Keywords

This chapter aims to offer a brief survey of the methodology of the current volume. The foremost issue that requires particular clarification is the terminology of gongsheng. The reader will notice that not all contributions of this volume are using the term “gongsheng” literally. In the first half of this chapter, I shall explain how we employ a systematic treatment of this terminological issue during the editing of this volume. Since the research topics of this volume are significantly diverse, an illustration of its layout and its overall research background is also in order. As this volume aims to explore the philosophical significance of the concept of gongsheng, I shall also elaborate on the philosophical implications of our methodology. This will be the task of the second half of the chapter: I will discuss some philosophical complexities concerning the topic (dis-)continuity of this volume and then briefly examine its metaphysical implications.

Methodological Remarks

The approach to this volume essentially involves an interdisciplinary and intercultural attempt to explore and develop the philosophical foundations of the concept of gongsheng across contexts, which include not only a variety of philosophical traditions but also contemporary discussions in different fields. Chapter 1 of this volume, written by Bing Song, offers an overview of the landscape of discussions motivated by the concept of a philosophy of gongsheng.

The idea of gongsheng can be in part traced back to the concept of symbiosis in biology, the introduction of which is credited to microbiologist Anton de Bary who used the term to describe a system of mutual reciprocity and coexistence among living organisms. Contemporary life scientists and philosophers of biology have now come to realize that symbioses are widespread and play an important role in evolution.Footnote 1 Moreover, talks of various forms of “symbiosis”—if we understand the term more broadly—have become increasingly common not just in studies of microorganisms but also in the contexts of ecology, climate research, anthropology, sociology, technology, etc., in reference to the various patterns of mutual dependence. Strictly speaking, then, these broader patterns of symbiotic associations rather indicate a cluster of concepts, each of which corresponds to a different context of study. Nevertheless, this cluster of concepts seems to be unifiable under a cover term, i.e., “gongsheng,” which is also the Chinese translation of “symbiosis.” The current volume is hence an effort to show that the term “gongsheng” emerges as an apt candidate for expressing the generalized concept involving symbiotic mutualism in broader contexts. In this sense, “gongsheng” is not merely a cover term with multiple, disjunctive meanings. It rather expresses a “cover concept” that encodes a focal meaning.

To explicate the concept of gongsheng, however, it demands more systematic inquiries of its theoretical roles as well as the underlying philosophical foundations. We aim to show that explorations with this concept can indeed generate fruitful philosophical dialogues and discussions.

Terminological Issues

As noted, the term “gongsheng” is used to translate “symbiosis” into Chinese. The term is written in Chinese as “共生,” which is also the written translation of “symbiosis” in Japanese kanji, while the word is Latinized in Japanese as “kyōsei” instead.Footnote 2 Although both “gongsheng” and “kyōsei” are used to translate “symbiosis,” they are widely used in both Chinese and Japanese contexts in much broader senses that go beyond the core definition of “symbiosis” in biology. In other words, if we want to translate either “gongsheng” or “kyōsei” back into English, the word “symbiosis” captures only part of the word’s full meaning.

Admittedly, even in English, the meaning of the word “symbiosis” is also extended to cover non-biological uses, such that we get to speak of, say, the “symbiotic relationship” between the writer and the reader, and so on. But the focal meaning of “symbiosis” is arguably still biological. It is up to life scientists and philosophers of biology to determine what counts as a symbiosis strictly speaking, so the non-biological uses of the term are essentially merely analogical. However, the situation is different when we consider “gongsheng”/“kyōsei” in Chinese/Japanese, where the broader uses of the term are much more evident and dominant in both languages.

The literal translation of “gongsheng” or “kyōsei” would be something like “co-generate,” “co-live,” or “co-become.” The notion can be traced back to the long and profound history of contemplating the “symbiotic” state of being and becoming in the broadly Eastern philosophical traditions. Although diverse in meaning, it has been adapted in contemporary contexts—under the influence of the research on biological symbiosis—as a key term expressing ideas of “symbiosis” concerning natural protection as well as in art (e.g., cf. the renowned architect Kisho Kurokawa’s promotion of the philosophy of kyōsei in architecture), etc. Over the recent years, the word “gongsheng” or “kyōsei” is gaining more attention and popularity in China and in Japan. An internet search for “gongsheng” as a keyword or theme-word yields over 50,000 academic journal articles in Chinese, of which over 60% were published in recent ten years (and over 90% published in the past 20 years). The word is now actively used in public discourse, too, on issues ranging from environmental policies to the common well-being of a society, etc., even appearing in slogans in politics every now and then.

