Globalization has changed almost every facet of life for people around the world, and today the flow of influence is no longer uni-directional. It is argued that East Asian societies are anchored in an indigenous form of hierarchical relationalism where social structure is produced by relational obligations of an ethical and normative nature that have slowed its traditional culture “melting into air” as prophesied by Marx. The successfully modernization of East Asia has involved hybridization, compartmentalization, and sequencing of traditional psychological (...) features of Confucianist societies such as delay of gratification and respect for education, paternalistic leadership, filial piety, and beliefs in harmony or benevolence. Features of hierarchical relationalism are adaptable to creating niches for East Asian societies that thrive under globalization as characterized by the paradoxical coupling of economic inequality in fact with discourses of equality in principle. Moral, ethical demands for enlightened leadership constrain East Asian elites to at least attempt to protect subordinates and protect societal well-being. A fundamental contribution of East Asia to global society may be in the articulation of how to ameliorate economic inequality using Confucian principles of hierarchical relationalism. (shrink)

It was the lack of hope for political reform that turned a neo-Confucianist school led by chu hsi to develop comprehensive metaphysical principles and integrated social actions as the only true way to put the confucian value system into practice. An ill-Advised persecution led to the contrary result: a heightened prestige. Facing the mongol threat, The state in an effort to strengthen itself belatedly adopted this school as the state orthodoxy, More for prestige than for reality. When the mongols occupied (...) all china, It was to this neo-Confucianism that the chinese society turned for its cultural identity. This was the socio-Political process by which a re-Defined confucian value system came to pervade china, Even among the illiterate. (shrink)

The problem of defining culture has exercised anthropologists but not cross?cultural psychologists because psychological science is based on quantitative forms of empiricism where the validity of categorical boundaries is determined by their predictive utility. Furthermore, many indigenous psychologies have been allied to nation?building projects in the developing world that choose to gloss over within state ethnic differences for the purposes of national strength and unity. Finally, Carl Martin Allwood?s target article ?On the foundation of the indigenous psychologies? (2011, Social Epistemology (...) 25 (1): 3?14) is grounded in western thinking about science that privileges analytical philosophy, particularly the importance of constructing definitional categories as the basis of its critique of indigenous psychologies. This is a limited basis for thinking about psychological science whose flaws have been exposed by highly visible critiques on analytical versus holistic thinking. From the point of view of Asian social psychologists, there is no analytical solution as to where to draw the boundaries of culture because culture is a social construction that will vary according to the situation and motives at play in different situations. But this is not an intractable problem because all human psychology is intentionally realized with elements of social construction that are part and parcel of experienced reality. (shrink)

Globalization has brought people around the world closer together in ways that have created greater uncertainty in their identity politics. This has sometimes strengthened local identities, despite attempts to create ‘universal’ forms of identity that impose one standard of appropriate conduct in the face of difference. Drawing from Dialogical Self Theory and from cosmopolitanism, we propose that adequately responding to the ethical and identity challenges presented by globalization requires having Global Consciousness: “a knowledge of both the interconnectedness and difference of (...) humankind, and a will to take moral actions in a reflexive manner on its behalf”. We argue that this approach can ground a distinctively normative psychology of globalization. We consider negative and positive aspects of the golden rule in equal and close relationships, and benevolence in unequal power relationships as behaviour guides for global consciousness, and theorize about institutional leadership that supports the provision of public goods. We offer empirical tests of this approach. (shrink)

Invertebrate genetic models with their tractable neuromuscular systems are effective vehicles for the study of human nerve and muscle disorders. This is exemplified by insights made into spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster and the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans. For speed and economy, these invertebrates offer convenient, whole‐organism platforms for genetic screening as well as RNA interference (RNAi) and chemical library screens, permitting the rapid testing of hypotheses related to disease mechanisms and the exploration of new (...) therapeutic routes and drug candidates. Here, we discuss recent developments encompassing synaptic physiology, RNA processing, and screening of compound and genome‐scale RNAi libraries, showcasing the importance of invertebrate SMA models.Editor's suggested further reading in BioEssays: SMN and Gemins: ‘We are family’... or are we? Abstract. (shrink)

Collective memory can make and break political culture around the world. Representations and reinterpretations of the past intersect with actions that shape the future. A nation's political culture emerges from complex layers of institutional and individual responses to historical events. Society changes and is changed by these layers of memory over time. Understanding them gives us insight into where we are today. Encompassing examples from colonization and decolonization, revolving around the critical junctures of the world wars, this book illustrates how (...) collective memory is produced and organized, through commemoration, through monuments, and through individuals sharing stories. Using concrete examples from around the world, James H. Liu shows how different disciplines can come together through shared concepts like narratives and generational memories to provide mutually enriching perspectives on how political culture is made, and how it changes. (shrink)

