The academic confusion caused by the "gang of four" was prominently manifested in the history of Chinese philosophy. The history of Chinese logic was also affected by the confusion. Now the "gang of four" has been smashed after a merciless trial by history. Under the leadership of Chairman Hua and the Party Central Committee, scientific research has begun to make a long stride ahead. Therefore, it is possible to conduct scientific investigations and thorough discussions on a series of issues in (...) the history of Chinese philosophy and logic. Appraisal of the book entitled the Kung-sun Lung Tzu [The Works of Kung-sun Lung] is one of the issues. (shrink)

This is an up-To-Date analysis of kung-Sun lung's thesis "white horse is not horse" and the underlying class logic. Critique is made of the wrong-Headedness of the mass-Term interpretation (hansen) and a shallow understanding of classical chinese grammar in light of modern logic. Neo-Ruohist canons on identity, Difference, Separableness and inseparableness are also analyzed for comparison and contrast.

Graham compares Kung‐sun Lung's “White Horse not Horse” [Graham, A.C. (1990) Studies in Chinese Philosophy and Philosophical Literature (Albany, SUNY Press)] loith the use of a synecdoche in English, “Sword is not Blade”. The Blade as part stands in here for the whole which is the Sword. But just as Sword as ‘hilt plus blade’ is more than blade, then via analogia, White Horse as ‘white plus horse’ is more than the part that is just ‘horse’. Graham had (...) taken over this Part/whole argument from Chad Hansen who argues that since Chinese does not require the word ma for ‘horse/horses’ to be used with prefixed articles or numerals, ma is a ‘mass‐noun’ similar to certain English mass‐nouns like ‘sand’ which also has no plural form unlike the count‐noun ‘horse’ [Hansen, Chad, (1983) Language and Logic in Ancient China (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press)]. Hansen then equates “White Horse is not Horse” to the Mohist argument for “Ox Horse is not Horse”. Ox‐Horse is a ‘mixed herd’ of Ox and Horse that is not (just) that part that is Horse. The same it is with the mass‐sum that is White Horse. It is like saying in English “White Sand is not Sand”. Sand being this spread of sand on the beach, it is more than just a patch of that beach that is white. But this attribution of a Part/whole logic to Kung‐sun Lung runs up against a basic dictum stated in his thesis on ‘Pointing and Thing’. There it is noted how all things can be pointed out except thing itself because the word “thing” leaves nothing to exclude for it to be stand out. Since that thesis is derived from the law of the excluded middle where a thing is either X or not X, it is not possible for Kung‐sun Lung to subscribe to a Part/whole logic which basically argues for a thing being both X and not X. (shrink)

The practice of mathematical word problem is ubiquitous and thought to impact academic achievement. However, the underlying neural mechanisms are still poorly understood. In this study, we investigate how lexical consistency of word problem description is modulated in adults' brain responses during word problem solution. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging methods, we examined compare word problems that included relational statements, such as “A dumpling costs 9 dollars. A wonton is 2 dollars less than a dumpling. How much does a wonton (...) cost?” and manipulated lexical consistency and problem operation. We found a consistency by operation interaction in the widespread fronto-insular-parietal activations, including the anterior insula, dorsoanterior cingulate cortex, middle frontal gyrus, and intraparietal sulcus, such that inconsistent problems engaged stronger activations than consistent problems for addition, whereas the consistency effect was inverse for subtraction. Critically, these results were more salient in the less successful problem solvers than their more successful peers. Our study is the first to demonstrate that lexical consistency effects on arithmetic neural networks are modulated during reading word problem that required distinct arithmetic operations. More broadly, our study has strong potentials to add linkage between neuroscience and education by remediating deficits and enhance instruction design in the school curriculum. (shrink)

