Philosophy

ASIANetwork Exchange Teaching about Asia 11 Teaching the history of Chinese religions in a gender-balanced way involves a rather large number of variables. First, of course, there is the fact that one must deal with at least three religious traditions: Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, each of which itself varies both synchronically (at a given period of time) and diachronically (through time).1 In addition, there are the following sets of polarities that must be taken into account: 1) The various textual traditions and the social practices that may or may not reflect them. 2) Normative texts and descriptive texts. Students usually need to be warned not to make the same mistake as some of the early Orientalists, i.e. to assume that such texts as the Liji (Record of Ritual) described actual practices, when they were more like idealized norms. Similarly, the traditional dynastic histories were written from a distinctly Confucian perspective and cannot be relied upon as transparent sources on topics in which the Confucians had a particular sectarian interest (such as Buddhism and Daoism). 3) The practices of the literate elite and those of the majority of commoners. This distinction should not be overemphasized though, since there was considerable mutual influence. 4) Women constructed as ideal symbols and women seen as diverse individuals. 5) Women portrayed as objects of a male-centered "gaze" and women as subjects expressing their own lives and worldviews. Since these are polarities, not dualities, any specific observation may be located anywhere along the spectrum defined by each one. And in certain cases the boundaries between the three traditions can be just as fluid. So we have a large number of variables at play, and little time in which to do them justice. Of the three t r a d i t i o n s , C o n f u c i a n i s m must be central to this discussion, since it largely defined the m a i n s t r e a m discourse on gender in China from the Han dynasty onward. But just as we need to distinguish between the treatment of women as symbols of a feminine ideal and women as diverse individuals, we also need to be aware that Confucianism is not a fixed, monolithic, entity but rather a dynamic field of discourse. Not only does it display both synchronic and diachronic variation, it also has different levels of discourse. For example, the same Confucian thinker might express one view of women in a commentary to a classic scripture and quite another in a letter, conversation, or eulogy. The same is true, of course, for the other religious traditions. The conventional view I will begin by sketching what might be called the conventional view of women in Chinese religions, and then will suggest ways by which to go beyond it. The usual story goes something like this. The Confucians-or "scholars" (ru), as they were actually called-were the conservative supporters of the status quo, especially after the 2nd century BCE, when their teachings and their authority were given official sanction by the government and they became invested in its stability and continuance. Confucians argued that the family was a microcosm of the state, and just as the state was ruled by a male emperor with the mandate of Heaven, the father possessed a natural authority that legitimized the social superiority of men in any social context. The proper place for women was in the home, where they were largely responsible for the upbringing and education of children. The "woman's way (dao)" was to assume the roles of wife and mother. The chief virtue proper to these roles was obedience: first to her father, then to her husband, and finally to her grown son. Such views, it is said, led eventually to such misogynistic practices as foot-binding (for the erotic pleasure of men), which began in the Tang dynasty (7th -10th centuries), and the "cult of chastity" (in the Ming and Qing dynasties, 14th early 20th c e n t u r i e s ) , which elevated chaste widows to the role of cultural heroes. In the early 20th century such Confucian repression was harshly criticized, for example by the writer Ba Jin in his novel, The Family (Jia), which portrayed the stifling and lethal influence of Confucian family values on both women and men. The "May Fourth" generation of intellectuals and the Communists, who later came to power, rejected Confucianism as one of the chief causes for China's failure to modernize. For the Communists, Confucianism was a "feudal ideology" (terminology that one still hears from tour guides in China) that stood for social hierarchy and thus was inimical to socialism. Daughter/Wife/Mother or Sage/Immortal/Bodhisattva? Women in the Teaching of Chinese Religions Joseph A. Adler Kenyon College (continued on next page) The conventional view presents Buddhism and Daoism as the woman's refuge from the hostility of Confucian values. TEACHING ABOUT ASIA Sage Teaching about Asia ASIANetwork Exchange 12 The conventional view presents Buddhism and Daoism as the woman's refuge from the hostility of Confucian values. Although Confucianism to a great extent defined the playing field for two thousand years, alternatives were available to women by recourse to the values and practices of Daoism and Buddhism. In the early phase of Daoist thought-i.e. the classical texts Laozi (a.k.a. Dao de jing) and Zhuangzi, which took their present forms by the 3rd century BCE-Confucian values were strongly criticized as being human contrivances, and the spontaneous processes of the natural world were seen as the model for a meaningful human life. The Laozi, in particular, seems to express a strong preference for distinctly "feminine" virtues, such as yielding, softness, fertility, and non-aggression, and suggests that these are, in the long run, both healthier and (perhaps ironically) more effective in the furtherance of personal interests.2 Earlier versions of the conventional story end the Daoist chapter right there, completely ignoring the full-fledged Daoist religion, which only began in the 2nd century CE. But until the 1980s there was relatively little scholarship available in English on the Daoist religion. Buddhism played a similar role. Entering China from India by way of Afghanistan and the "Silk Road" at the beginning of our first millennium, Buddhism at first was solely the religion of foreign monks, all of whom (as far as I know) were male. But as it gradually spread into the Chinese population it attracted women in substantial numbers. Buddhist nunneries provided alternative vocations not only for those women who chose not to marry, but also for widows and those women who, once their children had grown, felt limited by Confucian social restrictions. A prominent example of the greater possibilities for women in Buddhism is the fact that one of its most important "deities" (using that term loosely), the Bodhisattva of Compassion, Avalokitesvara (Guanyin in Chinese), essentially became female in China, reflecting the enormous appeal of Buddhism among women.3 Updating and complicating the conventional view That, more or less, is the standard account of women in Chinese religions. But it doesn't incorporate much of the scholarly literature on women in Chinese religions that has appeared in the past two decades or more, and continues to appear at increasing rates. Here I will not attempt to review it all, but I will merely offer an impressionistic outline of some of the trends since about 1980 and new perspectives to which students today can and should be exposed. To begin with Chinese Buddhism, in the early 1980s Diana Paul, who has been called a pioneer in the field, published two important works on women as portrayed in the normative textual tradition of Mahayana Buddhism: The Buddhist Feminine Ideal (Scholars Press, 1980), focusing on Queen Srimala in the Srimaladevi Sutra; and Women in Buddhism (2nd ed., University of California Press, 1985), surveying the Mahayana sutra literature more broadly. Paul showed that there is a tension in the canon between the philosophical foundation of Mahayana thought, which provides no justification for discrimination against women, and the patriarchal attitudes that were so deeplyrooted in both the Indian and Chinese cultures that gave rise to and interpreted the canon. The famously ambiguous story of the 8-year old daughter of the Dragon King in the "Devadatta" chapter of the Lotus Sutra can be taken as a symbol of that tension. The precocious young girl shows up the sceptical disciple, Shariputra, by manifesting her full Buddhahood at the wink of an eye-yet she does so by first briefly transforming herself into a man, reflecting the popular Buddhist notion that women cannot achieve Buddhahood in their polluted female bodies, but must first be reborn as men.4 Several other scholars, since Paul's ground-breaking work, have been focusing less on the normative textual tradition and more on the lives of individual women in Chan Buddhism, the most prevalent school since the Song dynasty (10th 13th centuries). Among them are Miriam Levering, who has published a series of essays since the 1980s on women in Chan Buddhism (primarily the female disciples of the Song dynasty Chan master Dahui), Beata Grant, and Ding-hwa Evelyn Hsieh.5 One of the most interesting developments in Buddhism today is that Buddhist nuns in Taiwan have been leaders in such groups as the Buddhist Compassion Relief (Tzuchi) Foundation (founded in 1966 by the nun Cheng Yen), which may be the fastestgrowing religious organization in Taiwan. I might also mention an excellent documentary film, "To the Land of Bliss" by Wen-jie Qin (who has a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from Harvard), which examines the responses of Buddhist nuns at a Pure Land Buddhist temple in Sichuan to the death of their abbot in 1998.6 In the case of Daoism, the most remarkable development bringing the conventional view up to date since the early 1980s is that scholarship on the Daoist religion, as opposed to the early Daoist classics (Laozi and Zhuangzi), has come into maturity and opened up essentially a whole new tradition to the English-speaking world. Beginning in the late 2nd century CE, several series of revelations were received and recorded (the first series from the now-divinized Laozi), and now comprise the core of the enormous Daoist Canon (containing over 1400 titles). Daoist communities existed (in the Celestial Masters tradition) in which women could be priests or "libationers", and later on there were respected female Daoist teachers, a number of whom achieved apotheosis as "immortals." In medieval Daoist monasteries, women were equal in status to men in all ways, distinguished only by the type of cap they wore.7 The current generation of Daoist scholars, many of whom were trained by the late Michel Strickmann at the University of California at Berkeley and by Livia Kohn at Boston University, have been churning out translations, essays, and monographs at a Paul showed that there is a tension in the canon between the philosophical foundation of Mahayana thought, which provides no justification for discrimination against women, and the patriarchal attitudes that were so deeplyrooted in both the Indian and Chinese cultures that gave rise to and interpreted the canon. ASIANetwork Exchange Teaching about Asia 13 furious rate, including a substantial number of accounts of Daoist women. As in the case of Buddhism, this has shifted the focus somewhat from normative texts and idealized conceptions of the feminine to individual female figures, including deities, immortals, and mere humans. The recently published Women in Daoism, by Catherine Despeux and Livia Kohn (Three Pines Press, 2003), provides an excellent summary of current scholarship. So now there is much more solid data available to show how Daoism provided alternatives for women to the Confucian-dominated mainstream of society, in terms of vocation, social status, and religious symbolism. And so we arrive at last at the bête noir, Confucianism. It is not my intention to exonerate Confucianism from responsibility for the subjugation of women in China, but rather to complicate the over-simplified picture presented above. It is unrealistic to attempt to explain away or minimize the damage done to women's lives in China by policies and practices that have been legitimized in Confucian terms, such as the "cult of chastity" in the Ming and Qing dynasties, which condemned many widows to poverty and loneliness by placing a social stigma on remarriage by women.8 Nor is it adequate to separate Confucianism entirely from these practices by arguing that they stem ultimately from patriarchal social values, and are only reflected secondarily in Confucian thought. While that may be true, it does not remove from the Confucian ledger the responsibility for reinforcing those values. On the other hand, it is intellectually and historically mistaken to essentialize the Confucian tradition-to treat it as a static, monolithic, misogynistic entity- and thereby to condemn it out of hand. Throughout most of the twentieth century in China that is precisely what occurred: first by the pro-Western, rationalistic New Culture and May Fourth movements, and then by the rabidly anti-traditional Communist regime. An admittedly extreme example of this approach is embodied in a pamphlet produced during the Cultural Revolution, called Workers, Peasants, and Soldiers Criticize Confucius and Lin Piao, which begins, "Confucius was a reactionary who doggedly defended slavery and whose doctrines have been used by all reactionaries, whether ancient or contemporary, Chinese or foreign, throughout the more than 2,000 years since his time."9 Even putting aside the strident political dimension of such material, many non-Maoist scholars today, both Chinese and Western, have not critically examined the clichés and outof-context Confucian quotes that provided fodder for this kind of polemic, such as the oft-quoted comment by the 11thcentury scholar Cheng Yi to the effect that it would be better for a widow to die of starvation than to lose her "virtue." Nevertheless, Confucian scholarship in the West since World War II has blossomed and matured, led by the estimable William Theodore de Bary and Wing-tsit Chan at Columbia and Tu Wei-ming at Harvard (and formerly Berkeley), and building upon the work of eminent scholars in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Japan. In mainland China, however, serious contemporary scholarship on Confucianism got a relatively late start. It began in the early 1980s after the death of Mao Zedong, the fall of the Gang of Four, and the rise to power of the more pragmatic Deng Xiaoping. Even then, such influential scholars as Ren Jiyu brought to their work the Marxist assumption that religion was inherently bad. Only in the past decade or so-paralleling the revival of popular religion in China since the early 1990s- has Chinese scholarship on Confucianism put aside the tired old debates about materialism vs. idealism and begun to take seriously the prospect of learning something valuable from the tradition. The website Confucius2000.com, for example, is an extraordinary forum reflecting the re-evaluation of Confucianism occurring in China today, including vigorous debate on its religious dimensions.10 So what can we learn (and teach) from contemporary scholarship concerning women in Confucianism? The first two points I would stress are methodological: (a) we need to examine the Confucian tradition as a dynamic field of discourse unfolding through history rather than a static body of ideas, and (b) we need to bear in mind the conceptual polarities outlined at the beginning of this paper, the most important of which, in regard to Confucianism, are the first two: (1) the distinction between the textual tradition and social practices, and (2) the distinction between normative texts and descriptive texts. Taking the historical view, we must identify the Han dynasty11 as the first important turning point. Two events are central to this episode, and one man is the key figure in both: Dong Zhongshu (179194 BCE). It was Dong who persuaded the Han Emperor, Wu-di (r. 140-87 BCE), to switch allegiance and state support from Huang-Lao Daoism to Confucianism. The Confucian scriptures (at that point limited to the socalled Five Classics) and the ideas of Confucius (551-479 BCE) then became the ideological basis for the training of government officials, and for the first time the state had an interest in controlling the content of those teachings. And, to further develop and clarify the relevance of Confucian thought to government, Dong Zhongshu wrote his magnum opus, the Luxuriant Gems of the Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu fan lu), in which he incorporated, for the first time in a systematic way, the theory of yin and yang into the emerging Confucian synthesis. There is an emerging consensus among recent scholars that it was the rigid application of the yin-yang rubric to women and men, respectively, that has led to the repression of women in Confucian thought and practice. There are two aspects to this process that need to be (continued on next page) So now there is much more solid data available to show how Daoism provided alternatives for women to the Confuciandominated mainstream of society, in terms of vocation, social status, and religious symbolism. Bodhisattva Teaching about Asia ASIANetwork Exchange 14 explored: the intellectual and the historical. First, the intellectual point is actually somewhat counter-intuitive, because the yin-yang concept is a principle of complementarity or polarity, which, one would think, would not be consistent with a h i e r a r c h i c a l structure. But even before the Han, yinyang was associated with an implicit hierarchy, since Heaven (above) and Earth (below) were early examples of the distinction. Yet they were originally seen as functional modes of activity, which both men and women were understood to embody. The key interpretive shift, which seems to have occurred in the Han and is certainly seen in Dong Zhongshu's writing, was to essentialize men as yang and women as yin:12 "The husband is yang and the wife is yin;"13 and "Yin and yang also may be called man and woman, and man and woman may also be called yin and yang."14 As Chan Sin Yee points out in an excellent essay, the yin-yang concept itself does not imply gender essentialism. But, she says, "the alignment was in fact made by Confucians in the past, and with the alignment, gender essentialism is suggested."15 This, of course, begs the question why Dong Zhongshu should have made this interpretive shift in the application of the yin-yang complementarity. One can only speculate, but since Dong was constructing a massive intellectual system of correspondences, it is not unreasonable to assume that even a garden-variety level of sexism or patriarchal attitude might have tempted him to align women and men with yin and yang, in the interest of filling out his system. If Dong Zhongshu's system had remained merely an intellectual construct it almost certainly would not have had the social impact that is claimed for it. But Dong was not just an effete scholar; he was a prime minister working for an activist emperor who was reconceiving a theory of government that was destined to sustain a great empire. It was the resulting politicization of Dong Zhongshu's Confucian synthesis that provided the conservative inertia which, flourish by living their lives according to that model. But we also know from the personal accounts of women who joined Buddhist nunneries that that was not the case for all women. The process by which male and female were rigidly boxed into the categories of yin and yang was a gradual one, and it was slowed considerably by the fall of the Han dynasty and the resulting discredit brought upon Confucianism in the eyes of many intellectuals, who were drawn instead to Buddhism and Daoism. But the growth of politicized Confucianism resumed again in the Song dynasty (960-1279). Here we meet with another great systematizer, Zhu Xi (1130-1200), who was heavily indebted to his predecessor Cheng Yi (1033-1107). Both of these figures are frequently depicted as culpable for the suppression of Chinese women over the last millenium. Cheng Yi's statement about widow chastity, referred to above, is one of the most-quoted indictments of the entire Confucian tradition. Zhu Xi occasionally expressed similar views, e.g., "To do wrong is unbecoming to a wife, and to do good is also unbecoming to a wife. A woman is only to be obedient to what is proper."18 Here is where the distinctions of text vs. social practice and normative vs. descriptive texts become crucial. Scholars such as Bettine Birge and Pat Ebrey have shown