Seeing the World like a Sage: Mengzi on Cultivating Perception

Seeing the World like a Sage: Mengzi on Cultivating Perception

Speaker: Franklin Perkins

2023.12.11

问题：

1, how can emotions be cultivated?

2, dependence of judgment on the way the world appears to us (e.g. bias, imagination).

作者认为，孟子关注，我们如何perceive事物。

孟子常常使用类比论证，问题：

1, 孟子如何认为情感的cognitive respect?

2, Analogy argument is not obvious, needing further arguments

回应：重要培养圣人的perception: cultivating sagely perception. 即，孟子认为，要培养适当的感知方式（推），如恶恶臭，如好好色。

文本例子：乍见；3A5, the corpse of a parent; 1A7, seeing as ... (seeing an ox)

Sagely perception: 

1，禹思天下有溺者，由己溺之也；稷思天下有饥者，由己饥之也，是以如是其急也。禹、稷、颜子易地则皆然。

2，思天下之民匹夫匹妇有不与被尧舜之泽者，若己推而内之沟中，其自任以天下之重也。

A more plausible way to read these lines is in terms of how sages experience the world. We all sometimes experience events as matters of our own responsibility; sages cultivate themselves so that all suffering and injustice is experienced in that same way.

summary

one important aspect of self-cultivation for Mengzi is cultivating oneself so that the world appears in a certain way

Mengzi advocates changing emotional responses through addressing cognitive or evaluative element, but his focus is on cultivating the ways that the world appears to us, appraisals or evaluations that are implicit and not deliberate one strategy is getting people to see one event in the way that they see another not arguments by analogy but techniques for inducing a change inspect perception, or as Wittgenstein says,“lighting up a new aspect,” something like switching from seeing an image as of a rabbit to seeing it as of a duck.

Last question: how is sagely perception justified?

Because they are accurate or true. 7B24

具体而言：我们对世界的感知具有一定的倾向性preference。

Mengzi's goal is to see things in a certain way【如圣人那样感知】

与庄子比较。如：

成心；

魏王贻我大瓠之种，我树之成，而实五石……

Zhuangzian sagely perception: 

1, unbiased mirror;

2, having things appear more enjoyable.