In sum, while we can regard “symbiosis” in English as a homonym, whose focal meaning is anchored in biological contexts, the focal meaning of the term “gongsheng” (and “kyōsei”) involves a more general pattern, ranging from ideas in traditional Eastern philosophies to modern-day environmental philosophy and ecological ethics, from discussions of social cohesion to those of governance.Footnote 3 It is admittedly hard to explicate what the focal meaning of “gongsheng” (and “kyōsei”) is exactly like. But this volume aspires to show that there is a focal meaning, a thorough revelation of which, however, demands cross-contextual and cross-disciplinary investigations as well as a more deliberate and systematic development of its underlying philosophy. In particular, the contributions of this volume show that the concept of gongsheng can find its conceptual root in a variety of historical philosophical traditions, discoverable in Confucianism, Daoism, and in Buddhism alike; yet on the other hand, it must be acknowledged that the contemporary emergence and proliferation of talks about gongsheng also has a clear causal path traceable to the translation of the modern biological terminology of “symbiosis.”

Rather than adopting an English translation of the word “gongsheng” in this volume, we decide to keep it untranslated instead. We hope the reader will understand that “gongsheng” is intended as a cover term for the varying concepts discussed in the contributions of the volume, through which it is hoped that the focal meaning of the term can be better manifested, which, in turn, will be able to serve as the unifier for many of the varying concepts throughout contexts, at least tentatively so. At the same time, we find “co-becoming” as the closest translation of “gongsheng.” The reader can consult Chapter 1 by Bing Song for more details on the considerations in translating the term.

To avoid unnecessary clutter, in the following chapters of this volume, we will also not stick to a meticulous distinction between uses and mentions, so that we will be moving back and forth between a term, say, “gongsheng,” and the concept of gongsheng that the term is intended to express.Footnote 4 We assume that this is sound practice, insofar that the term has its intended, focal meaning at least within each of the contexts to be discussed.

Nevertheless, the reader will notice that not all contributions of this volume use the term “gongsheng” literally. Since biological symbiosis is the main topic of the contributions by Shijian Yang (Chapter 8) and Liping Zhao (Chapter 9), respectively, it is more natural to stick to the original term “symbiosis” in those chapters. Besides, the contribution by Tsuyoshi Ishii (Chapter 7) will be focusing on the Japanese term “kyōsei” instead. Finally, the topic of the contributions by Alain Caillé (Chapter 13) and Frank Adloff (Chapter 14) will be explicitly about convivialism, which we believe shares some similar vision about the fabric of human society with the philosophy of gongsheng. The main concept for each of the remaining chapters of this volume can thus be summarized as shown in Table 2.1, where the notions of gongsheng and kyōsei are the direct targets of research in this volume, with a variety of contexts ranging from Buddhism to international studies.Footnote 5

Table 2.1 Mapping main concepts to the chapters of this volume
Full size table

Within each chapter, despite the main concept for that chapter, when the topic at a context is clearly about symbiosis in biology, the term “symbiosis” will still be used, even in chapters other than 8 and 9. Occasionally, concepts will be accompanied by paraphrases enclosed in parentheses. So, the reader may sometimes read “gongsheng (symbiosis, joint transformation, or co-creation),” etc. Sometimes, words like “symbiosis” or “symbiotic” are used in their extended or analogical meanings. These are occasionally added with quotation marks for emphasis. In general, we trust the readers will be able to disambiguate the different uses in different contexts.

Remarks on Research Backgrounds

This volume aims to inquire into the philosophy of gongsheng. Rather than offering research articles based on an extant, well-established framework of study, the task of this volume is largely tentative and exploratory. As noted, while we take the concept of gongsheng to be the target of study and the core concept of this volume, it actually corresponds to a cluster of ideas involving symbiotic mutualism and social cohesions, etc. These ideas, however, are commonly built on an assumed non-anthropocentric, multispecies, holistic view of beings, values, and changes—or more abstractly speaking, a co-becoming state of existence. We acknowledge that further research is needed in order to flesh out its philosophical implications, both metaphysically and epistemologically.

So far as the co-editors of this volume are aware, few attempts have been made to systematically explore the very philosophical foundation of the concept of gongsheng (kyōsei), despite its growing popularity in various contexts in the Chinese and the Japanese language. We thus see this volume as an early philosophical attempt in English literature to bring into discourse the rich collection of historical thoughts and ideas, discoverable in Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism alike—for which “gongsheng” serves as a cover term—but also to encompass interdisciplinary dialogues on the latest developments in microbiome research, ecological anthropology, etc., with the hope to eventually acquire a fused image of gongsheng.

