Note. This is a machine-assisted translation of a Chinese original. Where wording matters, please consult the Chinese original.
Tianwen · IV · How do we cognise this world?
If "in the beginning there were no things", and the myriad things do not exist, why is it that we see such a rich and varied world?
When we see something, we usually take it for granted that it is because the thing is there, and so I see it. Essence comes first, and essence then produces phenomena. In ordinary use this cognitive model seems unproblematic: there is a flower by the road, so I see this flower; there is a bird in the sky, so I see this bird.
But probe a little deeper, and something is off.
There is a Chinese saying: "Once bitten by a snake, ten years afraid of a well-rope." Why does being bitten once by a snake make you afraid of a well-rope for ten years? Because after being bitten by a snake, when you next see a well-rope you mistake it for a snake.
Analyse this with the cognitive model just stated: there is a well-rope on the road, so I should see a well-rope. Why do I see a snake? Where did the "snake" I see come from?
Of course we have an explanation: I had been bitten by a snake before, well-ropes look like snakes, so I mistook the rope for a snake. The explanation is fine, but it is in fact at odds with the cognitive model we started with.
The earlier cognitive model says: there is an objective object (a flower, a bird), and I have a cognitive faculty, so I perceive that object.
But the well-rope case is a problem: there is an objective object (the well-rope), yet what I perceive is a different object (a snake).
Think about it carefully: in this scene I in fact have no knowledge of the existence of a "well-rope" at all. All I see is that there is something by the road, and in my mind I take it to be a snake.
Push the thought further: when we see a flower or a bird, what is really going on must be — I see something, and in my mind I take it to be a flower, or a bird.
So we have two different cognitive models:
- There is an objective object (a flower), and I see it.
- I see something, and in my mind I take it to be an object (a flower).
The first is the model we ordinarily accept, but by the analysis above it is problematic. The second, though slightly at odds with common sense, does seem to be what rational reflection leads to.
If the cognitive model is "I see something, and in my mind I take it to be a flower" — then the "flower" I see is wholly produced in my mind.
Another person, looking at the same thing, will likewise have a flower arise in their mind. By extension, when most people look at this thing, a flower arises in their mind, and so we agree by consensus to call it a "flower". Of course, since each person is producing it in their own mind, the flowers are not exactly the same. If someone produces a "snake" in their mind, we say they have seen wrongly.
So, by this rational derivation: when we see a flower, it may not really be that there is a flower existing there which we then see — rather, it is because we see it that it exists.
So that line of Master Yangming's:
Before you looked at this flower, this flower and your mind were both quiet and at rest. When you came to look at this flower, the colours of this flower at once became clear.
is not as mystifying as it sounds; it is simply a true description of how cognition works. Every flower we see is in fact only a flower generated in the mind. When you are not looking at it, no such flower is generated in the mind, and "this flower and your mind are both quiet and at rest". When you come to look at it, a flower appears in the mind, and only then do its colours at once become clear.
We do not need a "flower" objectively existing in order to see her. By extension, the sun, moon and stars, the mountains and rivers, you and "I" — none of these need to exist objectively for us to see them. There is a possibility that all of them are merely generated within our minds.
Then what is this xin of ours? Why does she generate this world? And how does she generate it?