The Beauty of Cognition
认知之美
The child next door is practicing the piano and plays a wrong note. The person on this side knew the piece well from hearing it as a child; he is not listening, yet he stops short. He stops because the right note has already arrived first. A subject who has seen this cannot not acknowledge: a living thing still remembers what is no longer before it, and anticipates what has not yet come; what it remembers is not the original, and to recall is to take it up again; what it anticipates has a shape, and when the time comes it may fall through; what is remembered reaches forward and becomes what is anticipated, and when that falls through, what moves in return is the remembered. That sentence is the beauty of cognition. It is two halves of one beauty: the half of memory is remembering, what is no longer before one still counting in a living thing; the half of prediction is anticipating, what has not yet come arriving first in it. The two halves are one thing, a loop: what arrives first is what the remembered reaches forward; when it falls through, either what is remembered is revised, or by what is remembered one discerns that what is before one is wrong. Not before one, not laid out before one either, and still counting: this is the point peculiar to this level. The beauty has two faces: completive beauty is a song known through and through, the whole of it there as soon as one begins to sing; generative beauty is a harmony that should land and does not, what is anticipated hanging, in the act of landing. The paper says what cognition is and is not (not storage, not the accumulation of knowledge, not understanding or reflection, and not beginning at the layer of what has just sounded in the ear); what this paper takes over from Augustine singing a song he knows, and where it parts from him; what can pass for the beauty of cognition (storage, the sweetness of longing, the thrill of guessing right, progress in learning, anticipation that cannot fall through); and what is left to each person. It traces where the question comes from, from reversals in tragedy that come contrary to expectation and yet on account of one another, from "those who read this in times to come will also be moved by this writing" in the Orchid Pavilion preface as given in the Jin shu, and from "listening stirs only what is already in the heart," through Hume, Kant, Wordsworth, Bergson, Proust and Husserl, to today's research on musical expectation and the theory that writes beauty into learning. It ends by handing on to the beauty of the self the question of who it is that remembers and anticipates.
Keywords: beauty of cognition, remembering, anticipating, memory, prediction, completive beauty, generative beauty, Augustine, overlap, 11DD, 12DD
1. The Wrong Note Next Door
The child next door is practicing the piano. On this side, someone is going about his own business and is not listening. As a child he heard the piece the child is playing so often that he knew it well, and he has not heard it for many years. At a certain point, a note comes out wrong. He stops short.
He stops because another note belonged there. The child next door did not play that right note, yet it had already arrived first: it had reached him, and reached him clearly; the note that was played ran into it, and only then did he know it was wrong. No one told him to remember this piece, and no one told him to anticipate the next note. He was not listening, and both were there anyway.
The child pauses, goes back, plays it again, right this time. On this side, he goes back to what he was doing.
In that moment of stopping, two things can be seen. One is that what is no longer before one still counts: next door has played only half the piece, and the afternoons, years ago, when he heard it are all gone; yet the whole piece is still at work in him at this moment, waiting there. The other is that what has not yet come arrives first: the note has not been played, and it already has a shape, a shape clear enough to fall through. And the two are one: the note that arrived first is what the remembered piece reached forward; when it fell through, what he turned back to check it against was also the remembered piece.
That point is what this paper is about.
This paper follows the reading set out in the general outline.[^1] A personal aesthetic is each person's own and comes from his own cannot-not; aesthetics is the part that subjects with judgment cannot not acknowledge together, here called the overlap. The overlap is large; what does not overlap is larger. The overlap is not everyone being obliged to agree: whoever looks cannot not see, and whoever has seen cannot not acknowledge. When someone says "it is beautiful," he is claiming that this time he has landed on the overlap, and that claim can be right or wrong. What settles out of an act of drawing a boundary is called a construct; what it cannot contain is called the remainder. The remainder gives a place where one can go on, and a direction; it pushes no one; whether to go depends on a person's own cannot-not.[^2] A beauty has two faces: when the construct has come into place, it is completive beauty, quiet; when the construct is being chiseled out, it is generative beauty, tense. The beauty of cognition has both faces. A ray is a direction of judgment, not a classification of objects: the same passage of music can also be looked at from the direction of physics, or from the direction of perception. This paper asks about one direction only: how what is no longer before one still counts in a living thing, how what has not yet come arrives first in it, and what the power of judgment sees in that direction.
2. What Cognition Is and Is Not
The beauty of cognition has two halves. The half of memory: what is no longer before one still counts in a living thing. This paper calls this half remembering. A piece not heard for many years is still in him; a street not walked for many years, his feet still know. The half of prediction: what has not yet come arrives first in it, has a shape, and can fall through. This paper calls this half anticipating. The next note has not been played, and which note it should be is already there; the corner has not yet been turned, and the feet already know what lies beyond it.
Remembering is not storing things as they were. The psychologist Bartlett gave people an unfamiliar folk tale and had them retell it after a while, and again after another while; the story grew shorter with each telling, and what they could not make sense of was either dropped or explained into something familiar. From this he said that recollection is not re-exciting old traces as they were, but constructing anew.[^3] This can show that what is remembered is not a master copy stored and left untouched; it cannot show that everything recalled is unreliable, nor that constructing anew is the beauty spoken of here.
Researchers have also said something about how the two halves are linked in a living thing. Two researchers, reviewing many studies, said: the future is not an exact repetition of the past, and imagining the future requires a system that can flexibly draw details out of the past and recombine them; remembering the past and imagining the future draw, to a considerable extent, on the same psychological and neural processes.[^4] This can show that remembering and anticipating may use the same equipment in a living thing; it cannot show that the two halves are one thing in the looker's single act of looking. That point the looker has to see for himself; Section 3 takes it up.
All this is what research tells people, not what they see.
