A Chinese Model of Cognition: the Neiye

[dawei]

This is meant to give a chance to comment on this below work, that Zhongyongdaoist found and cites in another Neiye thread.   

 

“A Chinese Model of Cognition: the Neiye”

 

In order to give some idea of the paper without someone having to read all 133 pages, I will share, unfairly on some level, about 10 pages of quotes according to the main sections of the paper.  I will forewarn that there are soem typos as the copy paste from the original seemed to be at times like a OCR and I tried to fix most of it.

 

 I will post here the TOC , then separate posts on:

Preface and Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Conclusion

 

Followed by some of my thoughts.

 

TOC:

 

Table of Contents

Preface .

Introduction: Studying “other realities." 2

Chapter 1: A hermeneutic strategy for cross-cultural studies:  interpreting metaphors and cognitive models 12

1- The Lebenswelt : an anti-foundational view of reality 13

A. The notion of Lebenswelt 14

B. The persistent difficulty of interpreting alien categories 15

c. The relations between language and reality: non-arbitrary meanings in non-foundational realities 16

D. The notion of metaphor: a window into alien categories 19

II- Understanding and construing metaphor 21

A. Poetic and rhetorical metaphors: ad hoc figures of speech 21

B. The semantic deviance of poetic metaphors 21

C. Construing metaphors 22

1. Paul Ricoeur: "What meaning does a metaphor express?" 22

2. Taking metaphors literally (1). Donald Davidson:  "Under what circumstances are metaphors true?" 23

3. Taking metaphors literally (2). Samuel Levin: "What conceptions do metaphors imply, and what are the

epistemological consequences of accepting these conceptions. . .25

4. Lakoff and Johnson: metaphorical concepts in our understanding and experiencing of the world 27

S. The delicate notion of literality 29

6. AlI reading involves construal 32

111- Accessing the ancient Chinese Lebenswelt : analyzing

Chinese terms as metaphors 33

Chapter 2: What it implies to see the heart as the locus of conscious virtues 37

I- The importance of not neglecting the meaning of xin 37

A . The differences between “xin”, "heart", and "mind" .38

B. A difficult phrase: xin zhi xing  40

C. The dangers of "psychologizing" ancient Chinese texts 41

D. A first step towards avoiding "psychologization": taking terms literally 45

II- The consequences of ascribing conscious activities to xin 46

A. Introduction 46

B. Approaching the Lebenswelt of the authors of the Neiye:

the general consequences of ascribing cognition to the heart....47

Chapter 3: The physicality of cognitive activities in the Neiye 51

A. More than simple breathing techniques 51

B. Dao in the Neiye: what it is and how to attain it 53

C. Xin in the Neiye: a concrete location in the body 55

II- The physicaIity of cognitive practices in the Neiye 58

A. Two important passages 58

B. Seeing the internai logic of cognitive models 59

III- The heart in its natural form as the only access to dao 64

IV- Jlng as a bodily state 67

V - Countering the stirring effects of the senses and emotions on the heart 68

A. The importance of escaping Western folk psychology: external stimulations as stirring qi and the heart 68

B. Guan T C'offices" 1 senses): a political metaphor 70

C. Qing  (reactions to the outside world emotions): a tricky metonymy 71

VI- Xin zhi xing :  the proper configuration of the heart 76

Chapter 4: The mind-body problem, higher levels of consciousness in the Neiye, and early Chinese mysticism 80

I- Irrelevance of the mind-body problem in early

Chinese thought 80

A. The problem with the mind-body problem 80

B. Beyond "the mind": towards a more suitable understanding of cognition and perception in the Neiye 83

II- The difficulty of shen and its meanings in the Neiye 85

A. The oddity of shen in Western categories 85

B. The primary and metaphorical senses of shen : adjusting our definition of category 86

C. Shen in cognitive models 87

D. Shen as a lexicalized metaphor: following perceived homologies 88

E. Shen in the Neiye: a ghost or a metaphor? 91

III- Conceptions of body, cosmos and knowledge: how they May he related 94

A. The body as a natural metaphor? 94

B. Early Chinese mysticism 97

Conclusion 101

Appendix 1: passages in Chinese 109

Bibliography 111

 

[dawei]

Preface

Reading the text for the time with Professor Yates, after a while the author had "the feeling of difference was still so pronounced that we gave up trying to understand several passages of this difficult text.   It is only later that I became really interested in the fascinating craft of hermeneutics and the possibilities it opened for students of other cultural realities. In history and the humanities in general, there has a been a clear move, in the last decades, away from what is known as “intellectual history" and "history of ideas."

 

If I chose this study to go against the trend and focus on a single text, however, it is not to claim the superiority of one type of history overcame another, but at once to develop a deeper understanding of a text important in the formation of early Daoism, and to reach a certain mastery over two concepts useful for aIl hermeneutic endeavors: the notions of "metaphor" and ·~cognitive model." This study will therefore appear to many as a perhaps overly ambitious attempt at applying to an ancient Chinese text hermeneutic principles derived from a field with which sinologists rarely have any contact: cognitive science."

 

Introduction:  "Studying other realities"

"students of ancient Chinese thought are still looking for good methodological tools to tackle the elusive but fundamental problem of understanding the categories used by Chinese thinkers."