Like Machiavelli's The Prince and the Japanese Book of Five Rings, Sun Tzu's The Art of War is as timely for business people today as it was for military strategists in ancient China. Written in China more than 2,000 years ago, Sun Tzu's classic The Art of War is the first known study of the planning and conduct of military operations. These terse, aphoristic essays are unsurpassed in comprehensiveness and depth of understanding, examining not only battlefield maneuvers, but also relevant (...) economic, political, and psychological factors. Indeed, the precepts outlined by Sun Tzu regularly applied outside the realm of military theory. It is read avidly by Japanese businessmen and was touted in the movie Wall Street as the corporate raider's bible. Providing a much-needed translation of this classic, Samuel Griffith has made this powerful and unique work even more relevant to the modern world. Including an explanatory introduction and selected commentaries on the work, this edition makes Sun Tzu's strategical and tactical principles accessible not only students of Chinese history competition. (shrink)

Vinaya rules embody the ideal of how Buddhists should regulate their daily lives, and monastics are required to observe them, despite the fact that they were compiled nearly 2,500 years ago in India: a context dramatically different not only from Chinese Buddhism's present monastic conditions, but from its historical conditions. Against this backdrop, rules of purity were gradually formulated by Chinese masters in medieval times to supplement and adapt vinaya rules to China's cultural ethos and to specific local Chinese contexts. (...) This study explores how the traditional qinggui are applied by the Buddhist sa?gha in present-day Taiwan, and contrasts modern monastics' opinions on these rules and their relation to early Buddhist vinaya, on the one hand, against classical Chan literature and the Buddhist canon, on the other. This comparison fills a notable gap in the existing literature. (shrink)

Philip J. Ivanhoe's translation of Sun Tzu's _Art of War_ will be warmly embraced by students. His discussion in the Introduction about the text’s dating and authorship, as well as Chinese attitudes towards things military, is concise, informative, and up-to-date. The translation itself is a marvel--its language is simple and direct, making it immensely readable and clear.--Keith Knapp, is Westvaco Professor of National Security Studies, Department of History, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina.

According to tradition, when the Buddha’s aunt and stepmother Mah?praj?pat? was allowed to join the Buddhist monastic community, she accepted eight ‘fundamental rules’ that made the nuns’ order dependent upon the monks’ order. This story has given rise to much debate, in the past as well as in the present, and this is no less the case in Mainland China, where nunneries have started to re-emerge in recent decades. This article first presents new insight into Mainland Chinese monastic practitioners’ common (...) perspectives and voices regarding the gurudharmas, which are rarely touched upon in scholarly work. Next, each of the rules is discussed in detail, allowing us to analyse various issues, until now understudied, regarding the applicability of the gurudharmas in Mainland Chinese contexts. This research thus provides a detailed overview of nuns’ perceptions of how traditional vinaya rules and procedures can be applied in contemporary Mainland Chinese monastic communities based on a cross-regional empirical study. (shrink)

Abstract Kung?sun Lung's thesis on ?White Horse [is] not Horse? has been solved by A. C. Graham on the basis of a part/whole logic and by Chad Hansen on that and a ?mass?noun? hypothesis. We present it as a case of reducing White Horse to its two most telling marks and then, on the basis of the good Sense (instead of Reference) in a Negative Logic?the pragmatics of locating X as the remainder left over when all non?X's have (...) been removed?show how a stable hand, receiving an order for White Horse would scan first for Horse by removing all non?horse shapes and then for White by removing all colours except White. This way we can prove how indeed ?A request for White Horse cannot be satisfied by Black and Brown that fills an order for Horse... (because) to exclude some colour [in the second scan] is not the same as to exclude yet no colour [in the first scan].? No part/whole or mass?sum is presumed. The whole discussion is set in the context of shifting criteria for judging name from Confucius to Hsun?tzu. (shrink)

According to tradition, Mah?praj?pat?, the Buddha’s aunt and stepmother, when allowed to join the Buddhist monastic community, accepted eight ‘fundamental rules’ that made the nuns’ order dependent upon the monks’ order. This story has given rise to much debate, in the past as well as in the present. This article first shows how the eight rules became an integrated part of the vinaya, and more particularly of the Dharmaguptakavinaya, that forms the basis of monastic ordinations in East Asia. Against the (...) background of a much debated attack on these gurudharmas by the Taiwanese nun Shih Chao-hwei, we have then analysed the viewpoints of contemporary Taiwanese nuns, focusing on some less studied, yet very influential, Taiwanese monastic institutes. This research has brought to light a diversity of opinions on the applicability of the rules, relying in each case on a clear vision on Buddhism and vinaya. (shrink)

