http://hps.phil.pku.edu.cn/bbs/read.php?tid=269
A recent series of remarks of mine was prompted, in origin, first by a dialogue with “folk science” enthusiasts, and second by a discussion with Teacher Tian. Although Teacher Tian’s serial has not yet reached its conclusion, my response has long since come to an end. I’ll post it here for the record. (No need to indicate which words are mine, I suppose.)
Tian Song: Why Does Such an Animal as Human Need to Drink the Milk of Such an Animal as Cow? (Serialized Essay)
Why Does Such an Animal as Human Need to Drink the Milk of Such an Animal as Cow? (Part 1): Beyond Scientific Grounds (2498 bytes)
Posted by: Mai Zi
Date: December 29, 2007 08:34PM
Why does such an animal as human need to drink the milk of such an animal as cow?
A glass of milk every morning is the fashion of the so-called modern people living in the city, and is also regarded as a sign of healthy living. But why should humans drink milk? If I ask the question this way, the answer will surely be all kinds of “scientific grounds” for supplementing calcium, iron, zinc, tin, vitamins, and so on. Milk-product advertisements on television, ubiquitous and impossible to avoid, make precisely this claim. Under this discourse, people have entirely ceased to realize: milk is a cow’s milk, a liquid secreted for her baby from the warm breasts of the female individual of that large mammalian species called the cow.
So I want to pose my question this way: why does such an animal as human drink the milk of such an animal as cow?
1. Beyond scientific grounds
First, let us set aside scientific grounds, and return to common sense, return to things about which we can make judgments on the basis of our own individual experience.
Now many hospitals hang large posters proclaiming “Breastfeeding is good.” This means that for human infants, their mother’s milk is even “better than cow” milk—what is meant by the saying “a mother’s milk is the most miraculous,” in other words. However, common sense tells us that even this milk, more formidable than cow’s milk, if given to an infant for a year or so without any other food being added, will leave the poor child malnourished. Alas, under scientific discourse the word “nutrition” has already degenerated into a collection of various chemical elements, and I still have no choice but to use it. In the traditional countryside, there would be children who continued drinking their mother’s milk until eight or nine years old; clearly that was not a nutritional necessity, only a habit, a form of entertainment between mother and child. By the same reasoning, if a cow’s baby, after becoming an adult cow, still only drank its cow mom’s milk, it too would become malnourished. So the conclusion is: for adult individuals of mammalian species, milk is insufficient.
Then is milk necessary? Or to put it this way: does milk contain some magical substance that is indispensable to the adult human body, or perhaps not indispensable but beneficial in addition? Clearly, the now widespread habit of drinking milk has much to do with this belief. Probably for this reason, more than one person has given me this strange answer: “Because human milk is not enough.” Of course, this answer is not entirely groundless; the legendary tyrannical landlord Liu Wencai reportedly had two wet nurses to supply him with milk—that is evidence of reactionary feudal landlords’ luxury and decadence! To this answer, I would add another question:
Why should an adult individual of a mammal drink milk?
Among all mammals, there is no species whose adult individuals still need to drink milk, still less any species whose adult individuals depend on the milk of another species. Human beings are a unique exception.
In the long history of humankind, the great majority of peoples have never regarded the milk of other animals as an indispensable food. Most of the Han Chinese in China likewise had no tradition of consuming milk. In the Northeast speech I remember, associating an adult with milk was an expression of contempt and insult. I believe this linguistic habit still survives to this day. Although now, even men and women, young and old, in the Northeast can pull out at any time and place their brightly colored baby bottles (bottles for holding milk) and drink with heads tilted back without changing expression.
Naturally, some people will point out that milk, as well as goat milk, mare’s milk, and all their various products, are daily foods, even necessities, for pastoral peoples. I of course admit that there is ample historical basis for nomadic peoples consuming milk. So I shall set that aside for the moment and only ask about the remaining part: why did those non-pastoral peoples who had never had a tradition of consuming milk suddenly, within a fairly short time, come to regard milk as a daily food, even a necessity?
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Published in the second issue of Our Scientific Culture (East China Normal University Press).