An anonymous referee to this volume has pointed out that the idea of symbiosis (and that of a symbiotic ontology) has become an important ecological concept much discussed in continental philosophy and eco-feminism. In particular, the idea can be found in the works of evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis, eco-feminist Donna Haraway, and philosopher Michel Serres, among others. It could hence seem that the current volume fails to address an important tradition of literatures in environmental humanities. In defense, it is worth pointing out that the focus of this volume is not precisely on the development of a symbiosis-based philosophy of biology or environmentalism. The direct aim of this volume is to explore the philosophical foundations and implications of gongsheng as such. Although it shares many connections with the concept of symbiosis (which is why we included discussions concerning the latter particularly in Chapters 8 and 9), and the idea of gongsheng can be usually paraphrased as a form of “symbiotic” relation, we maintain that the focal meaning of “gongsheng” is not particularly about biological symbiosis, and hence, it is not a topic restricted to environmental humanities. This also explains why the term enjoys much more flexibility and popularity in various types of discourses in the Chinese and the Japanese language, ranging from social cohesion to the transformations of governance.Footnote 6

Philosophical Implications

In the remaining part of this chapter, I will give some brief discussions on the philosophical implications of our approach to gongsheng in this volume. In particular, I will discuss how the above-mentioned methodological approach to the term “gongsheng” is related to conceptual engineering; and based on that, we will briefly consider its metaphysical implications.

Gongsheng and Conceptual Engineering

Conceptual engineering is a growing field of research that has gained much attention over the past few years.Footnote 7 An act of conceptual engineering, roughly speaking, is an attempt to revise and improve an existing concept based on the assessment of its fitness in linguistic practice. Typical examples of conceptual engineering concern attempts at revisions of the intensions or extensions of concepts such as women, marriage, and planet, etc. But looking more closely, cases of conceptual engineering are arguably ubiquitous in almost all respects of our scientific and social practices. For instance, when we consider whether robots have consciousness, or whether animals have beliefs, what is at stake is not just the respective qualities of robots and animals as such; but it typically also involves the reevaluation of the very meanings of “consciousness” and “belief.” Suppose that we eventually accept that animals also have beliefs, an important consequence of such a revisionary move would be that the meaning of “belief” will no longer be the same as what the word used to mean (i.e., “belief” understood as a kind of propositional attitude that a human typically has). Therefore, a primary challenge for any conceptual engineer is to explain why her revisionary project is not merely a verbal dispute—in other words, she will need to account for the topic continuity between the pre-engineering concept and the post-engineering concept, such that the users of these two are not talking past to each other. To this end, a merely verbal continuity will not do.

At this point, some prominent scholars on conceptual engineering resort to a “revelation”-based view. For example, Sally Haslanger argued that, even for social categories like women, the project of conceptual engineering does not propose any new meaning, but only “reveal[s] an existing one.”Footnote 8 Such a view can be labeled as “externalist.” An important reason for adopting an externalist view is the following: The conceptual engineer must acknowledge that, even before the engineering attempt, the concept at stake has had perfectly functional discursive roles and hence a functional linguistic interpretation. Therefore, if one judges the pre-engineering concept to be defective according to a certain standard, that standard must not be based merely on a novel linguistic interpretation of the term. She must instead argue for the claim that the novel interpretation more accurately captures the term’s “intended meaning,” whatever that is. But at least, the justification of that claim must be independent from, and hence external to, the user’s linguistic practice.Footnote 9

Different theories have been proposed regarding what exactly may serve as the externalist standard for settling a concept’s intended meaning. For instance, one might resort to the so-called referential magnetism,Footnote 10 claiming that there are objective, mind-independent facts governing the reference of a term. Some philosophers propose that there are causal or biological mechanisms that determine the referents of the terms that we use.Footnote 11 Alternatively, we might have to compare the pertinent semantic theories’ comparative theoretical virtues, such as charity and naturalness, to see which is more explanatory.Footnote 12 In addition, we might need to incorporate metaphysical considerations such as the “joint-carving ideology” about the metasemantic conditions for a determinate interpretation.Footnote 13 By contrast, some other philosophers suggest that the topic continuity in a revelatory process of conceptual engineering derives from our pre-theoretic mental representations of the corresponding external type.Footnote 14 Yet others claim that, when it comes to engineering social categories or artificial types, the types themselves are subject to the conceptual engineer’s very activism seeking to change it.Footnote 15

How are these related to our discussions about gongsheng here? First, as mentioned, the emergence of the use of the term of “gongsheng” (or “kyōsei”) in various contexts in the Chinese- and Japanese-speaking communities are often indeed revisionary. Although the concept is deemed as having its conceptual roots in a variety of historical philosophical traditions, there is nonetheless a causal path tracing back to the translation of the phenomenon of symbiosis in biology. Still, we have been witnessing ever more expansive uses of the term in areas far beyond biology, which are clearly revisionary. In fact, the attempt to explore the philosophy of gongsheng in the current volume can equally be seen as a case of conceptual re-engineering—it is an exploratory effort to explicate the meaning and significance of gongsheng not only in light of its historical resources but also constructively, in connection with the modern theories on biological symbiosis, environmentalism, social cohesion, and convivialism.