Nor is remembering the accumulation of knowledge. A body of learning settling out generation after generation is a matter of another grain; what is spoken of here is past perception still counting in a living thing. What a person knows by ear, what he has learned, what he has read, once it has entered him, also counts; what counts is that it is still at work in him, not whether it is correct or amounts to a body of learning. Nor is cognition understanding or reflection: to know that one is remembering or anticipating, to know "this is what I remember," is a question that belongs to a later ray.
Nor does cognition begin at the layer of what has just sounded in the ear. The note that has just sounded and is still in the ear, the next beat that will come: this is the breadth of perception itself; listening to a melody cannot do without it, and that layer belongs to the beauty of perception. But which note the next beat should bring, and what that note is like, the few notes just sounded cannot supply; it reaches over from a piece known by ear many years ago, and that piece is not before one. This is what this paper looks at. When it is said that at this level the construct for the first time goes beyond the present, this "first time" is first in the order of asking: on this ray, what is no longer there is for the first time asked about as something still there; it does not mean that before this nothing in the world went beyond the present. Tree rings keep past years; that is what the beauty of causation looks at. There is a test for where this level begins: take away what has just sounded in the ear at this moment, take away the bars just played; is the right note still there? Whatever is still there and still at work belongs to this level. Where it ends: as soon as one asks who is remembering and who is anticipating, it is handed on to a later ray.
3. The Beauty of Cognition
Once a subject has seen that what is not before one still counts in a living thing, and that what has not come arrives first in it, he cannot not acknowledge:
A living thing still remembers what is no longer before it, and anticipates what has not yet come. What it remembers is not the original: to recall is to take it up again; what it anticipates has a shape, and when the time comes it may fall through. What is remembered reaches forward and becomes what is anticipated; when that falls through, what moves in return is the remembered.
That sentence is the beauty of cognition. "Remembers" and "anticipates" are the two halves. "Not the original" and "may fall through" are how each half looks at this level. "Reaches forward" and "moves in return" are how the two halves are one thing; "moves in return" is of two kinds: revising what is remembered; or not revising it, and by it discerning that what is before one is wrong. Not before one, and still counting, is the point peculiar to this level: in perception, the world counts only when it is before one; the past left on things is a trace laid out before one's eyes; at this level, what is not before one, and not laid out before one either, still counts in a living thing.
"Not the original" the looker can see in himself. The same song, hummed today and hummed ten years ago, goes at a different pace, and a line of the words has changed too; he cannot say which line it originally was; yet it is still that song. To recall is not to open a photograph; it is to take it up again, this time.
How the two halves are one thing can be seen on a street. Many years later, a man goes back to the street where he lived as a child. Before he reaches the corner, his feet slow down; he anticipates that around it is the soy-milk shop. He turns the corner: the shop is gone; there is a pharmacy. He stands there for a while. From then on, when he recalls this street, at the corner there is a pharmacy; the soy-milk shop is still there, only it has become "there used to be a soy-milk shop there." His feet slowing down first is the remembered street reaching beyond the corner: what is remembered reaches forward and becomes what is anticipated. The pharmacy runs into it, what was anticipated falls through, and what moves in return is the remembered: this time, it is revised. The wrong note next door fell through too, and what moved in return was also the remembered; that time it was not revised: by it he discerned that the one in the wrong was the player. Here one can see that the two halves are not two things that happen to meet: what is anticipated is precisely the stretch of the remembered that reaches ahead; falling through is that stretch running into the world.
In other living things, too, researchers have found what looks like the same loop. They had a kind of scrub jay cache peanuts and wax worms on the two sides of a sand tray. The birds like wax worms, but wax worms spoil if kept long, and peanuts do not. One group of birds had first been through this: they cached, came back a few days later to recover, and found the worms spoiled. Then came the test: before recovery, all the food was removed from the tray and replaced with fresh sand, so that the birds could search only on the strength of that earlier caching. In this group, birds recovering four hours after caching mostly went first to the side where the worms were cached; after one hundred and twenty-four hours, all went first to the peanut side. Another group had been through worms staying fresh even after a long time, and at both intervals they went for the worms first. The researchers said that the birds remember what they cached, where, and when, and meet the behavioral criteria for episodic-like memory.[^5] This can show that which side a bird goes to first can be settled by a caching not before its eyes, and by its own experience of worms spoiling. It cannot show what remembering and anticipating are like on the bird's side; that, this paper does not say on the bird's behalf.
The seeing at this level is in the looker's own remembering and anticipating. When he hums a familiar song, he is remembering and anticipating; but while humming, he is not looking at it. If he stops, and does not use what is remembered to get something done, or what is anticipated to hurry on his way, he cannot not see: this song is not here, yet it is there; the next line has not come, yet it has arrived first, arrived in a way that can fall through. Having seen, he cannot not acknowledge. To watch an old man cross in the dark the house he has lived in for decades, without turning on the light or reaching out to feel his way, lifting his foot before he reaches the threshold, is also to watch the remembered reaching forward; what is watched is not how it was learned. What the looker looks at is remembering and anticipating, not "I": looking at a piece he remembers, he is looking at how the piece is still there.
Why is it overlap and not preference? What people remember differs, and what they anticipate differs too. But whoever stops can see, in his own remembering and anticipating, the same point: not before one, and still counting; what arrives first can fall through; when it falls through, what moves in return is the remembered. This does not depend on any kind of music, any language, or any era. Section 6 says more about the layers of the overlap.
Remembering wrongly is also remembering. He thinks the shop was to the left of the corner; in fact it used to be on the right; he remembers it all the same, and it reaches forward all the same; whether he remembers accurately is a matter of correctness. So too with anticipating: anticipating correctly is not necessarily beautiful, and falling through is not necessarily unbeautiful. The wrong note next door: the moment it fell through was exactly when what he anticipated was clearest. Beauty is not correctness.
This seeing is also a different thing from pleasure or displeasure. The moment of recall may be sweet, may be bitter, or may have no taste at all; the moment of falling through may be vexing, or funny. The ground of acknowledgment lies in the point that is seen, not in feeling; whether feeling comes along is up to each person.
