The study of dialectical logic has a history of nearly one hundred years in China. It is significant for understanding both the growth of Chinese logic and the Sinicization of Marxism to review dialectical logic in the context of introducing the study of Marxism in China. Debates about dialectical logic in Chinese academic circles involve not only the problems of logic itself, but more importantly the understanding of Marxist philosophy. In the 1920s and 1930s, some Marxist researchers in (...) China were influenced by the philosophers and logicians of the former Soviet Union, and they came very close to equating dialectical logic with Marxist dialectics. They also identified the formal logic originating from ancient Greece as metaphysics, praising the former and criticizing the latter. In the upsurge of Marxist philosophy in the 1950s and 1960s, Chinese logicians carried out normal and formal academic research on dialectical logic. During the period from the end of 1970s to the end of 1990s, the research and teaching of dialectical logic in China reached its heyday, and logicians performed comprehensive and detailed research on some critical issues, including the basic laws of dialectical logic, which they tried to formalize. Since the beginning of the 21st century, dialectical logic has ceased to prosper and has faded from the core field of the discipline of logic, although some honorable scholars still persist in studying it. (shrink)

The history of Chinese Marxist thought is intimately intertwined with ancient autochthonous philosophical texts. In Chinese Dialectics the complete intellectual history of Chinese Marxism is laid bare.

This paper explores the elusive dialectic between concentration and forgetfulness, consciousness and unconsciousness in spontaneous artistic creation favoured by artists and advocated by critics in Chinese art history, by examining texts on painting and tracing back to ancient Daoist philosophical ideas, in a comparison with Kantian and post-Kantian aesthetics. Although artistic spontaneity in classical Chinese aesthetics seems to share similarities with Kant’s account of spontaneity in the art of genius, the emphasis on unconsciousness is valued by classical (...) Chinese artists and critics inspired by the Daoist idea of ‘Wu Wei’ (acting without conscious intention or effort). As the Qing painter Wang Yuanqi (1642–1715) claimed when admitting his failure to copy the Yuan master Ni Zan (1301–1374), Ni Zan’s success in natural and untrammelled expression lies ‘in between having an intention and not having one’. A similar idea about the dialectic of consciousness and unconsciousness in artistic spontaneity was suggested by Heinrich von Kleist’s On the Marionette Theatre (1880), which demonstrated that while self-consciousness might disturb and hinder the naturalness of artistic expression and thus encourage affectation, it does not mean that there is no role for consciousness. Although the views on unconsciousness in art and the co-play of consciousness and unconscious in artistic creation by Schelling, Schiller, Goethe, and even Nietzsche might get inspirations from Kant’s hidden view of the unconscious, Kant’s emphasis on the harmonious cooperation between imagination and understanding disguises his inexplicit idea of the unconscious. This paper will demonstrate that while in both Classical Chinese and European cultural contexts, artists, critics and philosophers talk about the same elusive relation, the philosophical explanations of the same phenomenon are essentially distinctive. (shrink)

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)

Western scholars read "dialectical materialism" in Chinese Marxism within a Western philosophical frame. Some hold that Chinese Marxism is Chinese in some important sense, but fail to see what is involved; others see nothing particularly Chinese about Chinese Marxism. Similarly, Chinese Marxists identify bianzhengfa with Marxian dialectic, without adequately realizing the difficulties attending that concept. ;The dissertation shows tongbian as a distinct but not necessarily unique style of Chinese "thought" , which was (...) formulated in ancient philosophical literature such as the Yijing. I argue that Chinese intellectuals understand Marxist thought in terms of tongbian. What tong-bian sees is a "world as such," or ziran ; with no transcendence, every element is relative to every other and all elements are thus "correlative." Each particular is both self-determinate and determined by every other. An explanation of relationships requires a contexualist interpretation of the world in which events are strictly interdependent. "Polarity" implies a relationship of two events, each constituting a necessary condition for the other. Yin always suggests becoming-yang, and vice versa. Any two events constantly alternate each another, change into each other, exchange with each other, displace each other, and so on. The salient feature of tongbian philosophy is that the complementary and contradictory interactions of the two basic elements of a polarity like yin-yang constitute the forces, and produce change. ;Chinese Marxism finds its roots in Engels but reads him in a distinctly different way and, by drawing on tongbian, develops into a strong and useful strand of thought. I examine this in the writings of Cai Yuanpei, Qu Qiubai, Ai Siqi, and Mao Zedong. I show that juxtaposing dialectics with bianzhenga is a misunderstanding. The version of Chinese Marxism that I recover seems close to Marx on certain points, especially In terms of "internal relations." However, it is rather a third way as developed from a culture and tradition that can not be understood in Western terms. (shrink)