that these "Neo-Confucian" writings do not necessarily reflect either the prevailing social practices or the scholars' own attitudes and practices in regard to actual women.19 Cheng Yi, for example, praised his father for "marrying off" an orphaned, widowed relative, contrary to the scriptural injunction that a widow should not remarry.20 Zhu Xi similarly treated the actual women in his life far differently than one would expect given his theoretical writings and statements on the proper role of women. He, even more so than Dong Zhongshu, was a systematizer, and he too regarded yin-yang as the most fundamental ordering principle.21 Zhu was, in fact, intent on fitting everything he possibly could into this intellectual system. So it is not surprising that he would align the categories of man and woman with the fundamental yin-yang principle. But as the above-mentioned scholars have shown, we should not superimpose that theoretical over the centuries, would draw Confucianism consistently toward support of stability, a hierarchical order, and the status quo. We see this even more strongly in the Comprehensive Discussion in the White Tiger Hall (Baihu tong), which is a record of an i m p e r i a l l y s p o n s o r e d conference in 79 CE (although the received text may contain later additions). The meeting was convened to decide the authenticity of the "New Text" and "Old Text" versions of the Confucian canon, and includes such statements as "Yang takes the lead; yin acts in concert. The male acts; the female follows."16 Another important Han-dynasty text is one written by a woman for women: the Lessons for Women (Nüjie), by Ban Zhao (45-114 CE). Ban was the sister of Ban Gu, the official historian of the Former Han dynasty, who died before he could complete that history, so she finished it. She wrote the Nüjie ostensibly for her daughters, instructing them on how to live proper Confucian lives as wives and mothers. Although this is a relatively rare instance of a female Confucian voice, Ban Zhao almost entirely accepts the prevailing views concerning women's proper roles; they should be silent, hardworking, and compliant. She stresses the complementarity and equal importance of the male and female roles according to yin-yang theory, but she clearly accepts the dominance of the yang-male. Her only departure from the standard male versions of this orthodoxy is that she insists on the necessity to educate girls and women. We should not underestimate the significance of this point, as education was the bottom line qualification for being a junzi or "noble person," and the prevailing view, ever since the time of Confucius, was that a junzi is presumptively male. Still, some scholars assert that Ban Zhao did more harm than good to the fate of women in China.17 But her example suggests that the Confucian prescription for a meaningful life as a woman was apparently not stifling for all women. Even some women of the literate elite, for whom Confucianism was quite explicitly the norm, were able to There is an emerging consensus among recent scholars that it was the rigid application of the yin-yang rubric to women and men, respectively, that has led to the repression of women in Confucian thought and practice. ASIANetwork Exchange Teaching about Asia 15 structure onto the actual lives of Song women. In fact, the very existence of such arguments for restrictions on women's lives might suggest precisely the opposite: the stronger the polemic, the higher the percentage of women there might be who are actually ignoring the strictures. The politicization of Confucian principles resumed in strength when Zhu Xi's teachings became the basis of the civil service examination system, and remained so for almost 600 years. It was really the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties in which the lives of women- at least women belonging to the literate elite-became seriously restricted. For example, "[a] woman who was widowed before she was thirty and remained chaste until she was fifty was granted a memorial arch, and her family was exempt from certain kinds of taxes" (under a system of state rewards that actually began in the early 13th century during the Yuan dynasty, and continued until the 20th century).22 Of course it was the situation during the Qing, in particular, that was the immediate point of departure for the liberal and radical critiques of Confucianism in the twentieth century. Finally, we should note that the limitations placed on women in Confucian texts never really applied to the peasant class, for whom the restriction of women to work within the home and with children was a luxury they could not afford. And since the percentage of the literate elite was tiny in the Han dynasty and still relatively small even in the Qing, we should not assume that the majority of women were even aware of these restrictions-which, in any case, were idealized norms rather than descriptions of the prevailing state of affairs. Conclusions The conventional view outlined above is fairly accurate in regard to Daoism and Buddhism. They did indeed provide welcome alternatives to the sometimes stifling restrictions on women's lives prescribed by Confucianism. What is most important today in teaching Chinese religions is (1) to include the firstperson voices of Buddhist and Daoist women (making use of the scholars mentioned above), and (2) to include institutional Daoism. These are fairly easy and straightforward ways of presenting Chinese religions in a gender-balanced way to undergraduates. Confucianism is the hard part. Its role should neither be whitewashed nor villainized. What is most crucial here is (1) to unpack the historical development of the tradition, with some attention to the way in which the yin-yang theory was interpreted, which resulted in the essentializing of gender roles; (2) to distinguish between normative texts and actual social practice; and (3) to note that it was politicized Confucianism that became the supporter of a harshly patriarchal society. A rigid social hierarchy, of which the gender hierarchy was a part, was one way of maintaining a stable society. This is not to say that politicized Confucianism is not "true" Confucianism; that it is inauthentic. That would be a sectarian judgment, not a scholarly one. But we can say that this version of Confucianism was and is not the only version. It arose at a specific historical moment in response to the political needs of a new empire, and it continued to be reinforced as later iterations of that empire found it a useful tool to support a hierarchical social system. Gender essentialism was not a feature of the teachings of Confucius and Mencius, nor is it part of contemporary Confucian thought.23 In fact, there are contemporary female scholars who call themselves feminist Confucians. So in my view, the story of how Confucianism became politicized and what became of it as a result is an excellent object lesson in the danger of implicating religion too closely with politics.24 With these suggestions for nuancing the presentation of Confucianism, and with the numerous resources readily available to balance the teaching of Daoism and Buddhism with women's lives and voices, it is quite possible today to present an adequately gender-balanced picture of the history of Chinese religions. Footnotes 1For the sake of brevity I will omit popular religion (minjian zongjiao), Islam, and Christianity from this discussion. 2For an alternative interpretation - that the Laozi stresses the feminine with the aim of reaching a balance between masculine and feminine virtues - see Roger T. Ames, "Taoism and the Androgynous Ideal," in Richard W. Guisso and Stanley Johannesen, eds., Women in China: Current Directions in Historical Scholarship (Youngstown, NY: Philo Press, 1981). 3See Chün-fang Yü, Kuan-yin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokitesvara (NY: Columbia University Press, 2001). 4This widespread notion is roundly rejected by the 13th-century Japanese Zen master, Dôgen, in the "Raihai tokuzui" essay of his Shôbôgenzô (translated by Francis Cook in How to Raise an Ox: Zen Practice as Taught in Zen Master Dogen's Shobogenzo (Los Angeles: Center Publications, 1978), pp. 133-150. 5The syllabus for Hsieh's course, "Women in Chinese Religions," is on the website of the American Academy of Religion (http:// www.aarweb.org/syllabus/default.asp under "Syllabus Project") and could serve as a valuable guide for anyone interested in teaching a similar course. 6"To the Land of Bliss" (47 minutes) is distributed by Documentary Educational Resources in Watertown, Mass. (http:// www.der.org). 7Livia Kohn, The Daoist Monastic Manual: A Translation of the Fengdao Kejie (NY: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 65. 8 This is based on a line in the Liji (Record of Rites), ch. 9. 9 Trans. Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1976. 10 See Anna Xiao Dong Sun, "The Fate of Confucianism as a Religion in Socialist China: Controversies and Paradoxes," in Fenggang Yang and Joseph B. Tamney, eds., State, Market and Religions in Chinese Societies (Leiden: Brill, 2005). 11206 BCE 220 CE, with a short interregnum from 9 CE to 23 CE. 12Chan Sin Yee, "The Confucian Conception of Gender in the Twenty-First Century," in Daniel A. Bell and Hahm Chaibong, Confucianism for the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 312-333. 13Chunqiu fan lu 53, trans. Mark Csikszentmihalyi, in Robin R. Wang, ed., Images of Women in Chinese Thought and Culture (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2003), p. 168. 14Ibid., p. 169. 15Chan Sin Yee, p. 320. 16Trans. Paul R. Goldin in Wang, Images of Women, p. 171. 17 See Lily Xiao Hong Lee, The Virtue of Yin: Studies on Chinese Women (Australia: Wild Peony, 1994), ch. 1. 18Trans. Robin R. Wang, Images of Women in Chinese Thought and Culture, p. 325. 19Bettine Birge, "Chu Hsi and Women's Education," in Wm. Theodore de Bary and John W. Chaffee, eds., Neo-Confucian Education: The Formative Stage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); and (continued on next page) Teaching about Asia ASIANetwork Exchange 16 Patricia Buckley Ebrey, The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). See also Bettine Birge, Woman, Property, and Confucian Reaction in Sung and Yuan China, 9601368 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), and idem., "Women and Confucianism from Song to Ming: The Institutionalization of Patrilineality," in Paul Jakov Smith and Richard von Glahn, eds., The Song-Yuan-Ming Transition in Chinese History (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2003). 