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Interpreting the Butterfly Dream

2009; Routledge; Volume: 19; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09552360802673781

1469-2961

Xiaoqiang Han,

Historical Philosophy and Science

Abstract This paper follows the tradition of treating Zhuangzi's Butterfly Dream episode as presenting a version of skepticism. However, unlike the prevalent interpretations within that tradition, it attempts to show that the skepticism conveyed in the episode is more radical than it has been conceived, such that the episode can be read as a skeptical response to Descartes’ refutation of skepticism based on the Cogito, ergo sum proof. The paper explains how the lack of commitment in Zhuangzi to the dubious assumption about ‘I’ that it necessarily refers to something existing to which Descartes seems to uncritically adhere allows Zhuangzi to doubt what for Descartes is absolutely indubitable: I exist. Notes Notes 1. The English translations of the Butterfly Dream and the interpretations of it mentioned in this paper represent only a small fraction of the scholarly works on this particular episode. 2. This is an instance of Moore's paradox. The contradiction can also be removed if the present tense is replaced by the past tense. For instance, instead of ‘I do know that I am a butterfly’, Zhuangzi asserts, ‘I did not know that I was a butterfly.’ 3. Among the majority are translations by Burton Watson (Citation1964), Yutang Lin (Citation1948), Robert Allinson (Citation1989), and Martin Palmer and Elizabeth Breuilly (1996). 4. While Descartes’ argument itself must be formulated in the first-person perspective, it can be represented in the third-person perspective. 5. This seems to have become a widely accepted standard interpretation (see Allinson, Citation1989, p. 83; Roth, Citation2003; Lee, Citation2007). 6. See Möller (Citation1999, p. 443). Möller distinguishes Zhuang Zhou, the protagonist of the story, from Zhuangzi, the narrator, to serve his third-person (or ‘zero-person’) interpretation. Except when representing Möller's argument, I use ‘Zhuang Zhou’ and ‘Zhuangzi’ interchangeably to refer to the same person, who is both the protagonist of the story and the narrator. 7. Legge writes, ‘… he did not know whether he, Kwang Kâu [Zhuang Zhou], had been dreaming that he was a butterfly, or was now a butterfly dreaming that it was Kwang Kâu [Zhuang Zhou]’ (Legge, Citation1962, p. 130). 8. The 18th century philosopher and aphorist Georg Lichtenberg objects that rather than supposing an entity that is thinking, the most that Descartes could claim was ‘cogitatur’ (‘there is some thinking going on’). He says, ‘We should say it thinks, just as we say it lightens. To say Cogito is already to say too much as soon as we translate it I think. To assume, to postulate the I is a practical requirement.’ See Lichtenberg (Citation1990, p. 168). The view was quite prevalent among some prominent philosophers of the last century such as Earnest March and Bertrand Russell. Russell writes in his History of western philosophy, ‘Here the word “I” is really illegitimate; he ought to state his ultimate premise in the form “there are thoughts”. The word “I” is grammatically convenient, but does not describe a datum’ (Russell, Citation1955, p. 567). But it has been disputed whether the ‘I’ in ‘I think’ must be interpreted as being used by Descartes as a referring expression, rather than as a mere indication of the subjective character of experience (see Newman, Citation2005). 9. Anscombe writes, ‘In these writers [St Augustine and Descartes] there is the assumption that, when one says “I” or “the mind”, one is naming something such that the knowledge of its existence, which is a knowledge of itself as thinking in all the various modes, determines what it is that is known to exist’ (Anscombe, Citation1994, 140). 10. Hintikka (Citation1962) suggests in his much celebrated paper ‘Cogito, Ergo Sum: Inference or Performance?’ that Cogito can be understood not as a premise (hence a statement), but as a performatory act which verifies sum. So understood, Descartes does not commit question-begging by presupposing the existence of I in Cogito. Nonetheless Hintikka's view that the self-verifying nature of the statement ‘I exist’ which is made evident by the act of I think relies precisely on the assumption that the ‘I’ in ‘I exist’ refers something that exists. He says, ‘This pronoun [“I”] inevitably refers to whoever happens to be speaking’, where ‘whoever happens to be speaking’ is clearly intended to be something that exists (Hintikka, Citation1962, p. 14). 11. Anscombe, for example, explains (1) as thus, ‘The object an I-user means by it must exist so long as he is using I’ (see Anscombe, Citation1994, pp. 151–152).