a thing of the case
made by a particular saying or conceptual production.
• If we use the linguistic concept “謂之一” (the naming of one) to define
or describe the natural state of “為一” (being one) it would lead people
to make different true-claims about the “一” of “謂之一” and thus lead
them to use another linguistic item (i.e., the third item or another
something) to define or describe the meaning of the “一” of “謂之一”
and the relation between “為一” and the “一” of “謂之一.”
• Since people often affirm their rejection of other people’s truth-claim and
negate other people’s assertion of truth-claim, there will be no end for
this infinite disputations. So Zhuangzi concludes that we should not go on
to do this (無適焉). Instead, we should follow what it is in nature (因是[寔]
已) (Zhuangzi 2: 9 ).
Zhuangzi’s Relativity Is Not Relativism
• In a Davidsonian sense, conceptual relativism
presupposes a reality which is the base of
correspondence to conceptual schemes or
languages. Zhuangzi’s conceptual relativity (not
relativism in Davidson’s sense) is not based on
the presupposition that there is a reality as a
base which corresponds to different conceptual
schemes, but based on a realty or nature as an
undifferentiated chaos which does not support
any conceptual schemes.
Hun-dun Is Not Conceptually Carved
• Zhuangzi does claim a kind of linguistic skepticism
which is a local one, not a global one which can be
regarded as a view hand in hand with metaphysical
realism.
• Both the conceptual relativity and linguistic skepticism
are used by him as a strategy for self-transformation or
spiritual transcendence. For Zhuangzi, there is no
reality as a base in the sense of correspondence or
representation; but there is reality in terms of the
original state of this world for people to form or shape.
He thinks that this world is artificial in the sense that
it is conceptually carved, while the reality as hun-dun
is zhi-ran 自然 (natural) and wu-wei 無為 (non-doing)
and thus without conceptually polluted.
To Transcend Physical Body and Intellect for
Entering into the Vision of Hun-dun 1
•
•
•
•
彼假修渾沌氏之術者也：識其一，不知其二；治其內，而不治其外。夫明白入素，
無為復朴，體性抱神，以遊世俗之間者，汝將固驚邪？且渾沌氏之術，予與汝何
足以識之哉！ (天地)
The man makes a pretence of cultivating the arts of the Embryonic Age. He knows the
first thing, but not the sequel to it. He regulates what is internal in himself, but not what
is external to himself. If he had intelligence enough to be entirely unsophisticated, and
by doing nothing to seek to return to the normal simplicity, embodying (the instincts of)
his nature, and keeping his spirit (as it were) in his arms, so enjoying himself in the
common ways, you might then indeed be afraid of him! But what should you and I find
in the arts of the embryonic time, worth our knowing?
上神乘光，與形滅亡，此謂照曠。天地樂而萬事銷亡，萬物復情，此之謂混冥。
(天地)
Men of the highest spirit-like qualities mount up on the light, and (the limitations of)
the body vanish. This we call being bright and ethereal. They carry out to the utmost
the powers with which they are endowed, and have not a single attribute unexhausted.
Their joy is that of heaven and earth, and all embarrassments of affairs melt away and
disappear; all things return to their proper nature: and this is what is called (the state of)
chaotic obscurity.
To Transcend Physical Body and Intellect for
Entering into the Vision of Hun-dun 2
•
•
•
•
泰初有無，無有無名，一之所起，有一而未形。(天地)
In the Grand Beginning there was nothing and there was nothing named. It
was in this state that there arose from oneness – having oneness but still
without forms.
古之人在混芒之中，與一世而得澹漠焉。當是時也，陰陽和靜，鬼神不
擾，四時得節，萬物不傷，群生不夭，人雖有知，無所用之，此之謂至
一。當是時也，莫之為而常自然。(繕性)
The men of old, while the chaotic condition was yet undeveloped, shared the
placid tranquility which belonged to the whole world. At that time the Yin and
Yang were harmonious and still; their resting and movement proceeded
without any disturbance; the four seasons had their definite times; not a
single thing received any injury, and no living being came to a premature end.
