This chapter contains section titled: Pluralistic Epistemology Panstructuralism Cultural Epistemology.

In this essay I argue that in any country, the realization of sexual equality requires a certain level of economic development. I support this general theme by examining a particular case—a dilemma faced by Chinese feminists today. I intend to show that in a developing country such as China, where heavy physical labor is still in great demand in daily life and productive activity, full sexual equality cannot be a reality.

: In this essay I argue that in any country, the realization of sexual equality requires a certain level of economic development. I support this general theme by examining a particular case--a dilemma faced by Chinese feminists today. I intend to show that in a developing country such as China, where heavy physical labor is still in great demand in daily life and productive activity, full sexual equality cannot be a reality.

: In response to Jay Gallagher's criticism, I emphasize that my article "The Dilemma Faced by Chinese Feminists" (2000) is aimed at showing how both the level of economic development and sexual difference are relevant to the realization of sexual equality. It is a much more serious theoretical attempt than to argue that men have a physical advantage in a society where heavy labor is still in great demand.

In the universe, there are countless pairs of opposites. In Chinese philosophy, there are general names for these opposites, i.e., yin and yang. In this paper I argue that the unity of opposites is a theme common to Heraclitus, a pre-Socratic philosopher, and Laozi, the best known Daoist. More specifically, I argue that both Heraclitus and Laozi believe the following: 1) opposites produce and depend on each other, without one there can’t be another; 2) each thing in the universe consists (...) of opposites and is a unity of opposites, there is nothing that is absolutely one-sided; 3) the conflict between opposites changes everything and makes new things possible. Nothing is at rest and new beings constantly come to exist, since there is constant struggle between opposites. As far as their views on the unity of opposites are concerned, Heraclitus’s and Laozi’s philosophies are extremely similar. (shrink)

This paper proposes that the study of Chinese philosophy in the English speaking world has evolved in the three stages, i.e., the stage of preliminary introduction, the stage of communication, and the stage of deep study. The paper also tentatively investigates how problematic methodology in the study of Chinese philosophy and the prevalent conception of philosophy contribute to the marginalization of Chinese philosophy in the English speaking world and suggests some possible ways for the study of Chinese philosophy to emerge (...) from the current difficult situation. At the end this paper emphasizes that no matter whether the study of Chinese philosophy can make the English speaking philosophical world accept Chinese philosophy as genuine philosophy, increased understanding and appreciation of the important and unique contribution of Chinese philosophy is its significant accomplishment nevertheless. (shrink)

This comparative study argues that both Aristotle and the Ch'eng-Chu School deny that a weak-willed person truly and clearly knows what is best at the time of action, but their analyses of a weak-willed person's knowledge are rather different. It is shown that both Aristotle and the Ch'eng-Chu School believe that practical knowledge presupposes repeatedly acting on it and thus that the defect of the weak-willed person's knowledge cannot be overcome by purely cognitive training.

The yin yang model of thinking is most essential to the Chinese cosmology, ontology and outlook on life. This paper is a systematic discussion of such a dialectical way of thinking and its significance. It starts with investigating the origin and the meaning of terms “yin” and “yang”, and explains the later developed yin yang doctrine; it then shows how greatly and profoundly the yin yang model of thinking has influenced Chinese philosophy and Chinese character. It concludes that Chinese naturalistic, (...) dialectical, and optimistic attitudes toward the world and life are all based on the yin yang model of thinking and that the yin yang doctrine is the starting point for anyone to understand Chinese people and their philosophies. (shrink)

This paper discusses some paradoxical propositions in Chinese tradition, especially the School of Names. It not only explains what Chinese philosophers mean by these propositions and why there are such paradoxes in Chinese philosophy, but also makes an attempt to formulate these paradoxical propositions in the language of symbolic logic. Meanwhile, the paper makes a comparison between Chinese views about contradiction and Aristotle?s law ot non?contradiction and explores the relation between them. It comes to the conclusion that once the difference (...) between Chinese concept of contraries and Aristotle?s is made clear, inconsistency between Chinese paradoxial propositions and Aristotle?s. law of non-contradiction disappears. (shrink)

