§100. The Senses

Xunzi discusses both names and sense perception in the same treatise and in much the same terms because they share the same power of discrimination (bian). Xunzi says that if things are the same, they tend to appear the same too, from which he deduces the rule that “whenever things belong to the same category of being or have the same essential characteristics (qing), the repre­sentation (yi) of them presented by the senses is the same.” “Representation” is perhaps not an ideal translation of yi here.

This is almost the theory of Gibson (§68). To perceive a thing is not to “represent” it with an image, a static form. It is to begin to interact with it, by discriminating where and how we can act on (or with) what we perceive. To go by perception in your action is reliable only when the perceptions prop­erly arise from the organ. “Only when it rests on the evidence provided by the ears is it possible for this awareness of the defining characteristics to know sounds, and only when it rests on the evidence provided by the eyes is it possible to know shape.” This being so, he concludes, “The mind’s aware­ness of defining characteristics necessarily requires that the sense organ be impressed by the type of the thing to which that sense organ [is sensitive].”¹⁴

This awareness of things, of their tendencies, requires more than just a series of sense perceptions, because left to themselves the senses run riot. “From birth there are the desires of the ears and eyes—the fondness for sound and visual appearance—the compliance with which causes the birth of loose­ness and chaos.” The response to imminent chaos is a reassuring assertion of higher authority.

Perception (guan) is an official (guan), each sense having its office, with its desires restrained by a superior—the heart or mind (xin), acting for the good of the whole. Like Empedocles and Aristotle, Chinese tradition localizes thinking and feeling in the heart, which is conscious and intelligent, under­standing and feeling. Its principal activity is discrimination or distinction, and the objectivity, the “intentionality,” the external reference of perception, requires its concurrence. “When the heart is not employed, then although black and white are in front of a person’s own eyes, he will not see them, or although thunder drums are sounding on either side of him, his ears will not hear them.”¹⁶

Xunzi silently appropriates an idea from the Mohists, who introduced the argument that perception is not knowledge. “Knowing is different from having an image When one knows, it is not by means of the five senses.” Knowledge arises only when “by the use of your intelligence (zhi), having passed a thing, you are able to describe it” This intelligent memory distinguishes knowing something from merely seeing it. Knowing is ex­perience, that is, perception remembered, memory being how knowledge survives the passing of perception. “If the only means were the five senses, knowing as it endures would not fit the facts” Without memory, knowledge would last no longer than perception. Since it outlasts perception, knowledge and perception cannot be the same.¹⁷

Perception becomes knowledge when it is remembered, a mnemic syn­thesis that is a function not of eyes and ears but heart and mind. Perception is a source, a beginning, but there is no knowledge without the involvement of thought and language, introducing intelligent distinctions, classification, names, and memory. This is among the Mohists' most influential ideas, si­lently appropriated by all sides in later thinking about knowledge and sense perception.¹⁸