In the present study, we use a training design in two experiments to examine whether bilingual language switching facilitates two components of cognitive control, namely monitoring and inhibitory control. The results of Experiment 1 showed that training in language switching reduced mixing costs and the anti-saccade effect among bilinguals. In Experiment 2, the findings revealed a greater decrease of mixing costs and a smaller decrease of the anti-saccade effect from pre- to post-training for the language switching training group compared to (...) the L2 training group. Overall, the results suggest that extensive exercise in monitoring and inhibitory control among languages in an experimental setting may enhance the corresponding components of cognitive control. We discuss these findings in the context of the relationship between bilingual language control and executive control. (shrink)

Lung nodules are an early symptom of lung cancer. The earlier they are found, the more beneficial it is for treatment. However, in practice, Chinese doctors are likely to cause misdiagnosis. Therefore, deep learning is introduced, an improved target detection network is used, and public datasets are used to diagnose and identify lung nodules. This paper selects the Mask-RCNN network and uses the dense block structure of Densenet and the channel shuffle convolution method to improve the Mask-RCNN (...) network. The experimental results prove that proposed algorithm is extremely effective. (shrink)

The most famous paradox in chinese philosophy, Kung-Sun lung's "white horse not horse" has been taken as evidence of platonism, Aristotelian essentialism, Class logic, Etc., In ancient chinese thought. I argue that a nominalistic interpretation utilizing the notion of "stuffs" (mass objects) is a more plausible explanation of the dialogue. It is more coherent internally, More consistent with kung-Sun lung's other dialogues, And the tradition of chinese thought which is usually regarded as nominalistic. The interpretation is (...) also strongly suggested by striking parallels between all chinese classificatory nouns and english mass nouns. (shrink)

Students of classical Chinese philosophy are quite justly puzzled by the debates and paradoxes in the "School of Names" and the extant logico-semantic texts of the Later Mohists. The latter has received an incisive and extensive treatment in A. C. Graham's Later Mohist Logic, Ethics and Science. Thus far, no larger systematic work on Chinese logic and philosophy of language is available in English. Hansen's book is a good attempt to deal in the large scale with classical Chinese philosophy of (...) language. This book consists of five carefully written chapters. The first expounds a methodology which starts from the premise that interpretation is a theory--"an attempt to explain a text--to render it understandable. As such it is inescapably relative to the intended audience, and appropriately wedded to the critical, rational, logical evaluation procedures appropriate to other theories. The main evaluative features on which we have concentrated is the coherence of the theory." The text at issue is that ascribed to Kung-sun Lung discussed in chapter 5. In terms of its announced aim, it succeeds well in rendering a plausible though by no means uncontroversial explication of the text. The attempted explication is, however, mediated by a number of chapters which raise interesting philosophical issues that repay closer examination by students and philosophical scholars of Chinese philosophy of language. Chapter 2, for example, proposes a bold hypothesis on Chinese philosophy in terms of the logic of mass nouns. It is claimed that a "stuff-like ontology and semantics were implicitly operating as a background assumption behind pre-Han philosophy," and a negative corrollary: "an hypothesis that an abstract or mentalistic ontology and semantics of the type common to Western thinkers were not implicit assumptions behind pre-Han philosophy." For the reviewer, the negative thesis is highly plausible independently of the adequacy of the first. (shrink)

In the past two decades, interest in the logical aspect of Chinese thought was largely confined to classical Chinese philosophy, particularly to the works of the later Mohists and Kung-sun Lung. Most of these discussions employed the techniques of formal analysis. Little attention was devoted to the possibility of exploring the nature of informal analysis and the standards of competence for evaluating particular pieces of discourse.

For years, business executives have found value in the Chinese general Sun Tzu's classic work on military strategy, The Art of War. However, making connections between ancient warfare and today's corporate world is not always easy. In this essential new work, which contains the full, original translation of The Art of War, Mark R. McNeilly combines Sun Tzu's quotations, interesting military examples, and current business examples to convincingly illustrate how Sun Tzu's principles apply in competitive business situations today.