20See Wang, Images of Women , pp. 318-319. 21I have argued elsewhere that this claim is the key to the significance of the term taiji (Supreme Polarity) in Zhu Xi's thought. See Joseph A. Adler, "Varieties of Spiritual Experience: Shen in Neo-Confucian Discourse," in Tu Wei-ming and Mary Evelyn Tucker, eds., Confucian Spirituality, vol. 2 (NY: Crossroad, 2004), pp. 122-123; and idem., "Zhou Dunyi: The Metaphysics and Practice of Sagehood," in Wm. Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom, eds., Sources of Chinese Tradition, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (NY: Columbia University Press, 1999), p. 672. The argument is developed further in a work in progress. 22Ann Waltner, "Recent Scholarship on Chinese Women," Signs 21:2 (1996), p. 422. See also her "Widows and Remarriage in Ming and Early Qing China," in Guisso and Johannesen, eds., Women in China (note 2 above). 23As Li Zehou put it in 1980: "In the hands of different Confucian scholars serving the interests of their respective classes or political ideologies, Confucianism often went off at a a tangent. The Confucius that the May 4 movement in 1919 destroyed was just the Confucius that Confucians from the Han dynasty to the Qing dynasty had identified with monarchy. This is just as Li Dazhao said: 'We are launching an attack not upon Confucius himself but upon the Confucius whom the past successive emperors have molded into a political idol and authority - not upon Confucius himself but upon the Confucius whom the emperors have invested with a tyrannical soul.'" Trans. Liu Qizhong, in Wm. Theodore de Bary and Richard Lufrano, eds., Sources of Chinese Tradition, 2nd ed., vol. 2 (NY: Columbia University Press, 2000), p. 578. 24Aside from the sources already mentioned, there are numerous recent studies on women in Confucianism. Some of them are: Patricia Ebrey, "Women, Marriage, and the Family in Chinese History," in Paul S. Ropp, ed., Heritage of China: Contemporary Perspectives on Chinese Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); Mary Gallagher, "Women and Gender," in Howard Giskin and Bettye S. Walsh, eds., An Introduction to Chinese Culture Through the Family (Albany: SUNY Press, 2001); Theresa Kelleher, "Confucianism," in Arvind Sharma, ed., Women in World Religions (Albany: SUNY Press, 1987); Dorothy Ko, "Footbinding as Female Inscription," in Benjamin A. Elman, John B. Duncan, and Herman Ooms, Rethinking Confucianism: Past and Present in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam (Los Angeles: UCLA Asia Institute, 2002); Dorothy Ko, JaHyun Kim Haboush, and Joan R. Piggott, eds., Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea, and Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); Chenyang Li, ed., The Sage and the Second Sex: Confucianism, Ethics, and Gender (Chicago: Open Court, 2000); Susan Mann, Precious Records: Women in China's Long Eighteenth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997); Susan Mann and Yu-yin Cheng, eds., Under Confucian Eyes: Writings on Gender in Chinese History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Sherry J. Mou, ed., Presence and Presentation: Women in the Chinese Literati Tradition (NY: St. Martin's Press, 1999); Sherry J. Mou, Gentlemen's Prescriptions for Women's Lives: A Thousand Years of Biographies of Chinese Women (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 2004); Vivian-Lee Nyitray, "The Real Trouble with Confucianism," in Joseph Runzo and Nancy M. Martin, eds., Love, Sex and Gender in the World Religions (Oxford: Oneworld, 2000); Vivian-Lee Nyitray, "Treacherous Terrain: Mapping Feminine Spirituality in Confucian Worlds," in Tu Weiming and Mary Evelyn Tucker, eds., Confucian Spirituality, vol. 2 (NY: Crossroad, 2004); Vivian-Lee Nyitray, "Confucianism" in Arvind K. Sharma, ed., Fundamentalism and the Position of Women in World Religions (Albany: SUNY Press, 2005); Lisa Raphals, Sharing the Light: Representations of Women and Virtue in Early China (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998); Lisa Raphals, "A Woman Who Understood The Rites," in Bryan W. Van Norden, ed., Confucius and the Analects: New Essays (NY: Oxford University Press, 2002); Barbara Reed, "Women and Chinese Religion in Contemporary Taiwan," in Arvind Sharma, ed., Today's Woman in World Religions (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994); Rubie S. Watson and Patricia Buckley Ebrey, eds, Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); and Terry Woo, "Confucianism and Feminism," in Arvind Sharma, ed., Feminism and World Religions (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998). Brill's journal of African and Asian Studies (AAS) Call for articles The peer-reviewed journal of African and Asian Studies publishes leading empirical and multi-disciplinary work in the areas of African and Asian Studies. It offers a wide range of scholarly topics aimed at experts in their respective fields of research. The Editorial Board invites you to submit articles for publication. For more information, please contact the Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Lumumba-Kasongo at email@example.com or visit the web page at www.brill.nl/aas For a free online issue, please go to http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/ afas.


Conspiracy Theories

Philosophy

1000wordphilosophy.com/2020/12/17/conspira cy-theories/ Conspiracy Theories Author: Jared Millson Category: Epistemology, Philosophy of Science, Social and Political Philosophy, Ethics Word count: 997 NASA faked the first moon landing.[1] The US government orchestrated the attacks on 9/11.[2] A cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles running a global child sex-trafficking ring is plotting against Donald Trump, who is battling them. [3] Each of these claims have been denounced as a "conspiracy theory."[4] But what are conspiracy theories? Should we ever accept one? If so, when? This essay offers initial answers to these questions.[5] 1. Defining Conspiracy Theories First, what's a conspiracy? Conspiracies are actions or plans undertaken by a small group of individuals working in secret to achieve shared goals. These goals need not be sinister: the African National Congress conspired for decades to bring down the apartheid regime in South Africa-a noble aspiration. Second, what's a theory? In general, theories try to explain some set of (alleged) facts or events, usually by identifying their causes. The first two examples above (the moon landing coverage and the 9/11 attacks) attempt to explain these events by making claims about what caused them.[6] Putting these together yields this definition: a conspiracy theory is an explanation of some alleged fact or event in terms of the actions undertaken by a small group of individuals working in secret.[7] 2. Common Misunderstandings Conspiracy theories are often assumed to be inherently irrational or false by definition.[8] But since some accusations of conspiracy have merit, a definition should not assume that conspiracy theories must be problematic.[9] Our proposed definition reflects this and corrects this common misunderstanding. Indeed, most people accept some conspiracy theories-e.g., Watergate or the claim that the 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by al-Qaeda. In fact, if you've told someone about a recent surprise party you attended, then you've explained an event by reference to a small group of individuals working in secret, and so you've offered a conspiracy theory! Conspiracy theories need not contradict any "official story" or explanation of events that most people accept.[10] If they did, then a conspiracy theory would cease to be one, e.g., when official sources give conflicting stories, when there simply is no official account, or when the conspiracy theory is adopted by officials.[11] 3. Evaluating Conspiracy Theories So conspiracy theories are sometimes true; they are sometimes reasonable to accept. But when?[12] Conspiracy theories claim the existence of a conspiracy. Conspirators disclosing or "leaking" information about their activities would be good evidence for a conspiracy theory. But few people admit to being directly involved in conspiracies, so conspiracy theories typically lack this support.[13] Some claim that successful conspiracies won't have leaks.[14] But the absence of such evidence does undermine a theory when efforts to find it fail. And the more ambitious a conspiracy, the less likely its activities are to remain secret. It is hard to get people to work together on long-term, complex projects-much less in secret. Conspiracy theories often claim to explain data that contradicts or is left out by the official story. But they rarely end up explaining more data than their rivals, since they tend to have their own "errant data" that they cannot accommodate:[15] e.g., conspiracy theories about 9/11 usually cannot explain why there is a video of Osama Bin Laden claiming responsibility for the attacks.[16] So conspiracy theories often do not explain more data.[17] Since they appeal to one cause (i.e., the conspiracy's goal) rather than to many, conspiracy theories may seem simpler than their rivals-e.g., when an 2 international free-trade agreement is explained by leaders' secret desire for world government, rather than by many competing national interests. However, conspiracy theories often add causes- conspiratorial ones-to explanations offered by their non-conspiratorial rivals: e.g., the "Pizzagate" conspiracy theory[18] claimed that kids were at a pizza shop because of a child-trafficking ring's activities. This assumes that kids were there for pizza and a malicious cartel's actions. So this conspiracy theory, like many others, is not simpler.[19] Some see the problems not in conspiracy theories themselves but with their advocates who rarely make novel predictions and tend to accommodate failed predictions by making ad hoc changes to their theory rather than by abandoning it.[20] Some inflate the scope of a conspiracy to save their theory:[21] e.g., when a newspaper's articles contradict a conspiracy theory, they conclude that the newspaper's staff is in on the conspiracy too.