Understanding is not seeing either. A researcher of memory has lectured for many years on how recollection reconstructs; he could say all this with his eyes closed. In all this he was not looking; he was only using. One year he goes back to the street of his childhood and turns the corner: a pharmacy. About how recollection reconstructs he learns nothing new, yet for the first time he stops to look at it: this street still counts in him, and at this moment it has been revised. His understanding has not changed; what has changed is that this time he is looking.
Seeing can also go wrong. One may think one is looking at a remembered piece when one is looking at one's own longing; one may also think one has seen what is anticipated when one is only waiting impatiently. To say "it is beautiful" is to claim that this time one really has seen, and the claim can be wrong.
Completive beauty: what is remembered is there whole. A song known through and through: before one opens one's mouth, the whole of it is already there: where it starts, where it turns, where it stops. Not every note is laid out clearly before one; when one sings, they come out one by one, and not one place is missing. Each time one sings it, it is taken up again, and the pace and the phrasing differ from last time, yet from start to stop it lacks no stretch of itself. A man walks in the dark in a house he has lived in for decades: where the door is, where the chair is, how high the threshold is, his feet know. What is remembered is not everything: what one remembers of a song is not all the sound of any one time it was sung, yet it lacks nothing: completeness is lacking nothing, not being everything, and not being the original. Completive beauty is quiet: open your mouth and the whole song is there; there is no need to hunt for it line by line.
Generative beauty: what is anticipated in the act of landing. A piece reaches the place where it should close; the harmony has led one to the door, and it should land on the tonic chord; this "should" reaches over from years of listening to this kind of music. It does not land; it turns off somewhere else, goes on for a while, and only then lands. Through that stretch, what is anticipated hangs all the while: it may land, or it may be pushed away again. In one play, a man comes to Oedipus meaning to cheer him and free him from his fear about his mother; by revealing who Oedipus is, he brings about the very opposite.[^6] For someone seeing the play for the first time, everything remembered from before has to be rearranged in him. The tension is here: what is anticipated is in the act of landing, not yet settled; it may land true, or it may fall through; if it falls through, what is remembered will move: either it is revised, or by it one discerns that what is before one is wrong. The completive face is what is remembered being there whole; the generative face is what is anticipated in the act of landing.
4. Augustine's Song
This paper takes a song over from Augustine, and parts from him on one thing: the shape he discerned, he took for a lack.
In Book 11 of the Confessions he asks what time is. How can the future, which is not yet, be diminished and used up? How can the past, which is no longer, grow? He answers: only because in the mind that does this there are three things: it expects, it attends, it remembers, so that what it expects passes through what it attends to into what it remembers.[^7] Then he gives an example. I am about to sing a song I know. Before I begin, my expectation stretches out over the whole; once I have begun, as much of it as I pluck off into the past, so far my memory too stretches; and the life of this action of mine is stretched apart (distenditur) in two directions: into memory, because of what I have sung, and into expectation, because of what I am about to sing. My attention, though, is present, and through it what was future passes over to become past. The further this goes on, the shorter the expectation and the longer the memory, until the expectation is wholly used up, the whole action is finished, and all of it has passed into memory. He adds that what happens in the whole song happens in each of its parts and in each of its syllables; so too in a longer action, in the whole life of a man, and in the whole age of the children of men.[^8]
He uses his own words: memory (memoria), expectation (expectatio), attention (attentio). He gives this song in order to ask what time is, not to speak of beauty; this paper does not replace his words with beauty.
What this paper takes over is two things. One: the song is one he knows (canticum quod novi): before he begins, his expectation already stretches out over the whole (in totum expectatio mea tenditur). Why it can stretch over the whole, he does not say; this paper reads it out of the word "know": because the whole is already remembered. Expectation is the stretch of memory that reaches ahead; this is what this paper calls reaching forward, and it is also the completive face: what is remembered is there whole. The other: the two sides are one thing in a single singing: expectation grows shorter by as much as memory grows longer, not two things walking side by side.
Where it parts from him is in the next passage. He says: see, my life is a stretching apart (distentio). What he asks is to be gathered up from the days of old and to follow the One; forgetting what is past, not toward the things to come that will pass in turn, but toward the things that are before; not stretched apart but reaching forward (non distentus sed extentus), not by stretching apart but by intentness (intentio), to press on to the prize of the calling above; there to hear the voice of praise and to contemplate your delight, which neither comes nor goes (he is speaking to God). He also says: but I have been scattered into times whose order I do not know, and my thoughts are torn apart by tumultuous changes.[^9] For him, the mind stretched apart toward memory and expectation is the scatteredness of a creature, something to be gathered up.
What he calls reaching forward is reaching toward what neither comes nor goes; what this paper calls reaching forward is what is remembered reaching out onto what has not yet come, which is exactly what he calls stretching apart. It is on this one word that this paper parts from him.
This paper does not argue with him over whether this is a lack. The shape he discerned, he discerned very accurately: a song one knows is already there whole before one begins; as one sings, expectation grows shorter by as much as memory grows longer. This point is the overlap this paper speaks of. He discerned it in order to ask what time is and to seek what neither comes nor goes; that is another road. His sighing over such a life is his own. Those who see it may sigh, may long for a place that neither comes nor goes; the ground of acknowledgment lies in the point that is seen, not in his sighing over it, nor in anyone else's liking for it. Beauty is not pleasure.
5. What Can Pass for It
The method is still the same: take it away and see.
Storage. An old photograph, a cassette tape, an old account book. The past stays on them without the slightest deviation, more accurately than people remember it. Take away the looker and see: with no one looking, the photograph still keeps that day; but it does not take that day up again, nor reach forward, and it cannot anticipate tomorrow. The past left on things is what the beauty of causation looks at; this paper looks at the past that still counts in a living thing.