This paper examines Kang Youwei’s view of sexual equality based on the study of his The Book of the Great Unity (Da Tong Shu 《大同書》). The paper shows that Kang’s critique of the subjection of women is the most systematic, profound, and fierce in the history of modern Chinese philosophy. Although his theory of the oppression of women and sexual equality is essentially the combination of liberalism, utilitarianism, and socialism, his work on the subject should be given a special place (...) in modern feminist philosophy. Unlike Western feminist thinkers, Kang understood the suffering of oppressed women in non-Western countries, especially in China, and spoke out for them in a way that no one did before. The volume on women’s oppression and liberation in The Book of the Great Unity could be regarded as a book on the subjection of women in developing countries crossing cultures and religions. (shrink)

This article discusses Confucius's view of courage in comparison with Aristotle's and Neo-Confucians'. It proposes the following arguments: Confucius's conception of courage is much broader than Aristotle's, since it does not confine courage to the category of martial virtue and moral excellence that presupposes a noble motive; both Confucius's and Aristotle's conceptions of courage hold that courage is concerned with the fear of external threats but not the strength in self-improvement as Neo-Confucians have proposed; and Confucius's conception of courage is (...) more relevant and significant than Aristotle's and Neo-Confucians' to contemporary life. (shrink)

An important question about the nature of courage is whether it is a form of self-control. In this paper I argue that there are different kinds of courage and therefore the question whether courage is a form of self-control cannot be given a uniform answer. Courage exhibited in all cases may be classified as either spontaneous or deliberative courage. Spontaneous courage is not a form of self-control and usually is called for in emergency situations. It results from long-term moral cultivation, (...) not a mindless impulse. Deliberative courage is usually shown in nonemergency situations. It may or may not involve self-control. In general, other things being equal, courage without exercising self-control is morally preferable. The absence of self-control is a necessary condition for ideal courage but ordinary courage is always accompanied by the exercise of will power. (shrink)

An important question about the nature of courage is whether it is a form of self-control. In this paper I argue that there are different kinds of courage and therefore the question whether courage is a form of self-control cannot be given a uniform answer. Courage exhibited in all cases may be classified as either spontaneous or deliberative courage. Spontaneous courage is not a form of self-control and usually is called for in emergency situations. It results from long-term moral cultivation, (...) not a mindless impulse. Deliberative courage is usually shown in nonemergency situations. It may or may not involve self-control. In general, other things being equal, courage without exercising self-control is morally preferable. The absence of self-control is a necessary condition for ideal courage but ordinary courage is always accompanied by the exercise of will power. (shrink)

An important question about the nature of virtue is whether an agent's being virtuous requires the harmony in the agent between right action and right passion. This dissertation tries to answer this question by examining a particular virtue-- courage. ;The dissertation discusses different positions in both the West and the East on the relation of action and passion in the virtue of courage. These positions form a spectrum as follows: Mencius's view : courage does not involve battling with adverse desire (...) or feeling, since the courageous agent is fearless. Furthermore, great courage or moral courage is emotionally motivated. Aristotle's view: courage is not a form of self-control, although the courageous agent has medial fear. However, while courage is not emotionally motivated in the same way as other Aristotelian virtues, it is not an apathetic state, since it is emotionally motivated by love for the noble to a certain degree. James Wallace's view: courage sometimes is a virtue of self-control, and sometimes is not. Neither harmony between action and passion nor an internal struggle on the part of the agent is a necessary condition of courage. Robert C. Roberts's view: courage usually involves battling with the desire to flee and overcoming fear. Although there are exceptions, courage is basically a form of self-control. ;After examining the above positions, the author states her own views on the issues. The author believes that the relations between action and passion in cases of courage are various. In the case of ideal courage, an agent's action and passion are in harmony, but the agent's emotional motivation mainly comes from the agent's other virtues. In the case of ordinary courage, although the agent has to battle with adverse passion, the courageous action is not simply the outcome of the victory of will power over passion. There are both cognitive and emotional factors which contribute to the strength of will. ;Through the study of courage, the dissertation concludes that the harmony of action and passion is only a criterion of perfect virtue. Virtue in general does not require such harmony. (shrink)

