•

Laozi: "He who speaks does not know"

•

famous saying from the Daodejing

•

very easy to make satire of, since it contradicts itself

•

but it maps to the suspicion of language, since language can

•

cut us off from our experience

•

distorts our experience in various ways

•

a common theme in the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi

•

two foundational texts of Daoism

•

language can impair our ability to experience reality

•

Daodejing

•

language not only gets in the way but distorts our experience of reality

•

language damages our nature

•

chapter 2

•

"Everyone in the world knows that when the beautiful strives to be beautiful, it is repulsive"

•

wei = striving

•

when everyone calls that which is beautiful "beautiful", it becomes less beautiful

•

you're setting up an ideal that his not the right ideal

•

media presentations of beauty

•

female body: tall, anorexic models

•

society sets up an image that it pushes as beautiful

•

beauty for Confucius

•

we have crude natural tastes, we have to get trained up and we refine these over time

•

beauty for Laozi

•

natural tastes are fine

•

Confucius is taking away from our basic intuitions, which are the right ones

•

hedonistic treadmill

•

social strife

•

"no showing reverence for precious goods leads others not to steal"

•

danger of hypocrisy

•

Confucianism is suspect

•

talking about morality it just as bad as talking about beauty

•

hypocritical social values destroy honest, natural relations between people

•

calling someone benevolent impedes their ability to become benevolent

•

a corrosive force in human nature

•

when the Way was lost there was Virtue

•

if you are talking about virtue, things are already messed up

•

when virtue was lost there was benevolence

•

when benevolence was lost there was righteousness

•

when righteousness was lost there was ritual

•

and rituals are the wearing thin of loyalty and trust, and the beginning of chaos

•

Daodejing, Chapter 18

•

"When the great Way is abandoned, there are benevolence and righteousness."

•

you don't start talking about morality until morality is gone

•

"When the six familial relationships are out of balance, there are kind parents and filial children."

•

when you have to talk about kind parents and filial children, this is a sign there are some that are not kind and filial

•

when you really have it, you don't need to talk about it

•

"When the state is in turmoil and chaos, there are loyal ministers."

•

people don't call themselves loyal ministers unless they are not

•

a real loyal minister doesn't have to talk about it

•

healthy relationships don't need ceremony and you don't need to talk about it

•

ritual scripts will turn people into hypocrites

•

inhibits their ability to experience and live in a sincere relationship

•

contemporary psychology

•

moral licensing

•

consciously considering yourself moral may impair actual moral behavior

•

people were asked to meditate, and consider how compassionate they are, yet these were the people in the study who were more likely to spend money on frivolities for themselves

•

one feels one is good and therefore can engage in bad

•

experiment

•

people were asked to donate $10 to a charity

•

people who were primed with normal words, would typically give $2.71 on the average

•

people who were primed with words such as caring, generous, and kind, gave $1.07 on the average

•

people primed with words such as greedy, mean and selfish spent an average of $5.30

•

verbal labels can

•

be a smoke screen for the lack of the quality

•

distort our experience with reality

•

verbal overshadowing

•

consciously reflecting on our perceptions can have a negative effect on recalling experiences accurately

•

Jonathan Schooler

•

how language interacts with perception in a negative way

•

when people try to talk about things that they really don't have good words for, this can be disruptive

•

e.g. a face

•

we don't have a good vocabulary to describe

•

we can recognize them but not describe them well

•

people who described the face afterward after the crime were less accurate in identifying the robber

•

when you describe a face, it can reduce your ability to recognize it

•

same with a color, shapes, voices, tastes

•

reasons

•

people lack the vocabulary to describe e.g. the face in sufficient detail

•

with experts who have the right vocabulary the effect was the opposite

•

e.g. professional wine-tasters

•

amateurs who tried to describe the wine they tasted afterward, showed a high rate of verbal overshadowing, whereas wine experts showed a modest gain in their ability to identify wines later, if they described them right after tasting them

•

study: multiple face recognition

•

participants were shown two faces and told to describe one of those faces

•

verbalition interfered with both the face they had described as well as the face they hadn't described

•

this suggests a generalized processing shift when people make verbal descriptions

•

from a non-analytic mode to a more analytic mode

•

study: not just memory but other non-verbal judgements

•

participants tried a number of jams

•

some were asked to explain why they made that choice, other were asked not to explain it

•

they were then asked to rate the jams

•

those who made verbal descriptions showed more of a discrepancy with generally recognized high-quality jams and low-quality jams

•

experts don't seem to be subject to verbal overshadowing

•

reflection and verbalizing have a positive effect in accuracy of descriptions

•

the experience of non-experts tend to support the view of Laozi

•

the experience of experts tend to support the view of Confucius

•

training is important and leads to greater accuracy