The sweetness of longing. Recalling the courtyard of one's childhood, one's heart softens. Psychologists studying nostalgia found that people are more prone to it when in low spirits or lonely; nostalgia in turn strengthens ties with others, raises regard for oneself, and brings positive feelings.[^10] Nostalgia evoked by music is tied at once to joy and to sadness.[^11] These speak of the taste of longing and of what it is good for. Take away the longing and see: a moment one has no wish to go back to yet remembers clearly, say an exam one failed, that room, that desk, the clock on the wall, is still in him, still reaching forward: when he walks into a similar room, his eyes go first to look for the clock on the wall. The point can still be seen. The sweetness of longing can be in the same act of recall with it, but it is not the beauty spoken of here.
The thrill of guessing right. Anticipating correctly gives a thrill. Researchers of visual art have said that artists often first carefully build up expectations in the viewer's mind and then violate them; the viewer often finds predictability again, sometimes at another level; going from uncertainty to more predictability brings reward.[^12] Take away guessing right and see: at the corner of the old street there was a pharmacy; he had not anticipated it at all, and there was no thrill; the point can still be seen: what was remembered reached over, fell through, and was revised in return. A thrill is one kind of pleasure.
Progress in learning. One theory says that when an observer who learns has learned to predict something better, or to compress it shorter, it becomes simpler and more beautiful in his eyes; and interestingness is the steepness of the learning curve.[^13] Having just heard the same song ten times in a row, he will not choose it again; it has become too predictable.[^14] Take away the progress and see: a song known through and through, with nothing left to learn from it, is still there whole before one begins; whether it is interesting is each person's own; the point can still be seen. Section 7 returns to this school.
Anticipation that cannot fall through. A fortune slip says: hold on, and the clouds will part and the moon appear. Whatever comes later fits it. Afterward one says "I saw it coming," but at the time there was no shape in one's mind that would fall through if things did not fit. Take away the possibility of falling through and see: if whatever comes fits, nothing arrived first. What arrives first has a shape, and when the time comes it fits or does not; what cannot fall through is not anticipation.
Neighboring rays. The beauty of causation looks at the past left on things: tree rings need no one to remember that year. The beauty of perception looks at appearance before one's eyes: the note that has just sounded and is still in the ear, the next beat that will come, is the breadth of perception itself. The beauty of philosophy looks at a distinction opening a gap, so that something can be asked for the first time; this paper is not concerned with whether any question is asked: a scrub jay asks nothing, yet which side it goes to first still follows the caching of several days before. The beauty of the self looks at who is remembering and who is anticipating: once one knows "this is what I remember," that question is there; this paper looks only at remembering and anticipating themselves.
One last sentence, which this aesthetics says of every ray: beauty is not correctness, not usefulness, not importance, not understanding. On this ray the first two matter most: remembering accurately and anticipating correctly are not the beauty here; nor is putting what is remembered and anticipated to use in getting things done. Now that feeling has come in, one more must be added: beauty is not pleasure, and pleasure is not beauty; the sweetness of longing, the thrill of guessing right, the joy of learning are none of them the beauty spoken of here.
6. What Is Left to Each Person
Which stretch of the past one longs for is each person's own. Some think of one city all their lives; some have no wish to go back to anything. Whether one loves a return or a surprise is each person's own too: some love most a theme coming back after a long absence; some love most a turn no one saw coming.
What people remember differs, and what they anticipate differs too, and most of it is learned. Someone who grew up in one kind of music feels, at a certain point, that it should land now; someone who grew up in another kind waits for nothing at that point; what he waits for is elsewhere. This paper sets no standard for anyone's ears. The overlap lies in two layers. One is within a single style: those who remember the same things wait at the same point and hang at the same point; when they stop, what they see is the same point: how what is remembered reaches there, and how it can fall through. Among them there is overlap. The other layer is wider: what is not before one still counts, what arrives first can fall through, and when it falls through what moves in return is the remembered; this can be seen in everyone who remembers and anticipates, whatever kind of music he remembers.
So this level, too, is like knowing how to read: once one has heard enough of a kind of music, at that point one cannot help waiting. When someone hears an unfamiliar kind of music for the first time, none of what he waits for is in those places, and the first layer of overlap is out of his reach; once he has heard enough of it, he too begins to wait at that point. Does what is learned count as his own? It does. What is read counts too: Lu Ji, writing about writing, says that the writer "gathers the lost writings of a hundred generations and picks up the rhymes left over from a thousand years," and "surveys past and present in an instant";[^15] what a person has read, once it has entered him, is also what he remembers.
What a person remembers has a history. A teacher teaches him to hear the returns in a piece of music, and from then on he waits for them in other pieces too; this is cultivation: someone helped him grow his own ears. A climate of opinion says that a certain era was the best and that everyone should be nostalgic for it; he follows along and is nostalgic; that ruler may then take the place of his own law. Take the ruler away and see: of that era, what does he himself still remember, what does he still wait for? If he can revise it himself, it is his; if he is nostalgic only because everyone says one should be, it is not. What is taken away is fame and authority, not memory.
To say "this return is more beautiful than that one" is a judgment of beauty, and it can be discussed: did it let what is remembered reach forward more fully? Discussion may find that each has a shape of its own, and then each keeps its own.
Aesthetics says only this: whoever has seen cannot not acknowledge that it is beautiful; aesthetics decides for no one what to remember or what to wait for.
7. Where the Question Comes From
How what is not before one is still there, and how what has not come arrives first, was asked very early, mostly not under the name of beauty. First someone looked at drama and saw that a person's arrival can rearrange everything before it; someone wrote a preface for a gathering, saw that the feelings of the people of old had reached him, and thought that those who came later would read him the same way; then someone asked what time is and gave the example of a song he knew, already written about in Section 4; someone wrote about listening and said that listening stirs only what is already in the heart. Later, someone said that our expectation of the future is given by custom; someone said that reproduction is the condition of any whole representation; someone said that poetry takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity; someone said that the past preserves itself; someone said that the past is hidden in some object, and one taste brings it back; someone separated the tone just past, still held, from recollection. Today, researchers of music take expectation apart, and researchers of learning write beauty into prediction and compression. What follows runs in this order, leaving out what Section 4 has already covered. For each figure, the paper reports faithfully what he discerned, why he looked, where he presses on this paper, and where this paper parts from him; other traditions appear in their own words.