 

The problem 1 intend to address, however., is not that of grammatical categories and syntactic structure – as Graham does in his article whose first sentence we just quoted -, but that of the conceptual categories through which the ancient Chinese understood and experienced the world they lived in.

 

And since this study is about a specific text and not about the shaping power of language on "the Chinese world view," I will abstain here from speculating on the influence of grammar and syntax on Chinese thought. 1 will instead try to develop an understanding of what the terms the ancient  Chinese employed ta refer to certain things indicate about what they thought reality was, and how this understanding can give us better access ta the meaning of the text studied. We could compare this endeavor to that of a cognitive anthropologist.

 

What we consider as "reality" partly depends on the way we "carve" the world along certain lines, and on the structure of our cognitive models. A cognitive model is a way of organizing knowledge by connecting various concepts together. It is called cognitive to emphasize its mental nature: cognitive models exist in our minds.

 

Language, therefore, is far from being a '·mind-free" system of signs used for representing objective reality. Although it does not determine our understanding and experiencing of the world, through its semantic content and conceptual categories, it influences and directs our understanding and experiencing into prescribed channels. In this study, I will focus more specifically on the semantic content of the cognitive models and categories found in descriptions of cognitive activities. By "cognitive activities," I mean the process which leads to knowledge.

 

From one culture to another, cognitive activities are understood and experienced quite differently. These different conceptions are centered on a certain understanding of the cognitive functioning of the body~ of where and how cognitive activities take place.

Indeed, in different cultural traditions and societies, cognitive activities are ascribed to different parts of the body, and therefore believed to be explicable in very different ways. They are therefore understood, experienced and described in specific ways.

 

This study is primarily devoted to the development and application of a hermeneutic strategy aimed at understanding descriptions in mystical texts. l will apply this approach mainly one text: the Neiye, a collection of rhymed verse probably written in the fourth century BCE and thought by many to be the oldest extant Chinese "mystical" text.

 

However early a text one studies, however, several hermeneutic problems remain. It is difficult to make sense of another philosophical tradition without an extensive knowledge of its conceptual categories. of how they molded people's understanding and experiencing of the world.  How they were formed and used. And how they changed through time.  In order to understand descriptions of cognitive activities, we have to understand, more than superficially, the categories used to describe them and the functioning of these categories within larger networks of categories.  This small group of conceptual categories and their relations to each other is commonly called a cognitive schema, or "cognitive model."

 

Ancient Chinese accounts of cognitive activities are obviously based on cognitive models different from the common Western folk model of the mind. We have to avoid the temptation to “rationalize" and "psychologize" Chinese texts.  Not that the ancient Chinese were irrational or non-rational, but their reason made use of categories different from ours, based on other cognitive models. This demands that we penetrate the ancient Chinese world view and the conceptions which underlay the use of various terms within it. This, in turn, requires a solid grasp of the way categories and concepts are constructed. This is what my approach is aimed at developing.

 

In chapter 1, I will explain how we can combine various ideas and concepts developed by cognitive scientists and students of metaphor to form a renewed, more systematic hermeneutic strategy sensitive to cross-cultural investigations and deep differences in categories and cognitive models.

 

In chapter 2, 1 will propose a few preliminary reflections on what it could have entailed to believe that cognitive activities took place in the "heart." 1 will then turn to the Neiye for a detailed analysis of its descriptions of cognitive activities.

 

Chapter 3 is mainly devoted to a study of the use of xin , qi and qing in the Neiye, and underscores the inherent physicality of cognition in this text. I will try to determine how these words were related to one another, and how they functioned together in the cognitive model of cognitive activities.

 

This will take us to chapter 4, where the reader will find a few reflections on the general consequences of accepting this kind of analysis of the Neiye.  In this chapter, among other things, I will try to demonstrate the importance of escaping the terms of the "mind-body problem" when analyzing ancient Chinese texts, especially "mystical texts". A study of the uses of shen in the Neiye should make this clearer.

 

The conclusion will assess the value of the understanding developed in the previous chapters, and the potential for further research of the hermeneutic approach developed in this study.

 

[dawei]

Chapter 1:

"Recognition of difference" and The Lebenswelt : an anti-foundational view of reality, or life-world.

"originally developed by German phenomenologists. Our Lebenswelt is the world as we perceive and conceptualize it. Moreover, this world is too massively and pervasively present to our consciousness and beyond ils control to be actually regarded as not part of "the real world," as a mental creation or projection. (...] Inevitably, when we speak of something being "part of objective reality," the objective reality" we actually have in mind is the Lebenswelt we live in "alien categories"... "it assumes that other cultural traditions may have developed categories and cognitive models different from ours,"

 

The fact that other human groups use other categories is not just a linguistic epiphenomenon. Semantically, these categories are linked to a particular world view. They condition the way experiences are conceptualized and the world constructed and given meaning to. Understanding cognitive activities as they were conceptualized in an ancient Chinese text, then, is no easy task. It is already difficult enough to become aware of our own categories to avoid naively projecting them on Chinese texts. The problem becomes more daunting when we have to understand the internal consistency of Chinese categories from inside their Lebenswelt.