Western materialism and dialectics are different from their Chinese analogues. The informed perspective presented here may rouse a sensitivity to these differences in a tongbian reading of Marxist philosophy on the part of Chinese intellectuals; Marxism is no longer exactly what it is understood to be in the Western tradition. Ai Siqi's discussions of "materialism" and "the interpenetration of opposites" exemplify how Chinese Marxism draws on tongbian to read Marx and Engels in a distinctly different way. Little (...) in Ai's thought can be identifiable with Engels' law of unity of contradiction, where all motion consists of the interplay of attraction and repulsion, and the form of motion is what physics terms "energy." Following Hall and Ames on correlative thinking in the Chinese tradition, it is argued that certain Western cosmological assumptions have led to differences between Western Marxism and particular philosophical currents in the Chinese tradition, and that Chinese Marxism has developed from a culture and tradition that cannot be understood fully in terms of Western categories. (shrink)

English second language learners often experience difficulties in producing native-like English lexical stress. It is unknown which acoustic correlates, such as fundamental frequency (F0), duration, and intensity, are the most problematic for Chinese dialect speakers. The present study investigated the prosodic transfer effects of first language (L1) regional dialects on the production of English stress contrasts. Native English speakers (N = 20) and Chinese learners (N = 60) with different dialect backgrounds (Beijing, Changsha, and Guangzhou dialects) produced the (...) same stimulus including both trochaic and iambic patterns. Results showed that (a) all participants produced the stressed syllable with greater values of F0, duration, and intensity; (b) Native speakers of English employed an exquisite combination of F0, duration, and intensity, while the dialect groups transfer their native prosody into their production of English lexical stress, resulting in the deviation or abnormality of acoustic cues. Results suggest that L1 native dialect background is considered as a potentially influential factor which may transfer in L2 speech encoding and decoding process. (shrink)

This study investigated the possible prosodic transfer influences native regional dialects may have in the perception of English lexical stress by speakers of three Chinese dialects [Beijing (BJ), Changsha (CS), and Guangzhou (GZ)] compared to 20 American English (AE) speakers. F0, duration, intensity, and vowel reduction were manipulated in nonce disyllabic words. Participants performed four-word sequence recall tasks to identify lexical stress location. They performed better with natural sounds than with manipulated words. This study focused on the performance differences (...) in manipulating words. The results showed that all four-group members performed similarly processing F0 condition nonce words. BJ and CS participants were more accurate than GZ participants in duration and vowel reduction cues. Reaction time (RT) suggested that the processing time of acoustic cues differed significantly across language groups. The findings indicate that first language (L1) dialect effect is robust in second language (L2) stress perception tasks. (shrink)

In tone languages, some case studies showed that the word-level tonal representation was closely related to the underlying metrical pattern. Based on different tonal patterns in prosodic units, the metrical structures could generally be divided into the left- and right-dominant types in Chinese dialects. Yet the cross-dialectal phonetic realizations (e.g., duration and pitch) between or within these two metrical structures were still unrevealed. The current study investigated the duration and pitch realizations of disyllabic prosodic words in Changsha and Chengdu (...) dialects (the left-dominant structure), and in Fuzhou and Xiamen dialects (the right-dominant structure). Results showed that not all the duration patterns across four Chinese dialects were sensitive to different metrical structures, indicating that the duration might not be the universal cue for metrical prominence in Chinese dialects. In terms of pitch realization across all the four Chinese dialects, level tones (sometimes falling tones) generally appeared in the metrically weak unit, while underlying pitch forms appeared in the metrically strong unit. Compared with duration, pitch might be more robust for prosodic realizations of metrical structures in Chinese dialects. Furthermore, there was an interaction between duration and pitch patterns in Chinese dialects, which could shed new light on the phenomenon of “metrical tone sandhi”. Meanwhile, this study also provides some references for the judgment of the metrical stress and prosodic realizations in other Chinese dialects. (shrink)

