It is necessary for us to know what erroneous thinking is before we discuss its relationship with existence. The so-called erroneous thinking, as I see it, refers to the opposite of correct thinking. If correct thinking means that man's comprehension of objective existence can lead to the grasping of the law of objective existence and can correspond with objective existence, erroneous thinking represents the failure of man's comprehension of objectivity to grasp the law of objective existence. Therefore erroneous thinking is (...) contradictory to, not corresponding with, objectivity. (shrink)

The thirty-three sections of the Chuang Tzu annotated by Kuo Hsiang of the Chin dynasty were published during the period of the Northern Sung dynasty. Meanwhile, a preface allegedly by Kuo Hsiang was also printed in the book. The preface is as follows:Chuang Tzu was a man who had good knowledge of the origins of things in the universe and avoided no fantastic ideas. His remarks are hard to understand yet pertinent to phenomena. Any remark which is hard to understand (...) yet pertinent to phenomena may be true but useless; any remark which touches no actual things may be lofty but impracticable. This is surely different from a reluctant rise after inability. If the mind is free from preoccupations, it will respond to events at any time, and as a result, remarks will be cautious. Adapting himself to changes in the universe, Chuang Tzu was not merely turning out writings in the form of dialogues on things beyond human experience. (shrink)

Hao Wang was one of the few confidants of the great mathematician and logician Kurt Gödel. _A Logical Journey_ is a continuation of Wang's _Reflections on Gödel_ and also elaborates on discussions contained in _From Mathematics to Philosophy_. A decade in preparation, it contains important and unfamiliar insights into Gödel's views on a wide range of issues, from Platonism and the nature of logic, to minds and machines, the existence of God, and positivism and phenomenology. The impact of (...) Gödel's theorem on twentieth-century thought is on par with that of Einstein's theory of relativity, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, or Keynesian economics. These previously unpublished intimate and informal conversations, however, bring to light and amplify Gödel's other major contributions to logic and philosophy. They reveal that there is much more in Gödel's philosophy of mathematics than is commonly believed, and more in his philosophy than his philosophy of mathematics. Wang writes that "it is even possible that his quite informal and loosely structured conversations with me, which I am freely using in this book, will turn out to be the fullest existing expression of the diverse components of his inadequately articulated general philosophy." The first two chapters are devoted to Gödel's life and mental development. In the chapters that follow, Wang illustrates the quest for overarching solutions and grand unifications of knowledge and action in Gödel's written speculations on God and an afterlife. He gives the background and a chronological summary of the conversations, considers Gödel's comments on philosophies and philosophers, and his attempt to demonstrate the superiority of the mind's power over brains and machines. Three chapters are tied together by what Wang perceives to be Gödel's governing ideal of philosophy: an exact theory in which mathematics and Newtonian physics serve as a model for philosophy or metaphysics. Finally, in an epilog Wang sketches his own approach to philosophy in contrast to his interpretation of Gödel's outlook. (shrink)

Although I do not have any final thoughts about the present topic, it might still be valuable to identify what questions are bothering many Chinese scholars. During an academic meeting last month Professor Yu Dunkang summarized the embarrassing situation confronting the study of Chinese philosophy today, as follows: "The object remains unclear, and the value is misplaced." The phrase "the object remains unclear" means that scholars are not sure what questions need to be studied in relation to what is called (...) "Chinese philosophy," while the phrase "the value is misplaced" means that scholars misunderstand the value and the meaning of their own work. To a large extent, this summary is correct; but the question is how this particular situation came into being. (shrink)

Contextualism and Disagreement This paper argues that attributor contextualism is in conflict with ordinary language methodology. Attributor contextualism has at its center the thesis that, the truth-values of knowledge attributions vary with the conversational contexts. This thesis entails that if two speakers in similar contexts make conflicting knowledge attributions, at least one of these attributions is false. One important argument for attributor contextualism depends on ordinary language methodology, a methodology that places great trust in ordinary speakers and prevents judging a (...) substantial group of ordinary speakers' simple knowledge attributions false. I argue that there is strong empirical evidence that ordinary speakers do extensively disagree in similar contexts. My conclusion is that one cannot coherently hold the attributor contextualist thesis and use ordinary language methodology, because the lesson we learn from the empirical evidence is that using the methodology would prove the thesis false. Since prominent attributor contextualists explicitly adopt the methodology, and that the methodology is what distinguishes attributor contextualism from its main rival, invariantism, the conflict with the methodology is a problem for attributor contextualism. (shrink)