Included in Skepticism in the Era of the Finite Earth — The World of the Future Is Made of Garbage (Science Press, 2007)
[Main post] | Posted: 2008-01-01 11:49
If one is going to ask, “Why does such an animal as human need to drink the milk of such an animal as cow?”, then of course one must begin with the nomadic peoples; how could one “set that aside for the moment”?
And “those non-pastoral peoples who had never had a tradition of consuming milk suddenly, within a fairly short time, came to regard milk as a daily food” has already become another completely different question. We can also ask why foods like corn and potatoes expanded so rapidly across the globe; why peoples who had never seen corn suddenly made corn their staple food within a fairly short time; and so on.
If it is inappropriate for such an animal as human to drink milk, then this criticism should likewise apply to pastoral peoples. Why single them out as an exception and leave them out of the discussion first? No matter how globalization spreads things around now, the “chief culprit” that led such an animal as human to drink milk is undoubtedly the nomadic peoples. But why is Teacher Tian now unwilling to criticize the nomads?
This is like saying that scientists invented a technology, such as the atomic bomb, but they did not spread it, did not widely apply it; scientists merely carried on research activities along the tradition that had “sufficient historical basis,” so scientists are innocent. Now saying the same about milk seems to follow this line of thought: what is bad is the disseminator, not the inventor. Do we not trace things back to their source, and simply “ask about the remaining part”?
To be honest, I personally have little aversion to drinking milk. The nomadic way of life is also very “ecological” compared with agricultural peoples, not to mention compared with modern people; between nomads and sheep or cattle there is a symbiotic relationship, mutual dependence, and nothing shameful about it. If one cannot push the blame onto the nomadic peoples, then I cannot be persuaded that drinking milk is inappropriate. Of course I am not saying that the spread of milk is a good thing; the spread of milk, like the spread of corn, is a destruction of the diversity of food cultures, and on this point I support Teacher Tian’s concern.
[1st floor] | Posted: 2008-01-01 15:51
“The statement that among all mammals, there is no species whose adult individuals still need to drink milk, still less any species whose adult individuals depend on the milk of another species—human beings are a unique exception”—this sentence by no means proves that drinking milk is inappropriate; it may even suggest the opposite.
We can also say that among all animals, there is no species that is vegetarian, no species that, even though it can clearly digest something, likes to eat it, is hungry, faces delicious food right before its eyes, and yet refuses to eat that food. Human beings are a “unique exception.” If one were to talk about human beings merely as an animal, then vegetarianism has no basis for argument. To claim that such an animal as human should be vegetarian, one must treat humans as a “unique exception.”
By the way, humans are not entirely exceptional: domesticated pet cats and dogs all drink milk. Although adult cats and dogs cannot digest lactose, they still like to drink milk; as long as people provide it, they will keep on drinking milk, treating milk as a daily food or even a necessity. This is what “mammals” are like: as long as mammals like it and have the conditions to eat it, they will still drink milk; whereas to say that such a mammal as human likes it, has the conditions to eat it, yet still does not drink milk, is what is abnormal, exceptional, and unique.
[2nd floor] | Posted: 2008-01-01 18:00
Why Does Such an Animal as Human Need to Drink the Milk of Such an Animal as Cow? (Part 2): Individual Experience: From Having No Such Habit to Taking It for Granted
2. Individual experience: from having no such habit to taking it for granted
For most urban people in China, the change from scarcely or never consuming milk to drinking a glass every day took place in barely twenty years. As for the details of this change, if any scholar were willing to devote the effort, there would surely be much to write about. I shall, for the time being, sketch a rough outline based on my own individual experience.
It is said that when I was an infant I did drink formula, and I myself have also seen material evidence of this claim—an iron Nestlé milk tin, indeed Nestlé, I remember. However, in the two small villages in Jilin’s Lishu County where I lived as a child, there was no tradition of drinking milk. Occasionally one heard of families raising sheep and drinking goat’s milk, which we Han people regarded as odd. During a period of my adolescence in Siping, Jilin, fresh milk was supplied by ration coupons, and my family managed to catch that ride as well. Probably from around then on, I tacitly regarded milk as a good thing—the aroma that drifted from warmed milk in memory was indeed enticing. But because “the standard of living was not high,” it could not be enjoyed every day. So during my university years, I would often keep a bag of milk powder on my bookshelf, occasionally making myself a cup late at night, or chewing a few mouthfuls dry, as a supplement to “nutrition.” Only because I was naturally lazy did I use very little over the course of four years.
