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We ask Amazon Alexa or Apple Siri for recommendations on music, we request help from chatbots, or we play with robotic toys. Robots and other smart machines—broadly referred to as the class of technological artifacts capable of autonomous decision and action without direct human instruction and interference—are increasingly interwoven into the social fabric of our society with the area and scope of their application continuing to expand. As we become accustomed to interacting through and with robots, we also begin to supplement or replace existing human–human interactions with human–machine interactions. The introduction of robots and smart machines into our lives can significantly alter the existing human–human interactions (and relationship), and this shift to human–machine interaction can be for better or worse. Philosophers and roboticists have already carefully scrutinized the potential social, ethical, and legal issues raised by the supplement and replacement of humans by robots and smart machines in various aspects of our lives [1], e.g., in friendship (e.g., [2]) and intimate relationship (e.g., [3]), in classroom (e.g., [4]), and at home and at work (e.g., [5]), and their aim is to examine whether the design and use of robots and smart machines are ethically permissible and/or conducive to the good life. These analyses, of course, are essential in our decisions on whether or not to accept the (use of) robots. They are also crucial in informing us of how to design and use machines ethically. Yet, as Sherry Turkle notes in “Alone Together” [6], there is a related but more fundamental philosophical issue concerning the impacts of interaction with machines on our self-constitution, i.e., how interaction with machines change who we are? This article aims to discuss the impacts of the shift from human–human interaction to human–machine interaction on one facet of our self-constitution, i.e., morality. More specifically, it sets out to explore whether and how the shift to human–machine interaction can affect our moral cultivation. To illustrate this with an example, it has been suggested that people—and, in particular, children—could become rude as they become accustomed to voice-interactive AI digital assistants, e.g., Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, etc. For the AI digital assistants will give people what they want regardless of their attitudes and manners, the claim is that they promote a false sense of deservedness that creeps into people’s everyday social interaction, thereby making the users rude [7–9]. The discussion of voice-interactive AI digital assistants offers a compelling case for studying the potential negative impacts of the shift to human–machine interaction on our moral cultivation. I shall structure the article around what Shannon Vallor calls technology-driven moral deskilling [10], i.e., the phenomenon of technology negatively affecting individual moral cultivation, and shall attempt to offer a Confucian response to the problem. In the next section, I first elaborate in more detail Vallor’s idea of technology-driven moral deskilling. I then discuss three paradigms to virtue acquisition identified by Nancy E. Snow, i.e., the “folk” paradigm, the skill-and-expertise paradigm, and the Confucian paradigm, and show how the Confucian paradigm can help us to respond to technology-driven moral deskilling. Finally, I introduce the idea of Confucian rituals (li) and argue for a ritualizing of machines as an answer to technology-driven moral deskilling. In supplementing or replacing humans, robots and smart machines change how we (inter)act and with whom we (inter)act, e.g., people no longer ask their family or friends for recommendations but rely on their AI digital assistants, they request help not from technicians but from chatbots, and they do not play with neighbors but with robotic or AI partners. By relegating and eliminating the needs of humans in interaction and relationships, robots and smart machines can transform and disrupt many of the existing human practices that are primarily human-based and human-oriented, e.g., kinship and friendship, help-seeking, and play. In light of the transformation and disruption brought by new technology, Vallor argues that “moral skills appears just as vulnerable to disruption or devaluation by technology-driven shifts in human practices . . . because moral skills are typically acquired in specific practices which, under the right conditions and with sufficient opportunity for repetition, foster the cultivation of practical wisdom and moral habituation that jointly constitute genuine virtue” [10] (p. 109). She points out that as human practices are being transformed or disrupted, they may not afford individuals the same chance to acquire moral skills and virtues because the new practices may not provide the right conditions or sufficient opportunity to practice. Accordingly, robots and smart machines may lead to the diminishing of moral skills, and thus the problem of technology-driven moral deskilling. Vallor’s argument rests on the skill model of virtue (see [11–14]), in which the acquisition of virtues is structurally similar to the acquisition of practical skills.1 From this perspective, it is essential for individuals to practice their moral skills and receive appropriate feedback to become morally skillful, which, in turn, enable them to achieve the relevant virtues. In other words, if the technology offers fewer opportunities for individuals to exercise their moral skills, or if the technology does not enable them to receive appropriate feedback, then users of this technology risk being morally deskilled. One of the examples Vallor uses to concretize the case of technology-driven moral deskilling is ‘robot caregivers’ [10] (pp. 119–121).2 She points out that caring, understood as active provision of support to people who are in need, is a type of skill. For example, for nurses and caregivers to care well, both knowledge and know-how of caring are necessary. When nurses and caretakers do not have suitable knowledge, they will not know what to do to help their patients, and thereby fail to care; but, even if they know what to do, they still have to know how to do it in a way that is comforting and/or satisfactory to their patients. Moreover, their proficiency of care know-how can only be accumulated through experience with their patients [15]. Following Vallor, as we accept caring involves a set of moral skills, such as conversation, body contact and empathizing with patients, the implementation of robot caregivers could lead to moral deskilling: When robot caregivers become as effective and/or welcoming as human caregivers, they may devalue human care and make care know-how obsolete. More importantly, the implementation of robot caregivers may reduce and remove the need of human care, which, at the same time, reduces and removes the opportunity for humans to exercise care and acquire the relevant virtues.

According to The Analects, the government has an obligation to secure the conditions for people’s basic means of subsistence and intellectual/moral development. In cases of conflict, however, the former has priority:17 “The Master was on his way to Wei, and Ran Qiu was driving. The Master said: ‘So many people!’ Ran Qiu said: ‘Once the people are many, what next should be done?’ – ‘Enrich them.’ – ‘Once they are rich, what next should be done?’ – ‘Educate them.’ ” (13.9).18 This does not mean the blind pursuit of a higher GNP. The main obligation is to help the worst-off:19 “I have always heard that a gentleman helps the needy; he does not make the rich richer still” (6.4; see also 16.1). Mencius echoes these concerns. People must be educated so that they can develop their moral natures. First, however, the government must provide for their basic means of subsistence: [The people] will not have constant hearts if they are without constant means. Lacking constant hearts, they will go astray and fall into excesses, stopping at nothing. To punish them after they have fallen foul of the law is to set a trap for the people. How can a benevolent man in authority allow himself to set a trap for the people? Hence when determining what means of support the people should have, a clear-sighted ruler ensures that these are sufficient, on the one hand, for the care of parents, and, on the other hand, for the support of wife and children, so that the people will always have sufficient food in good years and escape starvation in bad; only then does he drive them towards goodness; in this way, the people find it easy to follow him. (1A.7, Lau; see also 3A.3) There is no point promoting moral behavior if people are worried about their next meal.20 Thus, the government’s first priority is to secure the basic means of subsistence of the people. This does not necessarily translate into opposition to the free market. Absolute private property rights might still be justified on the instrumental grounds that they have the consequence of securing the basic means of subsistence of the people. Mencius, however, does not take this line. While he opposes high taxes and restrictions on commerce that lead to economic inefficiency, he explicitly argues that the state can and should control the distribution and use of land to secure people’s means of subsistence.21 And how does the government realize this aim? Mencius proposed his now-famous “well-field system”: Humane government must begin by defining the boundaries of the land. If the boundaries are not defined correctly, the division of the land into squares will not be equal, and the produce available for official salaries will not be fairly distributed. Therefore oppressive rulers and corrupt officials are sure to neglect the defining of the boundaries. If the boundaries are correctly defined, the division of land and the regulation of salaries can be settled while you sit. Although the territory of T’eng is narrow and small, there must be gentlemen (rulers and nobles) and there must be country men. Without gentlemen, there would be none to rule the country men, and without country men, there would be none to support the gentlemen. I would ask you to divide land in the remoter districts into nine squares and to designate the central square (cultivated by eight families) as “aid” (tax), and in the central parts of the state, to let the people pay for themselves one-tenth of their produce. From the chief ministers on down, [each family] should have fifty mou as sacrificial land, and an additional twenty-five mou for each additional male. When there are deaths or moving from one house to another there will be no quitting of the district. In the fields of the district, those who belong to the same nine squares will render friendly service to one another in their going out and coming in, aid one another in keeping watch, and sustain one another in sickness. In this way, the people will live in affection and harmony. Each “well-field” unit is one li square and consists of nine-hundred mou. The center square is public field. The eight households each privately own a hundred mou and together they cultivate the public field. Only when the public work is done may they attend to their work. (3A.3, Chan) This might seem like a rather rigid set of guidelines for establishing boundaries of land within states, but Mencius notes that “these are the outlines of the system. As to modifying and adapting it, it is up to you and your ruler” (3A.3, Chan). The important point is for the state to maintain a relatively equitable distribution of land at the local community level, to allow individual households to make productive use of land for their families, and to qualify farmers’ rights to the produce of the land in order to ensure that enough food is supplied to the nonfarming classes. These principles, Mencius suggests, will secure basic material welfare for all members of the state. Chinese rulers did subsequently adapt the principles of the well-field system to their own circumstances. In the early Tang dynasty, land was owned by the state and distributed by it to peasant families, roughly in accordance with the well-field system. The system of state ownership eventually broke down, however. By the Song dynasty there were many landownership patterns,22 including some forms of private ownership. The state did, however, maintain some control on the sale and purchase of land in order to secure people’s basic means of subsistence. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the state protected peasants against subsistence uncertainties by means of local community granaries. As R. Bin Wong notes, “the explicit logic of community granaries put responsibility for the creation and maintenance of these institutions in the hands of local people. The state’s willingness to depend on the gentry and others to promote local grain reserves assumed a basic commitment to subsistence security as a key element in social stability.”23 Of course, the Chinese Communist Party put an end to “Confucian” principles of land distribution, by abolishing all forms of local community autonomy and household responsibility for farming and forcing farmers to work for state-owned communes. Far from enriching the people, however, this system led to massive inefficiencies.