Second Scholasticism greatly developed the medieval theory of continuous quantity as the Aristotelian notion for thematizing spatial extension, paving the way for the idea of space as extension in early modern natural philosophy. The article analyzes the section related to the category of continuous quantity in the Coimbra commentary on the Dialectics (1606), showing that it is indebted to the novel theory of Francisco Suárez on quantity as bestowing extension to a body in a particular sense, something which had been (...) overlooked by previous research. The scholarly debate on quantity was brought to China, and here the Chinese translation is examined of the section on quantity in the fourth volume of the Mingli Tan, published in China in 1636-­1639. (shrink)

Our current work seeks to provide direct empirical evidence on whether Chinese international students’ experiences studying abroad promote dialectical thinking. We collected behavioral data from 258 Chinese international students studying in multiple regions. We found that there was a main effect among the four conditions. More specifically, when primed with studying abroad or typical day, participants were more likely to show tolerance for contradiction by deeming both sides of contradictory scientific statements as convincing and rating them more favorably. (...) Therefore, it is plausible that Chinese international students’ experiences studying abroad promote their dialectical thinking. More work is needed to further this line of research by extending these effects with other measures of dialectical thinking such as perception of interconnectedness and prediction of change, adopting differing paradigms to provide more robust findings, and probing the underlying processes as to why experiences studying abroad promote dialectical thinking. (shrink)

The informative purpose of the research study is to describe the Applications of modern dance and creation in Chinese dance from dialectical materialist philosophy. This research study was conducted in china to measure Chinese and modern dance from materialist philosophy. Research based on primary data analysis for gathering the data developed almost 10 to 12 questions related to the variables. The Chinese dancers, department of Chinese dancers, film industries, etc., are all research study participants. For measuring, (...) the research study used smart PLS software, and run results included composite reliability, segmentations, smart PLS Algorithm, indicator correlations, and signification analysis related to the modern dance creation performance in China and the effect of dialectical materialist philosophy. Overall, the research found a positive and significant application of modern dance and creation from dialectical materialist philosophy. Modern dance and creation have a direct influence on dialectical materialist philosophy. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to discover an important contribution of classical Chinese ontological conceptions for the future world philosophy and the modern human Weltanschauung in the process of its globalization. Through a brief mosaic of a development of mutual Euro-Chinese encounters, from the Middle Ages to the present, the paper presents the view that both Chinese and European philosophical complexes were quite indispensable parts of the history of world philosophy; and in the future, perhaps, they (...) will be the leading factors that decide (in their serious confrontation) the basic determination of the roots of the global world metaphilosophy. At the same time the author, long having carried out scholarly research and published translations of Laozi 's Dao De Jing, Confucius' Lunyu, the Books of Xunii, Huang Lao, Huang di si jing, etc., wants to demonstrate, on the basis of specific examples of original Chinese dialectical metaphysics, their unique philosophical value for the future world philosophy and the modern human Weltanschauung. (shrink)

Abstract:This essay presents a refreshing reading of Bertolt Brecht's Stories of Mr. Keuner through the lens of classical Chinese dialectics. Through careful analysis, I uncover not only interesting resonances between Brecht's stories and classical Chinese philosophy but also intriguing dialectic tensions between individual and clusters of stories in the collection, and between Brecht (the man, the artist, and his dramatic oeuvre) and Mr. Keuner (Mr. Nobody), his philosophical alter ego, as the titular character dialogues with his many (...) interlocutors on momentous issues such as knowledge, power, justice, fatherland, and more. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to discover an important contribution of classical Chinese ontological conceptions for the future world philosophy and the modern human Weltanschauung in the process of its globalization. Through a brief mosaic of a development of mutual Euro-Chinese encounters, from the Middle Ages to the present, the paper presents the view that both Chinese and European philosophical complexes were quite indispensable parts of the history of world philosophy; and in the future, perhaps, they (...) will be the leading factors that decide (in their serious confrontation) the basic determination of the roots of the global world metaphilosophy. At the same time the author, long having carried out scholarly research and published translations of Laozi 's Dao De Jing, Confucius' Lunyu, the Books of Xunii, Huang Lao, Huang di si jing, etc., wants to demonstrate, on the basis of specific examples of original Chinese dialectical metaphysics, their unique philosophical value for the future world philosophy and the modern human Weltanschauung. (shrink)