Coming to Nanjing in 1986, the strongest cultural shock I encountered in the realm of food was yogurt! This thing that was almost never seen at that time in the cities of the Northeast was actually a daily beverage for Nanjing residents. My middle-school classmates who had come to Nanjing for their undergraduate studies were already all addicted to milk. I clearly remember that outside a small shop at Nanjing Institute of Technology (now called Southeast University), I swallowed my first-ever mouthful of yogurt, but immediately, right then and there, and without stopping for even a moment, I spat it out at lightning speed—this taste was simply too strange! Unexpectedly, in the months that followed, I quickly fell in love with yogurt. I very much liked the sensation of thick yogurt moistening the tip of the tongue.
However, it was not until 2001 that milk became part of my daily life. At that time I was busy writing my dissertation, living a secluded life, and my refrigerator was regularly stocked with bagged fresh milk, while the area outside the refrigerator often had bottled oatmeal, serving as the default setup for breakfast and late-night snacks. This habit was maintained intermittently until the summer of 2005, when it came to a swift end with the beginning of my vegetarian life.
Counting from 1986 to around 2005, that is my brief twenty-year history of drinking milk as an adult individual.
I believe many people have gone through a similar process of changing from never drinking, to scarcely drinking, to drinking every day. According to my limited random survey of the “why,” there are roughly three reasons: 1. Everybody drinks it; 2. It tastes good; 3. It is nutritious. These are precisely the three pressure points that dairy advertisements stimulate day after day. Everybody drinks it, so drinking milk becomes fashionable. And milk tastes good—according to my personal experience, I believe that part of taste is constructed: milk being tasty is not an instinct of human beings, but the result of social construction. If there were no fashion of everybody drinking it and no scientific basis for milk’s nutritive value, then after I spat out milk, I absolutely would never have taken a second sip, and it would have been impossible for me to think it tasted good. So among these three reasons, the strongest one seems to be the scientific grounds people are always invoking now: milk contains this or that nutrient, it produces this or that effect, and it has so many benefits for the human body.
For at least twenty years now, many scientific grounds—or myths—about milk have circulated in China, the most famous of which should be this one: because Japanese people drink milk every day, after N years their average height increased by ten centimeters! I too once believed these scientific grounds and myths without the slightest doubt. However,
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Published in the second issue of Our Scientific Culture (East China Normal University Press).
Included in Skepticism in the Era of the Finite Earth — The World of the Future Is Made of Garbage (Science Press, 2007)
[3rd floor] | Posted: 2008-01-02 09:43
“Nutritious” is of course one of the factors behind milk’s popularity. But we all know that cola is not nutritious, and is harmful to health rather than beneficial—yet it is still just as popular, isn’t it? If milk’s being nutritious is merely socially constructed, then why not construct cola as nutritious, or cigarettes as nutritious? Especially since the interest groups behind cigarettes are even more powerful, right? Of course it’s not that no one has ever said cigarettes are good for health, but nobody believes it; this shows that the construction of science cannot necessarily succeed by relying on interests and power alone. The nutrition in milk is not just lactose; the presence of proteins, fats, and minerals in it is as solid as a rock. Although I have not personally verified this, just as I have not personally been to the United States, I am still very willing to believe in their existence.
The rapid popularization of milk, like the even faster spread of cola, Western fast food, and the like, does indeed carry the danger of cultural homogenization, and I am also in favor of some resistance to it. However, one cannot say that the fact of rapid popularization from nothing necessarily means something bad or evil. We know that many of our present dietary habits are things that had never existed before at some earlier time. For example, China originally had no chili peppers; it took Sichuan only a few decades from the introduction of chili peppers to the formation of a regional culture in which no meal is complete without chili. There is also the introduction of potatoes, which is said to have led to one explosive population increase in Chinese history and changed the entire Chinese way of survival; that too was only a matter of a little over a hundred years.
