This article was first posted on this website on 2016-02-01 and is being re-posted as a "source article" for a chapter of the author’s new book DAOIST-LEGALIST SOCIALISM: One with real Chinese characteristics, §I-4, Is Daoism against Scientific Reason?

DAOIST-LEGALIST SOCIALISM: One with real Chinese characteristics 
(Table of contents)

 

Editor’s Note: This essay was originally written in Chinese and later translated into English by the author himself. It deals with the two contending ideologies of capitalism and communism from a philosophical point of view. Western Christian advocates of capitalism usually label communism as “atheism”, which is synonymous with “evil” in their diction, while believers in the latter defend their ideology as “scientific socialism” and criticize all religions as “superstition” and “opium” serving to numb people’s mind. Confronted with the reality of today’s world plagued by wide-spread loss of faith, ideological confusion, and all sorts of crises, it is urgently necessary to examine and clarify such basic concepts as “faith”, “rationality”, and “ideology” and their relations with each other. The author hopes this essay can serve, as the Chinese saying goes, as a brick cast here to attract jade and initiate some meaningful discussion.


Outline: I. Ultimate Rationality
I-1. Ultimate rationality: Source of all wisdom
I-2. Ultimate rationality vs. instrumental/scientific rationality
I-3. Intuitive rationality vs. conscientious rationality
I-4. Sensory intuition vs. integrated intuition
I-5. Rationality vs. rationalism

    For the abstract and outline of the whole essay see:
    Faith vs. Reason: A Critique of Rationalism in Ideologies (0): Abstract & Outline

 

The Text

Faith and rationality both provide necessary spiritual conditions for the survival of any society, as has been proved by all history, Eastern and Western, ancient and modern. Both are based on some understanding of the universe and human life and all other things involved. Objects of faith, of which ideology is one, may belong to different levels of existence. And so are the many ways of understanding, of which the rational approach is but one. It is of extreme importance to the society and human life to be aware of the differences in function of various kinds of faiths and cognitive approaches and the relationships between them.

I-1. Ultimate rationality: Source of all wisdom

All educated people know that rational knowledge derived through deductive or inductive reasoning is originated in, but more sound than, perceptual knowledge gained through direct experiences of the senses. As human beings, either as individuals or as a collective, is only a very very tiny part of the limitless whole of all existence with a very much limited cognitive structure and hence very much limited capability, they cannot see through all things at a glance but have to go though speculation by the use of concepts and logic before they can raise sensory perception to the higher and more effective plane of rational understanding.

In actual life, however, it is not always readily achievable for people to go beyond the limit of direct sensory experience to reach rational conclusions about social phenomena. Take the issue of China’s Cultural Revolution (CP) for example. In judging its rights and wrongs, especially its adverse happenings and consequences, some people can hardly get over unhappy personal experiences and feelings gained through sensuous perceptions. There are two basic reasons for this:

The primary reason is that they judge things totally by how their personal interests are affected. If they suffered personal losses or were even wrongly persecuted, they would pass a hundred percent negative verdict on the whole historic event of CP. They would take for granted any account favorable to their verdict without any doubt or further inquiry, while turning a deaf ear to any evidence not in agreement with their conviction, such as reports showing violent acts during the CP were generally initiated or instigated by those capitalist-roaders and/or their supporters, who later became vested interests after the failure of the CP and restoration of capitalist-roaders, though all those who accuse the CP are not vested interests. It is because of their class nature, i.e., the nature shared by all exploiting classes, that those vested interests do not see anything good in the CP, while exclusive concern for personal gains or losses has dimmed the rational insight of other people not belonging to vested interest groups or exploiting classes.

A secondary reason is that still other people, even though they might not be exclusively obsessed by concerns for personal interests, have a blind faith, however, in their own personal sensuous experiences and are incapable of reasoning about things beyond their narrow vision within the limit of direct observation.

In summary, the above two reasons come down to one root cause: the lack of ultimate rationality and a mature ultimate faith embodying it. On the metaphysical plane of faith, they do not believe in the ultimate reality of total intangibility（or“emptiness”as traditionally translated）of everything – heaven, earth, society, human life, “paradise” or “hell”, etc., which is why they are exclusively and obsessively concerned with their own temporary personal gains or losses, while on the level of rational understanding of the physical world they are not aware of the interdependence as one integrated whole between self and others/society/nature, i.e., the mutual conditioning between self-interests and the interests of others’ and of the whole social community and all existence, not aware of the general tendency towards an overall balance between all these interests. They do not recognize that all that comply with this general tendency are “true”, “good” and “beautiful” while all that go against it are “false”, “evil” and “ugly”. This shows that a mature ultimate faith based on ultimate rationality is a precondition for sensory perceptions to be elevated to the height of rational insight. Discussions of ultimate faith and ultimate rationality will follow in Part II.