 

So he calls for "a sophisticated interpretive strategy." to deal with "A large part of the difficulty of understanding certain words is that they only make sense within complex socially and culturally constructed cognitive models."   "The notion of metaphor: a window into alien categories. I think it is possible to have access to a Lebenswelt and its categories through the study of certain terms as metaphors."

 

Four Chinese words are focused on:  Xin, Qi, Shen Qing.

 

“ look at the Neiye, we will try to interpret the text as literally as we can, and accept the epistemological consequences of this reading.

 

"Certain terms which seem at odds with our own categories constitute a window through which we can gain access to the Lebenswelt of an author, because they give access to the metaphorical concepts and the cognitive models according to which an author understands and experiences the world."

 

[dawei]

Chapter 2:

The importance of not neglecting the meaning of xin. In this chapter, we will make a few observations about the possible implications of believing that the heart is the seat of cognitive activities. Clearly, xin is not a metaphor: its meaning is independent of any reference to another conceptual domain. It is a semantically autonomous term which seems to Mean simply "heart."  The cognitive model is in which this term makes sense, however, are very different from those in which the English "heart" makes sense... we have to move one step forward and wonder what the semantic boundaries of this term were in the ancient Chinese Lebenswelt, and in what cognitive models it made sense.

 

Granted, the Chinese notion of xin is different from our notion of heart as an organ, Indeed, judging from ancient  Chinese Medical texts, it is obvious that xin has a broader sense than simply the discrete organ that appears in Western anatomy textbooks...However, it seems important to use "heart" as a starting point and only then to see what in xin differs from this familiar category, instead of obscuring any possible comparison by translating xin as something other than heart.

 

Because the ancient Chinese assumed that xin referred not only to the heart as a physical entity but also to the seat of what we term the mind. scholars often prefer to render it as "heart-mind” sometimes even simply as "mind." But this is but a superficial translation which hardly helps us to unravel the complex metaphorical concepts which account for the differences between xin and heart. Through an investigation into the uses of xin in the text we have chosen to study, we will he able to answer certain crucial questions about the meaning of this important term It is important to understand that xin and the terms used along with it were not used fortuitously: they referred to the reality of the Lebenswelt of the authors of the Neiye. The use of a character can give us access to the authors' conception of reality and to the way they understood the practices they describe.

 

A difficult phrase: xin zhi xing

 

If we translate xin as mind, we obtain "the shape (or the form) of the mind," which does not make obvious sense in the theories of psychology with which we are familiar. Opting instead for "heart" to translate xin the phrase then reads "the shape of the heart", which is more literal, but still seems to make little sense in a text related to cognitive activities. On the (unspoken) grounds that the phrase makes no sense in our categories, we are then tempted to consider it as an esoteric saying which refers to something specific which only initiates could comprehend. 

 

I believe, however, that the difficulty we have to understand this passage in fact lies in our failure to understand the cognitive models in which the term xin makes sense. As long as we have not tried to make sense of it in light of other cognitive models, we cannot say that this expression makes no obvious sense or that it is esoteric.

 

The dangers of "psychologizing" ancient Chinese texts.  Michael LaFargue rightly refuses to call a passage esoteric or mystical when it is simply difficult to understand. Instead, he argues that  “mystical texts" are often experientially evocative, and that they make sense in the author's Lehenswelt ,which is consistent with the observation made in chapter 1 that the meaning of a term is related to our bodily, social and cultural experience of it. Considering this, LaFargue notes, the interpreter's task is ta became competent in the language used to describe this Lehenswelt, and then read the text in light of this newly acquired competence.

 

But LaFargue fails... The mind's Fonn [xin zhi xing ] ... LaFargue explains self-cultivation in the Neiye as being a quest for a certain "state of mind."

 

we also have to try to imagine a world in which xin was believed to the the seat of cognitive activities. In that it seems to refer to both the heart and the "mind," xin is at odds with our understanding of "heart" in English.

 

For unknown reasons, the ancient Chinese believed that xin was the seat of consciousness (emotions, thought, feelings, etc.). This belief became such common "knowledge" that all known ancient Chinese texts give primacy to xin as the seat of cognitive activities.

 

The consequences of ascribing cognitive activities to xin tend to go largely unnoticed. Some perhaps see this ascription as a simple mistake due to ignorance of modern biology, or vaguely as a manifestation of “the Chinese world view." In both cases, that the Chinese believed the heart was responsible for consciousness seems uncanny but inconsequential just a matter of using one word where we would use two (heart and mind).

 

to assume that once one is aware that the ancient Chinese Lebenswelt was different from ours, one can have ready access to this Lebenswelt through empathic imagination. This is not sufficient: to get closer to the meaning of a text, it is also crucial to study the language it uses and the conceptions which underlay it. 

[dawei]

Chapter 3

the analysis of how cognitive activities were understood by the authors of the Neiye in light of a few key-terms... Qi, Dao, Xin ... More than simple breathing practices…

 

Regular breathing cannot be fully understood without a certain idea of the functioning of cognition within the body. It is necessary to regularize qi, not only because regular breathing leads to relaxation and greater clarity of mind, but also because of the particular relationship between qi and heart in cognitive activities.