To begin with, while some cases may fall squarely within the scope of a law, many may have some aspects which were not foreseen by the law-makers and therefore the law cannot be automatically applied. Second, in many other cases, no law has ever been enacted or there may be several conflicting laws and none strictly fits the circumstance. These problems are common but solutions may vary. In theory, the inadequacy of law could be addressed by making more laws but there are always situations that are not foreseen. If a post hoc law is made and applied retroactively, it would be a most egregious offence against principles of rightness. This is why, where no clearly applicable law is available, most legal systems require judges to resort to custom and jurisprudential principles in civil cases, and allow them to abstain from action in criminal cases. In traditional China, judicial authorities were obliged to act on all cases brought before them. What should they do? Xunzi said that they should yi lei ju (以類舉 to place a case in a category of similar one and then decide). Why? He said that some things, which were different in some details, may have the same roots, they can therefore be considered to be of the same type. Human conduct can also be so categorised. Thus, a law made for one case may be applicable to another. But this cannot be done mechanically. A judge must carefully study the legislative background to determine why a law was adopted, what its immediate objective is, and what effects it may have on society in the long run. He called this investigation yi (議 to deliberate) the yi (義 the true meaning, or the spirit, and the ramifications) of a law. After this investigation and a careful examination of the facts of the case at hand, the judge will be able to decide whether the law can be applied analogically. This process is not easy for a judge but it is necessary. In Xunzi’s words, a judge who knows the spirit of law will be able to handle all cases; a judge who knows only the letter of the law will inevitably be at loss when he encounters a case not clearly covered by an existing law. Xunzi was not the first person who recognised the problem and suggested a solution. Both have been mentioned in The Book of Historical Documents. 3 Xunzi’s recommendation was generally accepted and became a rule known as bi-fu yuanyin (比附援引 to compare and apply by analogy) incorporated into criminal codes of later periods.4 But this practice leads to another problem – the “spirit of law” is nebulous and therefore can be interpreted in different ways, making the result of a trial uncertain – a judge may come to different conclusions in similar cases and different judges may decide the same case differently. The unpredictable outcomes will be highly injurious to the judicial system. Though not difficult to see, this problem was not addressed by Xunzi. Besides honest differences, judges could misuse law because of prejudice or evil intention. Thus, after saying that the scale, the peck, the bushel and other instruments of measurement, which are supposedly to ensure fairness and exactness, can be abused, Xunzi pointed out that law is also a mere instrument and, by itself, not “the source of order”, but can also be misused or abused. Whether it can be used to achieve principles of rightness depends on the person who uses it. Therefore humans are the source of order. When the person using law is just, law can bring justice; when he is dishonest, law can become a tool for injustice. In Xunzi’s words, “when the source is clean the water downstream will be clean; when the source is dirty, the water downstream will be dirty”. This logic led Xunzi to support the rule of the good person and reject the rule of law in the sense that it be applied mechanically in all circumstances. He argued that the laws of the ancient sage kings continued to exist through the later periods but the descendants of those kings did not continue to be rulers. The simple reason is that the later rulers did not use law properly. “Thus,” he famously said, “laws cannot stand by themselves and precedents cannot automatically govern. When there is the right man, they will be properly used; when the right man is gone, they will fall into disuse.” But Xunzi was not simply dismissive of law; he just emphasised its limits; hence his axiom: “The law is the starting point of good government; the ruler is the fountainhead of law. If there is a good ruler, the law may be simple yet it will be sufficient; if there is not a good ruler, the law may be comprehensive yet, when the circumstances change, there will be no proper action taken and the result will be chaos.” As a proof, he pointed out that there had been disorder under good laws but there had never been disorder under a good ruler – from antiquity to his time that was unheard of. Indeed, his observation has been verified by Chinese history after his time as well. Thus, neither high principles nor law is easy to apply. It was undoubtedly for the purpose of solving this problem that another set of norms was created. Known as li (禮 rites), they were rules for proper and refined behaviour initially designed for the upper classes from the rulers down to the shi (士 lowest officers). According to Li-ji (禮記 Notes on Rites), some of them were created by ancient sages but most others had their basis in custom, human feelings, common sense, and reason. As mentioned earlier, Xunzi thought rites necessary because people have limitless desires but the means to satisfy them are finite. This fact leads to competition, strife and disorder. Hating disorder, the ancient sage kings established rites as guidelines for people to follow a safer course in their search for the satisfaction of their desires. Thus, rites are also likened to water-level markers for people to avoid danger. Xunzi hailed rites as “the ultimate standards” for human conduct and assigned extraordinary importance to them, saying that, in personal life, rites guide people to live correctly and behave elegantly; in society, rites prescribe how people of different classes are to live and behave, to stay in their right places and interact with one another amicably; and that, in a country, rites lead to good governance and ensure peace and prosperity. Discarding rites, people will bring misfortune and calamity upon themselves, on society, and on the country.

The noted copyright scholar Carla Hesse has argued in a succinct essay that the recognition of creativity is largely a modern phenomenon because in every civilization knowledge was traditionally regarded as coming from divine revelation or the past. In addition to illustrating European history, Hesse particularly mentioned China to support her argument by referring to William Alford. 3 Alford believes that `the power of past and its consequences for possession of the fruits of intellectual endeavour' is overwhelming in Chinese history. 4 He points out such a so-called Chinese-characterized phenomenon by quoting the noted scholar of Chinese literature Stephen Owen, who articulated that `the Confucian imperative insists that in encountering the ancients, we ourselves must be changed.' 5 According to this, Alford further suggests that `the replication of particular concrete manifestations ... by persons other than those who first gave them form never carried ... the dark connotations ... [as] it does in the West. ' 6 Alford's theory of past thus, from a cultural perspective, denies the possibility of generating the concept of copyright and other intellectual property forms in Chinese values. Hesse's use of China is common. There is of course a difference between Hesse-style scholars and many others. 7 For the former, the evidence of lack of creativity is employed to shake the sacred foundations of intellectual property, which is often said to be historically `eternal' and 'natural'. 8 For the latter, however, China's example is frequently used to condemn contemporary China's notorious piracy problems; as they purport, the Chinese do not really want to create and only steal the creative fruits of the Western genius. 9 But has China been rightly used? Is it necessary to criticize intellectual property by denying the existence of creativity? It is noteworthy that Alford rightly points out that the historical inquiries made by Confucius (551BC-479 BC) should not be construed as connoting a lack of originality, although his theory of the past begins with Confucius's famous saying: `I transmit rather than create; I believe in and love the ancients'. 10 This is true even if we purely label Confucius as a chronicler who treats the original text prudentially and avoids random collation and haphazard explanation. " As Alford argues, by quoting Edward Pulleyblank, `the selection and arrangement of [the historian's] ... material called for the exercise of critical judgement, and conclusions about the causes of events or the characters of historical persons could be expressed separately in the appropriate place. ' 12 However, Alford does not further examine other aspects of Confucius's creative sparks. Alford's overemphasis of the role of past is de facto a Weberfan approach, which views Confucian culture as submitting to parents, authorities and ancestors. 13 However, Confucianism itself as a set of principles and concepts is not invariable. Even the Tao (way), which constitutes the central values of Confucianism and is transmitted from the past, is not entirely unchangeable. As Herrlee Greel argues, Confucius has never defined his way. 14 The Tao is not viewed as a `fixed code' but a `way of ideals', 15 which, as William de Bary puts it, needs to be continuously reconstituted. 16 The Tao itself contains the progress of creativity and is not simply a revivalist process. As Tu Wei-ming suggests, individuals can draw inspiration from the past and discover new meanings by their own experience and consciousness. 17 The Tao may also change when situations change and the Tao can be improved in tune with social evolution. 18 Even if some aspects of the Tao are permanently unalterable, there are still ample spaces left for creativity. Herbert Fingarette provides an insightful understanding. He suggests that a sole idea of Tao, which excludes individual creativity, cannot explicitly actualize every aspect of social life, as mere proficiency in the basic skills and common elements of music is not sufficient to create an original and charismatic stanza. 19 Throughout history, the Tao has been repossessed and reinterpreted several times, often in the name of worshipping the past. In this regard, Confucius himself is a highly creative genius. 2' His transmission and love of the past Tao should be best understood as humility and wisdom rather than starchiness. As articulated by Kuang Ya-min, who has written the biographies of many Confucian scholars, `Confucius created while transmitting'. 21 This explains that why Confucius's core conceptions of benevolence, equal education and electing the competent run contrary to the most wonderful system of the Zhou kingdom that Confucius himself admired, and that he acted not merely as an editor, compiler, abridger or expurgator, but, as demonstrated in the case of compiling the Zhou Yi and the Chun-qiu, comes close to being what we would call, in a modern context, an author. 22 Confucius's academic behaviour per se remains a paradigm of Confucian tradition, which was established expressly by Mencius (372-289 BC), who criticized the learning method treating Confucius as a still model for imitation. 23 This fostered a vogue for scepticism in the Song dynasty (960-1279) when printing mushroomed rapidly, transmitting knowledge to a much more significant extent. It was widely encouraged that, as one of the most noted Neo-Confucian thinkers Cheng Yi (1032-1107) said, "Student must first of all be able to doubt". This was echoed by many others, including the most successful Confucian philosopher, Zhu Xi (1120-1200), who taught that "great doubts lead to great progress", and put his philosophy into practice by proposing numerous innovations in the fundamental Confucian Classics. 24 As a matter of fact, that Confucianism constantly reinvented itself by coming to terms with the political and social changes of the time is nowhere more clearly illustrated than in the case of the Song Neo-Confucianism. 25 Individuals with independent personalities and creative sparks remarkably increased in the Song, albeit this phenomenon was largely confined within officials, literati and highclass merchants. 26 In the Ming (1368-1644), creativity started to emerge in ordinary people, especially when Wang Yang-ming (1472-1528), the second authoritative Confucian thinker after Zhu Xi, theorized the possibility for ordinary people to become sages. 27 With respect to creativity in humanism and individualism, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are probably the most creative and exciting period in China's history. 28 The justification of change and creativity stems from one of the fundamental philosophies of Confucianism, which views the entire universe as an endless, positive and progressive process. 29 In particular, the Song Neo-Confucianism developed a sophisticated theoretical system of taiji (Supreme Ultimate) to explain the creative nature of the universe. Zhang Zai (1020-1077) was one of the first Song Confucian scholars who invented the taiji theory. He attributes the driving force behind the universe to the continuous power of creativity. 30 Therefore, if the universe itself is creating things in a continuous way, then human beings must not be satisfied by merely being the creature of the universe but should actively participate in the creative process. 31 The meanings of life can only be reflected by continuous creative progress; 32 otherwise, as the erudite Song philosopher Lü Zu-qian (1137-1181) has argued, in hundreds of years the world 33 will remain stagnant. The role of the past is of course crucial. In every civilization, the past overlooks the present because the present needs acknowledged principles and paradigms, which largely come from the past, to be its societal underpinning. However, as Lloyd Rudolph demonstrated, it is more important to dialectically examine the relation between the past and the present. In many instances, the past is not absolute but is always creatively updateable without denying the values from the past. In a Chinese sense, the past is not the only thing. As the reputed French Sinologist Jacques Gernet has articulated, nothing can be more evident as a Chinese character than the notion that the future is always different 35 from the past.