Contrary to expectation, yet on account of one another. Aristotle says that tragedy imitates not only a complete action but also things that arouse fear and pity; these come about most of all when they happen contrary to expectation and yet on account of one another (παρὰ τὴν δόξαν δι’ ἄλληλα; the "yet" is added by this paper; the original has no word of contrast), and this is more wondrous than if they came about by chance.[^16] Reversal is a change of what is being done to its opposite, in accordance with probability or necessity; recognition, as its name indicates, is a change from ignorance to knowledge, leading to friendship or enmity, among those marked out for good fortune or misfortune.[^17] He looked for the sake of telling good plots from bad. He discerned that what arrives later can rearrange everything before it; the best surprise fits what went before. He presses on this paper: what has not yet come already has a shape, and the gap itself has a shape; does this level, then, also have a beauty that comes from the gap? This paper's answer: the shape of what is anticipated is not a gap; it is the stretch of what is remembered that reaches out. When the world comes, fitting or not fitting, the matter is settled within this level. What this level cannot contain lies not in the shape of what is anticipated but in Section 8. This paper meets him here: an arrival rearranges what is remembered. It parts from him here: he requires reversal to come by probability or necessity, which is a measure of good and bad plots, and its setting is tragedy; the recognition he speaks of is discerning who a person is, bound up with friendship and enmity, fortune and misfortune, not understanding in general. This paper's setting is what is remembered and anticipated in a living thing; the wrong note next door comes by no necessity at all.
Those who read this in times to come will also be moved by this writing. The Jin shu records that Wang Xizhi, writing a preface for the gathering at the Orchid Pavilion, said: "Whenever I read of what moved the people of old, it is as if the two halves of a tally matched . . . Those who come after will look on today as we today look on the past. Alas! So I have listed the people of our time and recorded what they wrote. Though the times differ and things change, what stirs our feelings is one and the same. Those who read this in times to come will also be moved by this writing."[^18] This passage is disputed: the "Preface at the River" (Linhe xu) quoted in Liu Xiaobiao's commentary on the Shishuo xinyu lacks the whole passage from "Now, people's dealings with one another" to "will be moved by this writing."[^19] This paper reads only the text as given in the Jin shu, and does not rule on its authorship. The writer of the preface wrote for a gathering, and what saddened him was life and death. He discerned that the feelings of the people of old had reached him, matching like a tally; and he thought ahead that those who came later would read him the same way. He presses on this paper: what he thinks of is how people not yet born will read him; if thinking ahead can reach even to people not yet born, is this paper not placing it too narrowly by putting it in a living thing? This paper's answer: it is he who thinks, and the thinking is in him; reaching to those who come later is what is thought, not where the thinking is. This paper meets him here: what is remembered reaches forward, as far as people not yet born. It parts from him here: this paper does not take that sadness as its ground, nor does it say that those who come later will surely feel the same: as this paper sees it, that is what is anticipated, and what is anticipated can fall through.
Listening stirs only what is already in the heart. In the book on listening and ecstasy in The Revival of the Religious Sciences, al-Ghazālī quotes Abū Sulaymān al-Dārānī: "Listening does not put into the heart what is not in it; it only stirs what is in it." The word for "listening" here is al-samāʿ in the original; the English translator renders it "music and singing."[^20] Al-Ghazālī quotes this to say that whether listening to music and singing is permitted cannot be settled for all cases alike; it depends on what is already in the heart. They discerned that the sound entering the ear puts in nothing new; what it stirs is what was already inside. They press on this paper: the same sound enters the ear, and what it stirs is what is already in each person's heart, which differs from person to person; where, then, is the overlap? This paper's answer: what is stirred is each person's own; that what is stirred is what was already there, not something this sound put in, can be seen in each of them. This paper meets them here: when a sound enters the ear, what arrives first is what was already there. It parts from them here: they ask what is in the heart and whether it ought to be stirred, which is a matter within faith; this paper looks only at how what is there still counts.
Custom is the great guide of human life. Hume says: custom is the great guide of human life; it is that principle alone which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past; without the influence of custom, we should be entirely ignorant of every matter of fact beyond what is immediately present to the memory and senses.[^21] In an earlier book he says that reason can never show us the connection of one object with another, even aided by experience and by the observation of their constant conjunction in all past instances; when the mind passes from the impression or idea of one object to the idea or belief of another, it is not determined by reason, but by certain principles which associate together the ideas of these objects and unite them in the imagination.[^22] He looked in order to find out what grounds causal inference. He discerned that expectation of the future is not inferred. He presses on this paper: since expectation is only custom, does this paper not overrate custom in saying that it "arrives first" and "has a shape"? This paper's answer: as this paper sees it, custom is exactly what is remembered reaching forward; to say that it arrives first and has a shape is not to overrate it, but to say that it can fall through, and that when it falls through, what it runs back into is the remembered. This paper meets him here: expectation is not inferred; it reaches over from the past. It parts from him here: he asks whether such expectation has a reason; this paper looks at how it is there.
Reproduction is the condition of a whole representation. In the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant says that if cinnabar were now red, now black, now light, now heavy, my empirical imagination would never even get the opportunity to think of heavy cinnabar on the representation of the color red.[^23] He also says that if, in drawing a line in thought, or thinking of the time from one noon to the next, or even just thinking of a number, I always lost the preceding parts from my thoughts and did not reproduce (reproduzieren) them as I went on, no whole representation could ever arise.[^24] He looked in order to find out how experience is possible. He discerned that unless what came before is reproduced, there can be no whole representation; and that for reproduction to work, the appearances themselves must first be subject to a rule. He presses on this paper in two places. First, reproduction is at work in every whole experience; his second example, thinking from one noon to the next, is already of what is not before one. Going beyond the present does not begin only at the level this paper looks at. This paper's answer: this paper does not say that it begins here; "first" is in the order of asking: on this ray, what is no longer there is for the first time made a question. Second, remembering depends on the world first having a rule. This paper agrees with the first half: for what is remembered to work, the world must first have its own shape; this is exactly the construct waiting for no one; aesthetics waits for someone to come and look. That rule, for him, is in the end traced back to the understanding; this paper does not follow him there.