 

Under ideal circumstances, the heart should be able to reestablish a permanent contact with dao , thereby gaining a complete understanding of the world. These ideal conditions were several: the fluids of the body (blood and qi ) had to be regulated, emotions and the senses had to be brought under control, and the heart had to become unstirred (jing. )  These all imply some kind  of physical preparation of the body and the heart for cognition, and the breathing techniques described in the Neiye are directly linked to this physicality of cognitive activities Kin as she (dwelling place, abode) refers to the place where jing will stop, provided that this place is properly cleaned: "Respectfully clean its abode (she ), and the essence Jing ) will then come of itself.  ln this and other instances, the heart is described as she , which normally refers to a staging place, where travelers rest and dwell temporarily. Like dao, jing is difficult to stabilize. In the text, jing and dao are both difficult guests, who require particular conditions in order to stay in place.  

In the same way that xin is a location, xin also has a location.

 

the process of grasping dao seems intimately linked to the flow of various fluids inside of the body, more specifically in the region of the heart.

 

for dao to provide understanding of the world to the heart, qi and the heart must be brought to a certain physical state of harmony and regularity. Knowing that qi is a fluid and the heart an entity with a location, these two passages unmistakably underscore the importance of physical preparation in the success of cognitive activities.

 

In several passages, indeed, it is jing (essence), not dao, which seems to lead to knowledge and sagehood.  Qi is also said to play the same role.  What adds to the problem is that the meanings of jing and qi seem intimately Iinked.  Jing is mentioned in the first sentence of the Neiye, but the following Hnes, though they seem to discuss the same topic, use the term qi instead.  In fact, further below, it is made explicit that jing is none other than the jing of qi : “By essence is meant the essence of qi."

 

According to this and other passages, we have to conclude that jing is the most refined form of qi and is a fluid. Sometimes, the text even uses shen or shenming to describe what happens when one reaches dao.   In one instance, however., sit is made clear that although it May seem so, it is not a numinous force which exerts its agency in cognitive processes, but jingqi, refined qi.  In all these cases, what brings about understanding of the world is a flowing substance, unsteady but which can be settled.

 

Ancient Chinese texts constantly remind us that sensory stimulation and emotional reactions have to be diminished, or at least brought under control, for xin to function properly.

since xin is a place where physical cognitive processes take place, it is difficult to translate it as mind without overly psychologizing it and obscuring the physiological basis of inner cultivation practices. We have seen how the heart, in the Neiye, is thought to function naturally only when the fluids that flow through and around it (in the chest) are regulated and harmonized.

 

In this context, "emotions" and the stimulation provided by the senses were seen, not as bodily obstacles to cognition, but as undesirable stimulations which stirred the heart. Emotions and external stimulation through sensory perception could thus be seen as disturbing the unstirred state necessary for the heart to fulfill its natural cognitive faculties

 

Considering that sensory stimulation and emotions could stir one's qi, it appears natural that the techniques described in the Neiye were aimed at regularizing the flow of qi inside of the chest through controlling the breath. On the other hand, simply saying that breath control leads to relaxation, and therefore to clarity of mind, would be neglecting the internal consistency and Iogic of the Chinese authors own understanding of their inner cultivation practices.

 

[Qing] Emotions, which could also contribute to disordering the heart, Emotions, however, were not seen as bodily hindrances anymore than the senses were... In the Neiye in particular, it was understood that anger and various excessive emotions, by stirring the heart, made it difficult for it to reach what we would call the "clarity of mind" necessary to understand the proper course of action.

 

It is essential to understand that in the ancient Chinese Lebenswelt, emotions and the senses were thought to have a harmful effect on action because they stirred inner bodily fluids, thereby obstructing the proper functioning of the heart, not because they kept a pure mind from reaching pure knowledge. What emotions and the senses disturbed was the functioning of a part of the body, the heart. Anger and other excessive emotions were seen as direct obstacles to the development in the heart of the superior level of awareness which made it possible to understand ethical principles or develop the sprouts of moral behavior in the heart.

 

Xin zhi xing as, the proper configuration of the heart. In light of the foregoing analysis, there seems to be reason to believe that, in the Neiye, xin was not simply seen as a material part of the body, playing specific cognitive roles within it....It is ever so that in the life of man, Heaven produces his essence and earth produces his form. These combine in order to make man."

 

Since xin is not one of these rarefied substances, and given that it is part of the body, it is not strange that it might, literally, have a shape! It is uncanny only if one persists in translating it as "mind." In fact, I believe that, in more than one passage, xing in the Neiye, even when it stands on ilS own, refers to the form of the heart. These passages would make more sense if one were to take them, either as a synecdoche for xin zhi xing , or at least as having to do with the human body, of which xin is part.

 

but another one seems easier to understand if xing is taken as an abbreviation for xin zhi xing , or at least as referring, among other things, to the form of the heart: UAs for dao, it is what makes the form [of the heart] replete, yet people cannot make it stable. It goes but does not return, it comes but does not settle.

[dawei]

CHAPTER 4

The problem with the mind-body problem.

 

we have to accept the consequences of the Chinese belief that the heart was the seat of cognitive activities. In Chinese accounts, the challenges that emotions and the senses posed to proper cognitive activities were not physical impediments to the free functioning of the mind-soul, because the concepts of mind and body were not part of the Chinese Lebenswelt. Although somewhat unclear, the following lines are an attempt to express this crucial point: The various energies of body and mind are extremely closely interrelated. Together they constitute the blood, energy [qi], and mind circulation essential to all human beings. Body and mind are ultimately one. This does not mean that they are not clearly differentiated. Rather, it means that the mind [...] pervades the whole body without inclining toward one part or another. Body and mind are ultimately one and ideally function as one single unit; yet as abstract forces they are quite distinct.