[22] Some critics charge conspiracy theorists with failing to properly defer to experts, resulting in theories that contradict expert testimony.[23] Conspiracy theorists often justify their mistrust by claiming that experts are themselves part of the conspiracy or have been duped by it.[24] But this is yet another way to inflate the scope of a conspiracy, which makes its existence less likely. Other critics claim that distrust of experts is a harmful effect, rather than a cause, of conspiracy theorizing. Since much of what we know comes from experts[25] and public institutions (e.g., the government, the press, academia, and professional organizations), accepting conspiracy theories deprives us of vital sources of knowledge.[26] Of course, only those theories that posit conspiracies with pervasive influence on our public institutions require such widespread skepticism.[27] So, while conspiracy theories aren't inherently irrational or false, few offer better explanations than their rivals. 4. Why Conspiracy Theories? Many people, nonetheless, find conspiracy theories appealing. By urging us to "follow the breadcrumbs"[28] and to "think for ourselves,"[29] these theories promise to make a complicated world intelligible to those without specialized training or expert knowledge. By claiming that a small group of evildoers are behind tragic events, they offer simple solutions to complex problems.[30] Whatever their appeal, we should approach conspiracy theories the way we would any theory- i.e., by comparing their merits to their rivals'. Farreaching conspiracies are rarely successful, so the more plausible conspiracy theories might be those that try to explain a smaller range of events by appealing to a conspiracy with limited goals.[31] These theories also shouldn't challenge the judgment of experts without providing adequate evidence of their unreliability. Will any of today's influential conspiracy theories meet these demands? Probably not.[32] Notes [1] See Exposed: Apollo 11 Moon Landing Conspiracy Theories, (2019, June 28). Some versions of this theory even claim that the famed director Stanley Kubrick helped to film the fake moon landing and that his film The Shining is a cryptic "confession" (Lamb, 2010). [2] There are various versions of this theory. For a consideration of some, see Was 9/11 an Inside Job? (2016, September 8). [3] The QAnon conspiracy theory is arguably among the most influential conspiracy theories in the history of US politics. But it is by no means the first. Aside from the well-supported theories regarding the Watergate Hotel break-in (Perlstein, 2020) and the Iran-Contra-Affair ("The Iran-Contra Affair," 2020), a version of the Illuminati conspiracy theory played an important role in early American politics (Fea, 2020). For an overview of the QAnon theory, See What is QAnon? How the Conspiracy Theory Gained Traction in the 2020 Campaign, (2020, August 12). [4] While such claims may have increased with the rise of social media, the term "conspiracy theory" has been with us for some time. The term seems to have first appeared in a New York Times article in 1863 (Caulfield, 2018). [5] For a brief overview of the philosophical thinking about conspiracy theories, see Pauly (retrieved 2020). For more extensive treatments, see Dentith (2014), Coady (2006) and Uscinski (2018). The first philosopher to address conspiracy theories explicitly and at length was Karl Popper (1966; 1972). [6] Muirhead and Rosenblum (2019) claim that the recent wave of conspiracy theories, what they call 3 the new conspiracism, are not really "theories" at all, since they don't offer explanations or claims about causes: they are mere insinuations of a conspiracy. Clarke (2002; 2007) also contends that some conspiracy theories are not sufficiently developed to count as theories. [7] This is similar to the definition proposed by Dentith (2014; 2018a) and Keeley (1999). The definition has some open-ended elements. How small must a group be to count as a conspiracy? Qualifying as a member of a conspiracy often depends on how much someone knows about the group's plans and what level of influence they have over them. What counts as working in secret? To act in secret there must be someone who you're trying to keep in the dark. But secrecy can't demand that no one knows about your plans, since you do. Generally, conspirators act in secret in the sense that they seek to minimize public awareness of their plans. See Mandik (2007) and Dentith (2014) for more on these issues. [8] As Keeley (1999) notes, treating conspiracy theories as epistemically suspect by definition is similar to the way Hume defines miracles as running counter to laws of nature and hence, by definition, irrational to believe. [9] There are other reasons to prefer a neutral definition. Calling something a conspiracy theory seems to be a claim about what the theory is about, not about the presence or absence of evidence to support it. Likewise, having a neutral definition lets us separate the task of evaluating a theory's epistemic merits from that of deciding what to call it. The debate about the proper definition of "conspiracy theory" reflects a divide in the philosophical literature on the subject between those who believe that conspiracy theories are inherently epistemically suspect-a.k.a. generalists-and those who think that each conspiracy theory should be assessed by its own merits-a.k.a. particularists. See Buenting, & Taylor (2010), Dentith (2014; 2018a), Coady (2006), Pigden (2006; 2016). In an effort to accommodate the pejorative connotation of the term, some have offered "conspiracism" as a label for the pathological tendency to believe conspiracy theories independently of their epistemic merits (Dentith, 2014; 2018a). [10] Coady (2003), however, advocates for a definition that requires a contrast with an official story. For criticisms, see Dentith (2014) and Pigden (2007). [11] For example, Woodward and Bernstein's claim- the conspiracy theory that the Nixon administration was behind the Watergate break-in-initially contradicted the administration's own account but was later accepted as the official story. It seems odd to say that Woodward and Bernstein's story ceased to be a conspiracy theory once it was endorsed by officials, since none of its claims changed. So theories can be, or become, widely accepted yet still be conspiracy theories. For more on the Watergate scandal, see Perlstein, (2020). [12] This section considers how conspiracy theories fare against their rivals when compared according to certain "theoretical virtues"-i.e., criteria that scientists use, at least implicitly, to select the best theories from among available options. These theoretical virtues include internal consistency, coherence with other accepted theories, evidential support, simplicity, and unification, among others. This section addresses the last three. A theory's evidential support is largely a matter of how well it fits the data. As for simplicity, one theory is simpler than another if it can explain the same data with fewer causes. Conversely, a theory is more unifying than another if it can explain more with the same resources. Some contend that conspiracy theories perform particularly badly when judged by these standards-e.g., Basham (2001) and Räikkä (2009). [13] Mandik (2007) and Clark (2002) both point to problems with conspiracy theorists' appeal to conspirators' mental states (e.g., beliefs, desires, intentions). For Mandik, this appeal, when combined with the claim that conspirators' avowals are untrustworthy, makes it difficult for conspiracy theories to overcome problems associated with intentional explanations. Clark thinks conspiracy theorists are guilty of the "fundamental attribution error"-i.e., the human tendency to overestimate dispositional factors and underestimate situational factors in explaining the behavior of others. This claim, however, has been challenged by Pigden (2006) and Coady (2003). [14] Indeed, a lack of evidence for a conspiracy is exactly what we'd expect if there is in fact a conspiracy working to keep its activities a secret. Keeley (2003) concludes from this that unfalsifiability (i.e., the inability to identify a type of 4 evidence that would show the theory to be false) is not a good reason to reject conspiracy theories. Basham (2003) makes a similar claim. Keeley (2003) thinks that absence of evidence may be construed as evidence of absence only when diligent efforts to find evidence, efforts that have succeeded in similar cases, fail. [15] Keeley (1999) was the first to criticize conspiracy theories for an over-reliance on "errant data" (his term). [16] Clarke (2002) and Dentith (2019) both point this out in response to Keeley's criticism regarding "errant data". [17] Even when a conspiracy theory does explain or unify more data than its alternatives, this may not make it better. Unifying more data is only advantageous when the data explained is true, and not all data will be. So a theory that explains more eye-witness reports of an event like the 9/11 attacks, need not be better, all things considered, than its competitors, since eye-witness testimony is often compromised by the effects of unconscious bias, faulty memory, and the power of suggestion. This is one of the reasons Keeley (1999) thinks the preoccupation with explaining errant data compromises the evidential support for many conspiracy theories. [18] For a detailed account of the "Pizzagate" conspiracy theory, see Robb (2017). [19] Some suggest that just as-all else being equal- we should avoid explaining events with many causes when fewer will do, we should avoid explaining events by appeal to malice when incompetence will do. This rule of thumb is sometimes called Hanlon's Razor (Hanlon's Razor, 2020)-a nod to Occam's Razor, which instructs us to select, all else being equal, explanations with fewer causes over those with many. [20] This is Clarke's (2002; 2007) criticism. He claims that conspiracy theories are "degenerating research programmes" in the sense developed by Lakatos (1970). Pigden (2006), however, questions whether there is genuine support for this claim. [21] We might liken conspiracy theorists to followers of millenarianism who, in the wake of a prophesied "Second Coming" that fails to materialize, find ingenious ways to reinterpret those prophecies as referring to some