Turning to diachronically yi action, such an action is geared toward and exemplifies the Confucian notion of dao (Way). Dao is a multilayered word that assumes multiple meanings in the Analects, such as principles (15:29), truth (15:32), and helping behavior (15:42). Broadly speaking, dao denotes “the way of life inherited from one’s cultural predecessors” (Ames & Rosemont, 1998, p. 45) and the guiding discourse for all (Hansen, 1989). Confucius teaches that exemplary persons “make their plans around the way (dao)” and “are anxious about the way” (Analects 15.32). Underlining human agency, Confucius points out, “It is the person who is able to broaden the way (dao), not the way that broadens the person” (Analects 15.29). To broaden dao is to make one’s inherited tradition one’s own and extend it to one’s cultural successors (Ames & Rosemont, 1998). Dao therefore is the thread that unites the past, present, and future diachronically. A creative person situates the past, present, and future within dao as the normative discourse and unbroken tradition. In choosing a course of action, such a person draws upon the wisdom and resources endowed by one’s cultural predecessors and propagates dao by meaningfully anticipating what is yet to come. An instance of yi that is performed synchronically and diachronically is Confucius’ treatment of a blind musician: The blind Master of Music, Mian, had an interview with Confucius, and, on reading the steps, the Master said, “Here are the steps,” and on reaching the mat, the Master said, “Here is the mat.” When they had all sat down together, the Master informed him of who was present: “So-and-so is here, and so-and-so is there.” When Master of Music Mian had departed, Zizhang asked Confucius, “Is this the way (dao) that one should speak with a blind music master?” Confucius replied, “Indeed, this has been the traditional way of assisting a music master” (Analects, 15.42) Zizhang is prompted to ask Confucius the above question as the latter has gone out of his way to assist the blind musician. Confucius’ action is atypical of hosts at that time, especially for someone of Confucius’ stature. Slingerland (2003) comments that Confucius “puts aside the normal ritual behaviour of a host in order to deftly and respectfully serve as a guide for the blind Music Master, without being overly fussy or condescending” (p. 190). Confucius’ intention and conduct are synchronic as they are predicated on and motivated by shu: he puts himself in the position of the blind musician and conscientiously caters to the latter’s needs and interests. At the same time, diachronic action is present as Confucius realizes and continues the traditional dao of receiving a blind music master; he also models for and passes on to Zizhang the appropriate response in such a circumstance. Having outlined a Confucian interpretation of creativity, it is timely to answer the two questions posed at the start of the paper. For the first question on what we mean by appropriateness in the context of creativity, a Confucian response is that appropriateness, as yi, revolves around perceiving and performing that which is most fitting in a particular situation. Yi provides the socio-cultural framework for individuals to react creatively to concrete circumstances and situational changes. The Confucian notion of creativity as delineated in this essay places an accent on the “dynamic, interpretive process of constructing personal knowledge and understanding within a particular sociocultural context” (Kaufman & Beghetto, 2009, p. 3). What is appropriate or otherwise is not determined by the authority, social conventions, or one’s whims and fancies. This point has been made clear through the earlier examples of Confucius’ judgment of Zhonggong and Mencius’ contention for disregarding the social prohibition of physical contact between men and women. Rather than conforming to the prevailing communal rituals and value system blindly, the standard for appropriate conduct, from a Confucian worldview, rests in li for the purpose of extending dao. As for the second question on the relationship between creativity, morality, and appropriateness, this article has articulated the centrality of morality for creativity in the Confucian traditions. All creative actions should be motivated by shu (empathy) and aimed at broadening dao through li (rituals inherited from the sage-kings). It is noteworthy that the term “morality” in Confucianism is not confined to ethical considerations of what is right or good, as is commonly understood in the Western literature. Rather, Confucian morality is satiated with ethical, psychological, spiritual, metaphysical, and esthetic significance (Ames & Rosemont, 1998; Tan, 2013). Also containing an intrinsic moral import is li. Describing li as “life forms transmitted from generation to generation as repositories of meaning,” Ames and Rosemont (1998) aver that li makes it possible for human beings to internalize shared values, thereby “making the tradition one’s own” (p. 51). Defining creativity as yi places morality at the heart of the thought, intention, and action of a creative person. It is pertinent that East Asians generally see a necessary link between creativity and ethics (Niu & Sternberg, 2002; Kaufman & Beghetto, 2009; Rudowicz & Yue, 2000; Tan, 2016b). Niu and Sternberg (2002) report that making contributions to the society is widely held to be more valuable and acceptable in East Asia than creative endeavors that disrupt societal harmony. There are two major implications from our exploration of a Confucian interpretation of creativity. The first implication is that our conception of creativity extends the existing research on personal creativity by adding moral and interpersonal dimensions to it. On the one hand, a Confucian interpretation of creativity coheres with personal creativity that is “manifested in the intentions and motivation to transform the objective world into original interpretations, coupled with the ability to decide when this is useful and when it is not” (Runco, 1996, p. 4, also see Runco, 2004). The object of personal creativity is new and meaningful encounter or experience that is the product of a mindful choice (Kaufman & Beghetto, 2009; Beghetto & Kaufman, 2007; Niu & Sternberg, 2006; Runco, 1996). Confucian creativity also relies on subjective novelty that points to what is new to the person concerned (“P creativity”); subjective novelty is oppositional to objective novelty that refers to what is new to humanity and history (“H creativity”) (Boden, 2001). Amplifying the concept of subjective novelty, Kaufmann (2004) writes that it refers to “an idea deserves to be described as original if it is novel for the individual who produces it, without necessarily being novel for something as a whole” (p. 156). But a Confucian approach to creativity goes beyond subjective novelty by accentuating the moral and interpersonal dimensions of creativity. The foregoing has already discussed how creativity as yi is essentially ethical and is characterized by shu, li, and dao. Creative acts, it follows, are not purely instances of subjective novelty that are devoid of morality; on the contrary, such acts are evidences of one’s ethical cultivation, concern for others, and contribution to societal harmony. Put simply, Confucian creativity is both “self-regarding” and “other-regarding”. Personalization, authenticity, and interdependence are underscored in Confucianism where an individual’s own values and beliefs are constructed in concert with those of others (Tan, 2018; Tu, 1985). A Confucian interpretation of creativity transcends the traditional construction of creativity that highlights the isolated, creative individuals to one that foregrounds human relationships (Glaveanu, 2015). Such an approach to creativity shifts the pivot from I-paradigm (the individual) and Hparadigm (the genius) to We-paradigm that plays up social exchange and human cooperation (Glaveanu, 2014; Glaveanu, Gillespie & Valsiner, 2014). As elaborated by Glaveanu (2015): Against “centric” models that reduce creativity to intra-psychological variables (e.g., divergent thinking, openness to experience, neurological correlates), the notion of distribution makes it a fundamentally relational and developmental phenomenon. The creative process cannot be represented by the almost instantaneous, mental, and individual moment of “getting the creative idea,” but necessarily engages self—other, symbolic—material, and past—present—future relations that turn it into a social, embodied, and temporal act (p. 167).