 

 Would however, disagree with Ishida that the mind and cognitive activities pervaded the whole body: before Han systematizations of the functioning of the body, the heart was still seen as the main locus of cognitive activities, and even if qi was thought to flow through the whole body, it became linked to cognitive activities only when it flowed through the chest, in, around, or near the heart. The qi which flowed through the heart had to remain unstirred for the heart to have a clear understanding of the world. This, of course, required that aIl qi in the body be regulated, but this was necessary simply because of the main demand of regulating qi in the chest and the heart. In no case did it Mean that  the mind pervades the whole body.

 

Ancient Chinese did not have notions of body and mind similar to ours on which they could have a perspective. By interpreting Chinese texts through the prism of the mind-body problem, one cannot but obscure the Chinese understanding of their own writings. This leads to such disconcerting and paradoxical conclusions as "body and mind are one but as abstract forces they are clearly distinct." This illustrates the pitfalls of labeling variegated concepts of one language with terms belonging to alien cognitive models. This leads to disregard for the logic and internal consistency of Chinese cognitive models.

 

What makes "body" and "mind" problematic concepts to use in an interpretation of ancient Chinese texts is the fact that emotions, feelings, perception, cognition, etc., were all thought to be subservient on the same location: xin, blood and qi , all to some extent physical, visible, and tangible. For the pre-Buddhist Chinese, human cognitive activities could not take place without a "physical" support, because they had no notion of an independent, immaterial mind responsible for cognition.

 

For example, if the senses impeded on cognitive activities it was only insofar as the external stimuli that they provided could store the heart. This should be taken literally, in that excessive sensory stimulation made blood and qi restless, which made it impossible for the heart to distinguish things clearly and to grasp what was necessary to decide on the proper course of action. Only an unstirred ( Jing ) heart could stabilize dao. The challenge posed by the senses was therefore not conceptualized as a bodily hindrance to pure mental activities (like in classical dualist accounts), but as an irregularity, or lack of harmony, in the flow of bodily fluids .

 

There were no perceived "interactions" or "relations" between body and mind because there were simply no such concepts as body and mind separated by an ontological gap. It would even be technically incorrect to say that for the Chinese "the mind is in the heart," because the notion of a mind separated from a location did not exist for the ancient Chinese. The heart was seen as the organ of cognition, without any such concept as mind.

 

To understand this conception, it is insufficient to say that body and mind were on the same level of reality, along a scale of more or less dense or rarefied matter.

 

In view of recent writings in cognitive sciences and anthropological studies which point to large cross-cultural differences in the construction of these activities, we cannot assume that, for the ancient Chinese, despite that all these terms did not form such a concept as "mind," they were still ail situated at the immaterial end of a scale of materiality. Separated from a unifying concept of "mind," they must each he treated separately and not necessarily equated to the phenomena we calI "mental." Similarly, they cannot he separated from such things as the senses, ordinarily considered to be bodily functions. In the absence of the term "mind" and mental functions to regroup these phenomena, conceptual frontiers and category boundaries are blurred.

 

we are making a mistake if we assume that the concept of "mind" is a natural category which refers to things as they exist in nature. It is possible, through this notion, to understand texts that make use of it, but reading Chinese texts as directly referring to "the mind" would be making dangerous hermeneutic assumptions.  Conversely, we would make a similar mistake if we tried to translate the Western notion of mind in such terms as qi, xin, and shen, because these terms belong to a different understanding of human consciousness and the body, and are therefore incompatible with the language of our mind-body problem.

 

When one starts thinking about cognition as it was conceptualized in ancient Chinese thought, beyond the fact that

Cognition takes place in the heart, it is first striking that there seems to exist two distinct levels of consciousness. Kin, in its general functioning, is the seat of consciousness and perception. However stirred the heart may be, however, it is always able to perceive the external world. This perception might be distorted and give one misleading ideas about the proper course of action to adopt, but it remains true that one does not need to be aware of dao in one' s heart to be able to perceive the world and act in it. In addition to this common perception and understanding, however, a second level of consciousness is also possible. It also takes place in the heart, but it only occurs when the heart is unstirred and leaves room for something else than ordinary perception. This state of fullness and calmness results from an elimination of the external stimulations which confuse the heart and make humans incapable of grasping the ways of the world. This second level of consciousness is often referred to as shen (numinous») humans are conscious even when they do not possess a shen -like understanding of the world, but after the arrival of shen , consciousness reaches a superior level: that of understanding how the world is and should be. Shen is one of the most problematic terms of the ancient Chinese language pertaining to cognitive activities.

 

Shen in ancient Chinese texts is one of the words Most often used to refer to cognition. As Roger T. Ames remarks in a passage previously quoted, it is one of these words which "integrate [...] a curious (...] combination of meanings": the character shen does not sometimes Mean "human spirituality" and sometimes "divinity."  It always means both and, moreover, it is our business to try and understand philosophically how it can Mean both).

