Mind and Body in Early China: Beyond Orientalism and the Myth of Holism

401 Pages·2018·30.485 MB·English

by  Edward Slingerland

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Mind and Body in Early China
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Mind and Body
in Early China
Beyond Orientalism and the Myth
of Holism
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EDWARD SLINGERLAND
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1
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Notes on Translations xiii
Introduction 1
1. The Myth of Holism in Early China 22
Neo- Orientalist Conceptions of Chinese Holism 24
Ideograph versus Logograph 31
Concrete versus Abstract 33
Immanent versus Transcendent 34
Cause versus Resonance 35
Reality versus Appearance 36
Essence versus Process 38
Strong Mind- Body Holism 39
Lack of Psychological Interiority 45
No Conception of the Individual 47
No Conception of the Soul, Afterlife, or “Other World” 49
Internal Evidence against the General Myth of Holism 50
External Evidence against the General Myth of Holism 56
A Preview of the Case against Strong Mind- Body Holism 61
PART I. Qualitative Approaches to Concepts of Mind and Body
2. Soul and Body: Traditional Archaeological and Textual Evidence for
Soul- Body Dualism 65
Afterlife Beliefs in the Archaeological Record 66
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Textual Accounts of the Afterlife and Soul- Body Dualism 75
Soul- Body Dualism 75
The Otherworldly Nature of the Soul(s): “Spirit” (shen 神),
Hun 魂 and Po 魄 85
This World and The Next: The Sacred and the Transcendent
in Early China 93
3. Mind- Body Dualism in the Textual Record 100
The Metaphysical Xin 心 100
Xin 心 versus the Body (xing 形, shen 身, ti 體) 101
Xin versus the Physical Organs 106
Xin and the Soul: Consciousness, Free Will,
and Personal Identity 111
Xin as Ruler of the Self 115
Xin as Immaterial Mover 117
Xin as Locus of Reflection, Free Will, and Moral Responsibility 121
Xin and Psychological Interiority 127
From Qualitative to Quantitative 138
PART II. Quantitative Approaches to Concepts of Mind and Body
4. Embracing the Digital Humanities: New Methods for Analyzing
Texts and Sharing Scholarly Knowledge 143
Basic Quantitative Methods: Keyword Lists and
Team- Based Coding 145
Simple Surveys: Online Concordances
(We Have Them, Let’s Use Them) 146
More Elaborate Techniques: Team- Based Qualitative Coding 150
New Ways of “Reading” Texts: Semi- and Fully Automated
Textual Analysis 161
Collocation Analysis 164
Collocation Analysis, Step 1: Semantic Benchmarking 167
Collocation Analysis, Step 2: Applying the Benchmarks
to Xin versus Other Organs 175
Hierarchical Cluster Analysis 180
Topic Modeling 187
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New Modes of Scholarly Dissemination: Large- Scale
Databases 192
Digital Humanities: Methodological and
Theoretical Reflections 206
Dumb Machines versus Smart People 207
The Tyranny of Categories, Questionnaires, and Click- Boxes 211
Embracing the Digital Humanities 213
From Internal to External Evidence 215
PART III. Methodological Issues in the Interpretation of Textual Corpora
5. Hermeneutical Constraints: Minds in Our Bodies and
Our Feet on the Ground 219
Shared Folk Cognition as Hermeneutical Starting Point 220
Theory of Mind (ToM) 221
The Folk Are Not Cartesians: “Weak” Mind- Body Dualism 231
Inner and Outer: The Container Self and the Role of
Metaphor 239
Theory of Mind and Religious Belief 248
Supernatural Agents 248
Afterlife and Soul Beliefs 253
Promiscuous Teleology 257
Religiosity and the Theory of Mind Spectrum 259
Embodied Cognition and the Comparative Project 262
A Naturalistic Hermeneutic 267
6. Hermeneutical Excesses: Interpretive Missteps and
the Essentialist Trap 270
Interpretive Missteps 271
The Slide from Difference to Différance 271
Caricature versus Caricature: Ancient Chinese Essence and
The Western Strawman 273
Theological Incorrectness 279
Mistaking Argument for Assumption 284
Fallacy of the Single Meaning and Persuasive Translation 288
Keeping Scholarship and Theology Separate 290
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Learning From, Without Essentializing 295
Individual versus Society 296
Mind versus Body 300
Reason versus Emotion, Knowing
How versus Knowing That 301
Comparative Thought and Psychic Unity 304
Conclusion: Naturalistic Hermeneutics and the End of Orientalism 308
Enough of Gavagai: We Are All Homo sapiens 309
Taking the Sciences Seriously: Regaining Our Status as a
Wissenschaft 313
Taking the Humanities Seriously: Becoming Full Partners in
Academic Debates 318
Beyond Neo- Orientalism 322
References 327
Index 365
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Acknowledgments
I have been working on this book in one form or another for over a
decade. Other projects or commitments have often pulled me away, but have
also allowed me to return to the topic with new insights or methods. One
consequence of the long gestation of this work is a hazy memory of its de-
velopment and trajectory. I began speaking about this topic as far back as
2008. Although I made some effort to take notes along the way, writing these
acknowledgements in 2018 I am certain to omit or overlook contributions,
and for this I apologize in advance.
Over the years, I have benefited greatly from audience feedback at the
venues where I have presented aspects of this work, including Ca’Foscari
in Venice (2009), Collège de France (2010), Princeton University (2010),
University of Texas Austin (2011), Sun Yat- Sen University, Guangzhou (2011),
Aarhus University (2012), University of Chicago (2017), the Central European
University in Budapest (2017), Sungkyunkwan University and Chonnam
National University in South Korea (2017), Arizona State University (2017),
the annual meetings of the American Academy of Religion (2011), Association
for Asian Studies (2011 and 2013), American Philosophical Association
Annual Meeting (Pacific Division) (2010), International Association for the
Cognitive Science of Religion (2011), and Society for Personality and Social
Psychology (2011), the International Association for the History of Religion
20th Quinquennial World Congress (2010), the Conference on Theology
and Cognition, Religion and Theology Project (Oxford 2010), and the Jacob
Marschak Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Mathematics in the Behavioral
Sciences, University of California- Los Angeles (2012).
In particular, I’d like to thank Paul Goldin, Anne Cheng, Attilio Andreini,
Michael Puett, Martin Kern, Ben Elman, Willard Peterson, Joseph Henrich,
Ara Norenzayan, ZHU Jing, Haun Saussy, Curie Virág, Hanoch Ben- Yami,
Youngsun Back, Randolph Nesse, and Roger Ames for comments that have