Thinking across cultures: Implications for dual processes

In A History of God, Karen Armstrong describes a division, made by fourth century Christians, between kerygma and dogma: 'religious truth … capable of being expressed and defined clearly and logically,' versus 'religious insights [that] had an inner resonance that could only be apprehended by each individual in his own time during … contemplation' (Armstrong, 1993, p.114). This early dual-process theory had its roots in Plato and Aristotle, who suggested a division between 'philosophy,' which could be 'expressed in terms of reason and thus capable of proof,' and knowledge contained in myths, 'which eluded scientific demonstration' (Armstrong, 1993, 113–14). This division—between what can be known and reasoned logically versus what can only be experienced and apprehended—continued to influence Western culture through the centuries, and arguably underlies our current dual-process theories of reasoning. In psychology, the division between these two forms of understanding have been described in many different ways. The underlying theme of 'overtly reasoned' versus 'perceived, intuited' often ties these dual process theories together. In Western culture, the latter form of thinking has often been maligned (Dijksterhuis and Nordgren, 2006; Gladwell, 2005; Lieberman, 2000). Recently, cultural psychologists have suggested that although the distinction itself—between reasoned and intuited knowl-edge—may have precedents in the intellectual traditions of other cultures, the privileging of the former rather than the latter may be peculiar to Western cultures The Chinese philosophical tradition illustrates this difference of emphasis. Instead of an epistemology that was guided by abstract rules, 'the Chinese in esteeming what was immediately percepti-ble—especially visually perceptible—sought intuitive instantaneous understanding through direct perception' (Nakamura, 1960/1988, p.171). Taoism—the great Chinese philosophical school besides Confucianism—developed an epistemology that was particularly oriented towards concrete perception and direct experience (Fung, 1922; Nakamura, 1960/1988). Moreover, whereas the Greeks were concerned with definitions and devising rules for the purposes of classification, for many influential Taoist philosophers, such as Chuang Tzu, '… the problem of … how terms and attributes are to be delimited, leads one in precisely the wrong direction. Classifying or limiting knowledge fractures the greater knowledge' (Mote, 1971, p.102).