Ethical Politics and Modern Society introduces and critically examines British idealist philosopher, Thomas Hill Green, his practical philosophy and its reception in China between the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. As a response to the modernity issue in Great Britain, Green's philosophy, in particular his ethical politics, anticipated a practical solution to the individual alienation issue in modern society. Witnessing the resemblance between Green's ethical politics and classical Chinese ethical and political thought, some Chinese scholars became inclined (...) to take Green's thought as an intellectual approach to assimilate Western modernity. While Green and the Chinese scholars both intended to articulate an ethical conception of modern politics in response to the issue of modernity, their results were very different. In this book, James Jia-Hau Liu analyses why modern Chinese scholars introduced Green's philosophy to China and why the studies of Green's philosophy in China have since faded away. Modern Chinese scholars, such as Gao Yi-Han, Chin Yueh-Lin, Tang Jun-Yi, Chang Fo-Chuan and Yin Hai-Guang, are explored in greater detail. The contradictory standings towards modernity between Green and Chinese scholars illustrate how to understand the difference forms of modernity that can be embodied therein. Ethical Politics and Modern Society is a valuable resource to scholars of political philosophy, political theory, history of social and political thought, British Idealism and the work of Thomas Hill Green. (shrink)

This co-edited volume compares Chinese and Western experiences of engineering, technology, and development. In doing so, it builds a bridge between the East and West and advances a dialogue in the philosophy of engineering. Divided into three parts, the book starts with studies on epistemological and ontological issues, with a special focus on engineering design, creativity, management, feasibility, and sustainability. Part II considers relationships between the history and philosophy of engineering, and includes a general argument for the necessity of dialogue (...) between history and philosophy. It continues with a general introduction to traditional Chinese attitudes toward engineering and technology, and philosophical case studies of the Chinese steel industry, railroads, and cybernetics in the Soviet Union. Part III focuses on engineering, ethics, and society, with chapters on engineering education and practice in China and the West. The book’s analyses of the interactions of science, engineering, ethics, politics, and policy in different societal contexts are of special interest. The volume as a whole marks a new stage in the emergence of the philosophy of engineering as a new regionalization of philosophy. This carefully edited interdisciplinary volume grew out of an international conference on the philosophy of engineering hosted by the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. It includes 30 contributions by leading philosophers, social scientists, and engineers from Australia, China, Europe, and the United States. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to improve the practical argument for beliefs in God. Some theists, most famously Kant and William James, called our attention to a particular set of beliefs, the Jamesian-type beliefs, which are justified by virtue of their practical significance, and these theists tried to justify theistic beliefs on the exact same ground. I argue, contra the Jamesian tradition, that theistic beliefs are different from the Jamesian-type beliefs and thus cannot be justified on the same ground. (...) I also argue that the practical argument, as it stands, faces a problem of self-defeat. I then construct a new practical argument that avoids both problems. According to this new argument, theistic beliefs are rational to accept because such beliefs best supply us with motivation strong enough to carry out demanding moral tasks. (shrink)

In 2000, Mark Palmer, one of the National Endowment for Democracy’s founders and Vice Chairman of Freedom House—an organization funded entirely by the U.S. Congress—founded a new government-supported group, Friends of Falun Gong. By perusing FoFG’s annual tax filings, one discovers that FoFG has contributed funds to Sounds of Hope Radio, New Tang Dynasty TV, and the Epoch Times—all Falun Gong media outlets. FoFG has also contributed to Dragon Springs and to Shen Yun, as well as to Falun Gong’s PR (...) arm. In order to contextualize the U.S. government’s funding of Falun Gong, it will also be helpful to examine a handful of additional U.S. agency activities, such as the NED’s funding of Liu Xiaobo, the Hong Kong protests, and other China-related and Tibet-related groups. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Wandering at Ease in the ZhuangziJames MillerWandering at Ease in the Zhuangzi. Edited by Roger T. Ames. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. Pp. viii + 239."Good grief!" exclaimed the reviewer as he greedily tore open the package from Philosophy East and West. "Not another book on Zhuangzi!"As it turns out, Wandering at Ease in the Zhuangzi, edited by Roger T. Ames, was found to be (...) not just "another book on Zhuangzi" but, instead, a wonderful collection of creative essays that genuinely wanders on Zhuangzi's vast spirit and that should appeal to a broad academic audience. Do not be deceived by the publisher's blurb on the back cover: "an excellent balance of philological and philosophical analysis." This summary of the book's contents proves to be fortunately misleading.The common thread running through this book is that it is dedicated to Yang Yu-wei, who taught many of the contributors while they were graduate students at Taiwan Normal University. Randall P. Peerenboom hilariously describes his first encounter with Professor Yang in a coda to his essay "Living Beyond the Bounds:Henry Miller and the Quest for Daoist Realization":He darted across the busy main street, dodging traffic, all the while calling out my name in a booming voice sure to attract the attention of the wandering undead and waving his arms in whirlwind fashion, managing somehow to evoke simultaneously images of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Jack Nicholson in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, and the Bodhidharma. Welcome, I thought, to the wonderful world of Oz.(p. 139) [End Page 125]This description sets the tone for the essays here, which concentrate on the Zhuangzi's humor, character, and personality, unafraid to stride out across the busy, one-way streets of traditional academic disciplines. While remaining rigorously within the bounds of academic probity, this volume steadfastly resists the dangerous encroachment of desiccating intellectualism upon the wit, intelligence, and charm of one of the world's greatest works of literature.All of the essays "live beyond the bounds" in some fashion or other. Chris Jochim's "Just Say No to 'No Self' in Zhuangzi" reviews recent writing on self and personhood in the Zhuangzi, and includes the treatment of Zhuangzi in the theories of flow and happiness by the noted psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi. Daniel Coyle's study of the zhenren (authentic person), lurks tentatively in the shadows of comparative mysticism. A comparison such as "Theocentrism aside, Zhuangzi's language is Eckhart-like in that it cancels itself out, short-circuiting the intellect so as to open one up to spontaneity and the omnipresence of Heaven" deserves greater exploration than a short essay can afford. James D. Sellmann's essay on the transformative effects of humor is briefly illuminated by a reference to Milan Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1986),1 but this worthy literary intersection is only pursued in a footnote. The question of philosophy and literature is also raised in William Callahan's study of action and decision making in the story of Cook Ding. Callahan, again in footnotes, acknowledges the influence of Kundera, Barthes, and Derrida in his quest to understand what it means to "read" literary philosophy or philosophical literature. His essay, however, owes its chief debt to the linguistic analysis of Chad Hansen and A. C. Graham, and we can only hope that he will soon furnish us with the full fruits of his literary education.One group of essays deals with particular characters in the Zhuangzi. Kirill Ole Thompson's inventive study of fishermen in the Zhuangzi wades into the waters of Tang poetry, incorporating translations of Zhang Zhihe, Liu Zongyuan, Wang Wei, and Sikong Shu. The literary connection is only in a coda, but it is there nonetheless. A future study would perhaps do well to broaden this research to include works of art. One thinks of Wang Meng's masterpiece of around 1360, Fisherman of Huaxi or the Yuan literatus Wu Zhen's Fisherman Recluse on Lake Dongting, both in the collection of the National Palace Museum, T'aipei.2Zhuangzi's close companion, Hui Shi, is the subject of... (shrink)