I think the answer to these questions turns on two very different ways of understanding relationality, namely the doctrines of first and second order relationality. The term ‘ontology’ as “the science of being per se or in itself” gives us a doctrine of external, second order relations. Ontology was introduced into our philosophical vocabulary as a new term for an old way of thinking at the beginning of the seventeenth century by two German philosophers.1 For the classical Greeks, “the science of being per se” (to on he on) was posited as their “first philosophy” with all of its implications for metaphysics, epistemology, logic, ethics, philosophy of religion, and so on. Ontology is that branch of metaphysics that seeks to classify and explain the things that exist, with its underlying assumption that there are unchanging substances or essences internal to things that are available to us to classify them as this and not that. Ontology privileges “being per se” with its categorical language and its “substance” and “attribute” dualism, giving us a grammar of substances as property-bearers and properties that are borne, respectively. Such ontological thinking animates Plato’s pursuit of formal, “real” definitions in his quest for certainty (that is, definitions not of words but of what really is), and underlies Aristotle’s taxonomical science of knowing “what is what.” For these classical Greek philosophers, only what is real and is thus true can be the proper object of knowledge, giving us a logic of the changeless. Corollary to ontology is causal thinking, formal definitions, and, important for David’s question, a doctrine of external, second order relationality in which relations conjoin discrete and self-sufficient things, such as human “beings.” As the contemporary philosopher Zhao Tingyang 趙汀陽 avers, this kind of substance ontology defining the real things that constitute the content of an orderly and structured cosmos provides a “dictionary” kind of explanation of the world, seeking to set up an accurate understanding of the limits of all things. In simple terms, it determines “what is what,” and all concepts are footnotes to “being” or “is.”2 In the Book of Changes, we find a vocabulary making explicit cosmological assumptions that stand in stark contrast to this substance ontology and that brings with it a doctrine of first order, constitutive relations. This alternative “first philosophy” has prompted me to create the neologism “zoetology,” with the Greek zoe- “life” and -logia “discourse,” as my own new term for an old way of thinking that we might translate into modern Chinese as shengshenglun 生生論: “the art of living.” The starting point in this zoetological cosmology, then, is that nothing does anything by itself; association is a fact. Since the very nature of life is associative and transactional, the vocabulary appealed to in defining Confucian cosmology is irreducibly dyadic and collateral: always multiple, never one. And further, it is the nature of life itself that it seeks to optimize the available conditions for its continuing growth, where such growth has a persistent existential and thus intentional aspect. “Life” is the productive correlation between organism and environment that gives rise to correlative, relational, ecological thinking that many of our best sinologists (Marcel Granet, David Keightley, Tang Junyi, K. C. Chang, A. C. Graham, and many others) would ascribe to the earliest semblances of Chinese cosmology as a dominant way of thinking. I would argue that an understanding of zoetology as “the art of living” in expressing what is most basic in the Confucian cosmology is essential to an explanation of the assumed coincidence that obtains among all of the various dimensions of the human experience in Confucian philosophy: aesthetics, education, family life, morality, politics, religion, and so on. That is, all that is beautiful, intelligent, loving, good, just, and sacred in the human experience returns us to nothing more than those modalities of human conduct that strengthen the root and conduce to growth in all of our first order familial, communal, cultural, and ecological relations. Everything is at once what it is for itself, for its specific context, and for the unsummed totality. Thus, there are always correlative yinyang 陰陽 aspects within any vital process of change, describing the focal identity that makes something uniquely what it is and, by virtue of the activity within its vital relations, what it is becoming. Turning to the human experience specifically, persons are not defined in terms of limitation, self-sufficiency, and independence, but ecologically by the vital growth they experience in their intercourse with other persons and their worlds. Given the primacy of a first order, lived relationality that gives persons their focal identities, and given the unbounded nature of such relations, any particular person is holographic in existing at the pleasure of everything else. The zoetological question of why such persons exist is explained by the regimen of cultivating their relations to live their roles most productively in family and community, and what they have come to mean for each other. And the necessity in ontology of defining “what is what” is replaced by the correlative possibilities each person affords everything else for its growth, revision, and redefinition. Important to an understanding of this vocabulary is the gestalt shift from the Greek noun-dominated thinking with human “beings” and their world of essential “things” to the Confucian gerundive assumptions about the always eventful nature of human “becomings” living their lives within their unbounded natural, social, and cultural ecologies. I would only add that, true to the cosmological postulate of “continuity in change” (biantong 變通) advanced in the Book of Changes, zoetological thinking is more fundamental than the distinctions we might want to make between evolving Confucian and Daoist philosophies, and even a decidedly Chinese form of Buddhist philosophy. The claim that Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism are “three teachings as one” (sanjiaoweiyi 三教為一) reflects this different, evolving, and yet continuous worldview. Corollary to zoetology is correlative thinking and its production of paronomastic correlations in which things constituted by their first order relations are thus defined by their vital associations. In such ecological thinking, the “where” and the “when” in the relations of something gives you its “what.” Zhao Tingyang suggests that in contrast to the dictionary definition afforded by Greek ontology, the Confucian cosmology provides . . . an explanation of the “grammar” of the world, striving for a coordinated understanding of the relationships—between heaven and humankind, humankind and things, and humans and humans—by which all doings are generated, with a special emphasis on the mutuality of relationships, and the compatibility of all things.3 But is this understanding of first order, constitutive relationality really “part of original Confucian thought?” The Analects is the first and primary reference for the philosophical definition of ren 仁 that I would translate as “consummate person/conduct,” and it is for this reason that it has come to be associated most closely with the person of Confucius himself. Confucius’ creative investment of new meaning in ren is borne out when its infrequent and unexceptional usage in the earlier texts is compared with over a hundred occurrences in the Analects in more than ten percent of its passages: that is, some 58 of the 499 sections. The fact that Confucius is asked so often what he means by ren would suggest that he, too, is inventing a neologism in using this otherwise obscure term for his own purposes, and thus that those in conversation with him are not entirely comfortable in their understanding of it. No one can do or become ren by themselves. Ren is not an essential endowed potential, but what one is able to make of oneself given the interface between one’s initial conditions and one’s natural, social, and cultural environments. It is the entire, irreducibly social person: renzhe renye 仁者人也. Ren does not reference individual persons independent of family relations, but is rather the cultivated cognitive, aesthetic, moral, and religious sensibilities of entire persons as these qualities are best expressed in their ritualized roles and relationships. Given that ren as it is developed in the Analects denotes the qualitative transformation of particular persons, it is made further ambiguous because it must be understood relative to the specific concrete conditions of those persons in their first order, constitutive relations. There is no formula, no template, no ideal. Like a work of art, it is a process of disclosure rather than closure, resisting fixed definition and replication. We find that insight into the nature of consummate conduct is provided through a cluster of modal, irreducibly relational terms such as ren itself, that is, in the way, manner, or mode something is done rather than by stipulating any specific actions themselves. Indeed, such modalities are resistant to general prescription in defining the substance of exemplary conduct, and are often brought into focus by an appeal to specific historical episodes and concrete exemplars. From the very beginning, ren has been closely aligned with achieving ritual propriety first in family roles and then, by extension, in those relations that locate persons in their communities. As Analects 12.1 declares, “The disciplining of one’s person and the refinement made possible by aspiring to propriety in one’s roles and relations is the substance of becoming consummate” (克己復禮爲仁). This social dimension of ren is central. Ren happens within a “field of selves,” the sum of significant relationships that comes to constitute one as a resolutely intra-subjective person. Ren is not only intellectual, but affective and physical as well: one’s expressed feelings and passions, one’s posture and comportment, gestures, and bodily communication. Ren is something done, an aesthetic project, a hard-won accomplishment. The human being is not something we are; it is something that we do and become, and either we do it together or not at all. Or perhaps said more clearly, our narratives and our persons—that is, ren as both person and conduct—are one and the same thing. John Dewey makes a similar point in resisting the fallacy of decontextualizing and essentializing one element such as “human nature” or human “being” within the continuity of experience, and then in the best effort to overcome this post hoc diremption, making this element foundational and causal: The reality is the growth-process itself; childhood and adulthood are phases of a continuity. . . . The real existence is the history in its entirety, the history just as what it is. The operations of splitting it up into two parts and then having to unite them again by appeal to causative power are equally arbitrary and gratuitous.4 Not the actualization of a singular “human being,” but the growth and refinement of interdependent “human becomings” (always plural), is perhaps the best way to understand and express the processional, emergent, and irreducibly social nature of what it means to become ren. And such an understanding of ren is certainly part of original Confucian thought. In a section in Human Becomings titled “Ren 仁 as a Way of Saying ‘Role Ethics’ in the Confucian Canons,” I argue that this holistic, normative, role-based, and narrative meaning of ren allows us to claim that ren itself is one clear way that role ethics is being referenced in classical Confucianism. Is such a way of thinking about becoming a person true and useful? One strength of Confucian role ethics is that it is radically empirical. Unlike ontological thinking that begins from abstract and speculative, causal assumptions that define the human “being” and its purposes, Confucian role ethics begins from and is theorized out of our immediate experience. Given the primacy of practice, all theorizing, as itself an intrinsic feature of practical activity, is meliorative in the sense of being an attempt to make both the form and the performance of these same practices more intelligent and productive. The mutual entailment of the subjective and objective, self and world, theory and practice in first order, constitutive relationality as aspectual distinctions within immediate experience is a fact, making this resolutely empirical understanding of such experience resistant to exclusive, dualistic categories of any kind. Again, this ren or irreducibly relational way of thinking about becoming persons is useful in the sense that it alerts us to our interdependence while at the same time discouraging zero-sum thinking. It encourages an awareness that if my neighbor does better, I do better. I can only be a good teacher if I have a good student, and the challenges of a good student will make me a better teacher. I would certainly want to argue that zoetology with its first order relationality is both true and useful as an ecological and inclusive way of thinking about the human experience. Such an understanding of ren entails a shift in our thinking about what it means to be “individuals” as persons, corporations, or nation states, taking the discourse away from a fictive autonomy and equality, and redirecting it to the empirically compelling aspiration to relational equity, that is, the affordance of having different interests and yet being deserving of full consideration. Such a sense of relational equity by activating our differences from each other to make a difference for each other and for the well-being of all leads us in the direction of an achieved diversity as the substance of human flourishing.

