Zen Review

1
Zen Review

• Daoist contributions to Zen/Chan ?
• Get rid of desire by forgetting words/concepts
• Wu-wei and distinction of Nirvana-Samsara
• Model of total focus in Zhuangzi
• Samurai, tea ceremony, Noh drama
• Positive this life focusnot nirvana
• But no further goalno distinction
• Fung Yu-lans 5 beliefs
• No truth, cultivation, change, Buddhism
• Ordinary activities dao

2
Teaching Techniques

• Distinctive and Confucian envy
• Story-telling v theory
• Shocking stories (no religious reverence for
  Buddha, Sutras, rituals, icons etc.
• Illustrate focus on the moment/present here
• Shock, spitting, beating, cutting, shouting
• Wake up, dont thinklook, taste, feel
• Koan Madyamika related to give up
• Kick out of templewalking zen
• Never tell too plainly
• Creates more individual thought

3
Pragmatism 20th Century Science

• Blends rationalism-reality with real-world
  practice
• Social models of language/knowledge
• Like/unlike China
• Sentence and inference difference
• Reality (Science) via practice
• Evolutionary influence way of talking
• Fitness along w/ species
• Science a survival way of knowing
• Knowing to, how and that
• Relativity and Quantum mechanics

4
Belief as a Habit

• Not internal picturesuccessful guide
• Depends on conception of success
• Peirce The first formulation
• Doubt an irritation, believe smooth flow
• Comfort and calmhow best to achieve it

5
Questions

• Final Examination questions
• Vote on test style

6
Practical Problem

• How to achieve that comfort?
• Fixed beliefs allow smooth, efficient action
• Stability and "constancy"
• Requires less of the "disruption" of doubt
• Four candidates tenacity, authority, a priori,
  science/reality

7
Tenacity

• Strength in durability
• Just a strategy of never change your mind
• Weakness in the social impulse
• Makes it inconvenient to work with others
• Natural tendency to argue

8
Authority

• Strength in social impulse
• Easy social sharingall believe the same thing
• Weakness in durability
• Change of thought leader change in belief
• Social and economic disaster

9
A priori (Socratic Method)

• Strength in lack of domination
• Each person reasons for herself
• Weakness in subjectivism
• Reason requires coherence
• As long as we do not contradict ourselves, we can
  believe different coherent theories
• Turns out that very few belief systems are
  inconsistent
• Familiar weakness of Socratic method

10
Reality (Science)

• Social, but not coerced
• Shared institutions of search for knowledge
• Publication, common assumptions, current theory
• Authority about chemistry but no authority to
  declare chemical laws
• Durable but not stubborn
• Method of disproof but believe until disproved
• Rational but objective testing
• Self-correcting we can use scientific method to
  evaluate particular methods

11
Real Emphasis Integrity

• The only method with an ethic!
• It matters if right or wrong
• as opposed to stable, shared, and spontaneous
• Truth as the final product of scientific inquiry
• Not some match (correspondence) with reality
• Emphasis on procedure, method, and long-run
  stability

12
American Triumvirate

• Peirce, James, Dewey
• James
• Makes success of a belief personal and
  psychological
• Founder of academic discipline of psychology
• Religion, mysticism, moral beliefs
• Will to believe and mortal decisions

13
Truth Is What Works (for You)

• The successful idea
• Test subjective
• Makes you feel better to believe in god, free
  will, morality and so on
• Peirce more idealistic about truth
• Still a social productbut in the long run
• Tension and pragmaticism

14
Dewey

• Social, political issues
• Education reform
• Problem solving
• Some at HKU now!
• Stops talking about truth
• Too abstract
• Warranted assertability
• What do the social norms of assertion require,
  allow and forbid saying?
• Justification or warrant rest on social norms

15
Pragmatic Mix

• Darwinism, Kant and utilitarianism
• Mind structures reality
• Darwinian context solves problems for the
  organism
• Rationality is a product of evolution
• Ways of solving problems that
• Are compact enough to "fit in genes"
• Successful general strategies given how the world
  is

16
Inquiry

• Constructs a Kantian world that works
• Change when it doesn't
• Survival determining, but lots of room for
  selection
• Hence also utilitarian
• Cost-benefit analysis
• In the extreme has survival consequences

17
Steps in Inquiry

• Habit
• Frustration
• Doubt
• Gathering information
• Hypotheses
• Testing
• Return to action

18
Only "Practical" Doubt

• Mind only "works" when habit is unsuccessful
• Intellectually conservative
• Accept scientific picture until disproof
• Anti-Descartes
• No abstract doubt
• Evil demon makes knowledge impossible
• May be mathematical, intellectual puzzles
• But not "systematic" doubt

19
Neurath's Boat

• Listing because of a leak
• Repair at sea (we have to stay afloat while we
  fix our system)
• Rely on the good side while we repair the broken
  plank
• Might eventually repair the whole boat
• No single plank is irreplaceable
• No "fundamental belief"
• Rely on other beliefs while correcting some
• Might later correct those
• As in Socratic method
• Rely on other premises

20
Focus on Social Intelligence

• Share information gather, store, access
• Less tolerant of individual "success (James)
• Science, logic and scientific method
• Efficient storage, retrieval, testing
• V apprentices, secret transmission, know-how
• Social intelligence about ethics, crime,
  economics and so forth
• Critical conformity
• No authority but only doubt when a problem
• Including theoretical problems

21
Social Emphasis

• Interest in Marxism, China
• Shared social focus
• American "socialist"
• Critical of Marxism but shared view of human
  social nature
• Main divergence radical v ameliorative
• Violent v liberallike Neurath's boat

22
"Classical Liberalism"

• Conservative individualism
• Shallow psychology of human nature
• Atomistic, egoistic, base hedonistic, amoral
  individuals
• Needing law to motivate moral behavior
• Self-fulfilling prophecy
• American character v. Chinese character
• Our nature is shaped by culture and institutions

23
Classical Focus Wrong

• Not question of individual v society
• Question is how to blend nature culture
• New liberalism
• Way to justify liberty is that its institutions
  create free people
• Self-critical, responsible, autonomous
• Not something demanded by metaphysically free
  individuals

24
Democracy

• Face to face discussion creates communal humans
• Shared views
• Mutual respect
• Equality
• Concern for community
• Advocate democracy
• To create self-governing, self-perfecting beings

25
Real Problems for Liberalism

• Non-political/cultural factors inhibit moral
  growth
• Even when politically free
• Manipulative "free" institutions
• Economic determinism
• Songs and arts
• Confucius on ?liritual and music

26
Manipulation

• Television and advertising create artificial
  needs
• Cars, fashions, perfumes, colognes, style
• Related to songs and natural impulse
• Cf. Laozi
• Education for jobs
• Free form of slavery
• Sensationalist slaves
• Educational system--teaches docility

27
Solution

• Political involvement
• People take real power over themselves
• Set up institutions with that goal
• Social intelligence
• Value knowledge is like scientific
• Social and coherent
• Criticize some onlyno systematic value doubt

28
Philosophy for All

• Reason in morals and in science
• Social shared intelligence
• We cannot choose not to philosophize
• We choose do it well. . .
• Or badly

29
Thank You

• Please stay for a few minutes to complete the
  course evaluation
• Good luck!