Chemistry, especially its historical practice, has in the philosophy of science in recent decades attracted more and more attention, influencing the turn from the vision of science as a timeless logic-centred system of statements towards the history- and practice-centred approach. The problem of pluralism in science has become a popular topic in that context. Hasok Chang’s “active normative epistemic pluralism” manifested in his book Is water H2O? Evidence, realism and pluralism, pursuing an integrated study of history and philosophy of (...) science, has provoked quite a widespread debate. It provides a good opportunity to discuss the topical philosophical issue of the nature of disagreements. The differences among disagreements in different domains have been pointed out in the disagreement literature. It has been noticed that in mathematics and science consensus is established more clearly than in philosophy where it remains largely unachievable. However, this conclusion is derived in the context of traditional logic-centred view of science. The aim of this paper is to consider the different nature of disagreements in science and in philosophy in the context of the history- and practice-centred approach. The analysis is focused on the critique of the received view of the Chemical Revolution which played quite a central role in Chang’s becoming a pluralist about science. Unlike Chang, however, a modified Kuhnian paradigm-conception of science and scientific revolutions is defended. (shrink)

With the knowledge that team work is not always associated with high(er) performance, we draw from the Multi-Level Theory of Psychological Contracts, Person-Environment Fit Theory, and Optimal Distinctiveness Theory to study shared perceptions of psychological contract (PC) breach in relation to shared perceptions of complementary and supplementary fit to explain why some teams perform better than other teams. We collected three repeated survey measures in a sample of 128 respondents across 46 teams. After having made sure that we met all (...) statistical criteria, we aggregated our focal variables to the team-level and analysed our data by means of a longitudinal three-wave autoregressive moderated-mediation model in which each relationship was one-time lag apart. We found that shared perceptions of PC breach were directly negatively related to team output and negatively related to perceived team member effectiveness through a decrease in shared perceptions of supplementary fit. However, we also demonstrated a beneficial process in that shared perceptions of PC breach were positively related to shared perceptions of complementary fit, which in turn were positively related to team output. Moreover, best team output appeared in teams that could combine high shared perceptions of complementary fit with modest to high shared perceptions of supplementary fit. Overall, our findings seem to indicate that in terms of team output there may be a bright side to perceptions of PC breach and that perceived person-team fit may play an important role in this process. (shrink)

How authentic are inquiry calls made by simulated clients, or ‘mystery shoppers’, to service organizations, when compared to real callers? We analysed 48 simulated and 63 real inquiry calls to different veterinary practices in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The data were transcribed for conversation analysis, as well as coded for a variety of call categories including reason for the call, call outcome and turn design features. Analysis revealed systematic differences between real and simulated calls in terms of reasons (...) for the call, call outcome and call duration and how callers refer to their pets in service requests and follow-up questions about their animal. Our qualitative analyses were supported with statistical summaries and tests. The findings reveal the limitations of mystery shopper methodology for the assessment of service provision. We also discuss the implications of the findings for the use of simulated encounters and the development of conversational agents. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophies versus Philosophy:In Defense of a Flexible DefinitionRein RaudIt is strange that no one has taken up Carine Defoort's clearly formulated and timely argument about the intercultural tensions in interpreting what philosophy is, although the issue deserves at least a roundtable, if not an international conference.1 I doubt that this is because there is a general consensus that the matter is now settled, and I would therefore like to (...) develop the argument a bit further and offer a few additional factors to consider. It is also obvious that the problem is not limited to the subject of Chinese philosophy alone: all traditions of thought from all over the world, but most notably the Indian, Islamic, and Japanese heritages, are affected by the positions we adopt. As in most debates about the commensurability of cultural traditions, we can find differences when we look for them, and similarities if these are what we would like to see, so the "conflict of sensitivities"2 is also a matter of attitudes. My own position is that regardless of what we prefer to call the practice of deeper thought (and 'philosophy' is a very good name), it would be extremely useful for all of its participants, whatever their origin and upbringing, to find a common denominator for them to be able to exchange ideas and mutually enrich each other on its basis. In what follows I shall try to sketch a perspective from which this could, in my opinion, be theoretically grounded.Four PositionsDefoort has identified four possible points of view on the problem of whether classical Chinese thought could or should be called 'philosophy,' which could be summarized as follows.1. Chinese classical thought is not philosophy, because it does not satisfy the conditions of philosophy as it is generally and traditionally understood in the West.2. Chinese classical thought is philosophy, because it reveals the necessary characteristics if analyzed with the help of an appropriate (Western-type) observation language.3. Chinese classical thought can be called philosophy, but only if we redefine philosophy in order to accommodate some of its nontypical or clearly deviant features.4. Chinese classical thought should not be called philosophy, because philosophy is a culturally closed Western phenomenon with a limited scope and incapable of understanding fundamentally different modes of thought. [End Page 618]If we dismiss the birthright variety of the first position, we could label it essentialist, and its weakest point is certainly that Western philosophy has not remained unchanged during the course of history. It is highly doubtful that Socrates, Diogenes, scholastics, Nietzsche, and Gareth Evans could all be members of the same set if the same strict criteria were applied to all periods and all cultural settings in the same way, and, as Defoort herself stresses,3 the fact that seventeenth-century Jesuits (the basis of whose original worldview, we should think, was much farther from the Chinese than ours) had no problem in calling Chinese thought philosophy should show us that the paradigm shift of the thing called 'philosophy' has occurred in the West and is, so to speak, our problem and not theirs.Now, it is also possible that in some circles even some prominent names in the Western tradition do not qualify as real philosophers, in the sense in which Hegel was treated by Bertrand Russell4 and Heidegger was dismissed by Alfred Ayer5 in their respective histories of philosophy (while they nevertheless felt compelled to include chapters or passages on them). A definition of philosophy that puts forward such criteria that a considerable number of thinkers would have to remain outside its borders should be labeled sectarian-and it can still be met, even if ever less often, in some analytical schools of philosophy. It is my conviction, however, that in our globalizing world any definition that would leave non-European philosophy outside the borders of 'philosophy proper' should be considered sectarian in nature. The main problem that I have with Defoort's family model6 is precisely that in it the head of the family, who makes the decisions as to who can be adopted and who cannot, is always Western, and the... (shrink)