Secondly, given that we are attempting to re-engineer the concept of gongsheng, we are then equally obligated to respond to the primary challenge to conceptual engineering, namely, to explain why the attempt is not merely verbal, and why “gongsheng” does not just happen to be a homonym with no intended focal meaning independent from our differing linguistic choices.

Now, suppose we need to give an externalist account for the continuity problem in the case for “gongsheng,” what would the account be like? To begin with, there is obviously no continuity regarding the semantics of the term “gongsheng” per se—the term’s meaning drifts from context to context. Thus, for a project of engineering gongsheng, we need to find a certain metasemantic mechanism that can “bundle” the various meanings together. Moreover, insofar that gongsheng is not (merely) a social category subject to our free invention, it seems problematic to claim that we can get to deliberately change or control the term’s meaning at will (hence the “revelation”-based view, in the spirit of externalism). But the other options seem problematic, too. Since the term is generally used in highly abstract senses, it is at least unclear how we are able to pin down a unique causal, biological, or representational mechanism for explaining the continuity of discourses on gongsheng. On the other hand, while there may be serious metaphysical considerations concerning the term’s joint-carving ideology, it also remains a difficult and open question regarding (i) what its underlying metaphysics should really be like, and (ii) how it might affect our metametaphysical understandings (more on this later).

In the case of re-engineering gongsheng, the best and simplest account available for answering to the continuity problem, as far as I can see, is the claim that the entire re-engineering project is goal-directed. Under this approach, the justification for the novel interpretation of the term is based on the claim that the novel interpretation is epistemically “more natural” in serving its intended goal by using the term in discourse. One might wonder what exactly is the goal that our discursive use of “gongsheng” is intended to reach. Now, it can at least be said that the goal is neither a merely practical one, nor a psychological one such as the fulfillment of certain functions in cognition. Rather, the goal must be inherently epistemic: It is a goal related to the acquisition of a better theory of metaphysics that involves the co-becoming state of existence (and other theories based on that)—it is hoped that a theory of gongsheng gives us a better account about the nature of reality.

Understood in this way, the metasemantic criterion for engineering gongsheng will also be epistemic in nature. Although it is aimed at reaching a theory of metaphysics, we do not presume a God’s eye view on the reality’s joints as such: When a conceptual engineer proposes a new account of gongsheng, it suffices for her to make a case that her interpretation is epistemically more natural and hence better off in serving the aforementioned goal. Of course, she may equally endorse the claim that her interpretation best carves at the metaphysical joints of reality. But this latter claim carries no independent argumentative force when it comes to disputing against other versions of accounting for gongsheng.Footnote 16 For the same reason, while a conceptual engineer of gongsheng is committed to the term’s having a certain metasemantic underpinning, that presumed underpinning remains largely underdetermined and hence open to further constructions.

Gongsheng and (Meta-)metaphysics

At this point, it is worth noting that this feature of interpretative underdetermination seems particularly common in the discourses of Chinese philosophy. Of course, it is common to all strains of philosophy that the semantics of a term in a context could be unstable or even largely malleable. But for contemporary Anglophone philosophy, especially under the analytic tradition, it is generally hoped that for a fruitful conversation, the procedures at stake for pinning down the term’s semantics should be at least definitive, metasemantically speaking (e.g., either by virtue of stipulation, or real definition, or anything else). For instance, one may disagree with another about how we should interpret “planet”; but the very basis for asking the conceptual engineers in such a case for a topic continuity is precisely the hope that a certain interpretative criterion should at least be obtained in a conversation for pinning down the meaning of the term “planet” in one way or another. If even the interpretative criterion remains underdetermined, arguing about a term would seem hardly fruitful. However, the interpretative criterion we have found so far for the engineering of gongsheng is of the vaguest sort: i.e., it is to serve the goal for developing a certain theory of metaphysics. In fact, such a criterion is doubly underdetermined: On the one hand, it remains an open question what standards can be applied to determine which is the epistemically more natural interpretation to serve that goal; and on the other hand, the very goal itself remains underspecified. After all, at least from the perspective of contemporary analytic metaphysics, we are yet to gain sufficient understanding of what exactly does a metaphysical theory of gongsheng, or of co-becoming, seek to offer.