Take chili peppers as an example. Someone who has never eaten chili before and tries it for the first time would probably spit it out immediately, wouldn’t they? And no one said chili peppers were highly nutritious either (there was no nutrition science when chili peppers were introduced to China), and of course there was no “advertising,” and probably no interest group pushing it either, right? So how did chili peppers become so widespread so quickly? Why did they rapidly become a daily necessity in some regions of China, even a mark of regional culture?
The 10th and 11th sections of Teacher Tian’s article make sense, but the rest is not convincing. In particular, the so-called “historical basis”: if such “historical basis” could stand, then should we not also reject chili peppers, reject potatoes, reject corn, reject tomatoes, reject cotton… because, according to historical basis, Chinese people never used these things before—because the common people of my Song, my Tang, my Han were not malnourished, so the potatoes introduced only from the Ming dynasty onward have nothing to do with health? If there is no “scientific basis,” and one relies only on “historical basis,” then Teacher Tian’s criticism of milk cannot be distinguished from resistance to potatoes.
[4th floor] | Posted: 2008-01-02 20:43
Every time Xiao Gu writes, it’s a long essay. Better to organize it into one article instead—how about it?
[5th floor] | Posted: 2008-01-03 08:39
Three, Why Do We Believe — or Need to Believe — in Scientific Grounds?
Three, why do we believe — or need to believe — in scientific grounds?
Many years ago, when my default scientific-ism setting was still strong, I once proposed a proposition that pleased me greatly: “The reason scientific knowledge is trustworthy is not that it is absolutely and perfectly true, but that it is something everyone can verify for themselves.” And yet, if we ourselves stop and think about it: for some piece of scientific knowledge, say the scientific grounds for the nutritional value of milk, do we believe it because we have “verified” it? Or do we believe it because we trust science as a whole, because everyone else believes it, because the newspapers all say so?
In my former view, science was built on individual experience. No matter how high the scientific edifice was built, it could always be reduced to the most basic experience. So, given a step-by-step approach, anyone could reconstruct the entire edifice of science on the basis of their own experience — so-called verification. However, even without probing the positivist assumptions involved, even if this ideal “ought” were theoretically valid, in practice it is impossible. Modern science is becoming increasingly distant from our everyday experience. Needless to say, profound subjects such as the Big Bang have already moved completely beyond the realm of experience; even scientists can only make theoretical judgments, not verify them empirically. Even something as seemingly everyday as the nutritional value of milk: the general public is equally incapable of making theoretical judgments, and likewise finds it hard to verify empirically. Take the claim that “smoking refreshes the mind”: smokers may still have ample experiential grounds for that, because the effect is immediate and obvious. But milk’s effects are too abstract. For example, calcium supplementation: has it really been supplemented, and if so, how does that show itself? How many people can directly experience that? By contrast, diarrhea caused by lactose intolerance is immediate and unmistakable. Thus, in the process of changing from barely drinking milk to having a glass every day, the “scientific grounds” people so often invoke are in fact something that seems near but is actually far away.
At this point, a new link appears: the scientific community (or, in common parlance, the world of science) — the producers of scientific knowledge in modern society. Some people will say that although we have not personally verified it, we can trust that the scientific community has done the verification for us. At that point, our trust in scientific knowledge is built upon trust in the scientific community. Trust in scientific knowledge and trust in the scientific community form a mutually dependent cycle — this is what is called positive feedback, akin to addiction.
Among the three major reasons for drinking milk — “tasty, fashionable, nutritious” — “tasty” is a subjective statement, something the speaker can judge directly; “fashionable” is also the social atmosphere the speaker can perceive; but “nutritious,” as a scientific ground, is something the speaker cannot directly derive. So the accurate formulation should be: “believing that milk is nutritious.” Likewise, there is also positive feedback between “believing it is nutritious” and the fashion of “everyone drinking it.” The more fashionable it is, the more people believe that milk is nutritious, and thus the more fashionable drinking milk becomes. Put together, these two things further strengthen the taste-construction of milk, making milk even more “tasty.”