Emotion recollected in tranquillity. Wordsworth says that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, and that it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.[^25] He looked for the sake of writing poetry. He discerned that recollected emotion is not a recording of the moment; after an interval of time, it grows again in tranquillity. He presses on this paper: poetry takes its origin from recollected emotion; if there is beauty in remembering, is it not in that re-aroused emotion? This paper's answer: the ground of acknowledgment lies in the point that is seen, not in feeling; the moment of recall may carry feeling, or may have no taste at all. This paper meets him here: taking up again, not the original. It parts from him here: he asks where poetry comes from, and his setting is the one who writes the poem; this paper looks at recall itself, and does not say that everything recalled will become poetry.
The past preserves itself. Bergson says that memory is not a faculty of putting recollections away in a drawer or writing them down in a register; there is no register, and no drawer; in reality, the past preserves itself, automatically (le passé se conserve de lui-même, automatiquement). He goes on to say that the whole of the past probably follows us at every moment.[^26] He looked in order to show that life is duration. He discerned that remembering is not storing. He presses on this paper: if the past preserves itself, is it not superfluous for this paper to say that it still counts in a living thing? This paper's answer: whether it preserves itself is his metaphysics, and this paper does not rule on it. This paper meets him here: not a drawer. It parts from him here: this paper looks at the moment when it counts here, a moment that is each time a taking up again; it does not say that the whole of the past follows one at every moment.
One taste, and it comes back. Proust's narrator first says: so it is with our past; it is labor lost to try to call it up by the intellect; it is hidden outside the intellect's reach, in some object, in the sensation that object would give us.[^27] Later comes a mouthful of madeleine soaked in tea. He says: the truth I am seeking is clearly not in the tea but in me; the mind has to seek, and not only seek: create. Again and again he asks his mind for one more effort. Then, suddenly, the memory appeared (Et tout d’un coup le souvenir m’est apparu): it was at Combray, on Sunday mornings, the little piece that Aunt Léonie gave him.[^28] He looked in order to write a book about lost time. He discerned that the moment of return does not come by will; one small thing brings the whole of Combray back; and what comes back, the mind itself has to create. He presses on this paper: it is labor lost to call up the past by the intellect; this paper says that one who stops cannot not see; can stopping call the past back? This paper's answer: it cannot. What one looks at on stopping is what has already come; whether it comes is not up to anyone. The object can move first, and the moving happens inside the person; he said so himself: the tea moves first, and the truth is in him. Seeing does not come by will either; having seen is a cannot-not. This paper meets him here, and also in "not only seek: create": to recall is to take up again. It parts from him here: this paper does not say that what comes back is all accurate, nor that what comes back is all beautiful.
Retention and recollection. Husserl says that in hearing a melody, we call the present tone perceived and the past tones not perceived; yet we also say that the whole melody is perceived, because the consciousness of retention (Retention) still holds on to the past tones.[^29] He also says that from perception to phantasy, from impression to reproduction (Reproduktion), there is no continuous transition; it is a discrete difference.[^30] He looked in order to find out how time-consciousness is constituted. He discerned that the tone just past, still held, belongs to perception itself; recollection is something else. He presses on this paper: perception itself already goes beyond the point of the present; can it stand, then, to say that at this level the construct for the first time goes beyond the present? This paper's answer: that the tone just past is still held, that the next beat will come, is the breadth of perception, and belongs to the beauty of perception; which note the next beat should be comes from a piece known by ear many years ago, and that is where this paper begins. "First" is in the order of asking. This paper meets him at that discrete difference of his. It parts from him here: he asks how consciousness constitutes time; this paper asks how what is no longer there still counts in a living thing.
Expectation is learned. Huron, who studies musical expectation, separates expectation about a particular work from expectation about a style: the first comes from having heard this work, the second from years of hearing a kind of music.[^31] He looked in order to understand how music moves people. He discerned that the point where things should land is learned. He presses on this paper: people within one style wait at the same point not necessarily because each has seen the same construct, but because they have been through the same training together. This paper's answer: the training they have been through together gives where to wait; that waiting there can fall through, and that when it falls through it runs back into what is remembered, each person sees for himself when he stops. The first layer of overlap does require remembering the same things, and what is learned is his own too; Section 6 has said so. The second layer depends on no style: what is remembered reaches forward, and when that falls through, what moves in return is the remembered; this point can be seen in people whatever music they listen to. This is also where this paper could be wrong, as Section 9 states.
Beauty tracks learning. Schmidhuber says that for a self-improving but computationally limited observer, once he learns to predict or compress some data better, the data become simpler and more beautiful in his eyes; interestingness is the first derivative of subjective beauty, the steepness of the learning curve; what is beautiful is not necessarily interesting; the wholly predictable is boring, and so is wholly incompressible randomness; the interesting lies only in regularities not yet known but learnable.[^32] He looked in order to build a machine that is curious of its own accord. He discerned that between understanding everything and understanding nothing there is a place with tension. He presses on this paper most directly: his two quantities are almost this paper's two faces, compressibility like the completive face, compression progress like the generative face; are this paper's two faces, then, two quantities of learning? This paper's answer has three steps. First, a song known through and through is beautiful for him too: it is already compressed to the shortest; it is just no longer interesting. Here this paper is close to him. It parts from him here: his beauty is a shortness measured by a compressor; this paper's completive beauty is seeing that what is remembered is there whole, and measures no length. Second, this paper's generative beauty lies in what is anticipated being in the act of landing, not yet settled, not in learning faster. A piece known through and through, reaching the point where it should land and does not, still hangs for a moment: years of listening to that kind of music still lead one to the door of the tonic; yet the piece remembered is one that does not land there. The two things remembered brush against each other there, and in that moment nothing is learned. The looker can try it for himself. Third, what he measures is compression: how short, and how fast it gets shorter; what this paper speaks of is seeing and acknowledging, and it does not take quantities of learning as its ground, because beauty is not understanding. This paper meets him here: the place with tension that he discerned, he calls interesting; what this paper sees there is the generative face.
