Spontaneous thought and early Chinese ideas of ‘non-action’ and ‘emotion’

Abstract

The early Chinese idea of non-action refers not to spontaneity, as has been argued, but to a relation between agency and spontaneity. Non-action needs to be seen in connection with the idea of emotion, which refers to the spontaneity involved. The debates surrounding non-action and emotion can be profitably compared to discussions of spontaneous thought in modern cognitive science. Early Chinese approaches supplement modern ideas by focusing on feelings rather than thought and by being more relational and ecological, seeing agency and spontaneity as parallel processes in constant interaction rather than mutually exclusive categories. Furthermore, emotions represent an inner counterpart to the external changes in our physical and social environment, pointing to a close connection between the nature within us and outside us. On a larger scale, therefore, non-action denotes a relation between deliberate action and the given internal and external situation within which such action takes place.

The Structure and Function of Mind-Wandering in Chinese Regulated Verse

“…From a cognitive neuroscience perspective, the absence of executive control and the functional predominance of the DMN, a network that exhibits high levels of activity during task-negative (resting) states (Fransson 2006), may be associated with the casualness of one's actions and thoughts. Recently, there has been an attempt to link the DMN, spontaneous thoughts, and mind-wandering to early Chinese concepts of "non-action," which suggest a way of relating to situations with naturalness rather than exerting control (Eifring 2019). Moreover, the author posited that spontaneous thoughts operate within a complex ecosystem, wherein they are closely intertwined with larger networks of both internal and external influences.…”