However, once I began to doubt the scientific community, the entire logical foundation started to shake. In what sense, and to what extent, has the scientific community actually verified all those grounds and myths about milk’s nutritional value? If even the statistical association between smoking and lung cancer is hard to determine, how can the association between milk and height be determined?
At the same time, I can also doubt “our trust in scientific grounds.” According to the doctrine that science “develops,” the development of science means that tomorrow’s science may overturn today’s science. If that is so, why should I act according to today’s scientific grounds? On the theoretical level, people often say that the development of science is not a simple negation of the past: science that has developed today not only corrects the errors in science that had not yet developed in the past, but also inherits what was correct in it. But with regard to concrete, real problems, as an ordinary person who does not understand science, what I see is the simple “yes” and “no.” In my short lifetime, I have already experienced several upheavals in scientific grounds. For example, when I was young, the scientific grounds said spinach was rich in iron and had great blood-nourishing effects; from this it could be proved that exchanging flirtatious glances was beneficial to physical and mental health. Later the scientific grounds said that a decimal point had been misplaced and spinach actually did not contain much iron, so the flirtatious glances sent back then became a bit awkward. Later still, people said there had actually been no mistake after all, and it really was rich in iron, so it should still be sent. Obviously, if I were to live according to scientific grounds, I would be living in a perpetual seesaw.
An even more direct example is “breastfeeding,” which I find rather ironic. The reason we now often see posters proclaiming “Breastfeeding is good” is precisely that scientific grounds once argued that breastfeeding was inferior to formula feeding! This happened in the United States in the 1950s. I have not yet checked the details, but the reasons one can imagine are roughly these: the calcium, iron, zinc, selenium, and so forth contained in cow’s milk, or their proportions, are superior to those in human milk, so feeding humans with cow’s milk is good; humans differ from one another, some are robust, some frail, some healthy, some ailing, so feeding them with healthy, robust cow’s milk is good; mothers who breastfeed have never disinfected the nipples! Good heavens, there are germs! Whereas cow’s milk has undergone “scientific” disinfection, so that is good. Of course, there were also reasons beyond health, such as reducing the burden on working women who had to take leave to nurse, easing the worries of appearance-conscious women about their figures, and so on. So for a while, formula feeding was regarded as scientifically advanced, while breastfeeding was regarded as primitive and backward. If there were no such history, then promoting breastfeeding would be utterly baffling. Do even cats and dogs not know this? Must people really make a special point of emphasizing it?
Unfortunately, human beings are losing their instinct as mammals and are becoming biological machines that act according to “scientific grounds” and thereby grow more and more chaotic.
Now, whenever people want to judge whether something has value or whether its existence is reasonable, they instinctively ask: what scientific grounds does this thing have? My counterquestion is: aside from scientific grounds, do we have any other grounds on which to judge the reasonableness of something’s existence? If those other grounds conflict with scientific grounds, should scientific grounds be given the highest priority? I have found two: one is the grounds of individual experience, the other is the grounds of collective history. Looking back, in the proposition I was so pleased with earlier, I had in fact already based trust in science on individual experiential judgment. As a biological individual with stimulus-response functions, the grounds of personal experience are the foundation of all grounds. For most affairs in everyday life, each of us can make judgments on the basis of our own biological instincts and life experience. For example, what to eat at noon or what movie to watch at night does not require scientific grounds. And historical grounds, which I interpret as the accumulation of long-term individual experience of a people, should be placed even above scientific grounds. In the past, people often treated experiential grounds and historical grounds as footnotes to scientific grounds. Now, I hope to reverse that, and make scientific grounds the footnotes to historical grounds and experiential grounds.
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Published in The Scientific Culture of Ours (East China Normal University Press), second volume.
Included in Scepticism in the Age of a Finite Earth — The World of the Future Is Made of Garbage (Science Press, 2007)
[6 楼] | Posted: 2008-01-03 08:41
You flatter me… I was just saying what came to mind. I haven’t yet dared to think of organizing a special article to criticize Teacher Tian~ And I certainly do not want to argue that people ought to drink milk or anything like that. Besides, in forum discussions, a few scattered words are usually more appropriate; as for articles, it is not too late to sort them out after things have been thought through and discussed clearly.