Academic mothers perform intersected roles. They carry out their profession in workplaces, while they take the “second shift” of motherhood back to their families. The contested expectations in family and career built by the heterosexual matrix cause tension to academic mothers. We qualitatively investigate the interview data of six Chinese women academics on how they perform to negotiate their motherhood and academic work in the context of Chinese higher education, driven by the Butlerian theoretical concept of the heterosexual matrix. The (...) findings suggest that Chinese academic mothers play a zero-sum game between being mothers and being academics, deriving from their ontological responsibilities of motherhood. We conclude that in the masculine academia, these women academics help maintain the heterosexual matrix by satisfying the gender normativity when they negotiate their performances in their family and career; meanwhile, most have developed some strategies to achieve their career advancement. (shrink)

Someone asks a climber why he wants to climb a mountain—everyone knows that climbing is dangerous and is of no practical advantage—and he replies, "Because it is there." I like this answer because it shows a sense of humor—it is quite clear that it is because he wants to climb it, but he tries to trick us by saying that it is because the mountain is there that he is itching to get at it. Apart from this, I also like (...) what the climber does, scaling sheer cliffs for no good reason. It may cause aching muscles, and there is a risk you might knock your brains out, so the average person does all he can to avoid climbing mountains. From the point of view of thermodynamics, this is the very rarely seen phenomenon of negative entropy. Because human beings always tend toward what is beneficial and avoid what is harmful, and in thermodynamics spontaneous phenomena are known as entropy-increasing phenomena, anything that tends toward the harmful and avoids the beneficial must be negative entropy. (shrink)

Dushu carried a most interesting article in its eleventh issue: "Starlight in the Dark of the Night" . In this article the author, Wu Zengding, introduced to the reader the autobiography of Vera, an aristocratic Russian woman of the nineteenth century who planned the assassination of a Russian tsar. The most engaging part of this article is the analysis—or rather, description—of the "enormous fascination" exerted by revolution. I have said many times that there is nothing more fascinating for young people (...) than revolution and love; and, under certain circumstances, the fascination of revolution is more powerful than that of love. Simply put, at least one of the factors that led Vera to take the extreme road of revolution was her fear and rejection of the shi su existence of married women in old Russia. I am reminded of the heroine, Lin Daojing, in Yang Mo's novel Song of Youth, who is rescued by Yu Shuize from a state of hopelessness after fleeing from marriage, and subsequently cohabits with him. She later ruptures with Yu Shuize , not only because of political conflicts, but also because of conflicts in their outlook on life. Had she stayed with Yu, she would inevitably have gone down the road of worldliness—having children, looking after the home, doing the family budget, dealing with birth, old age, illness, and death; she would have become garrulous and overly talkative, and so forth. There would be no more romance, no more drama—and readers would have objected to that. (shrink)

This article discusses the practice and development of organ donation by capital prisoners in China. It analyzes the issue of informed consent regarding organ donation from capital prisoners in light of Confucian ethics and expounds the point that under the influence of Confucianism, China is a country that attaches great importance to the role of the family in practicing informed consent in various areas, the area of organ donation from capital prisoners included. It argues that a proper form of organ (...) donation from capital prisoners can be justified within the Confucian moral context in which the proper interests of capital prisoners and their families, the benefit of organ receptors, and a rightful order of society should all be appropriately considered. From the Confucian perspective, the act of donating organs from a capital prisoner must be decided by both the prisoner and his/her family (i.e., each side should hold a veto power), whereas such donation, in the proper circumstance protected by a rightful procedure, should be appreciated as a morally praiseworthy act of the prisoner who is willing to make the final effort to repent and correct his/her evil conduct and to leave something good to the world. (shrink)

Building on the emerging literature on the ethics of social enterprises (SEs), this paper advances the underexplored role of frontline workers (FLWs) as embedded agents at the interface between communities and SEs. Specifically, we uncover the subjectivity of FLWs as they navigate moral ambiguities while performing their professional roles, dealing with rules and regulations within the organizational hierarchy and living as members of local communities. Based on an inductive case study of a microfinance organization in Cameroon, we find that FLWs (...) engage in three rationalization strategies: cautious disengaging, safeguarding self-interest, and justifying relevance. Our findings offer a better understanding of the ethics of SEs by unpacking the subjectivity of FLWs. We highlight a bottom-up account of caring SEs, identify a boundary condition to subjectivity, and present a nuanced view of FLWs in embedded organizations. We also discuss the practical implications for SEs to improve their compassion and cater for the mental wellbeing of FLWs. (shrink)

Dispositionality is a modal notion of a certain sort. When an object is said to have a disposition, we typically understand this to mean that under certain circumstances, the object would behave in a certain way. For instance, a fragile object is disposed to break when dropped onto a concrete surface. It need not actually break - its being fragile has implications that, so to speak, point beyond the actual world. According to dispositionalism, all modal features of the world may (...) be accounted for in terms of its dispositional features. My aim in this paper is to assess the prospects for dispositionalism by examining the most promising theories. Sections 1 and 2 clarify the assumptions and desiderata of a successful dispositionalist theory of modality. Section 3 introduces the principles governing the dispositionalist theories that apparently meet the desiderata. Sections 4 through 6 show that dispositionalism nonetheless faces three problems: while dispositions help account for modal features of the world that are local, diachronic, or gradable, they cannot account for certain modal features of the world that are global, synchronic, or absolute. I end by discussing the costs of preserving dispositionalism. (shrink)

