Cognitive Science and Early Confucian Virtue Ethics: In Defense of Habit 1

Abstract

This chapter argues that early Confucian thinkers articulated a virtue ethical tradition built upon a plausible, empirically defensible account of cognitive control and regulation of one's moral environment. It begins with a review of embodied cognition and the two systems or hot/cold approach to cognition. The chapter argues that recent work in cognitive science and social psychology suggests that the sort of “cognitive control” that plays a central role in modern deontology and utilitarianism is actually a very weak foundation to build an ethical education system. Mencian sprouts are merely moral potentialities, of course, and Mencian moral education focuses upon the gradual strengthening and “extension” of these incipient virtues. Imagination is clearly central to the process, whether in recalling and dwelling upon one's prior somatic-emotional states. The degree to which the Chinese state has historically built both legal constraint and pervasive social surveillance into everyday life is remarkable.