[An update added 08102015] [An update to the earlier update added 09102015]

On Readings, p. 305, the objector is made to ask why, since (according to Xunzi), Sageliness is achieved through accumulation, not everyone can accumulate in this way and so acquire Sageliness? We can formulate the objection as follows:

(1) Everyone has the same nature.

(2) Everyone could become a (superlatively) virtuous agent. (From (1))

(3) Some people are virtuous agent, other people are not (some are vicious agents).

The objector is now asking: if (2) follows from (1)—as explained in the previous post—how is it that (3)? Why does everyone not become virtuous agents, let alone superlatively virtuous agents?

Xunzi gave a rather involved reply that required him to make several distinctions. The first thing he said was:

They could do it, but they cannot be made to do it. Thus, the petty man could (kěyǐ 可以) become a gentleman, but is not willing (bùkěn 不肯) to become a gentleman. The gentleman could become a petty man, but is not willing to become a petty man. It has never been that the petty man and gentleman are incapable of becoming each other. However, the reason they do not become each other is that while they could do so, they cannot be made to do so.

Two slightly different points seem to be made here. First,

(4) Some people are willing to do the things that would have allowed them to become a virtuous agent, others are unwilling.

Two quick comments: First, for simplicity’s sake, I’m taking “cannot be made to” as being equivalent to “is unwilling to”. Second, Xunzi has already spelt out what those things the doing of which would have allowed people to become virtuous agents previously (Readings, p. 305 top; see also the last part of the previous post). Anyway, the point now is that with (4), there isn’t a tension between (1)/(2) and (3) after all, since even though two persons have the same nature—and so both can become virtuous—one might be willing while the other unwilling, to do things that would have allowed either to become a virtuous agent.

Xunzi also makes a second analogous point:

(5) A virtuous agent is unwilling to do vicious things; the vicious agent is unwilling to do virtuous things.

Actually, (5) is slightly distracting—as (4) is the more substantive one. We could say that it is part of what it means for someone to be a virtuous agent, that he would be willing to practice virtue. So in a sense, Xunzi gets (5) for free since it is not controversial. With (5), Xunzi can easily explain why even though a virtuous agent could do vicious things—because after all, he has the same nature as the vicious agent—he won’t (and vice versa). But is the objector really asking about that? The more pressing issue is why, if all could become virtuous, only some people actually became virtuous agents and others are did not in the first place. (4) answers to this issue more directly. And it makes for a good explanation in Xunzi’s books since the explanation does not require positing that people have different natures, given the prior commitment to (1) (see also this previous post). In any case, the fact that (5) is explicitly mentioned is slightly puzzling. As we shall see much later, it may be symptomatic of a potential confusion on the part of Xunzi.

In the immediate sequel, Xunzi seemed to be merely drawing out the conclusion of the previous argument:

Thus, it is the case that the people in the streets could (kěyǐ 可以) become a Yu, but it is not necessarily the case that the people in the streets will be able (néng 能) to become a Yu. Even if one is not able (néng 能) to become a Yu, this does not harm the fact that one could (kěyǐ 可以) become a Yu.

If one is not careful, one would just take the above as saying that even when all could, not all do become virtuous agents—because even though all could, not all are willing. But that’s not actually what Xunzi said. What he said was that even when all “could” (kěyǐ 可以), not all “are able” (néng 能)—and it seems that this is a separate reason why even though all could, not all do—because even though al could, not all are able. In other words, Xunzi introduces two different modalities of possibility here such that you can have one without having the other. But what does the distinction between the two forms of modalities of possibility (translated as “could” vs. “is able”) amount to? Xunzi explains it with two examples:

One’s feet could walk over every place under Heaven. Even so, there has not yet been anyone who has been able to walk everywhere under Heaven. It has never been that craftsmen, carpenters, farmers, and merchants could not do each other’s business. However, none have ever been able to do each other’s business. Looking at it in this way, one is not always able to do what one could do. Even if one is not able to do it, this is no harm to the fact that one could do it. Thus, the difference between being able and being unable, on the one hand, and could and could not, on the other, is far indeed. It is clear, then, that [the gentleman and the petty man] could become one another.

