Undecided Mencius: Opening up Ontology for the Responsibility of Choice
Author: Chih-Yu Shih, Hung-jen Wang, Wei-hsia Li, Shu-shan Li
Abstract / Chinese PDF Download
Contrary to the mainstream epistemology of social science, this paper arguesthat the mission of social science is more than explaining. It treats behavior asproduct of both situation and mind that is always undecidable until it happens.Accordingly, the mission of social science is to discover those other behavioralpossibilities that could have occurred but did not. These possibilities are oftenexplained away in theory-driven research, as if external, objective structures closethem off. As a result, the actors under study are left without responsibility, to theextent that anyone in the same shoes would act in the same way. This paper borrowsMencius’s analogy of himself deciding between a fish and bear’s paws andeventually favoring the paws. The paper contends that Mencius did not really favorthe paws. Based on this assumption, it is epistemologically imperative to discoverthe fish, which disappeared in Mencius’s decision. It is the fish that made Mencius’schoice of the paws a genuine choice, and Mencius, a real person.