Indexicality: the Key

Monday we address the question whether Zhuangzi's Daoism was a version of intuitionism? If it is, then it would be like Mencius except, perhaps, for not focusing on the heart? Is that compatible with Zhuangzi's criticism of Mencius? I argue it is not because the arguments Zhuangzi gives are easily generalized against any account of a transcendent intuition. I read the passage to suggest skepticism of true ruler-like Hume. It "seems like" there is one but we have no evidence of it. A self or "authentic ruler" would explain the unity and reliability of our ±¡ qing^{reality:feelings} but we have no ±¡ qing^{reality:feelings} of it.

The heart that accompanies the body can't be the authentic ruler because it is merely one among many natural organs. It has no natural authority. If we assume it does have authority, then everyone has such an authority-we cannot justify a sage/fool distinction. Consequently, we cannot justify any specific way of cultivation unless we assume some other authority besides the heart.

Anyway, Zhuangzi argues, the ¤ß xin^heart-minds ¬O «D shi-fei^{this-not this} come from learning (social or experiential). They are not innate. In other words, they are conventional/accidental rather than innate/necessary. These two points seem to undermine any possibility of transcendent intuition too. Everyone would have one and it would not explain why intuitions differ. Our different training and lives does explain it.

In today's passages, Zhuangzi partially takes back his wind analogy of language. ¨¥ «D §j ¤] . But what does he say is the difference? He says ¨¥ ªÌ ¦³ ¨¥ .How does that explain any difference. We can say "That which blows has blowing?" It doesn't explain the distinction between language and breath. Suppose Zhuangzi had said ¨¥ ªÌ ¦³ ©Ò ¨¥ ? That would give us a nice contrast of subject and object. He would then be saying language use is intentional-its user has an intended object. Language, in other words, has "aboutness" it is about something.

This interpretive possibility in helped along by the Zhuangzi's skeptical point in his next sentence. ¨ä©Ò¨¥ªÌ¡A¯S¥¼©w¤]. This seems to be a statement of what Quine calls the indeterminacy of reference. Zhuangzi will say more of it later. But so what. If it were true then what would follow about language? We could still have the distinction, couldn't we? Here Zhuangzi doesn't give us much of a conclusion-in fact he gives us a classic double rhetorical question. Would it be language or not? Would it be different from twittering of birds - or not?

Now consider ¹D daoguide and ¨¥ yan^{language:words} . Notice the close link. I argued in my article that this showed that Zhuangzi still used the linguistic notion of a ¹D daoguide. This is clearly talking about different discourse daos. What is the basis for our assigning them to the categories of ¯u°° or for assigning language to ¬O «D shi-fei^{this-not this} ? Zhuangzi's answer is that we judge ¹D daoguide based on ¤p¦¨ and judge ¨¥ yan^{language:words} based on ºa µØ. How can we understand these claims?

The first suggests, again, a kind of pragmatism. What makes a dao seem authentic is some kind of success. But success, as we noted earlier, is relative to some accidental standard of success-hence small success. What makes a dao seem "true" is that, judging by some existing standard we already have, it seems to work. (Remember dao is guiding discourse-but we could understand the dao of science in this way too.)

Similarly, whether we think a way of language-ing things (way of talking about them or theorizing) is right or not, depends on how well we can spell it out. How completely can you "tell the story" without coming to a contradiction or an incoherence. John Rawls makes a similar point in discussing the justification of ethical theories. These are not really proved, they are merely spelled out in greater or lesser detail. Better theories are those that we can more fully elaborate.

So, Zhuangzi concludes, you have the ¬O «D shi-feithis-not this or the ¾§²ö ru-mo^{Confucian-Mohist} . If you want to ¬O shi^{this:right:approve} what the other «D's and vice-verse, then there is nothing better than ©ú. And what is that? Each interpretive theory will have its own idea, of course. It could be some kind of transcendental mystical insight (traditional view) or it could be the awareness of relative alternatives (relativism's view), or it could be the insight into its essential emptiness of language and discourse-the absence of any real standard (skepticism).