The present essay aims to throw light on the study of dialectical thinking from a cultural-historical perspective. Different forms of dialectic are articulated as ideal types, including the Greek dialectic, the Hegelian dialectic, the contemporary German negative dialectic, the Chinese dialectic, and the Indian negative dialectic. These influential cultural products in the history of the East and the West, articulated as ideal types, serve as constellations that could facilitate further empirical studies on dialectical (...) thinking. An understanding of the complexity of these constellations reveals the pitfalls of investigating dialectical thinking without an appropriate conceptualization of the research target. With the ideal types of dialectic as "figure," and Vygotsky's thesis of the cultural-historical origin of higher psychological processes as "ground," we explore possibilities for further lines of inquiry on dialectical thinking. Adhering to the Scribnerian multilevel scheme that reconstructs Vygotsky's thesis, and returning to the core ideas of Vygotsky himself, we discover new, meaningful questions about the study of dialectical thinking. In the research area of "culture and cognition," consideration of a cultural-historical perspective appears to be both necessary and promising. (shrink)

Both "dialectical contradiction" and "logical contradiction" use the word "contradiction." This is misleading; it may easily lead people to believe that the word "contradiction" has only one meaning and thus confuse dialectical contradiction with logical contradiction. As a matter of fact, in dialectics and logic "contradiction" implies different things. "Contradiction" as used in dialectics refers to the two contradictory aspects in a thing. In contrast, "contradiction" as described in formal logic means the self-contradictoriness in thinking. For example, contradictions between the (...) productive forces and the relations of production, between one's merits and weaknesses, and between getting rid of the stale and taking in the fresh are all dialectical contradictions. "At once a man and a not-man," "at once existent and non-existent," "at once meritorious and non-meritorious," and so forth are all logical contradictions. The law of contradiction of formal logic excludes only the self-contradictoriness in thinking and has nothing to do with dialectical contradiction. The law of contradiction says that there can be no"A and not-A." That is to say, "A and not-A" is the logic contradiction that the law of contradiction should rule out. If we admit that dialectical contradiction is not logical contradiction, we then cannot describe dialectical contradiction as "A and not-A.". (shrink)