One way to take the passage is to see it as telling the following story: from the fact that one could do X, and one could do Y, it doesn’t follow that one could do both X and Y. So from the fact that I could have walked to spot A, and I could have walked to spot B (and so on for all relevant spots in the whole wide world beneath heaven), it doesn’t follow that I could have walked to spot A and B (and all other relevant spots in the world). And from the fact that I could become a carpenter, and I also could become a farmer, it doesn’t follow that could become both a carpenter and a farmer. In other words, from the fact that I can do anything, it doesn’t follow that I can do everything. This is a simple and neat distinction (and one that is true and explainable in modern modal logic to boot by saying that “◊p & ◊q” does not entail “◊(p &q)”). Let’s call this the scope of model operator (SMO) reading of the passage.

The nice thing about SMO is that it tells a consistent story between the two examples. But unfortunately, it is probably not what Xunzi had in mind. That’s because as spelt out, the distinction is not one between two different modalities of possibility, but a difference between two claims, both of which involve the same modality of possibility, but with different scopes attached to the modal operators. (In contemporary notation, “◊p & ◊q” vs. “◊(p &q)”—only one modality, symbolized by the operator “◊” is involved.)

Consider a second possible way to understand what’s going on. Think of different levels of capacity. Let’s say we have two equally healthy and able-bodied persons. As far as the native cognitive and bodily capabilities are concerned, they are equivalent to each other. Actually, let’s just make them a pair of twins Mary and Jane. But there is this difference—Jane learned and thus is able to swim the butterfly stroke, while Mary never did learn such a thing and is unable to swim in that manner. We can grant that Mary would have learned to swim the butterfly stroke in the same amount of time with the same amount of effort if she had ever started on that project (she was busy learning to ride the monocycle instead). But since she didn’t learn to swim the butterfly stroke, there is this difference between them—Jane is able to swim the butterfly stroke while Mary is not. So even though in a more generous sense, both could do it—since they both have the native capabilities that, if given a suitable regime of training, would have given either the actual ability—one is able, the other not. Let’s call this the levels of capacity (LOC) reading of the passage.

The nice thing about LOC is that it introduces a distinction between two modalities (bare, native capacity that could be further trained vs. trained capacity that provides a real ability to do something), and the term for the second one—(néng 能)—suggests something like a competence, in any case something much stronger than a mere possibility or capacity. Secondly, LOC makes good sense of the craftsmen, carpenters, farmers, and merchants example—I hope you can see that my own explanation in terms of Mary and Jane can be easily reframed using the items in the example. But it doesn’t work as well for the can’t walk everywhere under Heaven example. I don’t think Xunzi means to suggest that there’s such a thing as a trained capacity that gives someone the real ability to literally walk everywhere under Heaven, or that one could have one set of trained ability to walk to spot A, but a different set of trained ability is needed to walk to spot B, and having one trained ability is not the same as having the other.

So here’s a third possible way to understand what’s going on. Think of the availability of different opportunities. Let’s have Mary and Jane back for the explanation, and this time, I’ll say more about how one ended up swimming for the national team, the other a successful circus acrobat famous for her high-wire monocycle act. Somehow, they happened to meet different people in their formative years, who got them interested in different things, which led them to explore different pathways, and so end up committed to different regimes of training and ultimately different careers. Now, being literally equally endowed as far as their native cognitive and bodily capabilities are concerned, either one would have become the national swimmer (or circus acrobat)—if she had met the relevant people in her formative years, and so gotten interested in swimming (or riding the monocycle), and so committed to herself to the relevant regime of training. But as a matter of fact, one sister encountered one set of circumstances and the other, a different set of circumstances, and the two sets of circumstances present two different sets of opportunities. In fact, we can even say that in the beginning, the two different sets of opportunities merely overlap, but as each new step is taken, they diverge further and further apart until they don’t overlap at all. Grant the two sisters starting out from the same situation and so have the exact same opportunities opened to each. One proceeded to A and the other to B. From A, one could reach either C or D with equal ease; and from B, one could reach either D or E with equal ease… But eventually, there will be situations that Mary could no longer access with the same ease as Jane, and vice versa. So we might say that at the beginning, both Mary and Jane could have become a national swimmer, or a circus acrobat. But as one progressed in the path that took her closer to actually being a national swimmer, or a circus acrobat, the window of opportunity for becoming the other narrows given the time and life available to each. To sum up, the fact that Mary and Jane each have the same starting point and so, in some generous sense, could do something, it might yet be that one has the opportunity to actually do the thing while the other lacks the opportunity. Let’s call this the different sets of opportunities (DSO) reading.

