In his 1987 article “Indeterminacy, Empiricism and the First Person”, John Searle argues that we actually know what we mean; therefore, W. V. O. Quine’s thesis of the indeterminacy of translation must be wrong. In this paper, I will try to identify the mistakes in Searle’s criticism of Quine’s story. I will argue that Quine’s indeterminacy thesis can be construed as containing two theses- that is, the immanent indeterminacy and the transcendent indeterminacy. With these two indeterminacies in mind, Quine’s indeterminacy (...) thesis will still remain tenable even if we actually know what we mean. (shrink)

In his 1987 article “Indeterminacy, Empiricism and the First Person”, John Searle argues that we actually know what we mean; therefore, W. V. O. Quine’s thesis of the indeterminacy of translation must be wrong. In this paper, I will try to identify the mistakes in Searle’s criticism of Quine’s story. I will argue that Quine’s indeterminacy thesis can be construed as containing two theses- that is, the immanent indeterminacy and the transcendent indeterminacy. With these two indeterminacies in mind, Quine’s indeterminacy (...) thesis will still remain tenable even if we actually know what we mean. (shrink)

Globalization consists of global interculture strengthening local cultures as it depends on them. Globality and locality are interdependent, and “universal” must be replaced by “inter-versal” as existence inter-exists. Chinese thinking thus must be Chinese, not Western, as Western thinking must be Western, not “universal”; China must help the West be Western, as the West must help China be Chinese. As Mrs. Tu speaks English in Chinese syntax, so “sinologists” logicize in Chinese phrases. English speakers parse her to realize the distinctness (...) of English; Chinese thinkers parse Western “sinologists” to realize the distinctness of China. Inter-versal parsing toward cultural inter-enrichment occurs in three stages. This is intercultural globalization. (shrink)

In five sections, this book describes cultural, personal, argumentative, religious and philosophical situations of togetherness, thus providing an imaginative ...

Among the four reading-levels, the textual and exegetical levels of Zhuangzi ’s Hundun-story are problem-free, and so we focus expository-wise on its conspicuous hospitality with nine implications. Then, hermeneutically, we see Hundun instructing us against clarity toward unclarity—cosmological, self-composing, cognitive, and communal—of kindly humus, in cosmic confusion, sleep and idleness, mist and pond-dragonfly, and non-ruling people-sovereignty. Pan-hospitality is our Emperor Hundun’s non-arbitrary imperative to nurture life.

This book uses Western philosophical tradition to make a case for a form of thinking properly associated with ancient China.

This essay offers two novel thinking-modes, “body thinking” and “story thinking,” both intrinsically interrelated, as alternative reasoning to usual analytical logic, and claims that they facilitate understanding “religion” as our ultimate living in the Beyond. Thus body thinking, story thinking, and religion naturally gather into a threefold thinking synonymy. This essay adumbrates in story-thinking way this synonymy in four theme-stages, one, appreciating body thinking primal at our root, to, two, go through story-thinking that expresses body thinking to catalyze religion, to, (...) three, reach religious living in holistic nisus to the Beyond. But then, four, religion is surprisingly harder than expected; we require a strange adult detour to come back home to body thinking in story thinking. These four themes are body-thought through many stories, some of which are argumentative. Thus this essay itself body thinks in story thinking. (shrink)

The great revolutionary teacher Lenin once praised Wang An-shih as an "eleventh-century reformer.".

Humanity must continue to grow and develop together in a complex of reciprocal relationships. Such a view presumes an education which is ultimately philosophical. That is, philosophy, teaching and globalization together complement and mutually enrich humanity. In what follows, I discuss the ground, the goal, and potential developments for this project.

Story-thinking is direct actuality-thinking; actuality is active and alive, never set or formal but free and reasonable. Actuality is things as they are alive, actively actualising themselves, birthing unceasing. They sound forth to resound, vibrate to inter-vibrate, tell to retell it, to reveal-R to express-E it. This "R to E" is not logically inferential, free of inferential error. Such R-to-E process dialogically transmits across an instant as "story-thinking." Story-thinking primordially hears of actuality to story-express it. Thus, actuality sounds itself -- (...) tells its story -- to a sensitive hearer who retells the story-actual in her own resonance, and her vibration is "storytelling." Actuality tells and is heard, and storytelling comes about. Story-thinking begins at storytelling to continue storytelling, this way. (shrink)

China deeply enters "here now" to make sense of life's ongoing millennia fresh. China thinks as it tropes along myriad things in life world, their opposites and levels interpenetrating. China thinks story-way to express all things inter-weaving into history, an "open system" that keeps growing. Chinese wisdom is alive today millennia young. The West is objective; China is intersubjective. The West is logically systematic; China coherently story-thinks to compose history. Western philosophy is analytically abstract; Chinese wisdom is actually sensible. As (...) existence is inter-existence, so China welcomes the West to interculture equally, globally. Filled with concrete stories in depth, this volume has four parts. Part I depicts Chinese wisdom as not prudence or theories but "vignettes of life-thinking", to present thinking in shifting actuality. Part II sketches heart-logic pulsing in seasons, to cyclone-breathe things as music-historic reason in Chinese Wisdom Alive. Part III depicts such story-thinking that musically includes all, melodious and dissonant, to undergo pain to comprehend all, factual, historical, futuristic, and imagined. Part IV shows how Chinese wisdom is alive today, rooted in its tradition millennia fresh, in ten abiding features cosmic-concrete, making sense intercultural. Such Chinese wisdom is so alive today as to be resiliently comical, chanting odes to the ultimate joy of heartbeat alive, thriving precisely on joys and bloody tragedies of days and ages. No usual logic can parse such "musical reason" singing through pain and death through time, birthing without ceasing. (shrink)

This essay is devoted to calling global attention to body thinking neglected yet routinely practiced by us all, especially in China for millennia. This essay, one, responds to the feature, universality, of disembodyied thinking, by paralleling it with Chinese body thinking, two, shows how basic body thinking is to disembodied thinking, and three, shows how body thinking in China elucidates bodily matters, time, contingency, and bodily death, what Western disembodied cannot handle.

這部書論述的主題，是從歷史與思維活動兩個角度，對人的存在所牽涉的種種問題，進行探討。我們對本書主題的契入方式，是放在對人本身的兩個層次的瞭解之上。第一個層次是：由於人類是理性的動物，思考是隸屬於人性的 自然活動。我們是自然的思考者，我們也是歷史的思考者；第二層面則是：我們每天的生活中，牽涉到許多人和事，經由我們每天所接觸的人與事的累積而形成歷史，所以，歷史也是人性的自然。所以，人類是歷史與理性的動物 ，理性與歷史是人性中的兩個基本特點。這部書稿之所以訂名為《歷史與思考》，便是奠基於人性中這兩個基本特質之上。.