Within the context of China, this study seeks to examine the relationship between English language proficiency, the native dialect of the learner, and the learner’s reason, or motivation for learning English. English language proficiency can be an important vehicle for accessing high quality higher education, for interacting with non-Chinese, and for enhancing employment and career opportunities Data was gathered through an online survey with 985 usable responses recorded. Respondents included a distribution of speakers from five of the major distinct (...) dialects of China. The analysis provides empirical evidence of a diversity of propensities and motivations for English language acquisition among learners from different regions and native dialects. Access to international higher education as a type of motivation is found to have a moderating effect on English proficiency. Other findings suggest that learners in regions with more historic exposure to foreign interaction are more likely to be motivated for social reasons, those from regions with export focused commerce will be motivated for business related reasons. The results of this study may be of interest to policy makers, linguists, educators, and those with an interest in socioeconomic sustainability through language acquisition and education as a method of socioeconomic mobility. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe Book of Lord Shang attributed to Shang Yang is one of the most controversial products of ideological debates in pre-imperial China. Forty years ago, Li Yu-ning summarized previous rounds of debates that peaked with the Shang Yang fervor of the early 1970s. The present article takes over where she ended, further exploring trends in studies of the Book of Lord Shang since the Open-up-and-Reform Era. The paper shows that despite a clear tendency of depoliticization of these studies, scholars are (...) still deeply influenced by the tradition of using the figure of Shang Yang as a foil in contemporary political debates. In their evaluation of Shang Yang’s legacy, many contemporary Chinese scholars continue to use traditional views, but also modern ideas such as the “rule of law,” “progress,” “evolution,” “dialectic,” or the Marxist theory of distinct social stages. They all contribute to the ongoing relevance of Lord Shang to current China. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Chinese and Indian Ways of Thinking in Early Modern European Philosophy: The Reception and the Exclusion by Selusi AmbrogioCatherine König-Pralong (bio)Chinese and Indian Ways of Thinking in Early Modern European Philosophy: The Reception and the Exclusion. By Selusi Ambrogio. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. How Modern Historians of Philosophy Drew Their World MapsIn his latest book, Chinese and Indian Ways of Thinking in Early Modern European (...) Philosophy: The Reception and the Exclusion, Selusi Ambrogio presents an extensive survey of how Indian and Chinese traditions were conceived of and staged in modern European historiography. This study, which surpasses in detail and scope other works devoted to the same topic,1 reconstructs 150 years of philosophical historiography. Otto van Heurn's Barbaricae philosophiae antiquitatum libri duo (published in 1600) included for the first time contemporary and ancient Indian thinkers in the philosophical doxography; at the other end of the time span considered, Jacob Brucker's Historia critica philosophiae (1744) sanctioned the exclusion of Chinese and Indian thinkers by means of a detailed criticism of their pseudo-philosophies. Moreover, Ambrogio makes the choice to focus on the history of philosophy, unlike Étiemble, for example,2 who was interested in philosophy in a broad sense—academic and non-academic—as well as in travel accounts, the writings of the Jesuits, and those of their opponents, among other sources. According to Ambrogio, the histories of philosophy were more representative of "the common European understanding of these civilizations," since they "were not openly written for controversialist aims" (p. 2). Even though one may wonder whether defining philosophy ("what philosophy is and its role"—ibid.) and legitimizing its scholarly practice is a less political or less polemical undertaking than pamphlets, letters, and philosophical essays,3 it is probably true that philosophical historiography produced an effect of objectification or an appearance of neutrality.The author's main thesis is that the exclusion of all non-Greeks or non-Europeans from the history of philosophy does not date from the nineteenth century and Hegel, as is generally thought, but precisely from the moment when Indian and Chinese "civilizations" were considered by historians of philosophy and included in the philosophical historiography: from the beginning of the seventeenth century onwards (p. 3). Applying a segregationist model, modern historians of philosophy developed a dialectic of [End Page 203] identification—the author speaks of "reception"—and exclusion. They defined the European philosophical mind by demarcating it from other ways of thinking, which they situated in place and time on a civilizational world map. Encompassing the world from Europe produced in return processes of definition and situation. Philosophy was established in a territory and identified with a "culture" or "mind" that began to think itself in relation to the rest of the world under the name of Europe.4I will discuss Ambrogio's remarkable work in three moments. First, I will develop some particularly interesting conclusions drawn from the study; namely, they address periodization, the production of cultural categories, and the valorization of theory. I will then discuss the main thesis as well as some problematic issues, before concluding on the subject of a world absent from Ambrogio's book, the Near and Middle East.I. Logic of Time and Cultural TerritorializationAmbrogio's book is composed of three parts that address three successive historiographical models. First, the "perennialist universalism" (p. 57)—represented by, among others, Otto van Heurn, Thomas Burnet, Isaac Vossius, François Bernier, Georg Horn, and François de la Mothe le Vayer—included ancient India and then China in the "prisca theologia"; on the other hand, it described contemporary Indian and Chinese thinkers as "barbarian" philosophers. In this constellation, Buddhism began to function as the negative part of Oriental thought. According to the Jesuits, it had polluted and corrupted the original Chinese wisdom, often identified with Confucianism.The second model constructed an "Atheistic Asia," which was used either as a positive anthropological image (for example in Pierre Bayle), or as a negative foil for Lutheran philosophy and theology (for example in Johann Franz Buddeus). In the pages he dedicates to these endeavors, Ambrogio often moves away from philosophical doxography, represented by André-Fran... (shrink)