Men might be possessed of (the faculty of) knowledge, but they had no
occasion for its use. This was what is called the state of Ultimate Oneness. At
this time, there was no action on the part of any one, but constantly in
accordance with what it is the case.
To Transcend Physical Body and Intellect for
Entering into the Vision of Hun-dun 3
•
•
鴻蒙曰：意！心養。汝徒處無為，而物自化。墮爾形體，吐爾聰明；倫
與物忘，大同乎涬溟；解心釋神，莫然無魂。萬物云云，各復其根，各
復其根而不知。渾渾沌沌，終身不離；若彼知之，乃是離之。無問其名，
無闚其情，物故自生。(在宥)
Hong Mang said, “Ah! your mind (needs to be) nourished. Do you only take
the position of doing nothing, and things will of themselves become
transformed. Neglect your body; cast out from you your power of hearing and
sight; forget what you have in common with things; cultivate a grand similarity
with the chaos of the plastic ether; unloose your mind; set your spirit free; be
still as if you had no soul. Of all the multitude of things every one returns to its
root. Every one returns to its root, and does not know (that it is doing so).
They all are as in the state of chaos, and during all their existence they do not
leave it. If they knew (that they were returning to their root), they would be
(consciously) leaving it. They do not ask its name; they do not seek to spy out
their nature; and thus it is that things come to life of themselves.”
To Transcend Physical Body and Intellect for
Entering into the Vision of Hun-dun 4
•
•
至道之精，窈窈冥冥；至道之極，昏昏默默。無視無聽，抱神以靜，形將自正。必靜
必清，無勞女形，無搖女精，乃可以長生。目無所見，耳無所聞，心無所知，女神將
守形，形乃長生。慎女內，閉女外，多知為敗。我為女遂於大明之上矣，至彼至陽之
原也；為女入於窈冥之門矣，至彼至陰之原也。天地有官，陰陽有藏，慎守女身，物
將自壯。我守其一，以處其和，故我修身千二百歲矣，吾形未嘗衰。(在宥)
The essence of dao is the deepest obscurity; its highest reach is in darkness and silence.
There is nothing to be seen; nothing to be heard. When it holds the spirit in its arms in
stillness, then the bodily form of itself will become correct. You must be still; you must be
pure; not subjecting your body to toil, not agitating your vital force - then you may live for
long. When your eyes see nothing, your ears hear nothing, and your mind knows nothing,
your spirit will keep your body, and the body will live long. Watch over what is within you,
shut up the avenues that connect you with what is external - much knowledge is pernicious. I
(will) proceed with you to the summit of the Grand Brilliance, where we come to the source
of the bright and expanding (element); I will enter with you the gate of the Deepest Obscurity,
where we come to the source of the dark and repressing (element). There heaven and earth
have their controllers; there the Yin and Yang have their Repositories. Watch over and keep
your body, and all things will of themselves give it vigour. I maintain the (original) one, and
dwell in the harmony of them. In this way I have cultivated myself for one thousand and two
hundred years, and my bodily form has undergone no decay.
To Transcend Physical Body and Intellect for
Entering into the Vision of Hun-dun 5
•
•
小夫之知，不離苞苴竿牘，敝精神乎蹇淺，而欲兼濟道物，太一形虛。
若是者，迷惑於宇宙，形累不知太初。彼至人者，歸精神乎無始，而甘
冥乎無何有之鄉。水流乎無形，發泄乎太清。悲哉乎！汝為知在毫毛，
而不知大寧！(列禦寇)
The knowledge of the small man does not go beyond (the minutiae of) making
presents and writing memoranda, wearying his spirits out in what is trivial and
mean. But at the same time he wishes to aid in guiding to (the secret of) dao
and of (all) things in the incorporeity of the Grand One. In this way he goes all
astray in regard to (the mysteries of) space and time. The fetters of embodied
matter keep him from the knowledge of the Grand Beginning. (On the other
hand), the perfect man directs the energy of his spirit to what was before the
Beginning, and finds pleasure in the mysteriousness belonging to the region of
nothingness. He is like the water which flows on without the obstruction of
matter, and expands into the Grand Purity. Alas for what you do, (0 men)! You
occupy yourselves with things trivial as a hair, and remain ignorant of the
Grand Rest!