I-2. Ultimate rationality vs. instrumental/scientific rationality

Instrumental or scientific rationality refers to the exercise of reason on the basis of distinguishing, defining and conceptualizing objects of cognition on the untrue but expedient assumption that mind and matter can be separated neatly into two. As a matter of fact, any act of distinguishing and defining throughout the process is conditioned and shaped by the consciousness structure specific to human beings (both the structure of the physical body and that of the spiritual soul, and both that of the human collective and that of specific individuals) and, therefore, the results are always more or less twisted and distorted. Whatever their ultimate faith is, human beings are compelled, on the practical plane, by the need for survival to take all things around them as objects of cognition and utilization and to pursue all sorts of knowledge that, twisted as they are, are still somewhat effective and useful. That is to say, the rational approach on this level and the knowledge thus gained are motivated by purposes of utilization and conditioned by the cognitive structure of the rational subject. Hence the term “instrumental rationality”, implying that it is not the highest level of rationality, not the ultimately supreme wisdom. And, in this very sense, science is only a tool, not on par with the highest form of wisdom that reveals the supreme way of Heaven, or symbolically the supreme will of God. Knowledge is no more than superficial cleverness, not true wisdom. “Knowledge is power”, but this power does not always bring benefits to mankind: it also brings disasters, of which some are manifest already while some are not or not sensed by the majority of people yet.

In short, instrumental rationality, science, and knowledge based on mind-matter binary opposition are indispensable, but should not be blindly believed in nor indulged but be regulated and adjusted by ultimate rationality, i.e., supreme wisdom matching the ultimate mind/matter-as-one reality of all existence, if humanity want to avoid  Heavenly punishment. The Way of Heaven, or Dao, can never be defeated, believe it or not.  


I-3. Intuitive rationality vs. conscientious rationality

There are two connotations in the term “intuitive rationality”:

(1) All rational thinking can be traced back to intuitive perception as its original foundation, such as axioms in science.  “An axiom… is a statement… that is so evident or well-established, that it is accepted without controversy or question. Thus, the axiom can be used as the premise or starting point for further reasoning or arguments, usually in logic or in mathematics.” “Usually axioms are very simple and match intuition, e.g.,‘a+b=b+a’.” (Trans. from Chinese by author.)

Since all rational reasoning originates in intuitive perception as the starting point, then it means that incorrect intuition can initiate invalid reasoning and lead to actually irrational, erroneous conclusions.

A typical instance is the assumption about the “rational economic man”, alleging that all economic decision makers are rational -- the term “rational” implying here that they all aim at the maximization of self-interests -- which is THE fundamental premise in Western economics about human economic behavior. As a matter of fact, the pursuit for greatest self-interests has never been the sole motivation for people’s economic activities. The Chinese Confucian classic The Great Learning says: “There is a great course also for the production of wealth. Let the producers be many and the consumers few. Let there be activity in the production, and economy in the expenditure. Then the wealth will always be sufficient.” (“生财有大道，生之者众，食之者寡，为之者疾，用之者舒，则财恒足矣。” --《礼记•大学》, Trans. James Legge.) And in another Confucian classic: “The Master said, ‘The mind of the superior man is conversant with righteousness; the mind of the mean man is conversant with gain.’”（“君子喻于义，小人喻于利” -- 《论语•里仁》，The Analects, Chapter 4, Trans. James Legge.）In other words, if one is not “mean”, one can well understand the interdependence between self and all others as one integrated whole and would follow the principle of reasonable fairness in dealing with others, instead of unreasonably pushing for greatest self-interests at the expense of others’.

In fact, disguising the aspiration for exclusive maximum self-interests as manifestation of “rationality” is but the externalized projection of the deeply-hidden selfishness of a few unscrupulous pursuers of capital expansion and their hack “economists” (not including entrepreneurs and scholars who advocate and practice fairness for balance of interests), who take it for granted that everybody is so obsessively self-regarding as they are, just as the Chinese saying goes, “gauging the heart of a man of honor with one’s own mean measure” (“以小人之心、度君子之腹”) or “stooping to prostitute oneself while hoping at the same time to have a memorial arch erected in his/her honor” (“既要做婊子、又要立牌坊”). By hiding under the cloak of rationality the motive that they “intuitively” feel to be true in their heart but sound ignoble to others, they think they can deceive themselves as well as others, thus securing both material wealth and spiritual peace of mind.

It has been universally known how much injustice has been given rise to and how many people victimized by economic theories “logically” deduced from such a starting point. This should alert us to trace all conclusions reached through “rational” speculations back to their initial intuitive ideas at the starting point and see if they can hold up to scrutiny. If a premise is questionable, then all the following conclusions should be doubted, if not to be fooled by “rationalism”. Social reality has witnessed too high costs for such blind faith.