“The Archimedean point for moral life” discussed in this article refers to the starting point of one's moral reasoning and what ultimately makes moral life possible. The article intends to show that Mengzi's doctrine of the Four Beginnings may throw some light on our search for such an Archimedean point. More specifically, it argues for the following: Mengzi's doctrine of the Four Beginnings actually takes moral sentiments as the Archimedean point for moral life; Mengzi's view of the starting point of (...) moral reasoning and the ultimate ground for moral life not only can be empirically supported to a great extent, but also logically plausible. (shrink)

Moral Perception is the moral agent’s perception of the morally significant situation. In recent decades, the question about the role of moral perception in the moral life has drawn more and more attention in contemporary ethical theories. It has been widely acknowledged that the virtuous person perceives a given morally significant situation differently from others. But, current discussions of moral perception have been focused on the cognitive function of moral perception i.e., moral perception's making a certain feature of a given (...) situation salient for the agent, but there is not much that has been said about the evaluative nature of moral perception, i.e., moral perception's offering the agent a certain evaluation of the saliently perceived feature of a given situation. This paper is intended to show that moral perception has both cognitive and evaluative dimensions. More specifically, it argues that moral perception is not only a matter of saliently seeing certain features of a morally significant situation but also a matter of evaluating these features. It is such an integration of cognitive and evaluative dimensions of moral perception that provides with the agent motivational power and makes her action possible. (shrink)

... virtue (arete) with Confucius' key notion ren — which has also been interpreted as "virtue" — in order to make explicit whether and to what extent they ...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:On the Epistemology of the Senses in Early Chinese ThoughtXinyan JiangOn the Epistemology of the Senses in Early Chinese Thought. By Jane Geaney. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002. Pp. vii + 267. Paper $20.00.On the Epistemology of the Senses in Early Chinese Thought by Jane Geaney is a most valuable and original work on Chinese philosophical views of the senses [End Page 489] in the Warring States (...) period (ca. fifth to third centuries B.C.). It may well be the first systematic study of this topic in the English-speaking world. For this reason alone, it is worthy of attention from all who study Chinese philosophy.The book includes a wide range of discussions of the positions presented in classical Chinese philosophical texts such as the Lunyu, the Mozi, the Mengzi, the Laozi (Daodejing), the Zhuangzi, and especially the Xunzi. Based on these texts, the author argues that there are some shared views on the senses among early Chinese philosophers and that these Chinese views are significantly different from those in Western philosophy. What best distinguishes early Chinese theories of the senses from Western ones is their view of sense discrimination.Sense discrimination is the subject of this book, which carefully examines early Chinese views on the individual senses, especially hearing and seeing, and their relation to the "heartmind" (xin). Geaney uses the term "sense discrimination" to mean something other than "sense perception" or "sensation." By "sense" Geaney refers to "things like hearing, seeing and other specialized forms of interaction between the inside and outside of human beings" (p. 175); by "sensation" she means one's direct and private awareness of sense data (p. 31); and by "sense perception" she refers to the interpretation of sense data (p. 32). Sense discrimination might be something that lies between sensation and perception since it neither represents sense data as directly as sensation does nor interprets sense data as much as perception does. It seems that by "sense discrimination" Geaney refers to the distinguishing function of the senses. For Geaney, sense discrimination is "the general operations characteristic of each of the senses" (p. 175). In other words, a typical operation of a sense always involves discrimination although it does not involve inference. For instance, to sense a color is to discern it "in terms of a background of other colors and the preferences associated with that form of discrimination" (p. 35). Since sense discrimination is a non-inferential activity and does not involve the employment of a concept, it is still a function of the senses but not a function of reason.For Geaney, knowledge associated with sense discrimination in early Chinese thought is different from sensation and perception as understood in Western philosophy, but has some resemblance to aspect perception in the Wittgensteinian sense. Aspect perception is the perception of particular aspects of the objects that are perceived. For example, "seeing x as a rabbit" or "seeing x as a duck" is an aspect perception (p. 33). It seems to Geaney that in Western philosophy, at least in so-called representative realism, the function of sensation is to represent sense data, and the function of perception is to interpret sense data. Sense data in themselves are content-neutral and uninterpreted. The knowledge gained from sensation involves uninterpreted raw data only and is therefore infallible, while knowledge from perception is based on the interpretation of raw data and is therefore not error-free. Aspect perception does not involve inference but does involve interpretation. Therefore, it is fallible as well (pp. 31-32). Geaney argues that in Warring States Chinese thought there was not a notion of sense data that are uninterpreted raw material. Hence, Warring States Chinese philosophers did not [End Page 490] have the concepts of sensation and perception as understood in Western traditions (p. 33).According to Geaney, although the distinction between things "as they seem to us" and things "as they are in themselves" was not a philosophical problem, and skepticism was not a real issue in early Chinese thought, it was not the case that early Chinese philosophers simply held a naive realist position that our senses always tell us what things... (shrink)