Confucian ritual propriety represents “a superior understanding of human goodness, and represents constitutive norms through which a person achieves an integral self and a unified life and a harmonious communal life as well” (Tang 2016, p. 137). Ritual in the Xunzi is of central significance to the Xunzian philosophy, which has therefore attracted considerable attention among academia (Graham 1989; Cook 1997; Goldin 1999; Puett 2002; Sato 2003; Hagen 2003; Cheng 2008; Perkins 2014; Kline and Tiwald 2014; Hutton 2014). Sato Masayuki maintains that “Xunzi’s synthesis of the pre-Qin thought is attained by his concept of Li (ritual), which is also the foundation of his argumentation” (Sato 2003, p. 424). Antonio S. Cua has categorized the li (ritual) in the Xunzi into three dimensions: the moral dimension, the aesthetic dimension, and the religious dimension (Cua 2005, pp. 39–62). But the central connotation of ritual in the Xunzi is more than those three dimensions. In particular, the Xunzi reveres ritual itself by constantly exalting ritual (longli 隆禮). As Mark Berkson has pointed out, “Whereas every religious tradition has rituals in which participants express reverence for that which is sacred, Confucianism (especially in its Xunzian form) is arguably more than most other traditions, at the same time reflects on and reveres ritual itself” (Berkson 2016, p. 233). The fundamental reason behind it lies in the fact that Xunzi deems rituals as the markers of the Dao (Way). To quote two edifying excerpts: “Those who order the people mark out the Way, but if the markers are not clear, there will be chaos. The rituals are those markers. To reject ritual is to bemuddle the world, and to bemuddle the world is to create great chaos. And so, when the Way is in no part unclear, and that which is within the bounds and that which is outside the bounds have different markers, and that which is inglorious and that which is illustrious have constant measures, then the pitfalls of the people will be eliminated [治民者表道，表不明則亂。禮者，表也。非禮，昬世也。昬世，大亂 也。故道無不明，外内異表，隱顯有常，民陷乃去。]”. (‘Tianlun’; Hutton 2014, p. 181) “Those who order the people mark out what is chaotic, to make it so that people will not err. The rituals are their markers. The former kings used rituals to mark out what would make the whole world chaotic. Now if one discards the rituals, this is getting rid of the markers. And so, the people become lost and confused and fall into disasters and troubles. This is why punishments and penalties become profuse [治民者表亂，使人無失。禮者，其表也，先王以禮表天下之亂。今 廢禮者，是去表也。故民迷惑而陷禍患，此刑罰之所以繁也。]”. (‘Dalue’; Hutton 2014, p. 291) As expatiated in the above excerpts, the Way has to be clearly marked out by the rulers in order to avoid great chaos and maintain social order. Otherwise, society will be chaotic, and people will err. Former kings appropriately utilized rituals to mark out what made the world chaotic, and thus disorder was dispelled. Notably, discarding the rituals is tantamount to abandoning the markers of the Way, and thus is exactly why the people fall into disasters and penalties become pervasive now. In other words, it is only when the Way is marked out clearly by rituals that the calamities of the people can be relinquished, and social order can be achieved. However, not all rulers can clearly mark out the Way, except the sages. As P.R. Goldin vividly comments, “The rituals, it turns out, are the equivalent of helpful signposts. Just as those who ford rivers mark treacherous spots, the sages marked the Way by means of rituals, so that people would no longer stumble” (Goldin 2018). In the search of the Dao, Xunzi has attached much importance to ritual as it is the marker of the Dao. Ritualization is the path to reach the Dao. As A.C. Graham puts it, “although Xunzi puts the main stress on the ordering and refining of the passions, he does see ritual as rooting man not only in family and state but also in cosmos” (Graham 1989, p. 259). One excerpt pertaining to this aspect stands out: “By ritual, Heaven and Earth harmoniously combine; By ritual, the sun and the moon radiantly shine; By ritual, the four seasons in progression arise; By ritual, the stars move orderly across the skies; By ritual, the great rivers through their courses flow; By ritual, the myriad things all thrive and grow; By ritual, for love and hate proper measure is made; By ritual, on joy and anger fit limits are laid. By ritual, compliant subordinates are created. By ritual, enlightened leaders are gen- erated; With ritual, all things can change yet not bring chaos. But deviate from ritual and you face only loss. Is not ritual perfect indeed! It establishes a lofty stan- dard that is ultimate of its kind, and none under Heaven can add to or subtract from it [天地以合，日月以明，四時以序，星辰以行，江河以流，萬物以昌，好惡 以節，喜怒以當，以爲下則順，以爲上則明，萬物變而不亂，貳之則喪也。禮豈不 至矣哉！立隆以為極，而天下莫之能損益也。]”. (‘Lilun’; Hutton 2014, pp. 204–5) Here, in order to give prominence to ritual, Xunzi employs parallelism of lines for rhetorical effect. Through ritual, the Way of Heaven, the Way of Earth, and the Way of human beings are all achieved, which constitutes a cosmic dance wherein Heaven, Earth, and human beings are aligned with the Way and run in proper fashion. To use Machle’s words, “Thus, the inherited li are, as it were, the echoes of the cosmic music, transcribed by the sages to be the choreography of humans’ part in the cosmic dance” (Machle 1993, p. 182). Since rituals are the markers of the Dao instituted by the sages, by following all the necessary markers, the ultimate Dao can be achieved. In other words, ritualization is the ultimate path to reach the Way (Dao). “The ritual of the sage, in its ideal form, is a canon of behavioral practices through which harmony may be achieved” (Cook 1997, p. 36). By the same token, because ritual itself is the ultimate lofty standard of its kind, any addition to it or subtraction from it is impossible to bring about, which is exactly why the Xunzi keeps exalting ritual across the whole chapters. As Tang Siufu succinctly puts it, “Ritual propriety represents a normative framework telling us what sort of human actions make the best of our native conditions” (Tang 2016, p. 136). Another case in point in the “Discourse on Ritual” chapter is the line “Ritual is the ultimate of the human Dao [禮者，人道之極也]”. Here, the Xunzi holds that ritual represents the ultimate standard of the human Way, marking explicit signposts normatively and prescriptively signaling the Dao of humanity because ritual itself encompasses all it takes to form the human Dao. As Sato Masayuki observes, “Consequently, it was Li (ritual) which was considered the invisible power which could attain order in human society. In this way, the role of Li in human society is comparable to the role of the Way (Dao) in the natural world and in a human body” (Sato 2003, p. 425). In the Xici zhuan, although ritual is not exalted manifestly across chapters as it is in the Xunzi, the underlying principle embodying ritual as the marker of the Dao is unveiled implicitly: “The holy sages were able to survey all the confused diversities under Heaven. They observed forms and phenomena, and made representations of things and their attributes. These were called the Images (xiang 象). The holy sages were able to survey all the movements under Heaven. They contemplated the Way in which these movements met and became interrelated. In performing a proper ritual, they appended judgments (ci 辭), to distinguish between the good fortune and misfortune indicated. These were called the Lines (yao爻) [聖人有以見天下之 賾，而擬諸其形容，象其物宜，是故謂之象。聖人有以見天下之動，而觀其會通， 以行其典禮，系辭焉以斷其吉凶，是故謂之爻。]”. (‘Xici’ I: 6; Wilhelm [1967] 1977, pp. 596–97, with modifications) “Thus the Book of Changes consists of images. The images are reproductions. The decisions provide the material. The lines are imitations of movements on earth. Thus do good fortune and misfortune arise, and remorse and humiliation appear [是故《易》者，象也；象也者，像也。彖者，材也；爻也者，效天下之動者也。是故 吉凶生而悔吝著也。]”. (‘Xici’ II: 3; Wilhelm [1967] 1977, pp. 640–41, with modifications) “The number of the total is fifty. Of these, forty-nine are used. They are divided into two portions, to represent the two primal forces. Hereupon one is set apart, to represent the three powers. They are counted through by fours, to represent the four seasons. The remainder is put aside, to represent the intercalary month. There are two intercalary months in five years, therefore the putting aside is re- peated, and this gives us the whole. There are five heavenly numbers. There are also five earthly numbers. When they are distributed among the five places, each finds its complement. The sum of the heavenly numbers is twenty-five, that of the earthly numbers is thirty. The sum total of heavenly numbers and earthly numbers is fifty-five. It is this which completes the changes and transformations and sets demons and gods in movement [大衍之數五十，其用四十有九。分而為二 以象兩，掛一以象三， 揲之以四以象四時，歸奇於扐以象閏，五歲再閏，故再扐 而後掛。天數五，地數五，五位相得而各有合。天數二十有五，地數三十。凡天地之數五十有五，此所以成變化而行鬼神也。]”. (‘Xici’ I: 8; Wilhelm [1967] 1977, pp. 604–5) As for the Xici zhuan, it was “written in support of the art of divination” (Puett 2002, p. 189), but divination can be seen as “a ritual that the sage must experience for its ritualistic importance” (Cheng 2020, p. 103), because “the very practice of divination associated with the Changes has its own philosophical and metaphysical significance and need not be explained on the basis of superstition or mysticism, as is commonly assumed” (Cheng 2020, p. 273). As Hon Tze-ki summarizes, “instead of seeing divination and philosophy as categorically exclusive, we see them as a continuum. It is from divination that we develop an acute sensitivity to the combined effects of temporal and spatial factors that determine our judgment” (Hon 2023). In aligning the ritual of divination with philosophical implications in the Changes, the dispute about whether the Changes is a book of divination or a book of wisdom is at least alleviated, or even resolved. In this sense, the divination-based ritual in the Xici zhuan can equally be regarded as the marker of the Dao.