淮南子詮言訓
• 洞同天地，渾沌為樸，未造而成物，謂之
太一。同出於一，所為各異，有鳥有魚有
獸，謂之分物。方以類別，物以群分，性
命不同，皆形於有。隔而不通，分而為萬
物，莫能及宗，故動而謂之生，死而謂之
窮。皆為物矣，非不物而物物者也，物物
者亡乎萬物之中。稽古太初，人生於無，
形於有，有形而制於物。能反其所生，若
未有形，謂之真人。真人者，未始分於太
一者也。
老子 14
•
•
視之不見，名曰夷；聽之不聞，名曰希；搏之不得，名曰微。此三者不
可致詰，故混而為一。其上不皦，其下不昧。繩繩不可名，復歸於無物。
是謂無狀之狀，無物之象，是謂惚恍。迎之不見其首，隨之不見其後。
執古之道，以御今之有。能知古始，是謂道紀。
We look at it, and we do not see it, and we name it 'the Equable.' We listen to
it, and we do not hear it, and we name it 'the Inaudible.' We try to grasp it,
and do not get hold of it, and we name it 'the Subtle.' With these three
qualities, it cannot be made the subject of description; and hence we blend
them together and obtain The One. Its upper part is not bright, and its lower
part is not obscure. Ceaseless in its action, it yet cannot be named, and then it
again returns and becomes nothing. This is called the Form of the Formless,
and the Semblance of the Invisible; this is called the Fleeting and
Indeterminable. We meet it and do not see its Front; we follow it, and do not
see its Back. When we can lay hold of the Dao of old to direct the things of the
present day, and are able to know it as it was of old in the beginning, this is
called (unwinding) the clue of Dao.
Mental Transcendence without Rejection of
Ordinary Truth
• For Zhuangzi, living in a conceptually carved world is
not an ideal life; but we cannot escape from this cage.
If we want to grasp the ideal life, “we should not
exclude what is right and wrong [in thinking] and thus
we might live in peace with the prevalent views.” (不譴
是非以與世俗處。) (Zhuangzi 33: 6)
• It means that if he excludes or rejects any view of
truth and falsity, he would also commit a view of truth
and falsity. In other words, he does not recognize all
the views as true or false in terms of correspondence;
he just transcends all these disputations and thus
enters into a realm of undifferentiated harmony
(though he does not reject the ordinary use of truth
and falsity in daily life).
The Reality Is inside This World
• Zhuangzi things that the ideal is just inside the actual.
That is: “If you could hide the world in the world, so
that there was nowhere to which it could be removed,
this would be the grand reality of the ever-during
Thing.” (若夫藏天下於天下而不得所遯，是恆物之大
情也。) (Zhuangzi 6: 2)
• Just like the flour is inside the bread.
• Besides, he believes that through self-cultivation, such
as sitting for forgetting all things (zuo-wang 坐忘) and
fasting or cleaning of the mind (xin-zhai 心齋), we can
transform into a spiritual vision without the suffering of
conceptual pollution.
How to Make a Belief Acceptable?
• For Zhuangzi, beliefs accepted by people are based on their function or
usefulness in practical life. This is Zhuangzi’s idea of “gong” 功 (function)
or “yong” 庸 (usefulness).