 

it is my contention that this quest for meaning will be misleading if one starts, as he does, with the premise that shen 66always means bothn divinity and human spirituality. Indeed, 1 think that a large part of the problem Ames describes is not only related to the difficulty of understanding alien terms~ but more fundamentally to understanding that some of these terms are in fact metaphorical.

Shen ,  we can infer from its radical, originally referred to spiritual or numinous phenomena. The primary nuclear sense of shen is therefore not human spirituality, but something like "divinity" or “(ancestral) spirit." When shen has to do with "human spirituality~" it is in a metaphorical sense, derived from its primary meaning. As far as I know, shen in fact never means both “spirit" and "human spirituality"!

 

Although less explicitly than Ames, Roth seems to embrace a similar notion of category:  If pressed to find a common characteristic in these various usages [of shen] I would answer that they all share some degree of sentience."  As a matter of fact, Roth's answer is not wrong: he points to an important connotation of the character in its primary meaning which made possible its subsequent metaphorical extension. However, his interpretation is based on a very persistent Western philosophical assumption: that "categories [in this case shen] are defined only by properties [sentience] that all members [the occurrences of shen in ancient Chinese texts] share." This is what Lakoff calls the uclassicaI theory of categories."

 

Lakoff's main thesis is ·'that we organize our knowledge by means of structures called idealized cognitive models,... This is exactly the case with shen: in one cognitive model, it refers to spirits, in another one, linked to the first in a way we will try to elucidate below, it pertains to human perception and cognition. To express these two different meanings, the ancient Chinese language uses the same word, in the same way as we use the word "to see" to refer to both "seeing with the eyes" and "understanding" without thinking that this word always has both meanings. How, then, do the two meanings of shen "stand in cognitive relations"?

 

In its primary nuclear sense, shen refers to "spiritual" matters, not to the cognitive functioning of human beings. When it refers to the latter, it is in a metaphorical sense. This type of metaphor, however, is special. It is not a simple rhetorical figure which omits the sign of comparison. It is in fact a lexicalized metaphor, a catachresis. A catachresis is a "metaphor by default," so to speak: it is a metaphor because it refers to certain realities in terms of another kind of reality, but only by default ,because it is a linguistic void; it is used where no other term could alternatively he used.  Shen , indeed, was not used as an alternative for other words equally suitable to describe the functioning of cognitive activities. It was lexicalized and became the natural word used to designate certain cognitive phenomena.  It is still a metaphor, however, by virtue of its primary nuclear sense (“spirit"), which does not pertain to human cognitive activities.

 

Shen in the Nei ye: a ghost... or a metaphor?

 

Shen appears in six passages in the Neiye. Several of them seem to suggest that shen only refers to the superior level of consciousness which gives access to dao. In one of these passages, a sage is defined as one whose chest is the dwelling of an essence (jing) which can aIso take the form of spirits... In fact, it almost seems that shen is used in the Neiye as an ad hoc metaphor to evoke the experience of superior consciousness.

Shen in the Neiye is mainly a metaphor! Like ail metaphors, it follows perceived homologies between a source domain and a target domain, described metaphorically: he who, through physical practices, clarifies his heart and thereby reaches a superior level of understanding of the world is compared to the spirits. l believe that, in this case, the spirits are not really inside of the body, but that the then shen is used to compare the Ievel of consciousness reached by the practitioner of inner cultivation to the level of spirits, whose consciousness is unimpaired by the physical stirring of the qi in the body and the heart.

 

The important role of breathing techniques in the Neiye can be explained considering that the heart was thought to be the seat of consciousness and that cognitive processes were intimately linked to the flow of qi inside of the body and the heart, to the internal state of the body. This meant that in order to develop a clear understanding of the world and the actions to be taken in it, it was necessary to work on internal bodily fluids. Qi was thought to refer to both the breath and to internal bodily fluids. What we would tend simply to call ·'breathing techniques," therefore, were in fact predicated upon the belief that controlling the breath (qi ) was controlling bodily qi , which contributed to making the heart unstirrable. It was the physical states induced by breath-control (calmness, slow heart rate, and feeling of distance from the world) that were thought to lead to a superior level of consciousness.

 

What the Neiye describes is different from Western mysticism. Early Chinese mysticism was not about contemplating and merging into ultimate reality by eliminating one's body and the feuers it imposed to the mind in its quest for superior truth .  It was aimed at reaching a superior Ievel of consciousness, mostly through physical practices. Normal consciousness and perception could still exist, but to them was added a superior level of understanding developed through physical discipline. The superior level thereby reached was seen as a more natural state of the heart, one which allowed one to understand the world clearly.

[dawei]

CONCLUSION

 

This study has been at once an attempt at renewing traditional approaches to ancient Chinese texts and a tentative analysis of one of these texts, the Neiye. l tried to reach an understanding of how the authors of the Neiye conceived of the cognitive functioning of the body. l have found current approaches somehow misguided because of the assumptions on which they implicitly rest.

 

The notions of metaphorical concept and cognitive model, and the possibility of detecting them through their linguistic expressions were important parts of our approach. By analyzing terms that diverge from our categories as part of larger cognitive models, by constantly wondering what conceptions underlay a world in which these terms were used, we were able to develop a better understanding of these terms and the texts in which they were used.