date further in the future (Barken, 2018). [22] As the conspiracy expands to include the newspaper's staff, it can seem less likely that one exists, since larger conspiracies are harder to keep secret and offer more opportunities for investigators to find evidence of their existence. This concern relates to other criticisms regarding how likely conspiracies are in general-i.e., their prior probability. Dentith (2014; 2016) claims that conspiracies, defined neutrally, are historically quite common. [23] Levy (2007) makes a claim along these lines, arguing that a conspiracy theory that contradicts the judgment of relevant "epistemic authorities" is prima facie unwarranted. In response to this claim, Dentith (2018b) observes that conspiracy theories often make claims that cut across many different disciplines. For instance, some versions of the "9/11 was an inside job" theory not only make claims that only experts in international politics can confirm-e.g., about the operations of Israeli intelligence services-but also claims that only civil engineers and chemists can assess-e.g., about the way buildings collapse and how insulated steel beams behave under extreme heat. Consequently, there are no experts or "epistemic authorities" on conspiracy theories per se and hence there is no relevant, accredited community of inquirers, as there is for fields like civil engineering, chemistry, and international politics. Aside from cases like 9/11 in which the government convened a commission of experts to investigate the attacks, there is no single group whose judgment can be appealed to when appraising a conspiracy theory. In the absence of such a community, conspiracy theorists attempt to cobble together what Dentith (2018b) calls "improvised expertise." [24] One reason for this impasse is that trust in experts depends upon how likely we think conspiracies are in the first place, i.e., their prior probability. If they are quite common, then there may be good reasons not to trust experts, since the latter are more likely to be part of a conspiracy. See Basham (2001) and Dentith (2016). [25] See Expertise by Jamie Carlin Watson. [26] This criticism has been leveled, in different forms, by Keeley (1999) and Levy (2007). [27] This is Clarke's (2002) response to Keeley's (1999) criticism. 5 [28] This expression, which refers to the trail of breadcrumbs left by Hansel in the classic children's fairy tale, is what proponents of the QAnon conspiracy theory use to describe their activities. The supposed government insider, Q, leaves clues or "breadcrumbs" in online discussion forum posts- what are known as "Q drops"-that his followers- self-described "bakers"-attempt to decipher. See Schwartz (2018) for more on the QAnon theory and its advocates. [29] We should remember that deferring to experts is part of what it means to "think for ourselves". Many philosophers think that we are always entitled to rely on the testimony of experts unless there is a specific reason to doubt their reliability. See Watson (2018, October 25). [30] Advances in science and technology require an ever-increasing specialization of knowledge and skills that makes it difficult for any one of us to understand how our world works. This broad historical trend may explain, in part, why conspiracy theorizing is gaining popularity. There are, of course, many more reasons why people find conspiracy theories so compelling, including the thrill of solving puzzles, the desire to be among the "enlightened few," and the tendency many have to seek out meaningful patterns among unrelated or random things (a.k.a. apophenia). For a gamedesigner's take on the appeal of the QAnon conspiracy, see Berkowitz (2020). [31] Räikkä (2009) offers a helpful distinction among political conspiracy theories according to whether their claims are local (e.g., Watergate), global (e.g., the Iran-Contra Affair), or total (e.g., the Illuminati) in scope. Räikkä claims that conspiracy theories that aim to explain only limited historical phenomena- i.e., local and global ones-tend to be better supported than total ones, which often posit permanent conspiracies (i.e., those that have been around for centuries). It's interesting to consider whether the QAnon theory, which ostensibly only aims to explain events in US politics, would qualify as local according to this distinction. [32] For more on the rise of conspiracy theories in social media, including tips on how to spot them, see Ellis (2018). References Barken, M. (2018, November 8). "Failed Prophecies Won't Stop Trump's True Believers," Foreign Policy. Basham, L. (2001). "Living with the Conspiracy", The Philosophical Forum, vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 265-280. Basham, L. (2003). "Malevolent Global Conspiracy", Journal of Social Philosophy, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 91-103. Berkowitz, R. (2020, September 30). "A Game Designer's Analysis Of QAnon: Playing with Reality," Medium. Buenting, J. and J. Taylor (2010). "Conspiracy Theories and Fortuitous Data", Philosophy of the Social Sciences, vol. 40, no. 4, pp. 567-578. Caulfield, M. (2018, Dec. 24). "The First Use of the Term 'Conspiracy Theory' is Much Earlier - and More Interesting - Than Historians Have Thought." Hapgood, (retrieved 2020, December 15). Clarke, S. (2002). "Conspiracy Theories and Conspiracy Theorizing", Philosophy of the Social Sciences, vol. 32, no. 2, pp. 131-150. Clarke, S. (2006). "Appealing to the Fundamental Attribution Error: Was it All a Big Mistake?", in Conspiracy Theories: The Philosophical Debate. Edited by David Coady. Ashgate, pp. 129-132. Clarke, S. (2007). "Conspiracy Theories and the Internet: Controlled Demolition and Arrested Development", Episteme, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 167-180. Coady, D. (2003). "Conspiracy Theories and Official Stories", International Journal of Applied Philosophy, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 197-209. Coady, D., ed. (2006). Conspiracy Theories: The Philosophical Debate. Ashgate. Dentith, M. R. X.(2014). The Philosophy of Conspiracy Theories. Palgrave MacMillan. Dentith, M. R. X. (2016). "When Inferring to a Conspiracy might be the Best Explanation," Social Epistemology, 30 (5-6): 572-591. Dentith, M. R. X. (2018a). "The Problem of Conspiracism," Argumenta 3 (2): 327-343. Dentith, M. R. X. (2018b). "Expertise and Conspiracy Theories," Social Epistemology. 32 (3): 196-208. Dentith, M. R. X. (2019). "Conspiracy Theories on the Basis of the Evidence", Synthese, vol. 196, no. 6, pp. 2243-2261. Ellis, E. G. (2018, October 5). "The WIRED Guide to Online Conspiracy Theories: Everything you need to know about George Soros, Pizzagate, and the 6 Berenstain Bears," WIRED. (Retrieved 2020, December 15). Exposed: Apollo 11 Moon Landing Conspiracy Theories [Video]. (2019, June 28) YouTube, uploaded by USA TODAY. Fea, J. (2020, September 24). "An Illuminati Conspiracy Theory Captured American Imaginations in the Nation's Earliest Days-And Offers a Lesson for Now," Time. Hanlon's Razor. (2020, November 30) Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation. (Retrieved 2020, December 15). Keeley, B. (1999). "Of Conspiracy Theories", The Journal of Philosophy. 96 (3): 109-126. Keeley, B. (2003). "Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition! More Thoughts on Conspiracy Theory", Journal of Social Philosophy, 34 (1): 104-110. Lakatos, I. (1970). "Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes", in I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave, editors, Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge. Cambridge University Press, pp. 91-196. Lamb, R (2010, January 21) "Faked Moon Landings and Kubrick's 'The Shining," Seeker. (Retrieved 2020, December 15). Levy, N. (2007). "Radically Socialized Knowledge and Conspiracy Theories", Episteme, vol. 4 no. 2, pp. 181192. Mandik, P. (2007). "Shit Happens", Episteme, vol. 4 no. 2, pp. 205-218. Muirhead, R. and N. Rosenblum. (2019). A Lot of People are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy. Princeton University Press. Pauly, M. (retrieved 2020, December 15). "Conspiracy Theories," Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Perlstein, R. (2020, October 22). "Watergate Scandal," Encyclopaedia Britannica. Pigden, C. R. (2006). "Complots of Mischief", in David Coady (ed.), Conspiracy Theories: The Philosophical Debate. Ashgate, pp. 139-166. Pigden, C.R. (2007). "Conspiracy Theories and the Conventional Wisdom," Episteme, vol. 4 no. 2, p. 219232. Pigden, C.R. (2016). "Are Conspiracy Theorists Epistemically Vicious?", in Coady, D., Brownlee, K. and Lipper-Rasmussen, K. (eds.), Blackwell Companion to Applied Philosophy, Wiley-Blackwell, Ch. 9. Popper, K.R. (1966). The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. 2: The High Tide of Prophecy, 7th edition, Routledge. Popper, K.R. (1972). Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. 2nd edition, Routledge. Räikkä, J. (2009). "On Political Conspiracy Theories", Journal of Political Philosophy, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 185-201. Robb, A. (2017, November 16). "Pizzagate: Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal," Rolling Stone. Schwartz, M. (2018, September 11). "A Trail of 'Bread Crumbs,' Leading Conspiracy Theorists Into the Wilderness," New York Times Magazine. "The Iran-Contra Affair." (2020, September 10). Encyclopaedia Britannica (retrieved 2020, December 15). Uscinski, J.E., ed. (2018). Conspiracy Theories and the People Who Believe Them. Oxford University Press. Was 9/11 an Inside Job? [Video]. (2016, September 8). YouTube, uploaded by Step Back History. Watson, J. C. (2018, October 25). "Expertise," 1000Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology. What is QAnon? How the Conspiracy Theory Gained Traction in the 2020 Campaign [Video]. (2020, August 12). YouTube, uploaded by PBS NewsHour. Related Essays Epistemology, or Theory of Knowledge by Thomas Metcalf Expertise by Jamie Carlin Watson Take My Word for It: On Testimony by Spencer Case Karl Popper and Falsificationism by Michael Zerella Can We Believe in Miracles? by Tomas Bogardus About the Author Jared Millson is an assistant professor in the department of philosophy & religious studies at California State University, Bakersfield. His work engages issues in epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, and logic. Much of it focuses on the nature of inquiry, the logic of 7 questions and answers, and the study of scientific explanation and representation. www.jamillson.com Follow 1000-Word Philosophy on Facebook, Twitter and subscribe to receive email notifications of new essays at 1000WordPhilosophy.com