8. The Question Left Open
The practice is over; there is no more sound from next door. The piece is still in him; tomorrow, when the child plays again, he will wait at that point just the same.
But what is remembered and what is anticipated are both in the same living thing. Who is that? Is the one who heard this piece many years ago the same as the one who will wait at that point tomorrow? This level cannot contain it. SAE: The First Critique recorded the same question at the station of prediction: prediction is running, but who is predicting?[^33]
The world does not push anyone to ask this. A person can remember and anticipate all his life without asking who is remembering and who is anticipating; if he cannot not ask, that is another ray. This ray stops here.
The question left open is: who is it that remembers and anticipates. That is the beauty of the self.
9. What Would Make This Paper Wrong
If any one of four things held, this paper would be wrong. First, those who stop cannot make out, in their own recall, that it is a taking up again: each recall is like opening the same photograph, with not one place moved; then this paper's "not the original" would be only an error found in research, not something seen. Second, the looker can see remembering and can see anticipating, but cannot make out that they are one thing: what is anticipated does not reach forward from what is remembered, and when it falls through, it does not move what is remembered in return; then the two halves would be only two things, and the seeing this paper speaks of only inference. Third, those who see this point are shown to be exactly those who are learning better: remembering and anticipating are acknowledged only because those who acknowledge them are predicting more accurately; take away the progress in learning, and no one acknowledges any longer. The school of theory described in Section 7 is the most direct pressure on this item. Fourth, the second layer of overlap, too, is shown to be only training undergone together: only those who grew up in the same music and the same language can see that what is not before one still counts and that what arrives first can fall through; those raised in another tradition cannot see this point in their own remembering and anticipating. This paper does not think any of these will happen, but it writes them here, and leaves them to those who look to test.
Acknowledgments
This paper is the ninth ray paper in the aesthetics branch of the SAE (Self-as-an-End) philosophical system and is published under the sole name of Han Qin. The author made the final decision on all philosophical arguments and choices, and alone is responsible for the final text.
Both drafting assistance and review were carried out with large language models. Drafting and internal precision audit were done by Claude (Anthropic); the structural gate and pre-publication sign-off were handled by ChatGPT (OpenAI). The material on the history of ideas used in Section 7, "Where the Question Comes From," was first gathered by ChatGPT's deep research, and its sources were then checked item by item. This paper, together with the second edition of the general outline and the other twelve ray papers, passed final review by both the internal precision audit and the structural gate, and passed a key-sentence acceptance check. The author thanks these systems and the research and engineering teams behind them. The author ruled on their comments one by one, and both acceptances and rejections are on record; the record of revisions and withdrawals across rounds is not reproduced here.
Notes
[^1]: Han Qin, SAE Judgment and Aesthetics, 2nd ed. (2026), §5.1, "How to Read the Rays," DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19296710.
[^2]: Han Qin, SAE: The First Critique (2026), DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21439120.
[^3]: Frederic C. Bartlett, Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932), chap. 5, 63–94; chap. 10, 197–214.
[^4]: Daniel L. Schacter and Donna Rose Addis, "The Cognitive Neuroscience of Constructive Memory: Remembering the Past and Imagining the Future," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 362, no. 1481 (2007): 773–786, https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2007.2087.
[^5]: Nicola S. Clayton and Anthony Dickinson, "Episodic-like Memory during Cache Recovery by Scrub Jays," Nature 395, no. 6699 (1998): 272–274, https://doi.org/10.1038/26216.
[^6]: Aristotle, Poetics 11, 1452a22–26, in Aristotelis de arte poetica liber, ed. Rudolf Kassel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965).
[^7]: Augustine, Confessions 11.28.37, in Augustine: Confessions, ed. James J. O'Donnell, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).
[^8]: Augustine, Confessions 11.28.38.
[^9]: Augustine, Confessions 11.29.39.
[^10]: Tim Wildschut, Constantine Sedikides, Jamie Arndt, and Clay Routledge, "Nostalgia: Content, Triggers, Functions," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 91, no. 5 (2006): 975–993, https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.5.975.
[^11]: Frederick S. Barrett, Kevin J. Grimm, Richard W. Robins, Tim Wildschut, Constantine Sedikides, and Petr Janata, "Music-Evoked Nostalgia: Affect, Memory, and Personality," Emotion 10, no. 3 (2010): 390–403, https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019006.
[^12]: Sander Van de Cruys and Johan Wagemans, "Putting Reward in Art: A Tentative Prediction Error Account of Visual Art," i-Perception 2, no. 9 (2011): 1035–1062, https://doi.org/10.1068/i0466aap.
[^13]: Jürgen Schmidhuber, "Driven by Compression Progress: A Simple Principle Explains Essential Aspects of Subjective Beauty, Novelty, Surprise, Interestingness, Attention, Curiosity, Creativity, Art, Science, Music, Jokes," in Anticipatory Behavior in Adaptive Learning Systems, ed. Giovanni Pezzulo, Martin V. Butz, Olivier Sigaud, and Gianluca Baldassarre, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 5499 (Berlin: Springer, 2009), 48–76, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02565-5_4; arXiv:0812.4360, abstract, sec. 2.4.
[^14]: Schmidhuber, "Driven by Compression Progress," sec. 2.11.
[^15]: Lu Ji 陸機, "Wen fu" 文賦, in Xiao Tong 蕭統, ed., Wen xuan 文選, juan 17.
