In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Eva Alerby and Cecilia Ferm, “Learning Music: Embodied Experience in the Life-World”C. Victor FungThe authors' choice of using phenomenology as a foundation of their inquiry is appropriate and appealing. They have, to a great extent, achieved their goal to explain music learning from a life-world approach. Descriptions of absolute musicality and relativistic musicality in the opening paragraphs remind me of the good old "nature versus nurture" argument. (...) Do the authors intend to relate musicality to musical ability or aptitude as defined by psychologists? If musicality is "the ability to make something of one's own," does it mean that the authors have taken on a relativistic view and believe that musicality can be acquired?At the onset of the essay, musicality is described as emotional or cognitive phenomena. I would be interested to know what role a psychomotor phenomenon plays in musicality. The authors later describe "motor knowledge" in the context of Merleau-Ponty's "maximum grip." Does it mean that "motor knowledge" or "maximum grip" in music is outside the realm of musicality?I have attempted to follow the authors' logic in answering the question: What is learning of music? The authors postulate that "knowledge does not always, and not in any way automatically, become exactly the same as the learning situation aimed for" and that "the aim of music education is to produce music knowledge." These propositions lead me to believe that the learning of music occurs in experiencing all types of musical activities, regardless of the musician's level of proficiency. In all types of musical activities, including different performances of the same repertoire by the same performer, the musician would find new knowledge that is being produced in his/her body. Therefore, I agree with the authors in that "bodily experience is the foundation for learning."I would like to respond to the issue of whether music learning occurs within [End Page 206] or outside of the human being. I enjoy reading how the authors borrow Merleau-Ponty's analogy of the blind man and his stick. They put it so beautifully that "the piano becomes an extension of the pianist's body, and the pianist can 'feel' its limitation." This leads me to ponder if there could be further extensions beyond the physical piano. We know that pianists make the strings in the piano vibrate through a lever mechanism. These vibrations travel through the air and arrive at the audience's ears. Then the vibrating energies are transmitted as electrical energies in the audience's nerve cells. The audience in turn may behave differently after such a complex transmission of energies at a performance. My question is: Is there an end to the "extension" of a musician's body? If so, where should it end? There is no doubt that the pianist relates to the world and learns about the world through the piano. Could the pianist learn about the world through the vibrations that the piano strings generate, through the air, and through the audience's hearing mechanism, brain cells, and behaviors? Is this what the authors meant by "the human ego is boundaryless and cannot be localized, and the ego is immanent in the whole system"? Regardless of how far the "extension" goes, how do we know if an "extension" has occurred? How can we validate an "extension" of a musician's ego"?It seems to me that the authors' discussions have focused on the tactile extension of the body. If the body can be extended like the stick for the blind man, would the air surrounding the blind man, including its smell, temperature, humidity, wind, and sound, be his extension too? When this question is transferred to a musician, would the total context of the musical event be the musician's extension of the body too? By "total context," I mean the cultural context, the environment (smell, temperature,...), and the people in the musical event.We are certain that music learning takes place when experiences and knowledge are incorporated in the body. We still have not solved the problem of whether music learning occurs within or outside of the human being, because the boundary of the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Eva Alerby and Cecilia Ferm, “Learning Music: Embodied Experience in the Life-World”C. Victor FungThe authors' choice of using phenomenology as a foundation of their inquiry is appropriate and appealing. They have, to a great extent, achieved their goal to explain music learning from a life-world approach. Descriptions of absolute musicality and relativistic musicality in the opening paragraphs remind me of the good old "nature versus nurture" argument. (...) Do the authors intend to relate musicality to musical ability or aptitude as defined by psychologists? If musicality is "the ability to make something of one's own," does it mean that the authors have taken on a relativistic view and believe that musicality can be acquired?At the onset of the essay, musicality is described as emotional or cognitive phenomena. I would be interested to know what role a psychomotor phenomenon plays in musicality. The authors later describe "motor knowledge" in the context of Merleau-Ponty's "maximum grip." Does it mean that "motor knowledge" or "maximum grip" in music is outside the realm of musicality?I have attempted to follow the authors' logic in answering the question: What is learning of music? The authors postulate that "knowledge does not always, and not in any way automatically, become exactly the same as the learning situation aimed for" and that "the aim of music education is to produce music knowledge." These propositions lead me to believe that the learning of music occurs in experiencing all types of musical activities, regardless of the musician's level of proficiency. In all types of musical activities, including different performances of the same repertoire by the same performer, the musician would find new knowledge that is being produced in his/her body. Therefore, I agree with the authors in that "bodily experience is the foundation for learning."I would like to respond to the issue of whether music learning occurs within [End Page 206] or outside of the human being. I enjoy reading how the authors borrow Merleau-Ponty's analogy of the blind man and his stick. They put it so beautifully that "the piano becomes an extension of the pianist's body, and the pianist can 'feel' its limitation." This leads me to ponder if there could be further extensions beyond the physical piano. We know that pianists make the strings in the piano vibrate through a lever mechanism. These vibrations travel through the air and arrive at the audience's ears. Then the vibrating energies are transmitted as electrical energies in the audience's nerve cells. The audience in turn may behave differently after such a complex transmission of energies at a performance. My question is: Is there an end to the "extension" of a musician's body? If so, where should it end? There is no doubt that the pianist relates to the world and learns about the world through the piano. Could the pianist learn about the world through the vibrations that the piano strings generate, through the air, and through the audience's hearing mechanism, brain cells, and behaviors? Is this what the authors meant by "the human ego is boundaryless and cannot be localized, and the ego is immanent in the whole system"? Regardless of how far the "extension" goes, how do we know if an "extension" has occurred? How can we validate an "extension" of a musician's ego"?It seems to me that the authors' discussions have focused on the tactile extension of the body. If the body can be extended like the stick for the blind man, would the air surrounding the blind man, including its smell, temperature, humidity, wind, and sound, be his extension too? When this question is transferred to a musician, would the total context of the musical event be the musician's extension of the body too? By "total context," I mean the cultural context, the environment (smell, temperature,...), and the people in the musical event.We are certain that music learning takes place when experiences and knowledge are incorporated in the body. We still have not solved the problem of whether music learning occurs within or outside of the human being, because the boundary of the... (shrink)

