Adapting

“Adapting” is Valmisa’s translation of the Chinese term yin (to respond to) and other associated terms, such as cong (to follow), bian (to adjust beneficially), shun (to follow along with), sui (to go along with), and xun (to follow a path). Valmisa also abstracts the concept from other passages in premodern Chinese texts that implicitly convey it. Adapting, according to Valmisa, is “a procedural method for performing actions that respond to thespecificities of a situation ... a meta-model of action in which many different courses of action can be incorporated” (22–23). A “meta-model” of action, she explains, “serves to establish constitutive models of action” (24)—“constitutive” meaning “context dependent” (18). Simply put, adapting is responding, but not haphazardly.Adapting, Valmisa says, allows for “a maximum degree of efficacy with the best possible use of resources, competencies, and affordances,” and by “efficacious” she means the ability to “achieve any potential goal” (5). Valmisa differentiates the adaptive model from two alternative models that she finds in the relevant literature, prescriptive (conforming to “pre-established, non-negotiable, fixed guidelines for actions”) and forceful (“imposing the agent’s arbitrary preferences and desires”) (6).There are, Valmisa says, seven core topics associated with adapting, which are, in her words: the design of strategies ad hocthe lack of constant standards to select the right course of actionthe difference between constitutive standards and structural goalshow to act in a world without standardsadapting as a procedural metamodel of actionhow to train adaptabilityhow masters educate others in adaptive agency Each of these seven is explored individually in the second chapter of the book, with all claims based in sources from Han and pre-Han texts.The book is divided into six chapters. The first two chapters lay out the ideas above and justify Valmisa’s methodology. In the third chapter, she applies her conception of adapting to three accounts of warfare in the early literature—the rise of the Han, the conquest of the Shang by the Zhou, and a battle between the Spring and Autumn states of Chu and Song.In the fourth chapter, Valmisa appears to change course entirely, engaging in an intricate examination of the concept of ming (fate) in a narrow set of early texts, but the relevance of ming to adapting becomes clear in chapter 5, where she examines how adapting is the ideal response to the uncertain and heteronymous forces of fate. Here, she extrapolates a notion of self-realization from the Zhuangzi and brings it into conversation with similar notions from Marcus Aurelius and Rosi Braidotti.In the final chapter, Valmisa draws from the first chapter of the Huainanzi to elaborate the idea of adapting through wuwei (noncoercive action) and associated Daoist ideals, expanding earlier discussions in chapters 2 and 3. The cooperation and identification that occurs in successful adapting, Valmisa says, results in three notions, discussions of which conclude the chapter—namely, joy, play, and freedom.Adapting is original in several respects. Methodologically, the book escapes the long-standing but questionable practice of interrogating only a small set of pre-Qin sources, centered around putatively historical figures. Valmisa examines a stunning array of texts, ranging from the earliest historical and quasi-historical sources to Han syncretic texts and, most significantly, a variety of excavated texts that are too often conveniently ignored. Sinologically, Valmisa breaks new ground with fresh interpretations of classic texts and terminology. Philosophically, she succeeds in reconstructing a Chinese theory of adapting that has potential relevance to traditional and contemporary philosophical contexts.The key difficulties that Valmisa identifies relevant to the study of the topic of adaptive agency are the following: “(1) the generalized lack of conceptualization of the notion of adapting, which is conveyed through a constellation of different words; (2) the possibility of the idea of adapting appearing without using specific word to convey it; and (3) as a result of both, the confusion between discourses on adapting and other kinds of discourses regarding agency” (60). Valmisa resolves these difficulties by identifying key terms and, through them, reconstructing a theory of adapting. The result, she suggests, is an internally consistent theory, heretofore neglected but now available for appreciation and deployment. The chapters richest in philosophy are chapters 2 and 6. In chapter 2, Valmisa defines “adaptive agency” and distinguishes it from other terms close in meaning. In chapter 6, she places adaptive agency within what she calls a unifying pattern.Disambiguating the concept of adapting by distinguishing it from other, related notions is one of the great services of Valmisa’s study. Valmisa distinguishes adapting from flexibility, relying, conforming, balancing, and spontaneity. Flexibility, she says, is a prerequisite for adaptability, but an adaptive agent is also “situationally responsive, creative beyond conventions, innovative in his use of means and available resources, and tolerant of ambiguity and uncertainty” (53).