Edited by Marthe Chandler and Ronnie Littlejohn, this work is a collection of expository and critical essays on the work of Henry Rosemont, Jr., a prominent and influential contemporary philosopher, activist, translator, and educator in the field of Asian and Comparative Philosophy. The essays in this collection take up three major themes in Rosemont's work: his work in Chinese linguistics, his contribution to the theory of human rights, and his interest in East Asian religion. Contributions include works by the leading (...) scholars in Chinese philosophy in the Western world and Rosemont's close associates: Roger T. Ames, Bao Zhiming, Mary Bockover, Marthe Chandler, Ewing Y. Chinn, Erin M. Cline, Fred Dallmayr, Jeffrey Dippmann, Herbert Fingarette, Harrison Huang, Eric Hutton, Philip J. Ivanhoe, David Jones, William La Fleur, Ronnie Littlejohn, Ni Peimin, Michael Nylan, Harold Roth, Sumner Twiss, Tu Weiming, David Wong, with responses from Henry Rosemont, Jr. and a brief Reminiscence by Noam Chomsky. (shrink)

The conversations between Meno and Socrates and between Mencius and King Xuan are philosophical dramas whose "plots" are intellectual arguments. Although both texts present historical characters at particular times in their lives, the texts were written some years after the events they describe by disciples of Socrates and Mencius. The authors had a number of motives: they wanted to represent what the characters thought and said, to explain the philosophical theories underlying the dramatic plots, and to justify the failure of (...) their mentors to teach something very important. Meno did not learn how to live a good life. Xuan did not become a sage king. It is argued here that while both dramas end in failure, Socrates leaves the conversation confidently optimistic about the future. The conversation between Mencius and Xuan, on the other hand, has deeply tragic overtones. (shrink)

Using Li Zehou's theories of aesthetics, argues for the importance of the arts to philosophy.

Although the historical dispute between introspective psychology and ontological behaviorism encourages the belief that attitudes do not exist, this belief is misguided. Even the Hacking test, suggested by someone with grave doubts about behavioral science, supports the claim that attitudes are “just as real as neutrinos.” Nevertheless, the progress of a science of attitudes may be severely limited by the influence of exogenous factors, factors including normative beliefs about how we should treat the people to whom attitudes are attributed. In (...) so far as these beliefs prevent scientists from experimenting on people and their institutions, particle physics has resources unavailable to survey research. Thus a serious examination of behavioral science leads to some surprising conclusions as to which sciences are the “hard” ones and which ones are simply easier. (shrink)

This paper examines two models used in survey research to explain voting behavior. Although the models rely on the same data they make radically different predictions about the political future. Nevertheless, both models may be more or less correct. The models represent interacting systems and it may be impossible to get a super model of the interactions between their elements. In the natural sciences causal relationships between the elements of interacting models can often be ignored. Because voting behavior models describe (...) phenomena that are roughly the same size, the reciprocal relationships between elements of different models severely restrict the predictive power of voting behavior models. Certain analogies, and disanalogies, between the use of models in natural and social science explain why the social sciences cannot predict many of the events they are able to explain. (shrink)

The last chapter examines the tense system used by ordinarily competent speakers of English to discuss past, present, and future events, actual and possible events, and various combinations of these. I present a systematic method for translating English sentences containing certain compound verb tenses and embedded tense constructions into a logical language using tense operators. Finally I show how the usual semantics for these operators reflects the truth conditions of the original English sentences. I argue, however, that a tense logical (...) semantics reflecting the use of tense in English will contain a partially ordered tense structure rather than one that is linearly ordered or branching. ;The third chapter discusses logic of 'unless'. I show that many of the previously puzzling features of this word can be understood by considering the tenses of the verbs in the sentences joined by 'unless'. In a number of cases it turns out that 'unless' should not be interpreted as a truth-functional connective at all, but is best understood as an intensional, tense connective. ;In the second chapter I discuss Quine's doctrine of eternal sentences. I take Quine's position to be that all the information important for logic and science presented in tensed English sentences can also be presented by eternal sentences which use timeless verbs and data and clock times. I argue that in so far as logic and science are concerned with an analysis of the reasons for human action, and with the explanation and prediction of specific events, eternal sentences lose indexical information that is necessary to accomplish these tasks. ;The first chapter investigates what may be called the standard view of propositions. On this view propositions are abstract objects that are timelessly true , and serve both as the meanings of sentences and as the objects of propositional attitudes. Although this view was widely held by a previous generation of logicians and is found in many textbooks today, there are serious difficulties in the view. I show that many of these difficulties stem from the claim that propositions are timelessly true . The standard view has been revised in two general ways. The first sort of revision allows propositions to be sometimes true and sometimes false. This position is consistent with the development of tense logic as one of the intensional logics. The second sort of revision replaces the notion of timeless propositions with that of eternal sentences which always have the same truth value. On this view tense logic is not worth serious philosophic attention since its basic notion, that of truth at a time, can be eliminated in favor of eternal truth. ;The first part of the project examines two major sources of criticism of tense logic: the view that logic is concerned with timeless propositions, and Quine's doctrine of eternal sentences. The second part of the project discusses several problems in logical theory that the use of tense logic can clarify or resolve, and that alternative theories are unable to present accurately, much less to elucidate. ;In the past few years there has been increasing interest in the logic of indexicals, including the temporal indexical 'now', and in the relationship between tense and modality. Although modern tense logic has reached a high level of technical sophistication, often specifically in response to this interest, many philosophers remain skeptical about the value of tense logic as a philosophic tool. This thesis addresses that skepticism and argues that it is unjustified. (shrink)

Chapters 8, "On Religion and Ritual," and 9, "The Religious Dimensions of Role-Bearing Family Lives," of Against Individualism continue the discussion between Henry Rosemont and Huston Smith that began in Rationality and Religious Experience. The conversations concern the nature of religion, religious experience, and the object of that experience. Rosemont argues that there are certain "homoversals," behaviors that cannot be entirely accounted for by physical or cultural environments.1 Language learning and facial recognition are homoversals, as is what Rosemont calls a (...) "religious impulse … a subjective sense human beings appear to have about being in the presence of something larger than themselves, something that... (shrink)