Now, I hope you noticed that DSO makes for a good way to understand both the can’t walk everywhere under Heaven example, and the craftsmen, carpenters, farmers, and merchants example, unlike LOC. It also introduces two modalities, unlike SMO. [Update: On second thoughts, the last sentence wasn’t right–it’s possible to understand DSO as involving a scope distinction but only on modality, on the analogy of SMO: having the opportunity for A and having the opportunity for B does not entail having the opportunity for A+B… / UPDATE 2: On third thoughts, I think it’s fine if DSO is modified to be based on a distinction between having a general capacity to do A vs. having the opportunity to do A. Some editing will be needed but phew…] Is this the right reading then? I’m not sure. First of all, while DSO makes sense of the craftsmen, carpenters, farmers, and merchants example, to my mind, LOC makes better sense of it. Being a craftsman, a carpenter, a farmer, or a merchant is, plausibly, to possess a trained capacities, rather than to have a certain set of opportunities opened to you. As the text says: “none have ever been able to do each other’s business”—they each lack the relevant ability to do the other person’s job. But nonetheless, I hope you can see from the discussion in the previous paragraph now issues of opportunities may well be involved in a fuller understanding of the situation facing the craftsman, carpenter, farmer, and merchant—while it’s true that the carpenter does not have the ability to do the farmer’s job because he lacks the relevant trained capacity of farming, why he lacks that relevant capacity can be explained in terms of his having no opportunity for acquiring that capacity. Not necessarily in the sense that he never had the opportunity to acquire that capacity, but it might just be that as he took on the process of acquiring the trained capacity of carpentry, it closes off the opportunity for also acquiring the capacity of farming—given the time and life available him.

But I’ll leave you with this possibility. Now as far as I can tell, all three—SMO, LOC and DSO make distinctions that I’m willing to stand behind. The problem is that none of them obviously makes for a good interpretation of what Xunzi’s text. And don’t forget that there is also the earlier distinction between willing and not willing—however the subsequent sections is understood, it doesn’t seem to be reducible to the same point as that distinction. Could it be that Xunzi is slightly confused? (After all, even Homer nods; and unlike Horace, we don’t need to get annoyed.)

Recall these two points that I had Xunzi make earlier:

(4) Some people are willing to do the things that would have allowed them to become a virtuous agent, others are unwilling.

(5) A virtuous agent is unwilling to do vicious things; the vicious agent is unwilling to do virtuous things.

As explained earlier, they answer to different concerns. Namely:

Q1: Why, if all could become virtuous—because after all, they have the same nature—only some people actually did became virtuous agents and others did not?

Q2: Why is it that even though a virtuous agent could do vicious things—because after all, he has the same nature as the vicious agent—he won’t (and vice versa)?

So (5) allows us to answer Q2, while (4) allows us to answer Q1. But as I also mentioned above, (5) is distracting since it answers to a problem that is sort of a non-problem—why would anyone be impressed by Q2? At the very least, it is less of an issue than the issue involved in Q1. I suspect that the difficulty of pinning down SMO, LOC and DSO as interpretations of the subsequent passage is related. Xunzi shuffled between two different concerns expressed by Q1 and Q2. LOC—and the obvious reading of the craftsmen, carpenters, farmers, and merchants example, makes for a good answer to Q2. In contrast, DSO, and to an extent, SMO as well, relates better to Q1.

This doesn’t mean that Xunzi’s account is problematic in some irretrievable way—I believe Xunzi could have taken on board all four distinctions—willing/not willing, SMO, LOC and DSO—and make them work for his account. Needless to say, when we do that, we aren’t just interpreting Xunzi but asking ourselves how the main points of his account may be reformulated in terms that we could accept.