To be clear, I have no intention to naively claim that such interpretative underdetermination is a problem unique to Chinese philosophy. Complex cases involving conceptual engineering can often have both their semantic and the metasemantic issues intertwined. To engineer marriage, for instance, the contention involved might be not just about what would be the best definition for marriage but also about what we, in an effort to engineer the concept, are exactly seeking to reach in the first place. Similarly, consider the skeptics of metaphysical grounding.Footnote 17 Their questions are also directed at the very basis and motivation for one to develop a general theory of grounding in the first place. My claim is only that the phenomenon of interpretative underdetermination seems particularly common in discourses in Chinese philosophy.

In fact, I am not even able to offer a scholarly defense of this claim here. We have at least witnessed one example of it, namely the notion of gongsheng. The exact goal for a theory of gongsheng remains an open question and hence is topic-wise underdetermined. And this has not hindered theorists and philosophers from trying to actively engage in conversations involving it.Footnote 18 In general, discourses in Chinese philosophy seem to be more tolerant of interpretative underdetermination. But why so? My hypothesis is that verbal associations play a more significant role in discourses in Chinese philosophy than that in Anglophone philosophy. Usually in Anglophone philosophy, verbal associations attached to a certain word (say, “ground”) play only limited if not insignificant roles in its interpretation. But consider words like “gongsheng” in Chinese. The word actually consists of two separate lexical morphemes, each of which was used as a free root in Old Chinese.Footnote 19 The morphology of the word “gongsheng” is thus more like that of “common ground” in English than that of “anthropology.” Yet, in the word “gongsheng,” the roots “gong” and “sheng” have much less definitive readings in themselves than that of “common” and “ground” as in the phrase “common ground.” Therefore, in the context of Chinese philosophy that deals with words with ancient “roots” (pardon the pun), the space for interpretations is larger. Given a word’s interpretations being more plastic, it might then have created more tolerance to the underdetermination of the topic involved with that word.Footnote 20

This is not to say that any discourse based on underdetermined topics with verbal associations are automatically theoretically meaningful. Any such discourse can eventually be turned into a successful theoretical inquiry only if its discursive goal becomes substantially clarified and stabilized. Before that, we can retain a fair amount of skepticism just like what the skeptics of metaphysical grounding did. Nevertheless, even for the sake of skepticism, careful examinations on a case-by-case basis are still needed. Pronouncing in a “knee-jerk” manner any attempt of engineering a concept with underdetermined topics as doomed to be merely verbal would be too quick.

If I am correct in this, then topic underdetermination is less problematic than it might initially seem, especially when it comes to disputes in philosophy. For instance, it is open for one to maintain that typical ontological disputes—like that of whether ordinary objects exist or whether reality is essentially tenseless, etc.—are all subject to different interpretative criteria and hence are topic-wise underdetermined.Footnote 21 For some, this might seem to lead to a metaphysical deflationism, because, under the influence of a standard reading of Carnap, the question of choosing between different interpretative criteria is essentially a merely pragmatic question—namely, it is a question of choosing between linguistic frameworks, just like choosing between languages you want to speak. If so, there will be nothing deep about metametaphysics, and ontological disputes are theoretically speaking merely verbal. However, I do not see why slipping into this form of deflationism is unavoidable. Although I cannot give a detailed discussion on this issue here, there is obvious theoretical space for us to do substantive metaphysics without having to choose between a Carnapian metaphysical deflationism and a (Quinean) holistic, “totalitarian” picture of metasemantics.

Granted that we do have such theoretical space, we will be able to have a more pluralistic ontology at least in an epistemic sense. Just like it remains an open question whether we should include ordinary objects, and abstract objects, in our ontology, it remains an open question whether a theory of gongsheng, i.e., a theory of co-becoming state of existence, can generate a novel view on ontology. One major difficulty for incorporating interesting ideas from Chinese philosophy into the contexts of contemporary Anglophone philosophy is that the pertinent conceptual landscape usually has large areas of it submerged under the “water” of obscure language. The very question about gongsheng is of course less well-understood than, say, the ontological questions about ordinary objects. However, the rich philosophical traditions the former question is associated with suggest that we have much to learn. It is also hoped to bring stimulations for contemporary, Western philosophers to think harder about questions they are more familiar with, such as that about metaphysical emergence, the boundaries of individuals, and the metaphysics of change, among many other questions beyond ontology.