One interpretation comes from ‘innovator’s dilemma’ – a concept popularized by Clayton Christensen in business strategy and management. Companies, as innovators, need to establish a balance between ‘exploration of new possibilities’ and ‘exploitation of old certainties’ (March, 1991: 71). Intellectual property rights are designed for companies to explore the new while exploiting the old (the past, in Lessig’s terms). These rights are usually short-term scope-limited monopolies granted by governments. Such mechanisms are intended to ensure that companies can allocate enough resources to innovation. However, too much monopoly can make companies too comfortable. In exploiting the past, they become lazy in terms of future innovation. Companies might choose efficient exploitation instead of risky exploration. The innovator’s dilemma explains the inherent contradiction: how this tension, which exists within and among companies, impedes competition, flow-on innovation and large-scale industrial progress. The ethos of ‘the more, the merrier’, which, according to Cukier, leads to an intellectual property ‘arms race’ and ‘mutually assured destructions’, echoes such creativity-restraining issues (2005: 1–14). Intellectual property currently contributes more to monopoly power of the establishment or exploitation of old certainties. In other words, it ‘propertizes’, rather than exploring new possibilities that ‘produce’ (in Chinese, chan). To tackle such creativity-restraining problems, several movements have adopted newer notions of property rights in order to limit the power of the past, and to emerge out of the détente of the ‘arms race’. The Free Software movement, through its copyleft licences, which are adopted voluntarily by individual programmers, creates collaborative communities. Incorporating similar sharing and public domain concepts, Creative Commons and other open content movements strive to create a new public domain called the ‘commons’ in which an individual’s work can be reused while some rights are reserved. The Open Access movement started from librarian institutions. Access provision has become the subject of discussion between academics, librarians and government officials. These keywords play a major role in current intellectual property debates and reform, despite historical, practical, ideological and domain differences. My definition of ‘intellectual property reformers’ collapses them under one umbrella term. Some meaningful differences may be lost, but for the purpose of this article, they all serve as countermovement to the ‘property-for-property’s sake’ protection mentality. They explore new possibilities to produce (chan) within an increasingly hostile environment. The argument is best articulated by Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture (2004), in which he contends that the trend towards market concentration aligns with the expansion of property for-property’s sake. This does harm in constraining creators, innovators and citizens. Reformers are attempting to make room for new kinds of creativity. This creativity thrives on distribution, derivation and appropriation of others’ work, and is enabled by the internet and cheaper accessible digital equipment. Users (and creators) now engage in ‘read-and-write’ activities. From equipment purchasing to content markets, a burst of creativity from endusers or consumers is considered criminal by intellectual property protectionists. A rigid and protection-minded, user-unfriendly environment leaves little space for John Hartley’s idea of ‘redaction’, which describes the ‘creative editorial practice of bringing existing materials together to make new texts and meanings’ (Hartley, 2004: 136). For example, while the notion of ‘Rip, Mix, and Burn’ creativity is often regarded as piracy by conglomerates such as Disney, reformers refute this by arguing that the success of these conglomerates relies on the very same form of creativity, be it creative mixture of new technology or creative appropriation of others’ work (Lessig, 2004). To accommodate such creativity rather than criminalizing it, the Creative Archive Licence Group in the United Kingdom, launched by the BBC, the British Film Institute (BFI), Channel 4 and the Open University, follows the reformers’ spirit in issuing its slogan: ‘Find it. Rip it. Mix it. Share it.’ Reformers emphasize that state-granted monopolies lead to higher transaction costs and market inefficiencies. They argue against the literal sense of ‘intellectual property’, which has served as the foundational concept of ‘property’ in the information society. For example, Free Software Foundation Europe proposed renaming WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Organization) as World Intellectual ‘Wealth’ Organization (Greve, 2005). Reformers take an alternative route to motivate creativity and innovation, instead of the constraining distribution, derivation and appropriation. A new politics seeks to enable an alternative notion of intellectual property rights. The traditional politics of protectionism, with its crusade on piracy, sacrifices new flows of creativity as the victim of collateral damage. Boyle (1997) has proposed a politics of environmentalism for creativity; Lessig (2004) uses the metaphor of DDT to describe the excess of legal and technological measures that are harming the cultural environment. Such creativity environmentalism prepares for the global discourse of creative industries, a redefined relationship between creators and users, processes of innovation and relevant institutional critique. The role of intermediaries has been re-examined between creators and users of intellectual rights. It is not only about what kind of intellectual property can create wealth and jobs, which is at the core of the United Kingdom’s official definition of creative industries, it is also about how intellectual property creates what kind of jobs and wealth for whom. Some reformers have pleaded to ‘skip the intermediaries’ because they feel that creativity is constrained by protection-minded middle persons. The process of innovation that builds on the alternative notion of intellectual property rights has been variously described as distributed (Weber, 2004), democratic or user-centred (Von Hippel, 2005), collaborative networks (Uricchio, 2004) and commons-based peer-production (Benkler, 2002). In replacing intermediaries, transparent networked connections enable the innovation process. The typical principal-agent problem that considers human incentives and asymmetric information, as Steven Weber (2004) argues, is partly solved by such a process. Benkler (2002) uses the term ‘commons-based peer-production’ to explain how the creative large-scale collaboration projects are made possible by a diverse cluster of incentives and social interactions, rather than either managerial commands or market prices. Such a process of innovation usually requires (1) an architecture of participation where read-and-write culture is the default, (2) distributed decisions that avoid misjudgements of central planning, and (3) a commons that everyone can exploit.1 This should be read as part of a larger effort in accommodating ‘read-and-write’ users. Speaking to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Rupert Murdoch (2005) admitted that young people ‘want control over their media, instead of being controlled by it’. Even IBM clearly states its ‘open’ proposition as ‘letting go of control’ so that it can change from ‘control’ to ‘sustained value-add’. Access and control for users and creators is thus essential. Because control and access to the intellectual outcomes and means of production are handed back to individual creators and users, it leaves little room for central-planning states and industrial conglomerates. Within the intellectual property war zone, the ethos of ‘the more, the merrier’ goes hand in hand with the conventional wisdom of ‘the bigger, the better and the stronger’. Media and cultural industries worldwide are typified by conglomerates. Generally speaking, conglomerates aim to leverage their capital advantages. Media and cultural conglomerates, more specifically, leverage synergies by aiming to sell the same content across various media channels. In business management, debates of how conglomerates produce innovation seem to be replaced by notions of flexibility, core competence and horizontal integration. Terry Flew and Callum Glimour (2003) provide a relevant institutional analysis, challenging the assumption that ‘bigger equals more powerful’. The signal is even clearer following the news of Viacom’s split into two entities. As Viacom chairman and CEO Sumner Redstone announced, ‘The age of the conglomerate is over’ (Szalai, 2005). Another example is IBM, the leading conglomerate in computer business for many years. IBM suffered a slide during the early 1990s. In its self-analysis, ‘IBM was a vast global conglomerate with incompatible brand strategies’.2 This changed. IBM embraced Linux in 2000. IBM decided to focus on providing services instead of hardware. IBM sold its PC group to the Chinese computer giant Lenovo in 2004. In 2005 IBM offered 500 patents for open-source use. IBM provides just an example, or at least an opportunity, for conglomerates to adapt in a more innovative and creative environment. If the Australian creative industries discourse is the ‘organic, bottom-up development’ of small enterprises characterized by ‘flat hierarchy and project-based work patterns’ (Hartley et al., 2002), the unanswered question is how can such small and medium enterprises compete in the value chain and cooperate with established conglomerates? The appropriate environment and social organization to harness such distributed, democratic, networked process innovation differs from the turf wars of traditional intellectual property that rely on competition for monopolies. More than the consolidation of monopolies, such a system requires disaggregated decision-making. As individuals and small and medium business are set free to explore, with their different considerations on the exploration-exploitation trade-off, the demand-oriented network effects replace the supply-oriented economies of scale and scope – the guiding principle for traditional conglomerates. Reformers of intellectual property rights, in my opinion, contribute to the discourse of creative industries. This is about a process in which creative labour is organized within innovative environments, where individuals are free to explore. They are not Communists just because they attempt to reform intellectual rights.3 Contrary to the common assumption that these reformers are anti-property, and therefore anti-market, most reformers will argue that intellectual property such as patents and copyrights are not pure ‘properties’ but government granted ‘monopolies’ that should be limited. As Moglen (2003: para. 3) claims, ‘the dogma of bourgeois property comes into active conflict with the dogma of bourgeois freedom’. The western – and particularly American – intellectual property debate now centres on a balance between the values of property and freedom. Be it business strategy or labour condition, reformers have much to offer the discourse of creative industries.4 Following success in the exploitation of old certainties, namely the World Factory, China is now attempting to explore new possibilities. However, China’s great ‘emergence’ narrative, although a source of pride and motivation, could mislead it into consolidating its media and cultural industries – in other words, to become big and powerful to fight and resist the western establishments. Have they noticed the paradigm shift? Linux threatens Microsoft, not because Linux has equivalent capital and organization, but because Linux is a commons in which various parties – big and small – participate and generate value. The future is dimmer if two parallel trends continue to persist. Wang Hui (2003) observes market extremism, radical privatization and economic corruption on the one hand, and tight control over politics and freedom on the other. These trends are adverse to western reformist visions of a creative and innovative environment. The following discussion is first a critique of China’s embrace of ‘the bigger, the better’ and second, a suggestion that China allow intermediaries that serve creative individuals and small and medium enterprises, for the purpose of creative production and social justice. The ‘emergence’ narrative has blinded China to the dangers of privatization, and the legitimacy of conglomerates selling pubic cultural goods. The concept of ‘the bigger, the better’ has transformed Chinese media and cultural industries at the end of the 20th century. Institutionally speaking, the government ordained this process in order to attract both foreign and domestic investment. Capitalization, and the integration of existing media units, is expected to industrialize the originally state-owned media and cultural sectors, and to create global media brands (Leow, 2004). Taking into account some Chinese cultural norms such as shangshi [ , ‘going public for stock market listing’], zhuada fangxiao [ , ‘securing the big and letting go the small’], Jing Wang (2004) argues that such a scenario does not accommodate the vision of creative industries from the West, rendering creative industries discourse of practically no value to China. Asthis article warned in the introduction, the translation project of creative industries discourse for China must take into account reformers’ concepts. Such a pre-sale warning renders creative industries discourse valuable for China. China should re-examine its media and cultural conglomerates, their future direction, as well as the new-born copyright collecting societies. Otherwise the pendulum is tilting towards intellectual-property-rights-rigid intermediaries, rather than users and creators. The phrase ‘creative da-tong’ incorporates western reformist agendas with the current official Chinese agenda. The Chinese term da-tong [ , ‘the Confucian utopia, meaning Grand Union, Grand Common or Great Harmony’] can serve as a keyword that provides a further development goal, incorporating the current Chinese policy agenda of xiaokang [ , ‘middle-class, well-off’] society,5 and also embodying the alternative notion of creative industries that builds on the concepts of ‘free culture’ (Lessig, 2002) and creative labour. ‘Creative da-tong’ describes a political and pragmatic coalition of creative labour (not yet intellectual propertized) with cultural industries (on the way to being disorganized and networked), in the context of a world factory now integrated into the global economy, for use by newly liberated-from-intellectual-property-tyranny labourer-citizens.