Dialectical thinking refers to a constellation of beliefs that consist of expectation of change, tolerance of contradiction, and holism. The current research explored whether dialectical thinking would affect people’s anticipation of climate change, which has been propagated globally. Study 1 compared the responses between Chinese participants, representing people from cultures that promote dialectical thinking, and North American participants, representing people from cultures that promote linear thinking. The results showed that Chinese participants demonstrated a stronger non-linear pattern regarding the (...) anticipation of climate change as compared with American participants, in which Chinese participants were more likely to anticipate a stable trend but less likely to anticipate an increasing trend for global warming. Study 2 with a manipulation of dialectical and linear thinking was conducted and provided some generally supportive evidence for the causal relation between dialectical beliefs and the anticipation of climate change. Implications for cross-cultural environmental research and international climate change education programs were discussed. (shrink)

This response to Asger S?rensen?s paper From Ontology to Epistemology: Tong, Mao and Hegel is made on the basis of a reflection on the author?s intellectual development with special reference to the idea of?dialectics?. This development is mainly composed of three periods, in which the author formed his strong antipathy toward dialectics as a mere tool of power, learnt to understand the importance of?dialogical logic? in providing conceptual tools for human knowledge of a type of reality which is both objective (...) and subjective - human practices - and attempted to understand the?dialectics of rationalization? by integrating?dialectics? in the Western tradition of Critical Theory with the Chinese tradition of?dialectics? systematically interpreted by Feng Qi since the 1990s. (shrink)

From about the fourth to the tenth century Buddhist monks in China engaged in formal, semi-public, religious disputation. I describe the Indian origins of this disputation and outline its settings, procedures, and functions. I then propose that this disputation put its participants at risk of performative contradiction with Buddhist tenets about language and salvation, and I illustrate how some chinese Buddhists attempted to transcend these contradictions, subverting disputation through creative linguistic and extra- linguistic strategies.

This essay asks why Chinese and North Vietnamese agricultural scientists in the 1950s and 1960s willingly adopted the Soviet agricultural sciences represented not only by agronomists Ivan Michurin and Trofim Lysenko but soil scientist Vasili Williams. The answer, I argue, is that they were fascinated by the promise of Soviet agrobiology that I conceptualize as a combination of dialectical materialism and voluntarist productivism: if one masters the interconnectivity between plants, microbes, organic and inorganic materials, and soil, one can overcome (...) the given biological and environmental limits, manipulate and optimize the material flow, and ceaselessly maximize agricultural production. Engaging the historiographical debate about Lysenkoism—which has mostly paid attention to the Euro-American cases, genetic controversies, and geopolitical specificities of each locale—as a global phenomenon, I shed fresh light on the understudied Chinese and North Vietnamese cases, the intersection between Lysenko’s theories and Williamsian soil science, and epistemic commonality across national differences. (shrink)

The articles in this collection were all selected from the first five volumes of the Journal of Dialectics of Nature published by the Chinese Academy of Sciences between 1979 and 1985. The Journal was established in 1979 as a comprehensive theoretical publication concerning the history, philosophy and sociology of the natural sciences. It began publication as a response to China's reform, particularly the policy of opening to the outside world. Chinese scholars began to undertake distinctive, original research in (...) these fields. This collection provides a cross-section of their efforts during the initial phase. To enable western scholars to understand the historical process of this change in Chinese academics, Yu Guangyuan's `On the Emancipation of the Mind' and Xu Liangying's `Essay on the Role of Science and Democracy in Society' have been included in this collection. Three of the papers included on the philosophy of science are discussions of philosophical issues in cosmology and biology by scientists themselves. The remaining four are written by philosophers of science and discuss information and cognition, homeostasis and Chinese traditional medicine, the I Ching (Yi Jing) and mathematics, etc. Papers have been selected on the history of both classical and modern science and technology, the most distinctive of which are macro-comparisons of the development of science in China and the west. Some papers discuss the issue of the demarcation of periods in the history of science, the history of ancient Chinese mathematics, astronomy, metallurgy, machinery, medicine, etc. Others discuss the history of modern physics and biology, the history of historiography of science in China and the history of regional development of Chinese science and technology. Also included are biographies of three post-eighteenth-century Chinese scholars, Li Shanlan (1811-1882), Hua Hengfang (1833–1902), and Cai Yuanpei (1868–1940), who contributed greatly to the introduction of western science and scholarship to China. In addition, three short papers have been included introducing the interactions between Chinese scholars and three great western scientists, Niels Bohr, Norbert Wiener, and Robert A. Millikan. (shrink)

