I am behind in all of my work, including keeping up with my buddies who blog on Chinese philosophy. Let me rectify that here.
Manyul has a nice post up that asks the question, "scientific research supports Daoist ideas?" in reference to a story in Seed Magazine. I can see the Daoist possibilities in passages from the article like this:
compiles the latest in her field’s research to paint a new picture of
our inner lives at inception — one in which we are, in some ways, more
conscious than adults.
If by "conscious" it is meant "more open to Way" or "unadulterated" or "free from adult concerns about 'knowledge' and 'morality'". But I'm not sure that is what is meant by the psychologists. Indeed, the article makes some Mencian points, as in this passage:
moral psychology has been saying that we have these innate moral
instincts, or innate moral grammars. When we look at children, we do
see some of these innate moral intuitions, but there is also this
tremendous capacity for moral revision. In some ways, I think those are
some of the most distinctively human abilities...
Check out the comments at Manyul's place.
Another post worth mention is Chris Panza's recent reflections on "Confucian torturers,
In the case of Guan Zhong, my case here would not support Guan Zhong himself defending what
he has done on the grounds that it did not cause him to sacrifice his
own dignity. It did. That’s the whole point. So Guan Zhong would have
to be highly self-critical of what he did, recognizing that it required
a sacrifice of dignity in a situation that is, in a sense, tragic. Guan Zhong entered a (tragic) situation where the virtuous thing (to torture) demands that the person who performs the action cannot flourish as
a virtuous person. They are “forever marred” in the eyes of virtue. In
a sense, Guan Zhong must perform the action while at the same time
condemn it.
The point here being: even if the neo-cons can
find a justification here for their policy of torturing, it would be a
sign of the utmost vice to defend the policy in the
self-righteous manner in which they are presently. Essentially, even if
torture in some particular case is demanded by virtue, it is also
certainly demanded by virtue that the agents in question “go down with
the ship” and accept the tragedy of their unique and unfortunate
situation.
But it seems that we would agree that Cheney should not now be out and about in the media trying to self-righteously defend what is obviously a morally odious practice.
The Useless Tree 
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