Xunzi discusses the origin of rituals, and says that they are meant to nourish desire: From what did rituals arise? I say: human beings are born with desires. If what they desire is not obtained, they cannot but seek for it. If there are no measures and limits on their seeking, then they will inevitably fight with each other. Fighting leads to disorder, disorder leads to destitution. The Ancient Kings disliked such disorder, so they designed rituals and righteousness to make differentiations, so as to nurture people’s desires, and to provide for their seeking. They saw to it that desires never wanted for goods and goods were never exhausted by desires. Desires and goods were sustained by each other and developed. This is the origin of rituals. Thus rituals are nourishment. (Lau 1996, 19.90.3–6; Knoblock 1988–1994, 19.1a–1b) People are born with desires and inevitably they seek the satisfaction of their desires. Without proper measures and limits, this seeking will lead to fighting, disorder and destitution. Rituals were instituted by the ancient kings to prevent this bleak situation. Rituals impose a structure on people’s lives within which desires can safely be satisfied. It is important to note that rituals do not satisfy desires as they naturally arise; rather, rituals nourish desires in such a way that they develop and are expressed in more cultured forms. “Nourishment” 養 (yang) does not merely keep something alive, but, more importantly, helps it grow in a healthy way. Three times Xunzi uses the two characters, “nourish” (yang) and “develop” 長 (zhang), to describe the proper way of watching over an infant (Lau 1996, 10.46.21–22, 11.55.25, 15.73.17; Knoblock 1988–1994, 10.10, 11.12, 15.5). Clearly the right way to care for an infant is to nourish him/her in such a way that the infant grows and develops properly. It is also not a coincidence that in these three passages, Xunzi uses the analogy of watching over an infant to describe the way the Sage-King cares for the people. After elucidating the nature of nourishment, and immediately following the quoted passage on the origin of rituals, Xunzi lists examples of nourishment. One example is how the meat of “pastured and grain-fed animals,” as well as “rice and millet” 芻豢稻梁 (chu huan dao liang) can nourish the mouth (Lau 1996, 19.90.6; Knoblock 1988–1994, 19.1b). At the time of Xunzi, rice, millet and the meat of pastured and grain-fed animals were regarded as high-quality foods. In another passage Xunzi contrasts high-quality foods like the meat of pastured and grain-fed animals, rice and millet with low-quality foods like “beans, coarse greens, dregs and husks” 菽藿糟糠 (shu huo zao kang). Xunzi suggests that low-quality foods represent the chaotic way practiced by the petty person, while high-quality foods represent the rituals and the righteous way propagated by the Sage-King (Lau 1996, 4.15.14–21; Knoblock 1988–1994, 4.10). The same contrast between high and low quality foods is likely intended by Xunzi when he suggests that the meat of pastured and grain-fed animals, rice and millet can nourish the mouth. If such an interpretation is reasonable, that is, if it matters that nourishment is of high quality, then we have a strong piece of evidence that nourishment is more than the simple satisfaction of desire. Rather, genuine nourishment can only be obtained when desire is developed and enhanced and therefore able to be satisfied in cultured forms through rituals. Rituals arise not only from the need to satisfy desires but also from the need to prevent chaos and conflict. Xunzi points out that rituals and right behavior enable people to live a communal life wherein they can protect and assist each other.3 In other words, rituals impose culturally approved limitations on desire so that we can live a civilized life in a harmonious community. It might also be suggested that rituals are constructed through an interpretative understanding of our nature. But what is the justification for one interpretation of our nature over another? And why is the satisfaction of desire through rituals the best way to keep desire under control and allow the community based on rituals to flourish? Xunzi asserts that co-operation is needed to sustain people’s life. This is so because a person cannot be good at every skill and cannot assume all roles by him or herself. If people do not help one another there will be destitution. While co-operation and a communal life are essential, distinctions are also required to maintain proper social order (Lau 1996, 10.42.16–7; Knoblock 1988–1994, 10.1). If we judge only from this passage, we might think that Xunzi is chiefly concerned with the problems of practical life. We might think of distinctions among individuals as simply the principle upon which the distribution of goods in a cooperative society depends. Xunzi would not deny that one important function of distinctions is to organize the distribution of resources among social members; however, it is unlikely that he would take this as the only function of distinctions, and even less would he think that the only purpose of the community is to better fulfill its members’ practical needs. Xunzi uses examples like the affection between father and son and the division between males and females as illustrations of differentiation 辨 (bian) which pertain to distinctions and rituals. Xunzi suggests that in contrast to human beings, animals have parents and offspring, males and females, but not a corresponding differentiation. Differentiation in this human sense is not the same as natural difference. Rather, differentiation represents both the recognition of difference and the understanding of the significance of this difference. The community, as an assembly of people ordered by differentiation and distinctions, is not just a structured group but also a group with intrinsic meaning and significance. What does this mean? Because our nature is originally without a normative framework and has a natural tendency to dominate the heart-mind, we can be led to bad judgments and bad behavior (Lau 1996, 4.15.14–17; Knoblock 1988–1994, 4.10). Consequently our nature might be regarded as bad in a fundamental sense, a sense which goes beyond “badness” that is due to external factors such as a lack of resources. According to Xunzi, even if we have unlimited resources, we could not live a good life if our nature is not transformed. Indeed, Xunzi points out that the inadequacy of resources is not the universal predicament of the world; that comes rather from the harm brought about by chaos and disorder. Xunzi is of the opinion that the natural world does contain enough resources for all people; however, if we do not properly manage these natural resources, and manage the social world as well, we cannot have a prosperous and flourishing life (Lau 1996, 10.44.20–45.14; Knoblock 1988– 1994, 10.8). The same is true of individual human beings. Xunzi once described a person who possessed all the beautiful things of the world but had no enjoyment from them because he did not comply with proper principles and consequently could not have an ordered life (Lau 1996, 22.112.9–16; Knoblock 1988–1994, 22.6d). Proper principles are precisely contained in Confucian rituals. Rituals transform our nature and enable us to live fully as a person. Thus, rituals are not merely a regulating mechanism like traffic regulations which are normative only conditionally and contingently. Rituals are, rather, constitutive norms that structure our life and the selves we are. In Xunzi’s eyes, a community is an assembly of people structured by rituals. It follows, therefore, that community is also constitutive of our life and not merely a better means to satisfy our desires. If I take the community merely as an external means by which to attain my individual ends, then, to better fulfill my ends independent of the community, there would be no reason for me either to enter into or stay within the community. Yet the community, as an assembly with differentiation, could not be merely an external means. Xunzi would suggest that living outside the community is living without differentiation, and thus living like birds and beasts. A life outside the community, if it is possible at all, is fundamentally different from a life within the community. The community does not just better sustain the natural biological life with which we are born; it makes possible and is also constitutive of a new kind of life, a life which is culturally meaningful and individually transformative. Certainly some people live in solitude, but very often they maintain a link, however minimal, with other people and the community, who carry with them the culture and the traditions of the community. Even though they might be physically cut off from the community, mentally and spiritually they are still nurtured by it. What is so important about the community is then not primarily the physical assembly of people, but its embodiment of culture and tradition in the communal life. Differentiation, distinctions and rituals represent precisely Confucian culture and tradition.