The discovery of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells in 2006 was heralded as a major breakthrough in stem cell research. Since then, progress in iPS cell technology has paved the way towards clinical application, particularly cell replacement therapy, which has refueled debate on the ethics of stem cell research. However, much of the discourse has focused on questions of moral status and potentiality, overlooking the ethical issues which are introduced by the clinical testing of iPS cell replacement therapy. First-in-human trials, (...) in particular, raise a number of ethical concerns including informed consent, subject recruitment and harm minimisation as well as the inherent uncertainty and risks which are involved in testing medical procedures on humans for the first time. These issues, while a feature of any human research, become more complex in the case of iPS cell therapy, given the seriousness of the potential risks, the unreliability of available animal models, the vulnerability of the target patient group, and the high stakes of such an intensely public area of science. Our paper will present a detailed case study of iPS cell replacement therapy for Parkinson's disease to highlight these broader ethical and epistemological concerns. If we accept that iPS cell technology is fraught with challenges which go far beyond merely refuting the potentiality of the stem cell line, we conclude that iPS cell research should not replace, but proceed alongside embryonic and adult somatic stem cell research to promote cross-fertilisation of knowledge and better clinical outcomes. (shrink)

Deliberative democracy is a revolutionary political ideal that requires fundamental changes in political institutions, bases of collective decision making, and the distribution of resources. Perhaps because of its revolutionary character accounts of deliberation in political theory thus far have offered little guidance for actors in actually-existing democratic circumstances. This article develops an ethical account of deliberative democratic action under imperfectly just conditions characterized by material and political inequality and failures of reciprocity. Under such conditions, appropriate principles of action can resolve (...) the tension between deliberation and confrontational political activism. The logic of this account parallels the justification for civil disobedience: the extent of permissible deviationfrom deliberative norms increases according to the adversity of political circumstances. This ethical account is composed of principles of deliberative activism, applications of those principles to four kinds of increasing unfavorable circumstances, and a menu of institutional and political strategies that increase deliberative inclusion and equality. (shrink)