(2) The second connotation in the term “intuitive rationality” is: A rational height of cognition can also be reached through intuitive experiences under certain circumstances, not necessarily through speculation using concepts and logic. For instance, illiterate old peasants of the past working all year round on the land, starting the day at sunrise and taking rest at sunset, getting busy or slowing down with the change of seasons, did not have such abstract concepts as “nature”, “Yin-Yang”, and “cycle” in their minds but decades of intuitive experiences gave them the feel of the oneness between man and nature and between the alternating phases of growth and decline of everything. Many of them, being in intimate communion with nature, actually attained a spiritual height close to that of ultimate rationality. That was why, in spite of the strenuous, scanty, and uneventful nature of their life, they could maintain a carefree, easy, contented and cheerful state of mind, and seldom fell victim to such psychological diseases as depression or bipolar disorder, which are so typical and prevalent in today’s “civilized” society. What is so ironical is that today’s human beings, with modernization and popularization of science and education, are stuck with concepts rooted in instrumental rationality characterized by an atomistic, fragmentized, and/or mechanically monolithic way of thinking, i.e., linear, “flat”, or lacking in dimensions. Hence, they are getting more and more alienated from spiritual experiences of man-nature and inter-human oneness. They are so much richer in their material gratification than country folks of old times but as much poorer in spiritual contentment, suffering from psychological imbalances due to collapse of faith and lack of ultimate (integrative) rationality. Many people are spiritually disoriented, blank, or depressed, or impetuous, and tend to go to extremes, or even go crazy without self-awareness. While concepts and logical reasoning should not be dismissed as unimportant, it is even more important to realize that sensory intuition and rational perception are not worlds apart, still less mutually exclusive.

Somewhat in contrast to intuitive rationality can be called conscientious rationality, which also has two connotations as follows:

(1) A person can be considered as conscientiously rational, if he is aware of the limitations of instrumental rationality and of its origin in sensory intuition short of being tested by the results of practice. Conscientious rationality functions in two ways: guarding against blind faith in instrumental rationality lest it should bring disasters to humanity, while making full use of it to benefit people.

(2) The reliability of instrumental rationality depends on the guidance of and regulation by ultimate rationality. Therefore, conscientious rationality is also embodied in conscientiously elevating oneself from lower levels of cognition to higher ones, i.e., not only from sensuous perception to rational understanding, but also from that of instrumental rationality to that of ultimate rationality. Ultimate rationality is the yardstick by which to examine and judge about the reliability, including degrees of and preconditions and accompanying conditions for such reliability, of all axioms and premises (from sensuous intuition), and all processes, principles and results of reasoning, including laws of formal logic and conclusions derived thereby.

For instance, the presuppositions about “scarcity of resources”, which actually rationalizes human greed, and about “the rational economic man” should be dismissed as false premises and invalid foundation for scientific economics. Consequently, capitalist economics on the whole should also be discredited (except certain parts that may be used after adjustment to fit different contexts).

For another example, the law of non-contradiction in formal logic “the two propositions ‘A is B’ and ‘A is not B’ are mutually exclusive” can hold water only under certain conditions. Without consideration of such conditions, it can also lead to absurd conclusions.


I-4. Sensory intuition vs. integrated intuition

While it’s easier to understand “sensory intuition” and its significance to rational understanding of things has been mentioned above, it is also important to know that all intuitive perceptions are not based only on sensory experiences. Perceptions resulting from rational speculations can also serve as the basis for higher-level intuition, that can be termed “integrated intuition” because it has been achieved after integrating and also transcending perceptions from all lower (sensory as well as rational) levels. This can be evidenced by scholarly descriptions of Buddhists’ experiences in spiritual practice:

“Buddhism distinguishes between theoretical speculation and spiritual practice, and also between interpretive understanding (解悟) and adhigama (证悟, direct realization without speculation). It requires practitioners to raise themselves from the former level to the latter, the latter being the sublimation and purpose of the former

“Prajna (般若)… is essentially a kind of mystic intuition that transcends sensory and rational perceptions… Pratyaksa (现量)  means to perceive the svalaksana (自相) of the object by excluding differentiative and speculative cognition and, therefore, is a kind of direct awareness, i.e., intuition.” (Trans. by author from方立天：《中国佛教哲学要义》，中国人民大学出版社，2002，Vol. II，P. 1035。)