Xiong Shili—20th century philosopher who significantly influenced the development of New Confucianism with his works on metaphysics and epistemology, first generation New Confucian

Mou Zongsan—20th century philosopher and a major figure in New Confucianism, known best for his development of Confucian democracy and writings on Kant, second generation New Confucian

Kongzi (pron. Kong-tsuh)—AKA Confucius, the first Ruist philosopher, lived during the Spring and Autumn period, Minister of Crime of the state of Lu

Mozi (pron. Mo-tsuh)—A philosopher who broke off of the central Ruist tradition and formed his own philosophy called Mohism, going on to critique Ruism, lived during the Warring States Period

Li (礼)—Rituals, societal and cultural rites, , make sure you understand this term

Ren (仁)—“Humaneness”, the virtue of altruism and benevolence

Ruism, or Confucianism, is a branch of Chinese philosophy first developed by the philosopher Kongzi (Confucius) during the Warring States period. It seeks to improve society by establishing social harmony through the implementation and observation of Rituals (Li). After Kongzi, there were many different philosophers that sought to expand the school of thought—most important the philosophers Mengzi and Xunzi (the one who much of the k discusses). In the twelfth century, the school of Neo-Confucianism further developed the school of thought, mostly by expanding its metaphysics. In the mid-to-late 20th century, a new school of philosophy called New Confucianism was developed in China, which sought to modernize aspects of Ruist thought and compare it with western thought.

-Why Ruism?

The first option, a “pause AI” agreement, is obviously not feasible. It would require every government, every firm in the computer industry, and everyone in the world with access to ICTs, to agree to abide by the ban. Even defining what activities are and are not banned would be a complex undertaking. Getting all of industry to follow this ban would require overwhelming support from the business community combined with very strict, comprehensive enforcement from all governments. But none of businesses or governments really want to stop, and even if they did the U.S., British, Chinese, European, Russian and Indian governments will not trust each other to stop unilaterally, and hence there would be no enforcement. Given the (alleged) military and business advantages of being the leader in AI technology, each state would have a strong incentive (payoffs for our game theorists) to defect from a pause agreement. There would be no reliable way to detect noncompliance, and if noncompliance was detected, there would be no way for one government or group of governments to enforce the agreement upon another. Unless there is a Hobbesian Leviathan able to wave his scepter over the entire world and command obedience, “pause AI” doesn’t work.

This leads Bostrom to argue that “the loss in expected value resulting from an existential catastrophe is so enormous that the objective of reducing existential risks should be a dominant consideration whenever we act out of an impersonal concern for humankind as a whole.” In other words, we should behave according to the following “rule of thumb for such impersonal moral action,” dubbed Maxipok:

Maximize the probability of an “OK outcome,” where an OK outcome is any outcome that avoids existential catastrophe.64

Next, I’d like to talk about why and how to prevent s-risks.

All plausible value systems agree that suffering, all else being equal, is undesirable. That is, everyone agrees that we have reasons to avoid suffering. S-risks are risks of massive suffering, so I hope you agree that it’s good to prevent s-risks.

The machine evolution argument can be readily dismissed. Machines do not evolve. Of course, technology does change over time in ways that superficially resemble “evolution,” but a proper application of evolutionary concepts corrects that perception. The machine itself isn’t evolving – the changes in technology are produced by humans responding to markets and other human social systems. Evolution in the Darwinian sense requires self-replication, mutation and natural selection over many generational cycles. The replication of machines comes from human manufacturing processes, not from self-replication. Nor does mutation – changes in the design of machines – come from the machines. They come from human decisions in response to societal pressures for efficiency, innovation and safety. The selection process – that is, which machines continue to be produced and which become obsolete – is also governed by human decisions. The choices are made by people in competitive markets and/or political institutions. Hence, the machines themselves do not evolve, industries and sociotechnical systems do. Human decisions, by individuals or in aggregate, control each step of the process. If this is true, we cannot speak of “machine evolution.” For machines to evolve, they would first have to become alive, which means they would gain the ability to self-support and self-replicate, which they currently cannot do.

If an AGI is going to win a fight with humans over the off switch, it must have effectors. An effector in cybernetics is a mechanism capable of acting on the physical world in response to instructions from a controller. An AGI capable of threatening humans with extinction must be capable of much more than calculation, information processing and messaging. It must be a cyber-physical system (CPS) with physical appendages or weapons, and sufficient energy resources to operate them. To pose a credible threat to all of humanity, in fact, an autonomous AGI cannot just be a single, isolated CPS like a Reaper drone. Its physical effector systems would require massive scale, huge force multipliers, almost unlimited physical inputs, and control of the many social systems (money, power sources, weapons, communications) required to deliver the required inputs and impose its will.

Here we find the deepest flaw in the AGI autonomy argument. Even supposing that one or more machines managed to generate internally developed goals not controlled by humans, the existential threat imaginary must go on to assume that the AGI is ultra-powerful and unchecked by any social and physical constraints. Super intelligence somehow allows a digital information system to consume unlimited quantities of electrical power and other scarce resources to muscle out all its competitors. Its effectors are assumed to have the power to prevent humans – whether individuals or organized armies – from disconnecting its power source, turning it off, improving or correcting its algorithms or utility functions, or destroying it. It can steal or pay for all the inputs it needs.

Mueller 24, [Milton Mueller (Professor and Program Director of the Georgia Tech School of Public Policy, Masters of Science in Cybersecurity Policy), "The Myth of AGI: How the illusion of Artificial General Intelligence distorts and distracts digital governance," Internet Governance Project, Georgia Tech, https://www.internetgovernance.org/wp-content/uploads/MythofAGI.pdf, accessed 7-2-2024, 5/24] Mr.Mr.

3. The Off-Switch Problem

Once again, the doomers have to make a fantastic leap of reasoning. They say the AGI would be able to overpower all other agents to pursue its objective. The machine would be able to steal or appropriate whatever it needs – because its utility function told it to. Appealing to economic theory, Sotala and Yampolskiy, 2015 say:

“AGI systems which follow rational economic theory will then exhibit tendencies toward behaviors such as self-replicating, breaking into other machines and acquiring resources without regard for anyone else’s safety."