In contrast to the traditional and ordinary interpretation of Xunzi’s theory of human nature, which considers Xunzi’s theory as claiming that human nature is bad or evil, this article aims at, first, arguing that the interpretation is wrong or at least incomplete and, second, constructing a new interpretation that, according to Xunzi’s text, there are some factors in human nature that are able to promote good behaviors. I shall demonstrate that some major paragraphs in Xunzi’s text were misinterpreted and misarranged, (...) analyze that the word wei (artifice) in the chapter of “Zhengming” has two different but related senses, one of which designates some of the potential capacities of human nature, and argue that the 23 words in the chapter of “Rongru” should not be deleted as redundant, as was done by the two famous philologists in Qing dynasdy, Wang Niansun and Wang Xianqian. (shrink)

CRÍTICAS DE HONNETH ÀS TEORIAS CONTEMPORÂNEAS DA JUSTIÇA DISTRIBUTIVA: A JUSTIÇA A PARTIR DAS RELAÇÕES SOCIAIS DE RECONHECIMENTO RECÍPROCO.

Not much attention has been paid to Malebranche’s philosophy of time. Scholars who have written on it have typically written about it only in passing, and by and large discuss it only in relation to his philosophy of religion. This is appropriate insofar as Malebranche doesn’t discuss his views of time in isolation from his religious metaphysics. I argue that Malebranche’s conception of how created beings have their properties commits him to saying that God is omnitemporal rather than atemporal. For (...) just as bodies get their spatiality by participating in God’s omnipresence, so all creatures get their temporality by participating in God’s omnitemporality. Moreover, Malebranche is a substantivalist about space and time: infinite space and time are one and the same divinely simple substance, God (partially considered), who contains the world. My exploration of Malebranche’s metaphysics sheds light on his views of eminent containment, participation, and causation. (shrink)

When heterosexuality dominates sexual culture, sexual minorities are marginalised, yielding minority stress and internalised phobia which devastate psychological well-being and raise suicide risks. A growing trend in using mindfulness-related interventions in health care shows positive signs, but there is a paucity of research on mindfulness for sexual minorities. This qualitative research, through interpretative phenomenological analysis, looks into how Buddhist sexual minorities (from various countries) interpret mindfulness from which their increased self-awareness, self-esteem and self-acceptance become prominent intrinsic resources, resulting in enhanced (...) mental health and quality of life. Such an exploratory study extends the horizon of health care benefits for helping professionals and sexual minorities with alternative views in overcoming external and internalised phobia. (shrink)

The current integrative review aims to do the following: first, examine the Chinese and English topical studies on the Vimalak?rti Nirde?a S?tra published from 1900 to 2011; second, analyze the characteristics of those works; third, investigate related study trends through a statistical analysis; and finally, identify research gaps. This review not only offers a comprehensive overview of the available literature on the S?tra retrieved from 25 English and Chinese electronic databases, but also categorizes the 256 selected publications into eight sub-themes: (...) art, book reviews, philological studies, literature, philosophy, textual criticism, translation, and miscellaneous topics ; thus illuminating different research foci and features between English and Chinese scholars, and also among Chinese researchers in various territories. This project illustrates how an integrative review can be employed in Buddhist studies; it reveals challenges and opportunities related to Buddhist studies, stemming from technology; it suggests collaborative research in Buddhism; and it proposes the application of the philosophy of the S?tra to practical disciplines. (shrink)