I am rather doubtful of Teacher Tian’s so-called “historical grounds.” After all that talk, he is probably basically just saying “habit.” If the point is that scientific knowledge ultimately rests on habits of life, then I support that — that is also the later Wittgenstein’s view — but that does not mean that habits of life are more reliable or more persuasive than scientific knowledge. Moreover, apart from scientific knowledge and everyday habits, there are certainly other ways to help people make decisions. For example, philosophical reflection — judgments such as “what to eat at noon, what movie to watch at night” can be made “on the basis of one’s own biological instincts and life experience.” But what one eats for a lifetime (vegetarianism) is not something that can be supported merely by biological instincts and life experience. If the aim is not merely to stir feelings with prose, but to establish an argument on a theoretical level as well, then Teacher Tian’s reasoning is not yet solid enough, nor systematic enough.
[7 楼] | Posted: 2008-01-03 09:35
What one eats for a lifetime was, in traditional society, prescribed by one’s ancestors, myths, and other traditional culture. For each individual person, it can also be understood as biological instincts and life experience.
[8 楼] | Posted: 2008-01-03 10:11
Such a “prescription” is “habit” or “custom,” but it is not judgment or “decision,” or rather, “choice.” Biological instincts and life experience can help us decide what to eat for dinner tonight, but they alone cannot help us decide how we should live as human beings. If a lifetime’s matters are also decided by custom, then this kind of “decision” is not the result of one’s own decision. If Teacher Tian means that we should abandon free will and blindly obey custom without thought, then I firmly disagree. And if that were the case, one could not possibly become a vegetarian either. Becoming a vegetarian is the result of an individual’s free decision, not of the prescription of traditional custom.
Moreover, if we are talking about life experience, then, for example, the generation younger than Teacher Tian has already grown up in an environment “full of milk.” Drinking milk has already become our custom — just as eating chili peppers has become the custom of Sichuanese people. If we want to use traditional custom to oppose eating milk, then we would inevitably have to trace it back to the generation before us. But on what grounds? Why should we use the customs of one or two generations ago to prescribe our own behavior? Then why not simply trace back several more generations? If we did that, we should not eat potatoes, chili peppers, tomatoes, and so on either; all of that can be argued through “historical grounds.”
Of course, I am after all a student of the humanities, and I know that “conservatism” is one of the missions of the humanities. But I have my own way of thinking about it. Speaking strictly to Teacher Tian’s line of reasoning, I cannot be convinced.
[9 楼] | Posted: 2008-01-03 12:33
After modernization, traditional society collapsed and dispersed, and only then did judgments based on the individual arise; society also began to valorize judgments based on the individual. But in the final analysis, these individual judgments are once again monopolized by scientific judgment, which possesses the highest discursive authority. Thus so-called individual judgment remains subordinate to some larger ideology. It is merely a matter of replacing the traditional gods with the god of science.
In the article on milk, the historical grounds of the Han Chinese having no tradition of drinking milk are used to argue that drinking milk is “unnecessary,” not “impossible.” Likewise, one can also argue that potatoes are unnecessary, chili peppers unnecessary, tomatoes unnecessary.
As for “impossible,” in the milk article, there are other grounds as well (including historical grounds) that assist the argument.
[10 楼] | Posted: 2008-01-03 16:17
The “unnecessariness” of drinking milk seems hardly in need of argumentation. Even if everyone believes that milk is highly nutritious, I’m afraid no one would insist that milk is indispensable to the human body. Of course, aside from imported foods like potatoes and chili peppers, rice, wheat-based foods, and any food at all are all “unnecessary” too. Spending so much effort arguing that milk is “unnecessary” is completely unnecessary with respect to Teacher Tian’s theme.
Teacher Tian says that “so-called individual judgment” still is “…”; then I want to ask: what, exactly, is the choice to become a vegetarian? What kind of decision is that? Or is it, after all, not even an individual decision? Does it not require a person’s self-awareness arising from within? Do we only need to follow the “vegetarianism” platform blindly, without needing to distinguish or judge for ourselves?