• From the point of view of function, if we regard a thing as useful because
there is a certain usefulness to it, then among all the ten thousand things
there are none that are not useful. If we regard a thing as useless because
there is a certain uselessness to it, then among the ten thousand things
there are none that are not useless. If we know that east and west are
mutually opposed but that one cannot do without the other, then we can
estimate the degree of function. (Zhuangzi 17: 5)
• (以功觀之，因其所有而有之，則萬物莫不有；因其所無而無之，則萬
物莫不無。知東西之相反，而不可以相無，則功分定矣。)
• “This being so, let us give up our devotion to our own views, and occupy
ourselves with the views’ function.” (為是不用而寓諸庸) (I 2: 6)
• It seems that, for Zhuangzi, there is no objective truth in an absolute
sense. If there is truth, I think there is only objective truth in a relative
sense, i.e., relative to the function of a belief which is with collective
recognition or agreement.
Two or One World?
• The external world includes what is outside our skin and what is
inside our skin. What is inside is a sensing, thinking, and saying
machine which can sense something, think of something, and
say about something of what is outside.
• Whether what is outside is the same as what is sensed, thought
of, and talked about is an ontological problem which puzzles
many philosophers for centuries.
• If it means the relation between our experience of what is
outside and the reality (including what is outside and what is the
machine inside) before any machine functioning, I think it is a
mystery. If it means the former and the latter are the same
world of different states: the natural state without or before
epistemic invasion and the artificial state which is full of
epistemic coloring, I think there is no skepticism can survive and
the objectivity is probably living in the world of the latter state.
What Reality Is Not?
• (1) Reality (i.e., the original, natural or ultimate state of
this world) is nothing, because things or entities are
individuated and distinguished by our thinking machine.
• (2) Reality is also ineffable, because it is the state
before any procedure of sensing and has not yet been
conceptualized in our thinking and saying.
• (3) Moreover, it is also not a base of correspondence,
because there is only one world which has two
different states: one is the state without any epistemic
access; the other is transformed into what is known by
us through our sensing, thinking, and saying.
Conclusion
• (1) Zhunagzi’s reality is not a base of correspondence or
representation, so there is no conceptual relativism and global
skepticism.
• (2) There is no external cause which is outside our experience
and conceptual scheme; no causal efficacy of objects and
events can survive outside this conceptual world.
• (3) There is only one world of two states: the natural/original
state which does not participate in epistemology and the
actual/artificial state which is knowable in our experience.
• (4) Zhuangzi’s aesthetic mysticism is not an ontological
mysticism. His dao is ineffability because it is nothing. So,
there is no contradiction. But the ineffability of the ultimate in
ontological mysticism is self-refuting.
講座之後，吾可以逍遙游矣！
•Thank you!
TA
• Without this sharing of reactions to common stimuli,
thought and speech would have no particular content, that
is, no content at all. It takes two points of view to give a
location to the cause of a thought, and thus to define its
content. We may think of it as a form of triangulation: each
of two people is reacting differentially to sensory stimuli
streaming in from a certain direction. If we project the
incoming lines outward, their intersection is the common
cause. If the two people now note each other’s reactions
[….] each can correlate these observed reactions with his or
her stimuli from the world. The common cause can now
determine the contents of an utterance and a thought. The
triangle which gives content to thought and speech is
complete. But it takes two to triangulate. Two, or, of course,
more ([30], pp. 159–60).
The application Determines the
Content of the Concept
• [I]t cannot happen that most of our plainest
beliefs about what exists in the world are false.
The reason is that we do not first form
concepts and then discover what they apply to;
rather, in the basic cases the application
determines the content of the concept.
• ([3], p. 436)
Location of Objects by Common
Interaction
• Our triangular model thus makes a step toward dealing
with another troublesome feature of Burge’s perceptual
externalism, the indeterminate nature of the contents of
perceptual beliefs. That difficulty arose because there
seemed to be no way to decide the location of the objects
and features of the world that constitute the subject matter
of perceptual beliefs; Burge told us only that the content
was given by the ‘usual’ or ‘normal’ cause. But this did not
help choose between proximal and distal stimuli, or
anything in between, in the causal chain. By introducing a
second perceiver, it is possible to locate the relevant cause:
it is the cause common to both creatures, the cause that
prompts their distinctive responses (Davidson, 2001: 8-9).