In Infotopia, citizens enjoy a wide range of information about the organizations upon which they rely for the satisfaction of their vital interests. The provision of that information is governed by principles of democratic transparency. Democratic transparency both extends and critiques current enthusiasms about transparency. It urges us to conceptualize information politically, as a resource to turn the behavior of large organizations in socially beneficial ways. Transparency efforts have targets, and we should think of those targets as large organizations: public (...) and civic, but especially private and corporate. Democratic transparency consists of four principles. First, information about the operations and actions of large organizations that affect citizens’ interests should be rich, deep, and readily available to the public. Second, the amount of available information should be proportionate to the extent to which those organizations jeopardize citizens’ interests. Third, information should be organized and provided in ways that are accessible to individuals and groups that use that information. Finally, the social, political, and economic structures of society should be organized in ways that allow individuals and groups to take action based on Infotopia’s public disclosures. (shrink)

This book is a companion to logical thought and logical thinking in China with a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective. It introduces the basic ideas and theories of Chinese thought in a comprehensive and analytical way. It covers thoughts in ancient, pre-modern and modern China from a historical point of view. It deals with topics in logical (including logico-philosophical) concepts and theories rooted in China, Indian and Western Logic transplanted to China, and the development of logical studies in contemporary China and (...) other Chinese communities. The term “philosophy of logic” or “logico-philosophical thought” is used in this book to represent “logical thought” in a broad sense which includes thinking on logical concepts, modes of reasoning, and linguistic ideas related to logic and philosophical logic. Unique in its approach, the book uses Western logical theories and philosophy of language, Chinese philology, and history of ideas to deal with the basic ideas and major problems in logical thought and logical thinking in China. In doing so, it advances the understanding of the lost tradition in Chinese philosophical studies. (shrink)

In the early twentieth century, China was on the brink of change. Different ideologies - those of radicalism, conservatism, liberalism, and social democracy - were much debated in political and intellectual circles. Whereas previous works have analyzed these trends in isolation, Edmund S. K. Fung shows how they related to one another and how intellectuals in China engaged according to their cultural and political persuasions. The author argues that it is this interrelatedness and interplay between different schools of thought (...) that are central to the understanding of Chinese modernity, for many of the debates that began in the Republican era still resonate in China today. The book charts the development of these ideologies and explores the work and influence of the intellectuals who were associated with them. In its challenge to previous scholarship and the breadth of its approach, the book makes a major contribution to the study of Chinese political philosophy and intellectual history. (shrink)

Traditionally, phenomenal consciousness has been restricted to the realm of perceptual and otherwise sensory experiences. If there is a kind of phenomenology altogether unlike sensory phenomenology, then this was a mistake, and requires an accounting. I argue such cognitive phenomenology exists by appealing to a phenomenal contrast case that relies on meaningful and relatively meaningless dialogue. I explain why previous phenomenal contrast arguments are less likely to be effective on even neutral parties to the debate: these arguments rely on a (...) ‘hard-to understand’ sentence, which may elicit sensory crutches that one focuses on, thereby obscuring cognitive phenomenology. I also argue for a positive characterization of the phenomenal contrast in terms of seeming to be aware of abstract relations that obtain between different contributions in a dialogue. This paves the way for arguing that what it’s like to entertain a cognitive content that p differs from that of q in their cognitive phenomenology. (shrink)

A. C. Graham thinks that the parallelism in the Neo‐Moist Canons is about the deduction of sentences. On the contrary, Chad Hansen thinks that they are not plausibly treated as inference of deductive forms since the later Moists are at pains to show that they can “go wrong.” In this article, I shall try to provide a logical analysis and a constructive rather than defeatist interpretation of parallelism in the text. I argue that the Moists tend to express their ideas (...) in the “material mode of speech” to build up their semantic and pragmatic sensibility in philosophical thinking. (shrink)

As an emerging human resource issue in business ethics, work-life balance has been gaining increasing attention from both practitioners and scholars in recent years. In response to the call of Kelliher et al. :97–112, 2019), we addressed the research gap by examining the WLB of Chinese knowledge workers under flextime arrangement and the impact of work-life supportive culture on work-life spillover of the workers. Specifically, we examined the relationships between three components of work-life supportive culture, namely managerial support, career consequences, (...) and organizational time demands, and two aspects of work-life spillover, positive and negative spillover, perceived by the workers. A quantitative survey with 35 employees in a software development company in Hong Kong was conducted. The results of structure equation modelling showed that managerial support was positively related to positive work-life spillover while organizational time demands was positively related to employees’ negative spillover. WLB needs of knowledge workers and the role of organizational culture in effective implementation of WLB policies were discussed, and several feasible WLB policies were suggested for managers. (shrink)

