Wang’s most distinctive and well-known doctrine is the unity of knowing and acting (zhī xíng hé yī). In order to grasp the significance of this doctrine, consider a student who is being questioned by a college honor code panel after being caught plagiarizing an essay.  If the honor code panel asked the student whether he knew that plagiarism was wrong, it would not be surprising for the student to reply, “Yes, I knew it was wrong to plagiarize my essay, but I wanted so much to get an easy A that I gave in to temptation.” Western philosophers would describe this as a case of akrasia, or weakness of will.  Zhu Xi, along with many Western philosophers like Aristotle, would acknowledge that the student had correctly described his psychological state.  However, Wang Yangming would deny that the student actually knew that plagiarism was wrong: “There never have been people who know but do not act.  Those who ‘know’ but do not act simply do not yet know” (Tiwald and Van Norden 2014, 267).  One of Wang’s primary claims is that merely verbal assent is inadequate to demonstrate actual knowledge: “One cannot say he knows filial piety or brotherly respect simply because he knows how to say something filial or brotherly.  Knowing pain offers another good example.  One must have experienced pain oneself in order to know pain.” Wang also adduces cold and hunger as things that one must experience in order to know.  We might object that Wang’s example shows, at most, that someone must have had an experience of goodness or evil at some point in his life in order to know what it means for something to be good or evil.  This falls short of the conclusion that Wang needs, though, for just as I can know what you mean when you say “I am hungry” even if I am not currently motivated to eat, so might I know that “plagiarism is wrong,” even if I am not motivated to avoid plagiarism myself in this circumstance.