Hagop Sarkissian

Consistent Belief in a Good True Self in Misanthropes and Three Interdependent Cultures

People sometimes explain behavior by appealing to an essentialist concept of the self, often referred to as the true self. Existing studies suggest that people tend to believe that the true self is morally virtuous; that is deep inside, every person is motivated to behave in morally good ways. Is this belief particular to individuals with optimistic beliefs or people from Western cultures, or does it reflect a widely held cognitive bias in how people understand the self? To address this question, we tested the good true self theory against two potential boundary conditions that are known to elicit different beliefs about the self as a whole. Study 1 tested whether individual differences in misanthropy-the tendency to view humans negatively-predict beliefs about the good true self in an American sample. The results indicate a consistent belief in a good true self, even among individuals who have an explicitly pessimistic view of others. Study 2 compared true self-attributions across cultural groups, by comparing samples from an independent country (USA) and a diverse set of interdependent countries (Russia, Singapore, and Colombia). Results indicated that the direction and magnitude of the effect are comparable across all groups we tested. The belief in a good true self appears robust across groups varying in cultural orientation or misanthropy, suggesting a consistent psychological tendency to view the true self as morally good.

Supernatural, social, and self-monitoring in the scaling-up of Chinese civilization

This commentary evaluates Ara Norenzayans central thesis in Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict, focusing on how it bears on the rise of early Chinese civilization. Discussion centers on three themes: supernatural monitoring, social monitoring, and self-monitoring.

Ritual and Rightness in the Analects

Li (禮) and yi (義) are two central moral concepts in the Analects. Li has a broad semantic range, referring to formal ceremonial rituals on the one hand, and basic rules of personal decorum on the other. What is similar across the range of referents is that the li comprise strictures of correct behavior. The li are a distinguishing characteristic of Confucian approaches to ethics and socio-political thought, a set of rules and protocols that were thought to constitute the wise practices of ancient moral exemplars filtered down through dynasties of the past. However, even while the li were extensive and meant to be followed diligently, they were also understood as incapable of exhausting the whole range of activity that constitutes human life. There were bound to be situations in life where there would be no obvious recourse to the li for guidance. As part of their reflections on the good life, the Confucians maintained another moral concept that seemed to cover morally upright exemplary behavior in these types of situations. This concept is that of yi or rightness. In this chapter, I begin with a brief historical sketch to provide some context, and will then turn to li and yi in turn. In the end, I will suggest how li and yi were both meant to facilitate the supreme value of social harmony that pervades much of the Analects and serves as its ultimate orientation.

Neo-Confucianism, experimental philosophy and the trouble with intuitive methods

ABSTRACT The proper role of intuitions in philosophy has been debated throughout its history, and especially since the turn of the twenty-first century. The context of this recent debate within analytic philosophy has been the heightened interest in (and use of) intuitions as data points that need to be accommodated or explained away by philosophical theories. This, in turn, has given rise to a sceptical movement called experimental philosophy, whose advocates seek to understand the nature and reliability of such intuitions (along with related judgements and behaviour). Yet such scepticism of intuition or introspective methods can be found in earlier periods and across philosophical traditions. Indeed, the Neo-Confucian philosophers of the Song and Ming dynasties (ca. tenth to seventeenth centuries CE) seem to exemplify this very tension, as they can be divided into an intuitionistic school on the one hand and an investigative school on the other. In this paper, I argue that, notwithstanding some obvious differences, there are broad similarities between the dynamics at play across these philosophical traditions. Moreover, by comparing and juxtaposing them, we will come to appreciate the distinctiveness of each, as their attendant aims, weaknesses and strengths become more salient thereby.

Cultural evolution and prosociality: Widening the hypothesis space.

Norenzayan et al. suggest that Big Gods can be replaced by Big Governments. We examine forms of social and self-monitoring and ritual practice that emerged in Classical China, heterarchical societies like those that emerged in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, and the contemporary Zapatista movement of Chiapas, and we recommend widening the hypothesis space to include these alternative forms of social organization.