Comments on: Mou Zongsan

By: Alrenous

Alrenous — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 04:57:02 +0000

I mean occidentals don’t think about idealism when they’re touching something with their hands, or any of the things such a touch can stand as a symbol for. It’s only for talking about things far removed from the actual world.

By: admin

admin — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 02:31:18 +0000

@ Thos Ward
Mou’s main point on this, which I think is right despite the room for niggling, is that Westerner’s naturally approach causality through theoretical rather than practical reasoning (perhaps even Mises, in a way). Do Bayesian methods translate readily across from empirical regularities to practical commitments? I suspect there are some interesting complications.

By: admin

admin — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 02:28:59 +0000

Insofar as I’m getting this (the Hanson terminology isn’t yet smoothly significant to me), it sounds convincing, and actually better than convincing (insightful).

By: Going Pro

Going Pro — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 17:57:40 +0000

Sounds like Ken Wilber to me unfortunately. Ideological mind independence wrapped in a vague standard morality (“the way” morality). For however well he reads Kant in these passages, he doesn’t show any real commitment to a reading of Husserl (not necessarily that he hasn’t read Husserl carefully, but that he doesn’t try to understand him). I do agree with him though when he writes “Husserl’s phenomenology, though written so tortuously and with such show, is at bottom impoverished to the point of having no content at all.” This to me sounds like a method towards achieving noumenon….but I think he and I differ on what noumenon is. It certainly doesn’t lead to critical social-hegemonic generalizations for me.

By: Thos Ward

Thos Ward — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 14:36:38 +0000

He was just an example from the rationalist camp of cognitive scientists. He’s a straight-up Bayesian who posits that prior knowledge informs classifications. What’s interesting from my view is that he demonstrates that the essential structure of knowledge is causal inference, not the content of perceptual phenomena. For example, you know what a cat is not by component analysis, nor by family resemblance (a la Wittgenstein or prototype theory a la Lakoff or Rosch), but instead by having a (variably robust) essentialist causal theory. (This would be why racial categories are so durable as theories even when people are indifferent or hostile to their truth value.) So like Mises, man has apodictic certainty of causality, for example man knows of the causal link in “man acts”. (Hoppe frequently discusses the problem of causality and empiricism.) For Rehder, though he doesn’t state it in these terms, causality is the a priori assumption that structures all knowledge. (In a sense, aren’t all Bayesians such? There can be no Bayesian structure without the a priori assumption. I suppose a counter argument would be that there is no poverty of stimulus that causality abides, however that one updates priors is a concession to causality at all times. I just don’t see how you could falsify causality.)

By: admin

admin — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 13:52:57 +0000

(I need to find out something about Rehder in order to comment.)

By: admin

admin — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 13:51:42 +0000

Yes (to both points). Pragmatism is the Anglo route to this place, and with William James it even shares some of the same rationalized mysticism. Mou is much closer to Heidegger than he wants to admit (I’m confident there will be a thousand doctoral theses on this eventually.)

By: John Hannon

John Hannon — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 13:16:37 +0000

Another tendency in Western thought that might resonate with Mou’s project is American Pragmatism as expounded by William James – at least insofar as practical thought is emphasized – whereas “non-attached ontology” brings to mind the later Heidegger’s notion of “Gelassenheit” (releasement) or “letting Being be” – meditative thinking in contrast to utilitarian, calculative thinking. (Mou’s distinction between the “wisdom mind” and the “cognitive mind” might also resonate here).

By: Thos Ward

Thos Ward — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 16:20:59 +0000

I should clarify – while the senses are obviously deployed toward discerning essential cause – they cannot completely account for it, which is why Rehder may be frequently called a rationalist.

By: Thos Ward

Thos Ward — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 16:07:10 +0000

Also, I think there is the possibility that this practical mind-only-ness is implied also in the results of cognitive scientist Bob Rehder’s essentialist approach to causal categories. It suggests, to me at least, that what is meaningfully perceived is a causal structure (in my mind essential cause may be no more than a vanishing point in perspective drawing – an ontological implication but not something material or ideal). To me this is consonant with praxeology in a lot of ways, but more, it seems to me like a non-attached cognition in that it seems a content independent theory of an object oriented praxeology. I could be talking out of my rear and misunderstanding “non-attached” but I’m taking it to mean non-empirical cognizance of real essential structure.