In Hypatia's 3, issue, Xinyan Jiang describes a failed experiment in sexual equality conducted during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. She believes the lesson to be drawn from it is that males will continue to have an advantage in societies requiring much physical strength. In contrast, I argue here that this failed experiment shows that the Maoist attempt to force women into men's roles was not feminist. American pioneers are cited as a counterexample.

In Hypatia's 3, issue, Xinyan Jiang describes a failed experiment in sexual equality conducted during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. She believes the lesson to be drawn from it is that males will continue to have an advantage in societies requiring much physical strength. In contrast, I argue here that this failed experiment shows that the Maoist attempt to force women into men's roles was not feminist. American pioneers are cited as a counterexample.

In Hypatia's 3, issue, Xinyan Jiang describes a failed experiment in sexual equality conducted during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. She believes the lesson to be drawn from it is that males will continue to have an advantage in societies requiring much physical strength. In contrast, I argue here that this failed experiment shows that the Maoist attempt to force women into men's roles was not feminist. American pioneers are cited as a counterexample.

In Hypatia's 3, issue, Xinyan Jiang describes a failed experiment in sexual equality conducted during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. She believes the lesson to be drawn from it is that males will continue to have an advantage in societies requiring much physical strength. In contrast, I argue here that this failed experiment shows that the Maoist attempt to force women into men's roles was not feminist. American pioneers are cited as a counterexample.

本书共分三篇,即:现时代与马克思主义哲学的反思;马克思主义认识论探要;全球化、全球问题及社会发展理论研究.

本书以专题的形式对哲学的一些基本理论、基本知识作了既有一定理论深度又有比较通俗易懂的阐述.

Authoritarian leadership is of great significance to eastern countries, including China. Meanwhile, unethical employee behavior also exists in all types of social organizations. The relationship between authoritarian leadership and unethical employee behavior is worth studying. Senior leaders often do not have a direct influence on employees except for through their immediate supervisors. The leadership style of senior leaders also influences the leadership style of their subordinates. This paper studies how authoritarian manager leadership trickles down to unethical employee behavior through authoritarian (...) supervisor leadership and discusses the moderating effect of leader member exchange and an ethical climate. Through a questionnaire survey of 406 pairs of leaders, supervisors, and employees, the research results of the multilevel model show that authoritarian supervisor leadership is positively related to unethical employee behavior, authoritarian supervisor leadership mediates the relationship between authoritarian manager leadership and unethical employee behavior, LMX positively moderates the relationship between authoritarian manager leadership and authoritarian supervisor leadership and moderates the mediating effect of authoritarian supervisor leadership, and, that an ethical climate negatively moderates the relationship between authoritarian supervisor leadership and unethical employee behavior and moderates the mediating effect of authoritarian supervisor leadership. (shrink)