[^16]: Aristotle, Poetics 9, 1452a1–6.
[^17]: Aristotle, Poetics 11, 1452a22–26, 1452a29–32.
[^18]: Fang Xuanling 房玄齡 et al., Jin shu 晉書, juan 80, "Biography of Wang Xizhi" 王羲之傳 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974), 2099.
[^19]: Liu Yiqing 劉義慶, Shishuo xinyu 世說新語, "Qixian" 企羨, the "Linhe xu" 臨河敘 quoted in Liu Xiaobiao's 劉孝標 commentary, Sibu congkan edition.
[^20]: al-Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, Kitāb ādāb al-samāʿ wa-l-wajd, chap. 1; English in Duncan B. Macdonald, "Emotional Religion in Islām as Affected by Music and Singing: Being a Translation of a Book of the Iḥyā ʿUlūm ad-Dīn of al-Ghazzālī with Analysis, Annotation, and Appendices," art. 8, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (April 1901): 195–252, at 220, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00028343.
[^21]: David Hume, An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, sec. 5, pt. 1, in Enquiries concerning the Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894), §36.
[^22]: David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (London, 1739), 1.3.6.12.
[^23]: Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Riga: Hartknoch, 1781), A100–101.
[^24]: Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A102.
[^25]: William Wordsworth, "Preface," in Lyrical Ballads, with Pastoral and Other Poems, 3rd ed., vol. 1 (London: Longman and Rees, 1802).
[^26]: Henri Bergson, L'Évolution créatrice (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1907), chap. 1.
[^27]: Marcel Proust, Du côté de chez Swann (Paris: Grasset, 1913), "Combray," pt. 1.
[^28]: Proust, Du côté de chez Swann, "Combray," pt. 1.
[^29]: Edmund Husserl, "Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins," ed. Martin Heidegger, Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung 9 (1928): §16, 397–398.
[^30]: Husserl, "Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins," §19, 405–406.
[^31]: David Huron, Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006).
[^32]: Schmidhuber, "Driven by Compression Progress," abstract, secs. 2.4, 2.6, 2.11.
[^33]: Han Qin, SAE: The First Critique, chap. 5, §3, "The Road's Later Stretch: from Selection to Mutual Non Dubito."
References
Works of the SAE system cited here are archived on Zenodo, with the Chinese and English versions in the same record. The DOIs cited are concept DOIs, which always resolve to the latest version, so version numbers and access dates are not given. All are single-authored (Han Qin). Drafting and review assistance is described in the Acknowledgments.
Aristotle. Aristotelis de arte poetica liber. Edited by Rudolf Kassel. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965.
Augustine. Augustine: Confessions. Edited by James J. O'Donnell. 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.
Barrett, Frederick S., Kevin J. Grimm, Richard W. Robins, Tim Wildschut, Constantine Sedikides, and Petr Janata. "Music-Evoked Nostalgia: Affect, Memory, and Personality." Emotion 10, no. 3 (2010): 390–403. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019006.
Bartlett, Frederic C. Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932.
Bergson, Henri. L'Évolution créatrice. Paris: Félix Alcan, 1907.
Clayton, Nicola S., and Anthony Dickinson. "Episodic-like Memory during Cache Recovery by Scrub Jays." Nature 395, no. 6699 (1998): 272–274. https://doi.org/10.1038/26216.
Fang Xuanling 房玄齡 et al. Jin shu 晉書. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974.
al-Ghazālī. Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn. OpenITI e-text, 0505Ghazali.IhyaCulumDin.
Hume, David. Enquiries concerning the Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals. Edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894.
———. A Treatise of Human Nature. 3 vols. London, 1739–1740.
Huron, David. Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006.
Husserl, Edmund. "Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins." Edited by Martin Heidegger. Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung 9 (1928).
Kant, Immanuel. Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Riga: Hartknoch, 1781.
Liu Yiqing 劉義慶. Shishuo xinyu 世說新語. Commentary by Liu Xiaobiao 劉孝標. Sibu congkan edition.
Macdonald, Duncan B. "Emotional Religion in Islām as Affected by Music and Singing: Being a Translation of a Book of the Iḥyā ʿUlūm ad-Dīn of al-Ghazzālī with Analysis, Annotation, and Appendices." Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (April 1901): 195–252; (October 1901): 705–748; (January 1902): 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00028343.
Proust, Marcel. Du côté de chez Swann. Paris: Grasset, 1913.
Qin, Han. SAE Judgment and Aesthetics. 2026. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19296710.
———. SAE: The First Critique. 2026. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21439120.
Schacter, Daniel L., and Donna Rose Addis. "The Cognitive Neuroscience of Constructive Memory: Remembering the Past and Imagining the Future." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 362, no. 1481 (2007): 773–786. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2007.2087.
Schmidhuber, Jürgen. "Driven by Compression Progress: A Simple Principle Explains Essential Aspects of Subjective Beauty, Novelty, Surprise, Interestingness, Attention, Curiosity, Creativity, Art, Science, Music, Jokes." In Anticipatory Behavior in Adaptive Learning Systems, edited by Giovanni Pezzulo, Martin V. Butz, Olivier Sigaud, and Gianluca Baldassarre, 48–76. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 5499. Berlin: Springer, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02565-5_4.
Van de Cruys, Sander, and Johan Wagemans. "Putting Reward in Art: A Tentative Prediction Error Account of Visual Art." i-Perception 2, no. 9 (2011): 1035–1062. https://doi.org/10.1068/i0466aap.
Wildschut, Tim, Constantine Sedikides, Jamie Arndt, and Clay Routledge. "Nostalgia: Content, Triggers, Functions." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 91, no. 5 (2006): 975–993. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.5.975.
Wordsworth, William. "Preface." In Lyrical Ballads, with Pastoral and Other Poems. 3rd ed. Vol. 1. London: Longman and Rees, 1802.
Xiao Tong 蕭統, ed. Wen xuan 文選.