This article aims at providing a general picture of the idea of correlative thinking developed by sinologists and philosophers in the field of Chinese and comparative studies, including Marcel Granet, Joseph Needham, A. C. Graham, David Hall and Roger Ames. As a matter of fact, there is no exactly the same view among these scholars when they use the term "correlative thinking"? to describe the Chinese mode of thinking; but they all recognize, more or less, the term's implication as "non-logical"? (...) or "pre-logical", "non-rational"? or "irrational", "intuitive-associative"? or "beyond analytic thinking". ?Based on this presumption, some of them think that there is "irreducibility"?from the root level of (correlative) thinking to the upper level of (analytic) thinking or that there is "incommensurability"? between correlative and analytic thinking. Based on the contemporary philosophy of language and philosophy of mind, especially Donald Davidson's holism of the mental and the principle of charity, I shall argue that the thesis of "pre-logical", ?"illogical"? or "non-logical" is self-refuting. I shall also demonstrate that the view of "incommensurability"? between correlative and analytic thinking and the thesis of "unanalyzability" of correlative thinking shared by most of these scholars are not well-argued but taken as a primary fact. The conclusion of this article is that there is no thinking by correlation and analogy which cannot be understood in terms of analytic concepts and which can escape from the logical or rational space. (shrink)

This book represents a germinal effort that urges all religious and world leaders to savor the mystical spirituality, especially the cosmology and spirituality of sacred sustainability of the indigenous peoples. The power of indigenous spirit world is harnessed for the common good of the indigenous communities and the regenerative power of mother earth. This everyday mysticism of the world as spirited and sacred serves to re-enchant a world disillusioned by the unsustainability of destructive economic systems that have spawned the current (...) ecological crises. Author Jojo Fung offers insight from his lived-experience and this book represents his effort to correlate the indigenous spirit world with Catholic Pneumatology and articulate the activity of God's Spirit as the Spirit of Sacred Sustainability. (shrink)

Increase Your Upsells, Reputation, Quality Leads and Residual Income Exponentially!

A.C. Graham, a widely respected Sinologist, may be the first scholar in the context of Chinese philosophy to express opinions counter to Donald Davidson’s principle of charity and to his view on the very idea of a conceptual scheme.

Empowering Affected Interests brings together a group of leading contemporary democratic theorists and philosophers to debate a taken-for-granted principle at the heart of the democratic project but increasingly under strain in a global era: the idea all those affected by a decision should be included in the making of that decision.

Since its original publication in Chinese in the 1930s, this work has been accepted by Chinese scholars as the most important contribution to the study of their country's philosophy.

All along, many commentators stressed the differences of Chinese and Western philosophy and method of Qi, that philosophy and approach to the Western emphasis on analysis, argumentation and logic, and China's philosophical method is longer than intuition, and permits will be realized. Different methods by which they believe will give different results: the knowledge of the outside world through Western methods may be, can be obtained through the French inner truth. The former purpose we got outside, after all is also (...) in the contented. The authors believe that this orthodoxy and popular opinion is a great problem. One problem is: with or without the so-called intrinsic truth, they say, intuitive method of physical certificates but not feasible. In addition to resorting to a very small number of believers of the first-person authority, they can not explain the methods and procedures, they can not prove its effectiveness. In addition, they oppose the West, although on the surface of the speculative method, which emphasizes the importance of reflexivity within the card, but when their faith in order to convince the people off the outer ring of authenticity Wuzhen Dao, in fact, they unwittingly use on the Western speculative methods, but not the logic of Western speculative, but now the speculative. The purpose of this article, first through a thought experiment of the anti-theory, went on to argue that the orthodox view of the popular errors and false. The authors believe that: this say just false, but logically self-denial. (shrink)