l-Razi, Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariyyaâ (d. 925)

Philosophy

al-Razi, Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariyya' (d. 925) Perhaps the most famous and widely respected Islamic authority on medicine in the medieval period, al-Razi also aspired to a comparable achievement in philosophy and the other sciences such as alchemy. His success in these other subjects, however, was seldom recognized either in his own time or later; in philosophy, for example, more writers cite him for purposes of rejection and refutation than for admiration and emulation. However, his ideas were and are important. Chief among his positive contributions is his advocacy of a doctrine of equal aptitude in all humans, which grants no special role for unique and divinely favoured prophets and which recognizes the possibility of future progress in the advancement of knowledge. Philosophically, al-Razi was by his own admission a disciple of Socrates and Plato, much of whose teaching he knew on the basis of the latter's Timaeus. Accordingly, he was noted for upholding the eternity of five primary principles, God, soul, time, matter and space, and for a concept of pleasure that sees it as the return to a normal harmony following a serious deviation or disruption which is itself pain. 1. Life and work 2. Metaphysics 3. Ethical and moral philosophy 1. Life and work Al-Razi's main career was that of a physician, and in that field he earned great respect and wide acclaim even from his most vociferous detractors in other matters. He directed two major hospitals, one in Baghdad, the capital of the Islamic empire at that time, and another in his native city of Rayy in northern Iran. His voluminous writings on medicine were universally admired. Despite advancing infirmities, he continued his research and writing into old age, still surrounded by students and assistants when he died in ah 313/ad 925. In Christian Europe he was known as Rhazes, and his works on medicine were highly respected. The whole of al-Razi's work, both in medicine and the physical sciences and in philosophy, derives its central concern from his naturalistic view of the universe as like a 'visible animal' which, in contrast to almost all of the other philosophers in his era, he regarded as a subject of empirical scrutiny. At the heart of his philosophy lies Plato's Timaeus, which seems to have been al-Razi's ultimate inspiration (see Plato). He displayed almost no interest in the rest of Plato, although curiously he was the most avowedly loyal follower of Plato in Arabic and Islamic literature. His other idol was, as might be expected, Socrates, whose way of life he attempted to emulate, advocate and defend; although al-Razi's Socrates was not the extreme ascetic of an earlier period in Socrates' life but rather a later, fully participating social being. For Aristotle he had little use, rejecting outright commonly accepted doctrines that had deeply influenced his philosophical contemporaries (see Aristotelianism in Islamic philosophy). Unusually for his time, al-Razi boldly claimed that he could and had moved beyond his ancient philosophical predecessors and that neither the religious prophets nor the Greek masters (nor even al-Razi himself) possessed the final word or ultimate truth. Others in the future can and will surpass the achievements already realized by the great minds of the past and present. Although denying prophetic religion, al-Razi's own ethical philosophy suggests a kind of religion that encompasses God and the universal soul, and hints at the salvation of particular souls. Nevertheless, writings of his on the falsity of prophets were broadly and specifically condemned and he was branded an arch-heretic for them. An opponent quotes him as claiming that the Qur'an yields no information of particular value in comparison with the books of Ptolemy, Euclid, Hippocrates, Galen, Plato or even Aristotle. It is clear that al-Razi would not accommodate revealed religion, which he saw as both particularistic and divisive. There is thus no harmony to be found between such religion and philosophy a dangerous and certainly radical stance to take in his day. Al-Razi's metaphysical doctrines received no approval from later scholars. As a consequence, with the exception of two treatises on ethics, few of his non-medical works survive, thereby making a fair and detailed judgment of his ideas now difficult and often impossible. 2. Metaphysics The metaphysical doctrine of al-Razi, insofar as it can be reconstructed, derives from his concept of the five eternal principles. God, for him, does not 'create' the world from nothing but rather arranges a universe out of pre-existing principles. His account of the soul features a mythic origin of the world in which God out of pity fashions a physical playground for the soul in response to its own desires; the soul, once fallen into the new realm God has made for it, requires God's further gift of intellect in order to find its way once more to salvation and freedom (see Soul in Islamic philosophy). In this scheme, intellect does not appear as a separate principle but is rather a later grace of God to the soul; the soul becomes intelligent, possessed of reason and therefore able to discern the relative value of the other four principles. Whereas the five principles are eternal, intellect as such is apparently not. Such a doctrine of intellect is sharply at odds with that of all of al-Razi's philosophical contemporaries, who are in general either adherents of some form of Neoplatonism or of Aristotelianism. The remaining three principles, space, matter and time, serve as the non-animate components of the natural world. Space is defined by the relationship between the individual particles of matter, or atoms, and the void that surrounds them. The greater the density of material atoms, the heavier and more solid the resulting object; conversely, the larger the portion of void, the lighter and less solid. Time and matter have both an absolute, unqualified form and a limited form (see Matter; Time). Thus there is an absolute matter pure extent that does not depend in any way on place, just as there is a time, in this sense, that is not defined or limited by motion. The absolute time of al-Razi is, like matter, infinite; it thus transcends the time which Aristotle confined to the measurement of motion. AlRazi, in the cases of both time and matter, knew well how he differed from Aristotle and also fully accepted and intended the consequences inherent in his anti-Peripatetic positions. 3. Ethical and moral philosophy More can be said about al-Razi's ethical doctrines because two of his treatises that contain elements of a moral philosophy al-Tibb al-ruhani (The Spiritual Physick) and al-Sira al-falsafiyya (The Philosophical Life) have survived. On the one hand, al-Razi saw ethics as a kind of psychological medicine. The restoration of equilibrium following upon dislocation is the goal of spiritual or psychic healing, and preventing such disruptions is ethics. For him, pleasure is not a positive or cumulative affection but instead the result of a prior pain that was itself caused by a rupture or departure from the normal state and which thereafter ceases as the normal condition returns or is restored. Passion and appetites will occur naturally but they must be restrained by reason from growing to excess; they should be neither served nor encouraged. True virtue lies in satisfying every need only so far as is indispensable. Al-Razi was against all forms of asceticism, specifically those practised by Muslims. In comparison to the ascetic model of Socrates, contemporaries faulted him for leading a public existence, marrying and having children, earning a living and enjoying the company of princes. Al-Razi, however, vigorously denied that such asceticism was true of his ancient master; Socrates, he insisted, eventually did return to public life and thereafter avoided the extremes of his earlier position. Equally al-Razi denied excesses of commission as well as abstinence. The merciful Lord, he said, does not approve the causing of pain and injustice; hence inflicting hurt either on oneself or on any other being is wrong unless necessary or inevitable. All must be in accord with nature and thus, on occasion, the greater good or benefit may require it. In this way al-Razi warned against the needless slaughter of animals (except in the case of wild, carnivorous creatures whose own extinction may spare their victims' death and also provide for the release of the beast's own soul). On the other hand, al-Razi, in line with his emphasis on the controlling role of reason, believed that philosophy and the philosophic life yields the only salvation that is ultimately possible (see Salvation). Pursuit of that life is to imitate God in the way possible for humankind. The ultimate end for which humans were created does not comprise a physical existence but another world, one without death and pain. The human soul will achieve its hold on that world in proportion to the quality of its previous life while in the body. Those who practise justice and seek to acquire knowledge that is, to lead the philosophical life become habituated to reason, living free of the body and accustomed to unceasing joy. Upon death this will be their permanent state. In contrast, those who cling to a physical existence will, as Plato said, fail to depart this world of generation and corruption and will therefore continue to suffer pain and unending distress. See also: Ethics in Islamic philosophy; Platonism in Islamic philosophy; Soul in Islamic philosophy PAUL E. WALKER Copyright © 1998, Routledge. List of works al-Razi (before 925) al-Tibb al-ruhani (The Spiritual Physick), ed. P. Kraus in Rasa'il falsafiyya li-Abu Bakr Muhammad b. Zakariyya' al-Razi, Cairo: Fouad I University Faculty of Letters, 1939; repr. Beirut: Dar al-Afaq al-Jadida, 1973; trans A. Arberry, The Spiritual Physick of Rhazes, London: John Murray, 1950. (An account of al-Razi's philosophical and ethical psychology.) al-Razi (before 925) al-Sira al-falsafiyya (The Philosophical Life), ed. P. Kraus in Rasa'il falsafiyya li-Abu Bakr Muhammad b. Zakariyya' al-Razi, Cairo: Fouad I University Faculty of Letters, 1939; repr. Beirut: Dar al-Afaq al-Jadida, 1973; trans. A. Arberry, 'Apologia Pro Vita Sua', in Aspects of Islamic Civilization, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1964. (Al-Razi's own philosophical autobiography.) References and further reading Goodman, L. (1971) 'The Epicurean Ethic of M. b. Zakariya' al-Razi', Studia Islamica 34: 5-26. (An account of the links between Epicureanism and al-Razi.) Goodman, L. (1972) 'Razi's Psychology', Philosophical Forum 4: 26-48. (An explanation of the implications and background of his psychological views.) Goodman, L. (1975) 'Razi's Myth of the Fall of the Soul: Its Function in His Philosophy', in G. Hourani (ed.) Essays in Islamic Philosophy and Science, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 25-40. (A detailed account of the doctrine of the soul.) Goodman, L. (1994) 'Al-Razi, Abu Bakr Muhammad b. Zakariya'', Encyclopaedia of Islam, new edn. vol. VIII: 474-77. (An excellent summary of all that is known about al-Razi and his work.) Goodman, L. (1996) 'Muhammad ibn Zakariyya' al-Razi', in S.H. Nasr and O. Leaman (eds) History of Islamic Philosophy, London: Routledge, ch. 13, 198-215. (Description of the life and thought of the thinker, and the wider relevance of his ideas.) Walker, P. (1992) 'The Political Implications of al-Razi's Philosophy', in C. Butterworth (ed.) The Political Aspects of Islamic Philosophy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 61-94. (The standard work on al-Razi's political theory.) http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ip/rep/H


Philosophy

EDITOR LETTER Big Data and Their Epistemological Challenge Luciano Floridi Published online: 8 November 2012 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012 It is estimated that humanity accumulated 180 EB of data between the invention of writing and 2006. Between 2006 and 2011, the total grew ten times and reached 1,600 EB. This figure is now expected to grow fourfold approximately every 3 years. Every day, enough new data are being generated to fill all US libraries eight times over. As a result, there is much talk about "big data". This special issue on "Evolution, Genetic Engineering and Human Enhancement", for example, would have been inconceivable in an age of "small data", simply because genetics is one of the datagreediest sciences around. This is why, in the USA, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) have identified big data as a programme focus. One of the main NSF–NIH interagency initiatives addresses the need for core techniques and technologies for advancing big data science and engineering (see NSF-12-499). Despite the importance of the phenomenon, it is unclear what exactly the term "big data" means and hence refers to. The aforementioned document specifies that: "The phrase 'big data' in this solicitation refers to large, diverse, complex, longitudinal, and/or distributed data sets generated from instruments, sensors, Internet transactions, email, video, click streams, and/or all other digital sources available today and in the future." You do not need to be an analytic philosopher to find this both obscure and vague. Wikipedia, for once, is also unhelpful. Not because the relevant entry is unreliable, but because it reports the common definition, which is unsatisfactory: "data sets so large and complex that they become awkward to work with using onhand database management tools". Apart from the circular problem of defining "big" with "large", the definition suggests that data are too big or large only in relation to our current computational power. This is misleading. Of course, "big", as many other terms, is a relational predicate: a pair of shoes is too big for you, but fine for me. It is also trivial to acknowledge that we tend to evaluate things non-relationally, in this case as absolutely big, whenever the frame of reference is obvious enough to be left Philos. Technol. (2012) 25:435–437 DOI 10.1007/s13347-012-0093-4 L. Floridi (*) School of Humanities, University of Hertfordshire, de Havilland Campus, Hatfield, Hertfordshire AL10 9AB, UK e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com implicit. A horse is a big animal, no matter what whales may think. Yet, these two simple points may give the impression that there is no real trouble with "big data" being a loosely defined term referring to the fact that our current computers cannot handle so many gazillions of data efficiently. And this is where two confusions seem to creep in. First, that the epistemological problem with big data is that there is too much of them (the ethical problem concerns how we use them; see below). And second, that the technological solution to the epistemological problem is more and better techniques and technologies, which will "shrink" big data back to a manageable size. The epistemological problem is different, and it requires an equally epistemological solution. Consider the problem first. "Big data" came to be formulated after other buzz expressions, such as "infoglut" or "information overload", began to fade away, yet the idea remains the same. It refers to an overwhelming sense that we have bitten off more than we can chew, that we are being forced-fed like geese, that our intellectual livers are exploding. This is a mistake. Yes, there is an obvious exponential growth of data on an ever-larger number of topics, but complaining about such overabundance would be like complaining about a banquet that offers more than we can ever eat. Data remain an asset, a resource to exploit. Nobody is forcing us to digest every available byte. We are becoming data-richer by the day; this cannot be the fundamental problem. Since the problem is not the increasing wealth of data that is becoming available, clearly the solution needs to be reconsidered: it cannot be merely howmany data we can technologically process. If anything, more and better techniques and technologies are only going to generate more data. If the problem were too many data, computers would only exacerbate it. Growing bigger digestive systems, as it were, is not the way forward. The real, epistemological problem with big data is small patterns. Precisely because so many data can now be generated and processed so quickly, so cheaply, and on virtually anything, the pressure both on the data nouveau riche, such as Facebook or Walmart, Amazon or Google, and on the data old money, such as genetics or medicine, experimental physics or neuroscience, is to be able to spot where the new patterns with real added value lie in their immense databases and how they can best be exploited for the creation of wealth and the advancement of knowledge. Small patterns matter because they represent the new frontier of competition, from science to business, from governance to social policies. In a Baconian open market of ideas, if someone else can exploit them earlier and more successfully than you do, you might be out of business soon, like Kodak, or miss a fundamental discovery. Small patterns may also be risky, because they push the limit of what is predictable and, therefore, may be anticipated, about not only nature's, but also people's, behaviour. This is the ethical problem. Target, an American retailing company, relies on the analysis of the purchasing patterns of 25 products in order to assign each shopper a "pregnancy prediction" score, estimate her due date, and send coupons timed to specific stages of her pregnancy. In a notorious case, it caused some serious problems when it sent coupons to a family in which the teenager daughter had not informed her parents about her new status. Unfortunately, small patterns may be significant only if properly aggregated, e.g. in terms of loyalty cards and shopping suggestions, compared, as when a bank can 436 L. Floridi use big data to fight fraudsters, and timely processed, as in financial markets. And because information is indicative also when it is not there, small patterns can also be significant if they are absent. Sherlock Holmes solves one of his famous cases because of the silence of the dog, which should have barked. If big data are not "barking" when they should, something is going on, as the financial watchdogs (should) know. The increasingly valuable undercurrents in the ever-expanding oceans of data are invisible to the computationally naked eye, so more and better techniques and technologies will help significantly. Yet, by themselves, they will be insufficient. And mere data hoarding, while waiting for more powerful computers and software, will not work. Since 2007, the world has been producing more data than available storage. We have shifted from the problem of what to save to the problem of what to erase. Something must be deleted or never be recorded. Think of your smart phone becoming too full because you took too many pictures, and make it a global problem. The infosphere run out of memory space to dump its data years ago. This is not as bad as it looks. Rephrasing a common saying in advertisement, half of our data is junk, we just do not know which half. So what we need is a better understanding of which data are worth preserving. And this is a matter of grasping which questions are or will be interesting. Which is just another way of saying that, because the problem with big data is small patterns, ultimately, the game will be won by those who "know how to ask and answer questions" (Plato, Cratylus, 390c) and therefore know which data may be useful and relevant, and hence worth collecting and curating, in order to exploit their valuable patterns. We need more and better techniques and technologies to see the small data patterns, but we need more and better epistemology to sift the valuable ones. Big data are here to grow. The only way of tackling them is to know what you are or may be looking for. At the moment, such epistemological skills are taught and applied by a black art called analytics. Not exactly your standard degree at the university. Yet, so much of our well-being depends on it that it might be time to develop a philosophical investigation of its methods. Who knows, philosophers might have something to learn, but also a couple of lessons to teach. Plato would agree. Big data and their epistemological challenge