 

One of the guiding principles of hermeneutics is that in order to understand meaning of an utterance, one has to understand its context. This context is partly socio-linguistic. In order to understand an utterance, one has to be as conversant as possible with the Lebenswelt in which it was made. This requires not only a critical work on our own categories, but also an effort to gain access to the categories and metaphorical concepts which underlie utterances made in other cultural and philosophical traditions.

 

Starting from particular words and what they reveal about a given Lebenswelt , I believe I managed to reach a clearer understanding of certain apparently obscure passages in the Neiye. I reached conclusions close to Hansen's on emotions in preBuddhist thought, but through a simpler investigation.  I also tried to show that it would be more likely for someone who did not believe in the existence of a mind having a different essence from the body, to have a different epistemology, not based on knowledge of essences.

 

If it can be shown that an epistemology based on essences as opposed to illusions (or appearances), or on reason as opposed to emotions, is strongly linked to a dualism between body and mind, it will come as no surprise that a culture which does not think in terms of body and mind similarly will not think of knowledge as a knowledge of essences, nor will it ascribe cognitive activities to a mind anchored in a debasing body. However obvious this may now seem in view of the number of times it has been explicitly remarked in sinological literature cannot help but believe that the consequences of this are still too often overlooked, and that our familiar notions based on mind-body dualism still underlie our hermeneutical endeavors in ways which keep obscuring the different world view of the ancient Chinese.

 

I hope I have managed  in this study  to demonstrate that the terms of the mind body problem could not be applied to ancient Chinese texts, and that xin in the Neiye could therefore not be translated as "mind" without obscuring the specific understanding of the cognitive functioning of the body described in this text.

 

Translating xin as mind makes the cognitive models on which it is based difficult to access, if not simply incomprehensible. Explanations of the meaning of xin are too often oriented towards a comparison with our own categories and not often enough towards an explanation of xin in specifically Chinese cognitive models. It is these models, however, that we have to understand in order to grasp the meaning of texts and get closer to how the ancient Chinese understood and experienced the world.

 

Xin is nothing like an abstract mind. In the ·'Neiye", it should always be translated as "heart", and nothing else.  AlI occurrences of it make sense if we use heart as a translation, whereas "mind" would often obscure the original understanding which appears in the text.

By translating xin as "mind" in passages which talk about anger or the senses as obstacles to proper cognitive activities, we obscure the more literal sense of the text "Heart-mind" is too vague, a catch word vague enough at once to refer to something familiar and to allow us not to reflect on the meaning of xin.

What we seem to have in the Neiye is not a mind, but a body one part of which (the heart) gives people consciousness of their surroundings. According to the Neiye, the heart should not make any purposive interpretive effort. Instead, it should be left undisturbed, naturally attuned to the rest of the world. The heart is always conscious of something, but in certain conditions of regularity and calm, this consciousness is more accurate, which leads to the right course of action.

 

It is difficult to imagine this Lebenswelt in which the organ responsible for cognition is more of a sensory organ than an abstract notion of mind. l think, however, that it is possible through a systematic enquiry into the conceptions which underlay the use of such terms as xin , qi , shen , and qing. l am not suggesting, of course, that language is deterministic, and that using these terms determined the way knowledge and cognition were conceived of, understood and experienced in ancient China. Even a superficial analysis of ancient Chinese thought would immediately belie this claim. The Mere fact that the Chinese used the term xin to describe the seat of cognitive activities did not have a determining effect on the way they subsequently conceptualized epistemological problems.

Language, however, is not a catalogue of a certain worldview; it goes far deeper than terminology and taxonomy. Categories shape the way one understands the world. Many have rightfully claimed that Whorfs hypothesis on the shaping power of language on consciousness was exaggerated and not accurate. However, realizing this should not lead us to the other extreme. Language does have a shaping power over consciousness, especially when we do not reflect upon the categories which underlie it.

 

In other words the world does not exist objectively out there, ready to be grasped by a language that naturally correspond to it. The concepts and categories of different languages are often incommensurable, which indicates that not all cultures have the same Lebenswelt and the same beliefs about the world. Such fundamental categories as xin structure orient and limit our representation of reality. The vocabulary of Western “folk psychology" has the same effect, and this terminology is a firmly entrenched in our minds that it gives us the illusion of existing objectively. Like xin for the Chinese, the vocabulary of folk psychology molds the way we experience and understand human conscious activities.

 

This does not mean, however, that one cannot understand another Lebenswelt. In fact, this study started with the belief that one could have access to another Lebenswelt by being aware of certain facts about language and categories. The fact that reality is not "out there" should not lead one to complete relativism about access to meanings developed in other traditions.  All languages work by dissimulated tropes and figures. Our purpose in this study was not, however, to underline the functionality of all language and the inaccessibility of meaning, but to try to understand better what the metaphorically of language meant and what this understanding can contribute to cross-cultural interpretation.

 

[dawei]

My comments:

 

Qi as fluid:  I didn't agree with this but he seems to take that because Jing is a refined form of Qi... but then why not say Shen is also a fluid...  I think it is too academic approach and not a practitioner's one.   Dr. Yang calls Qi more like an electromagnetic force... as an engineer and life long teaching and writing on the topic, that is something I tend to agree more with.