Philosophy in China has undergone a difficult course of development since 1949. During the first period of the existence of the Chinese People's Republic , there was a process of dissemination of the Marxist world-view among Chinese philosophers. A beginning was made in the treatment of current problems in the theory of the building of socialism. Studies in various areas of philosophical knowledge - dialectical and historical materialism, logic, ethics, esthetics, the history of philosophy - got under way. (...) The discussions that occurred in the mid-'50s reflected the fact that Chinese scholars in the realm of philosophy had attained a higher level of achievement. (shrink)

This research focuses upon tracing the acculturative trends of the Hui Muslim community in Xi'an. It suggests that the existence of Muslims in China is a dialectical process between the adaptation to the Chinese culture and the retention of essentially Islamic religious traits. It is exclusively based upon ethnography and aims to investigate qualitatively the patterns of acculturation/retention of the Hui in the light of four socio-religious variables, i.e. identity, dietary habits, religious festivals and life passage rituals, social networking (...) and marital homogamy. This is a small scale qualitative research based on participant observation, interviews, and an analysis of historic, archival, and documentary material. The sample consists of Hui people of Xi'an both from within and outside the Muslim Quarter without any restriction of age and gender. The archival and qualitative data is derived from the iconography and fieldwork in Xi'an between November 2011 and December 2014. Applying Gans definitions of acculturation and assimilation, this paper concludes that the Hui are acculturated in the Han society but not assimilated, as they exhibit retention of ethnic religious traits. (shrink)

Tong Shijun holds a concept of dialectics which can also be found in Mao’s writings and in classical Chinese philosophy. Tong, however, is ambivalent in his attitude to dialectics in this sense, and for this reason he recommends Chinese philosophy to focus more on formal logic. My point will be that with another concept of dialectics Tong can have dialectics without giving up on logic and epistemology. This argument is given substance by an analysis of texts by Mao, (...) Tong and Hegel. (shrink)

: Studies of Chinese dialectical materialism have long neglected the important philosophical dimension of Hegelian thought and its influence on Chinese Marxism. This essay examines the work of Zhang Shiying of Beijing University, whose studies of Hegel's works on dialectical logic in the 1950s sought to clarify the nature of Hegel's speculative dialectic and its relation to dialectical materialism. Like Lenin before him, Zhang believed that Hegel's works on logic offered a more profound reflection on materialism than (...) had previously been recognized by Marxist critics of German idealism. Zhang's sensitive reading of both Hegel's Science of Logic and the Encyclopedia Logic highlights the problem of the speculative dialectic and negativity. Examined here is Zhang's analysis of the Hegelian dialectic in light of contemporary accounts of the role of Hegelian negativity in poststructuralist thought. (shrink)

In Nos. 105 and 121 of the Kuang-ming Daily "Philosophical Supplement," there were two articles by Ch'ieh Ta-yu: "Some Opinions on the Problem of Determining the Object of Dialectical Logic" and "The Marxist Dialectical Method and Dialectical Logic." The first is quite general, while the second "elucidates the connections and differences" between dialectics and dialectical logic discussed in the first article. Almost all the basic points in both articles are erroneous. Actually, the author waves the banner of antidogmatism and expounds (...) a revisionist point of view. We will now refute his contentions. (shrink)