Despite Donald Davidson's influential criticism of the very notion of conceptual schemes, the notion continues enjoying its popularity in contemporary philosophy and, accordingly, conceptual relativism is still very much alive. There is one major reason responsible for Davidson's failure which has not been widely recognized: What Davidson attacks fiercely is not the very notion, but a notion of conceptual schemes, namely, the Quinean notion of conceptual schemes and its underlying Kantian scheme-content dualism. However, such a notion simply cannot carry the (...) weight of conceptual relativism for it does not catch the essences of conceptual relativism. Consequently, I argue that the very notion of conceptual schemes and conceptual relativism have survived Davidson's attack. Therefore, the failure of the Quinean notion of conceptual schemes and Kantian scheme-content dualism, even if Davidson can claim victory, does not mark the end of the very notion of conceptual schemes.[ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]. (shrink)

This article uses a Chinese narrative of ‘nature-human harmony’ as the main thread to connect the contributions of ontological anthropology. I argue that the best of the critiques of nature-human or nature-culture dualism in social anthropology propose rebuilding a world that ‘pursues harmony while preserving difference’ in the double sense of nature and culture. Given that most social scientific problems are indeed related to utilitarian individualism, I argue that research on ‘ontology’ should re-engage the ancient notion of ‘ ji’, construed (...) as ‘others-comprised self’, which forms the foundation of a perspective of ‘broad human relationship’ between humans and their others (other humans, things, and divinities). Perspectivism inherits many categories of Western cosmology that it critiques and represents a kind of inert ontology. Grounded in the cosmology of life ( sheng), we hope to contribute to a new anthropology of the compatibility between self/others and subject/objects. (shrink)

By rethinking the meaning of a central idiom in the Great Learning, this essay intends to open up a new horizon for the hermeneutics of early Confucian thinking, which has little to do with metaphysics. Through a careful etymological study of ge wu and a dialogue between the Great Learning and Heidegger's phenomenology of human affection, I demonstrate the critical position of the human heart in early Chinese thinking. This new interpretation of early Confucian moral teachings also recovers an invigorating (...) possibility for contemporary discourse on the question of ethics. (shrink)

The longitudinal, qualitative study aimed to explore the lived experiences of Chinese university emerging adults by analyzing their personal life stories, reflective journals, and semi-structured interview data collected over a 2-year period. A qualitative content analysis was used to identify five themes: maturity, academic performance, interpersonal communication skills, social support network, and sense of loss. The study found that the growth in emerging adulthood was dynamic, positive, and multifaceted. The study demonstrated that writing personal life stories, as a practice of (...) meaningful literacy instruction in EFL contexts, helped students to record a memorable past, reconcile with the past, and strive for personal growth. These findings suggest that emerging adults’ personal growth be stressed in foreign language teaching to promote Chinese university emerging adults’ growth and development. It is also suggested that personal life stories be used in foreign language teaching under the guidance of meaningful literacy instruction. (shrink)

Most research in environmental psychology is conducted in individualistic countries and focuses on factors pertaining to individuals. It is yet unclear whether these findings also apply to more collectivistic countries, in which group factors might play a prominent role. In the current paper, we test the individual-focused value–identity–behaviour pathway, in which personal biospheric values relate to pro-environmental actions via environmental self-identity, in an individualistic and a collectivistic country. Furthermore, we test in both countries whether a new group-focused pathway also exists, (...) in which group values relate to pro-environmental behaviour via environmental group identity, particularly in collectivistic countries. Questionnaire studies were conducted among Dutch and Chinese students. Our results indicated that personal biospheric values, mostly via environmental self-identity, predict pro-environmental behaviour in both countries. We also found initial support for our newly proposed value–identity–behaviour pathway at the group level, particularly in China. Yet, in both countries, the association between group-level variables and pro-environmental behaviour was weaker than for personal-level variables, and partly overlapped with personal-level variables. Our findings show the relevance of personal- and group-level factors in understanding pro-environmental behaviour in both individualistic and collectivistic countries, which has strong theoretical and practical implications, particularly for developing international strategies to promote pro-environmental actions across the world. (shrink)