“‘Perfect mergence of triple truth’ (圆融三谛) used by Zhi Yi (智顗, Buddhist thinker and master of China’s Sui dynasty – note by author), as an approach to spiritual perception through visualization, is essentially an intuitive one. Perfect mergence requires intuition; only intuition can accommodate perfect mergence. In a word, perfect mergence is nothing but intuition. The visualization of triple truth in perfect mergence has the following definitive aspects: A) Simultaneity in terms of timing, i.e., awareness of “intangibility”, “false tangibility”, “neither/nor” (空、假、中) at the same time, not in a sequence from that of intangibility to that of false tangibility and lastly to that of neither/nor, that is, sudden realization with no time interval, no step-by-step progressivity. B) Directness in terms of proceeding, i.e., direct penetration through appearance to the reality of ‘intangibility, false tangibility, neither/nor’ by transcending thinking in words. It is the practitioner’s realization in his inner soul of the truth about ultimate reality through contemplative meditation, i.e., not a regular act of getting to know about specific external objects, but a special kind of cognitive act typical of religious practice. C) Holisticity and mutual inclusiveness in terms of the content, i.e., the three concepts of ‘intangibility, false tangibility, neither/nor’ make up what is realized as one holistic whole, not as a patch-up of separate things. It is because of the inseparable relatedness and mutual inclusiveness within the triple set that the three aspects of the truth can be realized as an integrated whole. This ‘inseparable relatedness and mutual inclusiveness’ is also something original in Zhi Yi’s intuitive awareness.” (Ibid. P. 1194.)

While the “interpretive understanding” mentioned above is a kind of understanding attained through the use of concepts and logical reasoning on the rational level of consciousness, “adhigama” is nothing but intuition; but this kind of intuition, which is based on and at the same time transcends a rational interpretation of things and hits the truth point-blank, can be termed “integrated intuition”. In Zhi Yi’s view, the directness in his intuition (whose Chinese equivalent “直觉” literally means “direct awareness”) lies in all the three aspects of timing (“simultaneity”), process (transcending conceptual interpretation) and content (“inseparable relatedness” and “mutual inclusiveness”), which means no differentiation whatsoever, whether in terms of time, or of space or of the process, i.e., “perfect mergence”.


I-5. Rationality vs. rationalism

The above discussion on the complex inter-relationships of mutual conditioning and penetration between “sensory perception”, “rational perception” and “intuitive perception” indicates that such concepts are relative in nature, just as all concepts are. Therefore, all rational perceptions are not to be believed in blindly. A blind faith in the power of rationality is called “rationalism”.

Rationality is distinguished from all other cognitive approaches mainly by its use of concepts and logic in deductive, inductive and analogical reasoning, but it is not the sole effective way of getting to know about things in the world. If its importance is overstated to such a degree as to belittle and reject other cognitive approaches and their achievements, then it becomes a kind of rationalism that should be discredited.

Concretely speaking, rationalism is inadequate in the following three ways:

(1) Failure to see the existence and importance of ultimate rationality (as manifested in the ultimate faith in mind-matter oneness), regarding pragmatic instrumental rationality (based on mind-matter opposition) as the sole and whole manifestation of humans’ reasoning power. If ultimate rationality is acknowledged as the supreme regulator of instrumental rationality, blind faith in the latter would then lose ground. In this sense, rationalism is synonymous with “instrumental rationalism”, i.e., blind faith in instrumental rationality.

(2) Failure to see that rationality is always founded on sensory and intuitive experiences as its precondition and starting point and peaks in ultimate rationality as its highest attainment, supreme judge and ultimate destination, thus always trying to break free of constraints of a mature ultimate faith, of judgments by ultimate rationality and of tests by human historic practice.

(3) Failure to see that formal logic as its indispensable tool is applicable only to phenomena in the physical world and lacks the power for providing an ontological discourse about the metaphysical world, i.e., the ultimate reality of all existence. A typical example is Buddhists’ saying “Those who seek Dharma should seek nothing” (Ibid. P. 481.), for, whereas it brings to light the very pivotal juncture in the spiritual journey of a practitioner from seeking something to seeking nothing, the first and second halves of the sentence, if judged by formal logic, would seem inconsistent and so against one of its basic laws. But the inadequacy actually lies with formal logic and instrumental rationality, not with the spiritual experience of a Buddhist.

This is why, while properly upholding rationality, it is imperative to censure and discredit rationalism for its blind faith in instrumental and scientific rationality.

As a matter of fact, what has been discussed above shows that the three cognitive approaches, i.e., sensory, rational and intuitive, while distinguishable, are also inseparable from one another, being interdependent and inter-penetrating. Their differentiation is, ultimately speaking, man-induced for the purpose of a clearer understanding of his own cognitive processes and results to avoid traps of one-sidedness and blind faith in oneself. The three-phase process from sensory intuition to rational speculation to integrated intuition is not one of discontinuous “jumping steps” but a coherent one of upgrading of awareness from that of the partial to that of the overall, and from that of the apparent to that of the real behind it. The inter-penetration and complementarity between the three is the epistemological precondition for the shaping up of ultimate integrative rationality, a mature ultimate faith based on it, and ideologies that are somewhat self-consistent and beneficial to human welfare.