By examining an exemplar sample of mental health nursing educational policies and related legislation, in this article, we trace the discursive production of madness as an “othered” identity category. We engage in a critical discourse analysis of mental health nursing education in Canada, drawing on provincial and federal policies and legislation as the main sources of data. Theoretically framed by critical posthumanism and mad studies, this article outlines how the mad subjectivity becomes decontextualized out of its identity‐based understanding and recontextualized (...) as an inferior category of “the human,” circulating within discourses of pedagogy, economics, law, and psychiatry. The article maps the intertextual nexus of the discourse of mental health nursing education, making visible the complex, the arbitrary, and the sometimes‐contradictory nature of the discipline's grappling with identity‐based mental health concepts. We close with several implications for nursing policy, education, and practice. (shrink)

Background:There is controversy concerning the use of physical restraint. Despite this controversy, some nurses still consider the application of physical restraint unavoidable for some of their clients.Aim:Identify the perceptions and practice of physical restraint in China.Research design:This was a descriptive study that combined qualitative interviews with a quantitative cross-sectional survey.Participants:A total of 18 nurses were interviewed and 330 nurses were surveyed.Ethical considerations:Approval of the study was obtained from the hospital ethics committee. Permission to conduct the study was obtained from the (...) director of nursing. Participants were assured that their participation is voluntary.Results:Physical restraint was commonly used to protect patients’ safety. Naturally, intensive care unit nurses used physical restraint much more frequently than general medical/surgical ward nurses ( p < 0.01). In addition, night shift nurses tended to use physical restraint more frequently.Conclusion:Nursing managers should be aware of the role nurses play in the use of physical restraint. In-service training regarding the proper use of physical restraint should be strengthened and nurse staffing levels should be improved in order to minimize the use of physical restraint in China. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This study investigated what information about brain death was available from Google searches for five major religions. A substantial body of supporting research examining online behaviors shows that information seekers use Google as their preferred search engine and usually limit their search to entries on the first page. For each of the five religions in this study, Google listings reveal ethical controversy about organ donation in the context of brain death. These results suggest that family members who go online (...) to find information about organ donation in the context of brain death would find information about ethical controversy in the first page of Google listings. Organ procurement agencies claim that all major world religions approve of organ donation and do not address the ethical controversy about organ donation in the context of brain death that is readily available online. (shrink)

This article hopes to accomplish two goals: first, it proposes a more effective framework for philosophers who engage in philosophical interpretations and constructions of Chan Buddhist texts, like the Linji Lu, to deal with challenges from historians when the integrity of those Chan texts as well as their authorship is called into question, so that a more robust intellectual space for the philosophical discourse on Chan classics can be carved out from the dominant historicist discourse. Accordingly, I argue that philosophical (...) and historical approaches to Chan classics have divergent scholarly objectives and follow different disciplinary norms. To clarify such divergence, I propose a hermeneutical model to distinguish two sets of scholarly objects operative in history and philosophy respectively, namely original versus inherited text, historical versus textual author, and authorial versus textual intent. These scholarly objects are related, at times even overlapped but often irreducibly distinct, with the former in the pairs belonging to historians and the latter to philosophers. Second, the article puts forward an alternative interpretation of Linji’s signature teaching of sudden enlightenment by connecting Linji’s demand for immediacy in his training of disciples with the nurturing of a particular set of character traits conducive to Chan enlightenment. It argues that only those practitioners with a strong character can weather the grueling demand of the arduous spiritual journey prescribed in Chan teachings. Therefore, I describe Linji’s teaching as advocating that “character is the Way,” wherein the Way refers to the Chan path of enlightenment. (shrink)