What Zhuangzi goes on to explain, however, is a relativist insight. He puts the point in terms of indexicals and reference. Indexicals are terms whose reference depends on the context of utterance. They are sometimes called token reflexives. Sentences with indexical terms in them also have indexical truth values. The best example is "I". It is not the name of any particular person. "What it languages" as Zhuangzi would say, "is not fixed" My use and your use pick out different persons. Other examples are 'here', 'now', 'today', 'Wednesday', etc. Most terms somewhat indexical--even Chad Hansen is indexical as I discovered when I did a search for my own home page.

Zhuangzi seems to want to argue that the indexicality of 'this' and 'that' extend to the whole of language and thus to all discourse ¹D dao^guide. He makes the point by exploiting a crucial ambiguity in Classical Chinese. ¬O shi^{this:right:approve} has a clearly indexical use-like ¦¹.He uses it in conjunction with©¼ to emphasize this indexical aspect. When he has fixed our minds on the indexical use, he then shifts to using ¬O shithis:right:approve in contrast to «Dfei^{not-this:wrong:disapprove} . This allows him to suggest that all terms are indexical since all referential terms work by our learning a way to ¬O «D shi-fei^{this-not this} using them. All terms are relative to a language and to the local conventions of use. Zhuangzi then makes a similar point about life-death and ¥i ke^acceptable . ¥i ke^acceptable is a Later Mohist term of linguistic analysis and shows, again, Zhuangzi's involvement in those issues. It is an interestingly "relative" term of linguistic analysis, in contrast to "true" which dominates Western analysis. ¥i ke^acceptable is more obviously relative to society and conventions.

Graham argues here for a hypothesis about a distinction between ¦]¬Oand ¬°¬O. He seems to think of the former as a sort of conditional or relative assessment and the latter as more absolute? Zhuangzi, he argued, allows the former, but not the latter. This is connected to a distinction Graham wants to make between making distinctions and "sorting". I think he is right that Zhuangzi has to allow us to make ¬O «D shi-fei^{this-not this} judgments on pain of contradiction. But I can't see any basis for disallowing distinctions or even absolute ¬O shi^{this:right:approve}. What Zhuangzi actually says is that a sage ·Ó¤§©ó¤Ñ-and this is also ¦]¬O. Surely to project our distinction on nature is to regard them as more absolute than they are (remember, Zhuangzi does not favor sages.) But absolutisms are points of view as much as relativism is. From our relativistic view they may look silly, but it is not clear that they are doing anything much different from what we are doing when we make judgments.

So is there really a ¬O «D shi-fei^{this-not this} or is there none? Again we get a classic Zhuangzi double rhetorical question. Where ©¼¬Odon't form a complementary pair, Zhuangzi says we can call that the ¼Ï shu^axis of ¹D dao^guide. Think of it as the point from which all guiding discourse emerges. It is the point before there is any relativity or indexicality. Daos can go out in any direction from that point like spokes on a wheel. Within some dao or other anything may be regarded as ¬O shi^{this:right:approve} or as «Dfei^{not-this:wrong:disapprove} . That's why, Zhuangzi says, he encourage ©ú.

Then follows a rather vague reference to Gongsun Long's paradoxes--«üª« and ¥Õ°¨. Zhuangzi's point seems to be that they are instances of conventional possibility-we could speak Gongsun Long's way or radically other ways. This is vaguely consistent with how I would read Gongsun Long, that is, as recommending we adopt new linguistic conventions. But it does not help us much in fixing the meaning of Gongsun Long's claims. It does, again, show Zhuangzi's familiarity with the subject.

Finally, Zhuangzi argues, if a ¹D dao^guide is ¦æxing^walked then it is ¦¨ cheng^completion . Thing-kinds are made so by calling them so. This is a very radical conventionalism about natural kinds. Zhuangzi suggests we could make any clustering of things a natural kind by calling it so. And Zhuangzi follows this mention of ¦¨ cheng^completion with his theoretically important claim that any ¦¨ cheng^completion is also ·´ hui^defective . We'll say more about that later.