In his "Lectures on the History of Philosophy," Hegel once commented that the characteristic of Eastern philosophy lies in that it only recognizes as real the singular ding-an-sich . If an individuality, or a singular entity, stands in opposition to the ontological entity that exists in itself and spontaneously acts in itself , then it cannot have any value in itself, and cannot attain any value at all. However, at the same time that the individual entity unites with the ding-an-sich, (...) this individual entity ceases to be an entity, as a subject, and disappears into nonconsciousness. This viewpoint appears to be an understanding of the Chinese cultural traditional mode of thought that was almost universally held by all Western thinkers of the time. A similar point of view seems to be held by the British writer Samuel Taylor Coleridge in an essay that he wrote on the linguistic styles of various genre of literature. In Coleridge's case, however, he was attempting to make a comparison of Eastern and Western political systems. He believed that the characteristic of Eastern polity was that it embodied a tendency toward autocracy, or, in other words, toward unity, whereas the characteristic of Western polity, coming from the source of the Greek political system, conversely embodied a tendency toward diversity and plurality. It is not my belief that all the ways in which Western scholars understood Chinese culture, since the period of the Enlightenment, were accurate and valid. Indeed, many such Western thinkers, owing either to a paucity of information on their part or to their ignorance, or partial ignorance, of the sources of Chinese civilization, have made many incorrect evaluations and judgments about Chinese culture. However, I do believe that this particular view held by Western scholars, that Eastern philosophy emphasized identity and unity while deemphasizing or even ignoring diversity and plurality, is a viewpoint that deserves some attention. This, in my opinion, is indeed a characteristic of China's cultural tradition. The problem that it raises is essentially the question of the relationship between the group and the individual, between commonality and individuality, and, one may even go so far as to say, the relationship between "public" and "private.". (shrink)

I have read some outrageous books and as a result have lost my innocence. In English, to lose one's innocence also means to become sly and devious, and that is what has happened to me. My innocence was lost in the University of Pittsburgh library. It was there that I borrowed a book called The Pleasurable Experiences of a Foreign Devil in China, which was about the travels of an American in China. On the surface, this American seemed to be (...) passionate about Chinese culture—as soon as he disembarked in Shanghai, toward the end of the Qing dynasty, and saw what Chinese people were like, he became crazy about them. I could have been very pleased that other people like us, but not in this case, because this fellow was a "sadist" and a "bisexual" [Wang uses the English words here and below, and I have put them in quotes.— Trans.] or, in Chinese, a bisexual sadist. There is no way that being liked by this sort of person could please you, unless you happened to be a masochist. (shrink)

This essay shall discuss the moral feeling of being morally moved (daode gandong 道德感动) and explore its philosophical significances in understanding the nature of virtue ethics, especially that of Confucian ethics as exemplary ethics. I would like to argue that the feeling of being morally moved, similar to other feelings such as resentment or indignation, should be seen as one of the most important testimonies or manifestations of our morality or moral consciousness. It has played a very important role of (...) moral judgment and moral cultivation in the history of Chinese moral philosophy and in its everyday moral practices. Instead of being a testimony of morality as cold laws or norms, being morally moved is a testimony to our moral virtues, and it should be a living motive of our moral actions as well. (shrink)

To grasp the truth in traditional Chinese classics, we need to uncover the long obscured xiang 象 (image) thinking, which has long been overshadowed by Occidentalism. xiang thinking is the most fundamental thought of human beings. The logic of linguistics all comes from xiang thinking . Through conceptual thinking, people can understand Western classics on metaphysics, yet they may not completely understand the various schools of Chinese classics. The difference between Chinese and Western ways of thinking originated in the difference (...) of the basic views developed in the Axial period . Since Aristotle, Western metaphysical ideas have all been manifested in substantiality, objectivity, and being ready-made, whereas Chinese Taiji, Dao, Xin-xing, and Zen were manifested in the non-substantiality, non-objectivity, and non-ready-made-ness of a dynamic whole. To grasp substance, rational and logical thinking such as definition, judgment, and reasoning is necessary. On the other hand, to grasp Taiji, Dao, etc., which is a dynamic whole or non-substances, xiang thinking , which is related to perception and rich in poetic association, is essential. History has taught us a lesson, i.e., when we opened the window to logical thought, we closed that of xiang thinking . We should remember the words of Xu Guangqi, i.e., To mingle harmoniously and understand thoroughly so as to excel. (shrink)

Why should a lottery be used in the allocation of an indivisible good to which participants in the lottery have an equally strong claim? Stone argues that when indeterminacy arises, in which it is impossible to satisfy the equality condition requiring like cases to be treated alike, the impartiality principle suggests that the agent responsible for the allocation task should not intend to favor one over another on the basis of invalid reasons. In this article, I argue that the impartiality (...) principle is neither sufficient nor necessary to explain the fairness of lotteries. Instead, the fairness of lotteries is explained by the sanitizing effect that lotteries generate to screen out the reactive attitudes of resentment and indignation that claimants might otherwise have if they do not obtain the good in question. (shrink)