Using a sample of Chinese to-be-listed firms during the period of 2006–2012, this study examines the influence of CEO-auditor dialect sharing (CADS) on pre-IPO audit quality and further investigates the moderating effects of auditor reputation and audit firm industry specialization. On the basis of information in personal identification cards, this study hand-collects data about CADS, and then provides strong and consistent evidence to show that CADS is significantly positively related with discretionary accruals (the inverse proxy for audit quality), suggesting (...) that CADS leads to the collusion between the CEO and the signing auditors, elicits pre-IPO earnings management, and eventually impairs pre-IPO audit quality. Moreover, both auditor reputation and audit firm industry specialization attenuate the positive effect of CADS on discretionary accruals. Furthermore, sensitivity tests suggest that above findings are robust to different measures of CADS and discretionary accruals, and above conclusions still stand after controlling for the endogeneity. Lastly, the findings using the post-IPO sample further validate the negative association between CADS and pre-IPO audit quality. (shrink)

In connection with the discussion on the problem of logic, both within our country and abroad , it has already turned from the general, comparatively abstract, and difficult-to-resolve problem of the "relationship between formal logic and dialectics" to the more concrete problem of the functional scope of formal logic. Some people have even utilized special articles to inquire about a certain law in formal logic: the functional scope of the law of identity or the law of contradiction. The purpose of (...) these philosophers or logicians is to try to define the functional scope of a certain law in formal logic as a starting point, and then to proceed to study the functional scope of formal logic in the entire thinking process of mankind. If the functional scope of formal logic in mankind's entire thinking process is clearly and precisely defined, the solution of this complicated problem of the "relationship between formal logic and dialectics" would certainly not be very difficult. The basic purpose of Comrade Chu-ko Yin-t'ung's article on the problem of "whether or not formal logic's law of contradiction can be contravened in the dialectical thinking process" of men, which appeared in issue No. 82 of the "Philosophy" supplement of Kuang-ming Daily on April 24, is like this. It should be considered as a rather practical method. But I do not quite agree with his basic points of argument and with his analysis of certain examples of dialectics. I intend to present my superficial views here and to study them with Comrade Chu-ko. (shrink)

Medical argumentation in non-Western societies has attracted little attention. In line with the pragma-dialectical approach to the study of argumentation, this article identifies a prototypical argumentative pattern in Chinese medical consultations. In addition to institutional preconditions, whose relevance to the argumentative pattern has been well cited, a factor that may be equally important has remained unnoticed: the preference for certain drugs, treatments or therapeutic measurements on the basis of folk interpretations of medical phenomena in individual ethnic groups. These preferences (...) may be seen as cultural preferences in the medical domain. In this paper, a prototypical argumentative pattern of Chinese medical consultations is provided. Two levels of the pattern are distinguished and discussed: a basic argumentative pattern as presented in the pragmatic-dialectical approach and its extensions due to cultural preferences as well as institutional constraints. Illustrated by an exemplary analysis on the basis of empirical data collected from Chinese consulting rooms, the impact of cultural preferences on physicians’ strategic maneuvering in argumentation is identified and recognized. It is argued that the existence and impact of cultural preferences require attention in medical argumentation. (shrink)

Our current work examined the interface between thinking style and emotional experience at both the behavioral and neuropsychological levels. Thirty-nine Chinese participants completed the triad task, and we calculated the rate of individually selected relationship pairings to overall selections to represent their holistic thinking tendencies. In addition, participants in the top one-third of the ratio score were classified into the high holistic thinking group, while those in the bottom one-third of the ratio score were classified into the low holistic (...) thinking group. We used the sensitivity to punishment and sensitivity to reward questionnaire to examine how people elicit positive and negative affective behaviors. Additionally, we examined the volume of the amygdala and nucleus accumbens and their functional connectivity in the resting-state. We found that high holistic thinkers were much less sensitive to rewards than low holistic thinkers. In other words, individuals with high holistic thinking are less likely to pursue behaviors that have positive emotional outcomes. Furthermore, their bilateral nucleus accumbens and right amygdala volumes were smaller than those of low holistic thinkers. Hierarchical regression analysis showed that holistic thinking tendency can negatively predict the volume of the left nucleus accumbens and right amygdala. Finally, resting-state functional connectivity results showed increased functional connectivity FC between left nucleus accumbens and bilateral amygdala in high holistic thinkers. These findings provide emotion-related manifestations of thinking styles at the behavioral and neural levels. (shrink)