“Relying” falls on this list because it is a common translation of yin, the term that Valmisa usually (but not exclusively) translates as “adapting.” This is one of her key insights—that when one responds to circumstances as they arise, the circumstances matter, of course, but so does the manner in which one responds. An adaptive agent does not merely rely but also responds creatively and resourcefully. The same distinction from “adapting” applies to the term “conform,” with some added details pertaining to the early practice of divination.“Balancing” is a translation of quan, a technical term in early Chinese philosophy that refers to justified expedience, or discretion, in moral dilemmas. The difference between balancing and adaptability, Valmisa says, is that adaptability does not begin with a set of rules, and so there is no dilemma of competing goods.The difference between adaptability and spontaneity, according to Valmisa, is that whereas spontaneity in Daoist texts is often understood as skill-based, hindered by deliberation and analysis, and narrowly focused on a specific domain of activity, adaptability is “pondered, examined, and mediated: a self-aware and intentional form of exercising agency that can be explained ..., does not rely on any specific skill or set of content-oriented actions ..., is an open-ended and transferable method whose key precisely lies in being applicable to all kinds of situations ..., [and is] a method for achieving something else [beyond the specific activity]” (59).In chapter 6, Valmisa discusses the agent vis-à-vis the agent’s environment. In early Chinese philosophy, Valmisa says, the adaptive agent is immersed in a world of interconnection and interdependence, beyond traditional subject-object dichotomies, like a fetus in a womb. The world, she says, rather than being experienced as an external reality, is to the adaptive agent “a fundamental extension of their being and becoming” (156). The adaptive agent, as fundamentally natural, “lets the universe talk through him” and “is a locus through which nature prescribes to humans and the medium for the extrapolation of efficacious natural patterns to the realm of human deliberate agency” (161).The adaptive agent that Valmisa describes from early Chinese texts is one of extraordinary ability—a sage who seems capable of virtually anything. Before writing off the adaptive sage as a fictitious superhero far beyond normal human achievement, one would do well to recall the ideals of other philosophers: the self-denying philosopher-king of Plato’s Republic, Descartes’s armchair philosopher who can achieve ultimate clarity and distinctness in his ideas, and Mill’s rational utilitarian, who can calculate all relevant pleasures and pains. Valmisa’s adaptive agent is playing in the same league as these idealized figures.It is a little-recognized fact that the French physiocrats, who so deeply influenced Adam Smith’s theory of the invisible hand of the market, derived their economic philosophy from the Chinese concept of wuwei. What Smith and the physiocrats either missed or intentionally ignored was the distinct difference between the inner lives of agents in their system and the agent of wuwei. Valmisa describes the method by which an adaptive agent, whose action is fundamentally wuwei, is cultivated and honed. Rather than acting from self-interest, an adaptive agent, Valmisa says, undertakes a number of epistemic practices:Valmisa’s focus in this book is reconstructing a theory of adaptive agency, and because the book is a revision of her East Asian studies PhD dissertation, she can be forgiven for not engaging with all relevant philosophical literature, but one laments the missed opportunities for dialogue and engagement. For example, Valmisa adopts Roger Ames’s translation of “non-coercive action” for wuwei but never engages his many treatises on a process theory of agency in early Chinese philosophy that are, at least on the surface, consistent with her understanding of the agent as embedded in context. The similarities are striking, and one wonders why Valmisa did not build on Ames’s work rather than reinventing the wheel.Similarly, Valmisa adopts Francois Jullien’s understanding of the key notion of shi as propensity and discusses the notion with relevance both to war strategy and phenomena more generally in ways resonant with what Jullien has done in several influential works, and yet Valmisa does not even have a bibliographic entry for Jullien.And then there is Edward Slingerland, who wrote the first scholarly monograph on the early Chinese notion of effortless action (his translation of wuwei) across a range of early sources. Valmisa cites Slingerland but does not engage his work on effortless action.As a result, one is left wondering how Valmisa’s theory of adapting fits into the wider landscape of current sinological philosophy. Likewise, one is left wondering how, or whether, it can cross over to contemporary philosophy. Can the metamodel of adapting that she elucidates be viewed as an ideal for today’s reader? How might it fit in to contemporary theories of morality and action? The theory is billed in the subtitle as a “philosophy of action,” and yet connections with contemporary philosophy of action literature are largely left implicit. Perhaps these are Valmisa’s projects for the future. If so, I look forward to further insights

Action (physics) · Analytic philosophy · Contemporary philosophy · Epistemology · General interest · Physics · Quantum mechanics · Asian Culture and Media Studies · Chinese history and philosophy · Japanese History and Culture · Philosophy