[11 楼] | Posted: 2008-01-03 16:46
Something having no need of argument and something being argued wrongly are two different things.
Quite the contrary: when you think there is no need for argument, you are already implicitly admitting that the argument itself is not bad, only unnecessary.
This flaw is well caught in the following:
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“After modernization, traditional society collapsed and dispersed, and only then did judgments based on the individual arise; society also began to valorize judgments based on the individual. But in the final analysis, these individual judgments are once again monopolized by scientific judgment, which possesses the highest discursive authority. Thus so-called individual judgment remains subordinate to some larger ideology. It is merely a matter of replacing the traditional gods with the god of science.”
“So-called individual judgment” still is “…”; then I want to ask: what, exactly, is the choice to become a vegetarian? What kind of decision is that? Or is it, after all, not even an individual decision? Does it not require a person’s self-awareness arising from within? Do we only need to follow the “vegetarianism” platform blindly, without needing to distinguish or judge for ourselves?
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However, there is a confusion of concepts.
In my passage, “individual judgment” is aimed at your statement:
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Such a “prescription” is “habit” or “custom,” but it is not judgment or “decision,” or rather, “choice.” Biological instincts and life experience can help us decide what to eat for dinner tonight, but they alone cannot help us decide how we should live as human beings. If a lifetime’s matters are also decided by custom, then this kind of “decision” is not the result of one’s own decision.
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specifically the final phrase “one’s own decision.” What I am emphasizing is that this so-called “one’s own decision,” or “individual judgment,” is not, as they themselves imagine, something that belongs to the individual; rather, it is based on their default settings (generally speaking, scientific-ism).
That is to say, the “individual judgment” here is general, not something specific to a particular person or a particular affair.
It is not the same thing as a particular person’s judgment about a particular affair.
In your formulation, you emphasize “one’s own decision,” and regard that as very important. What I emphasize is that, in traditional society, this is not important. — But these issues are not involved at all in the milk article.
[12 楼] | Posted: 2008-01-03 18:57
“Something having no need of argument and something being argued wrongly are two different things.” — That’s right. But many times, something having no need of argument is even worse than something being argued wrongly. If something is argued wrongly, we can further examine where exactly it went wrong and how it might be improved. But if the argument was unnecessary in the first place, merely repeating some drivel that needs no argumentation, then there is not even any potential for further improvement.
Regarding free judgment, you said:
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This so-called “one’s own decision,” or “individual judgment,” is not, as they themselves imagine, something that belongs to the individual; rather, it is based on their default settings (generally speaking, scientific-ism).
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This is precisely what I mean by abandoning or ignoring free will and mindlessly obeying “habit” or “custom.” What is “default settings”? Default settings are the “custom” of our era, the habitual background of life in which modern people have long grown accustomed to living. That is why they are “default.” And if we want to trace back to the customs of “my Great Qing, my Great Ming …,” those are no longer the customs of our present age. If we say that we ought to be like “traditional society,” not to revere “freedom” but instead to follow custom, then scientific-ism is the custom of our present age; why should we not follow it? And what Teacher Tian is opposing now is precisely the custom of our present age. Teacher Tian is dragging out the customs of a prior age to resist the customs of the present age. But the problem is: if we should “go back” (which I support), how far back should we go? How should we go back? Why reject milk but accept potatoes? — These choices cannot be judged on the basis of the “historical grounds” Teacher Tian provides.
[13 楼] | Posted: 2008-01-03 20:03
Whether something is necessary is a value judgment. Value judgments vary from person to person.
When you think an article is unnecessary to write, you are making a judgment about the article as a whole, rather than commenting on its specific arguments, the content of those arguments, or the methods of argumentation.
Judging the whole and commenting on specific content are two different questions.
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As for whether potatoes should be accepted or not, that is something the article about milk does not touch on at all. So that is yet another question.
In the previous post I already said that the milk article does not use historical grounds to argue that milk is “not allowed,” but rather that it is “unnecessary.” One could likewise argue that potatoes are unnecessary, or that chili peppers are unnecessary. So the milk article was never taking on the task of arguing why milk should be rejected while potatoes are accepted.