 

Xin zhi xing as,  the proper configuration of the heart.    This seemed to be a good step in the right direction.... as he then says,

 

Quote

"there seems to be reason to believe that, in the Neiye, xin was not simply seen as a material part of the body, playing specific cognitive roles within it....It is ever so that in the life of man, Heaven produces his essence and earth produces his form. These combine in order to make man."

 

But then says, 

 

Quote

"Since xin is not one of these rarefied substances, and given that it is part of the body, it is not strange that it might, literally, have a shape! It is uncanny only if one persists in translating it as "mind." In fact, I believe that, in more than one passage, xing in the Neiye, even when it stands on ilS own, refers to the form of the heart. These passages would make more sense if one were to take them, either as a synecdoche for xin zhi xing , or at least as having to do with the human body, of which xin is part."

 

So we are back to purely Xin is a part of the body with a form.    

 

He seems to not want to use the pages of talking metphorical use, although he has stated a literal translation is best.

 

He seems to recover a bit with:

Quote

"but another one seems easier to understand if xing is taken as an abbreviation for xin zhi xing , or at least as referring,

 

among other things, to the form of the heart:  As for dao, it is what makes the form [of the heart] replete, yet people cannot make it

stable. It goes but does not retum, it comes but does not settle."

 

 

And again with:

 

Quote

"Body and mind are ultimately one. This does not mean that they are not clearly differentiated. Rather, it means that the mind [...] pervades the whole body without inclining toward one part or another. Body and mind are ultimately one and ideally function as one single unit; yet as abstract forces they are quite distinct."

 

He seems to want to come to a more unified theory of Xin as physical and yet not, and yet, both.

 

But then seems to go back on all this with:

Quote

"would.. however, disagree with Ishida that the mind and cognitive activities pervaded the whole body: before Han systematizations of the functioning of the body, the heart was still seen as the main locus of cognitive activities, and even if qi was thought to flow through the whole body, it became linked to cognitive activities only when it flowed through the chest, in, around, or near the heart. The qi which flowed through the heart had to remain unstirred for the heart to have a clear understanding of the world. This, of course, required that aIl qi in the body be regulated, but this was necessary simply because of the main demand of regulating qi in the chest and the heart. In no case did it Mean that ..the mind pervades the whole body."

 

What if both are a metaphorical correspondence, or just both/and ?

 

Call it water... but in another XING [form], it is ice. 

 

I was waiting to see the section on Shen (Spirit):

Quote

Shen , indeed, was not used as an alternative for other words equally suitable to describe the functioning of cognitive activities. It was lexicalized and became the natural word used to designate certain cognitive phenomena.

  It is still a metaphor, however, by virtue of its primary nuclear sense (“spirit"), which does not pertain to human cognitive activities.

 

But think he missed this application of chinese language to word meaning. 

 

As as simple idea: Chinese has about 1/3 the word of english for a reason.

 

And while he says the work is a rhythmic poetic work, that seems further credence to the idea that you might not always , 100% of the time, get to use the exact word you want in 100% of the time... and Classical Chinese doesn't seem to want to do that.

 

 

 

 

[Bindi]

What do you make of ch.3

Quote

 

Under ideal circumstances, the heart should be able to reestablish a permanent contact with dao , thereby gaining a complete understanding of the world. These ideal conditions were several: the fluids of the body (blood and qi ) had to be regulated, emotions and the senses had to be brought under control, and the heart had to become unstirred (jing.)  These all imply some kind  of physical preparation of the body and the heart for cognition, and the breathing techniques described in the Neiye are directly linked to this physicality of cognitive activities Kin as she (dwelling place, abode) refers to the place where jing will stop, provided that this place is properly cleaned: "Respectfully clean its abode (she ), and the essence (Jing) will then come of itself."  ln this and other instances, the heart is described as she , which normally refers to a staging place, where travelers rest and dwell temporarily. Like dao, jing is difficult to stabilize. In the text, jing and dao are both difficult guests, who require particular conditions in order to stay in place.  

In the same way that xin is a location, xin also has a location.

 

 

As you may have gathered I find this most important - with the system I follow the heart also has to be cleaned 'fit for a queen,' and the idea that the jing will come of itself and stabilise there when that level of cleaning has been achieved makes perfect sense to me. 

 

 

[dawei]

15 hours ago, Bindi said:

What do you make of ch.3

 

As you may have gathered I find this most important - with the system I follow the heart also has to be cleaned 'fit for a queen,' and the idea that the jing will come of itself and stabilise there when that level of cleaning has been achieved makes perfect sense to me. 

 

 

 

For this thread, I'd rather encourage folks to read the paper and we discuss his comments in light of the Neiye.   I plan to start a more multi-translation thread to look at the Neiye line by line within the overall context. 

 

In the paper, he proposes the heart will 'house' jing and Dao.  And even Qi is a part of the cognitive processes only when it flows near the heart.   As Qi is considered a fluid, the heart is the house for such fluids.... yet Shen and Dao are not called a fluid.   It seems throwing darts with speculative ideas on the role of the heart, in relation to jing, Qi, Shen, Dao in order to arrive at an understanding of its (heart) role in cognitive processes.  

 

I don't think this is what most called Inner Alchemy... but what a study might find is that it seems to clearly be a precursor of why a clear heart is beneficial to one's inner cultivation.