Chris Fraser

The article proposes an account of the prevailing classical Chinese conception of reasoning and argumentation that grounds it in a semantic theory and epistemology centered on drawing distinctions between the similar and dissimilar kinds of things that do or do not fall within the extension of ‘names’. The article presents two novel interpretive hypotheses. First, for pre-Hàn Chinese thinkers, the functional role associated with the logical copula is filled by a general notion of similarity or sameness. Second, these thinkers’ basic explanation of reasoning is that it is a process of moving from a comparison of whether something is similar to a ‘model’ or ‘standard’ to a judgment about whether that thing is part of a certain kind. Classical texts treat judgment as the attitude of predicating a ‘name’ of something, or, equivalently, of distinguishing whether something is the kind of thing denoted by a certain term. Reasoning is treated as a process of considering how some acts of term predication, or drawing distinctions, normatively commit one to making further, analogous predications or drawing further, analogous distinctions. Inference is thus understood as the act of distinguishing something as a certain kind of thing as a result of having distinguished it as similar to a relevant ‘model’ or ‘standard’. The article concludes by summarizing the consequences of the proposed account of early Chinese semantic and logical theories for the interpretation of other areas of classical Chinese thought.

John Searle’s “thesis of the Background” is an attempt to articulate the role of nonintentional capacities---know-how, skills, and abilities---in constituting intentional phenomena. This essay applies Searle’s notion of the Background to shed light on the Daoist notion of w’u-w’ei---“non-action” or non-intentional action---and to help clarify the sort of activity that might originally have inspired the w’u-w’ei ideal. I draw on Searle’s work and the original Chinese sources to develop a defensible conception of a w’u-w’ei-like state that may play an intrinsically and instrumentally valuable role in the exercise of agency. At the same time, however, I argue that Searle’s view that “Intentionality rises to the level of the Background abilities” convincingly explains why the conception of w’u-w’ei presented in ancient texts is untenable. W’u-w’ei-like states can generally occur only as components of an intentional flow of activity, and thus they are not fundamentally nonintentional

The article assesses Chad Hansen's arguments that both early and later Moist texts apply only pragmatic, not semantic, terms of evaluation and treat “appropriate word or language usage,” not semantic truth. I argue that the early Moist “three standards” are indeed criteria of a general notion of correct dao 道 , not specifically of truth. However, as I explain, their application may include questions of truth. I show in detail how later Moist texts employ terms with the same expressive role as “ is true.” Thus, contra Hansen, the Moists can justifiably be said to have a concept of semantic truth

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On Wu-wei as a Unifying MetaphorChris FraserEffortless Action: Wu-wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China. By Edward Slingerland. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 352. $60.00.This provocative work is the most ambitious general study of pre-Qin thought to appear in more than a decade. It deals with what is increasingly recognized as one of the period's key themes, the ethical ideal of perfected action and the processes of cultivation, or uncultivation, by which it might be achieved. The book has two specific aims, one substantive, one methodological (p. vii). The substantive aim is to show that the notion of wu-wei, which Slingerland renders as "effortless action," functioned as a shared ideal and problematic for both Daoists and Confucians and that internal tensions in this ideal motivated much of the development of Warring States thought (p. 5). The methodological aim is to illustrate the fruitfulness of conceptual-metaphor theory, familiar from the work of Lakoff and Johnson, by employing it to articulate and support the book's substantive theses (p. vii).For Slingerland, wu-wei is "a state of personal harmony in which actions flow freely and instantly from one's spontaneous inclinations... and yet nonetheless accord perfectly with the dictates of the situation at hand, display an almost supernatural efficacy, and (in the Confucian context at least) harmonize with the demands of conventional morality" (p. 7). Slingerland expands on this characterization in various ways, without making it entirely clear how all the features he identifies fit together. On the one hand, he explains that wu-wei is a phenomenological feature of the agent's subjective mental state: "wu-wei properly refers not to what is actually happening (or not happening) in the realm of observable action but rather to... the phenomenological state of the doer" (p. 7), primarily one of effortlessness and unselfconsciousness (pp. 29-33). But wu-wei is also "action that... accords in every particular with the normative order of the cosmos" (p. 5), so beyond its phenomenological features, it must include an objective normative component as well. Another remark suggests that wu-wei fundamentally is not a phenomenological state after all, since "it represents not a transitory state but rather a set of dispositions" (p. 7). Probably these various statements are meant to emphasize that the crux of wu-wei is to achieve and sustain a certain sort of psychological state, which then reliably generates effortless, normatively appropriate, efficacious action.The phrase 'wu-wei' plays essentially no role in Confucian texts and is absent from large chunks of the Zhuangzi. So Slingerland's thesis that wu-wei is the joint [End Page 97] ideal of both Daoist and Confucian thought faces a daunting justificatory challenge, which he proposes to meet by applying conceptual metaphor theory (p. 10). On his interpretation, wu-wei is not to be understood literally, as "non-doing," since in the state denoted by wu-wei, the agent is not actually inactive, doing nothing at all (p. 11). This gap between literal meaning and actual reference indicates that the term 'wu-wei' functions metaphorically, referring to "a metaphorically conceived situation" in which an action occurs even though the agent exerts no effort (p. 11). Slingerland hypothesizes that wu-wei became a technical term for effortless action because it is the most general of a network of conceptual metaphors for effortlessness and unselfconsciousness, including families of metaphors for "following" (p. 29), "ease" (p. 30), and "forgetting" (p. 33). This network expresses a unified, "deeper conceptual structure," appeal to which justifies the claim that "apparently diverse ideals of perfected action" are in fact articulations and developments of a single metaphorically conceived ideal, though the term denoting it—'wu-wei'—may not appear in a particular text (p. 11).Once we have a grip on the conceptual structure of wu-wei through the families of metaphors that constitute it, we can identify wu-wei as a central problematic of pre-Qin thought and trace its development by examining the use of these metaphors in texts from the Book of Odes and the Book of History (chapter 1) through the Xunzi (chapter 7). Each...

Summary. Analyses of the Mohist triads tend to rely mainly on observations about linguistic or rhetorical features. In this study, I aim to supplement such research by offering observations about the thematic content of the Shang- xian ©|½å and Shangtong ©|¦P triads (MZ 8-10 and 11-13). I argue that my observations are best explained by the hypothesis that the essays in both triads were compiled in the order shang-zhong-xia ¤W¤¤¤U . I also suggest that the writers of the later texts probably had access to the earlier ones.