To believe in a single absolute standard that transcends everything else—that is precisely what I oppose. And the “historical grounds” I speak of are not such a standard either. In my discussion, historical grounds are relative to scientific grounds and empirical grounds. They are not all-powerful, but here and now, for me, they are a way of dissolving the authority of scientific discourse. As for the effectiveness of this method and the scope of its applicability, I do not yet know.
For example, you think it cannot tell us whether potatoes can be accepted. Then, from your point of view, you have found a limit of this method. But I have not yet thought about this question. So for the moment I cannot tell you my answer.
I say that a piece of thread can be used to cut tofu. You say, but it cannot be used to cut potatoes.
Perhaps you are right. But one cannot deny what it can do on the grounds of what it cannot do.
[14 楼] | Posted: 2008-01-03 21:32
First, when I said “unnecessary,” I was referring to the argument for “drinking milk is unnecessary,” not to the “article as a whole.” Of course, if Professor Tian thinks that the whole point of this article is to serve the argument that “drinking milk is unnecessary,” then the article really would be unnecessary. But in my view, this article aims to oppose or resist milk, so what I meant is that the argument for “drinking milk is unnecessary” is unnecessary.
I also oppose finding a single, absolute, transcendent standard that stands above everything else. However, that does not mean that the standard of argumentation can be arbitrary or “impromptu.” If one does not understand the limits of a certain method, then one should not apply it at will; that is precisely where the problem with scientism lies: not recognizing the limits of scientific method, yet using it arbitrarily. But now Professor Tian also says with great confidence, “As for the effectiveness of this method and the scope of its applicability, I do not yet know”—so on what grounds can it be applied to the question of drinking milk? Where is the legitimacy for calling this “argument” an “argument” at all?
If opposing a single absolute standard leads to the arbitrary application of “disposable” standards—usable wherever one wants to use them, unusable wherever one does not want to use them—then such “argumentation” is worse than simply relying on intuition or emotion, because it is not only arbitrary and impromptu, but also disguises itself in the clothing of “argumentation” and confuses the issue.
If a piece of thread can be used to cut tofu, then of course one should acknowledge that it is useful. However, argumentation is not tofu-cutting; the success of an argument is not as direct and obvious as a block of tofu. The problem now is that I have not even acknowledged that it successfully cut the tofu, let alone anything else. And my rebuttal is this: if it can cut tofu, then it can also cut another thing similar to tofu as well (because you have failed to provide any limitation), and cutting that kind of thing is not acceptable, so it cannot have successfully cut the tofu.
Of course, the criterion for whether an argument succeeds is not unique; for example, persuasiveness, or the systematic relation between it and other arguments, can also be used to judge success. However, multiple standards do not mean no standards, much less that standards are unnecessary. Now Professor Tian says, “Here and now, for me, …” and takes that as the mark of this argument’s success; that is not without being a standard. Yet such a standard is too weak. If everyone were to say, “As long as my argument can convince me here and now, then my argument is successful,” then we would simply have no need for, nor any possibility of, academic discussion.
[15 楼] | Posted: 2008-01-03 22:42
What is called explanation is telling a story.
Telling a story that can be understood and accepted by one’s audience.
So explanation necessarily exists within a certain context; it is related to the explainer, and also related to the audience’s default settings. An abstract, absolute, transcendent explanation does not exist. Nor does argumentation. — An explanation, or an argument, that can be accepted by everyone does not exist.
In this sense, the expression “here and now, for me …” is, for me, something I am willing to accept. And the kind of mode of narration that claims to have obtained a transcendent standard is something I deeply সন্দেহ. Therefore, I myself am only willing to make such an expression: “here and now, for me …”
In addition, “here and now, for me” is not advancing a standard; it is simply stating the truth. If you think this is a weak standard, then I’m sorry, but I am only willing to advocate such a weak standard.
As for your saying that if everyone were to say, “As long as my argument can convince me here and now, then my argument is successful,” hehe, that “if” does not hold in my case. That is not my way of expressing things, especially not the latter half of that sentence.
[16 楼] | Posted: 2008-01-04 00:40
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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