Former Google advertising strategist, now Oxford-trained philosopher James Williams launches a plea to society and to the tech industry to help ensure that the technology we all carry with us every day does not distract us from pursuing our true goals in life. As information becomes ever more plentiful, the resource that is becoming more scarce is our attention. In this 'attention economy', we need to recognise the fundamental impacts of our new information environment on our lives in order (...) to take back control. Drawing on insights ranging from Diogenes to contemporary tech leaders, Williams's thoughtful and impassioned analysis is sure to provoke discussion and debate. Williams is the inaugural winner of the Nine Dots Prize, a new Prize for creative thinking that tackles contemporary social issues. This title is also available as Open Access. (shrink)

This is the first critical study of The Logic of Sense, Gilles Deleuze's most important work on language and ethics, as well as the main source of his vital philosophy of the event.James Williams explains the originality of Deleuze's work with careful definitions of all his innovative terms and a detailed description of the complex structure he constructs. This reading makes connections to his ground-breaking work on literature, to his critical but also progressive relation to the sciences, and to (...) his controversial denial of the priority of standard logics, human values and 'meaning' in thinking.This book will open new debates and develop current ones around Deleuze's work in philosophy, politics, literature, linguistics, cultural studies and sociology. (shrink)

Why is American punishment so cruel? While in continental Europe great efforts are made to guarantee that prisoners are treated humanely, in America sentences have gotten longer and rehabilitation programs have fallen by the wayside. Western Europe attempts to prepare its criminals for life after prison, whereas many American prisons today leave their inhabitants reduced and debased. In the last quarter of a century, Europe has worked to ensure that the baser human inclination toward vengeance is not reflected by state (...) policy, yet America has shown a systemic drive toward ever increasing levels of harshness in its criminal policies. Why is America so short on mercy? In this deeply researched, comparative work, James Q. Whitman reaches back to the 17th and 18th centuries to trace how and why American and European practices came to diverge. Eschewing the usual historical imprisonment narratives, Whitman focuses instead on intriguing differences in the development of punishment in the age of Western democracy. European traditions of social hierarchy and state power, so consciously rejected by the American colonies, nevertheless supported a more merciful and dignified treatment of offenders. The hierarchical class system on the continent kept alive a tradition of less-degrading "high-status" punishments that eventually became applied across the board in Europe. The distinctly American, draconian regime, on the other hand, grows, Whitman argues, out of America's longstanding distrust of state power and its peculiar, broad-brush sense of egalitarianism. Low-status punishments were evenly meted out to all offenders, regardless of class or standing. America's unrelentingly harsh treatment of trangressors--this "equal opportunity degradation"-- is, in a very real sense, the dark side of the nation's much vaunted individualism. A sobering look at the growing rift between the United States and Europe, Harsh Justice exposes the deep cultural roots of America's degrading punishment practices. (shrink)