It is a commonplace that Frege thought ordinary language to be seriously defective. Yet his remarks about ordinary language are not always unflattering. Comparing the relation between his formal language and ordinary language to the relation between the microscope and the eye, Frege remarked: ‘[the eye], because of the range of its applicability and because of the ease with which it can adapt itself to the most varied circumstances, has a great superiority over the microscope’. The point, of course, is (...) that, for Frege, the deficiencies of ordinary language arise in connection with the scientific endeavour: ordinary language is not an acceptable medium in which to pursue truth. As he goes on to observe: ‘… viewed as an optical instrument [the eye] reveals many imperfections … as soon as scientific purposes place strong requirements upon sharpness of resolution, the eye proves to be inadequate. On the other hand, the microscope is perfectly suited for just such purposes’. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the power of corporations as epistemic agents. Corporations need to hold certain forms of knowledge in order to develop and produce goods and services. Intellectual property is meant to incentivize them to do so, in ways that orient their activities towards the public good. However, corporations often use their knowledge strategically, not only within markets, but also in the processes that set the rules for markets. I discuss various historical examples, including the so-called “tobacco strategy” (...) of creating doubt about scientific evidence, and argue that as long as corporations are set up as profit-oriented entities, it is a dangerous strategy to provide them with too much epistemic power. I suggest various policies for reigning in this form of corporate power, for example regulations on PR activities. I then turn to the power of digital corporations, which is based on their collection and analysis of data. These kinds of companies, and the technologies they use, make the control of corporations as epistemic agents all the more urgent for democratic societies. (shrink)

The chapter contributes to the debate on Dōgen’s theory of time by discussing key concepts of the Shōbōgenzō’s “Uji” fascicle in a broader context, comparing them with other cases of usage in the entire work, their provenance in the tradition of Zen thought, as well as with their possible translational equivalents and their connotations in the Western tradition. A central claim for which I argue is that a presentist reading of the fascicle (as well as other related passages in Dōgen’s (...) work) leaves the fewest of the cryptic passages unexplained. It does this while blending seamlessly with Dōgen’s other claims about reality, language, our ways to understand them, and praxis.I begin, however, by touching on the much-discussed issue of Dōgen’s relationship with philosophy, arguing that it is incorrect to exclude non-Western traditions from the domain of philosophy because of particular features that certain canonically recognised Western thinkers and texts also possess. The issue is important, because it legitimates a register of reading of texts such as Dōgen’s in a way that places them in dialogue with ideas that they have historically had no connection with. And it also enables us to use them in contexts for which they have no historical relevance — something that treating them solely as subject matter for the history of ideas would not let us do. (shrink)

Lying is an important moral phenomenon that most people are affected by on a daily basis—be it in personal relationships, in political debates, or in the form of fake news. Nevertheless, surprisingly little is known about what actually constitutes a lie. According to the traditional definition of lying, a person lies if they explicitly express something they believe to be false. Consequently, it is often assumed that people cannot lie by more indirectly communicating believed‐false claims, for instance by merely conversationally (...) implicating them. In this paper, we subject this claim to an empirical test. In a preregistered study of 300 participants, we investigate how people judge cases of implicit deceptions that would usually be excluded by the traditional definition of lying (i.e., conversational implicatures, presuppositions, and nonverbal actions). Our results show that people do in fact consider it possible to lie by indirect means, suggesting that people have a broader concept of lying than is usually assumed. Moreover, our findings indicate that lie judgments are closely tied to the extent to which agents are perceived as having committed themselves to the believed‐false claims they have communicated. We discuss the implications of our results for the traditional definition of lying and propose a new commitment‐based definition of lying that can account for the findings of our experiment. (shrink)

Reality exists independently of human observers, but does the same apply to its structure? Realist ontologies usually assume so: according to them, the world consists of objects, these have properties and enter into relations with each other, more or less as we are accustomed to think of them. Against this view, Rein Raud develops a radical process ontology that does not credit any vantage point, any scale or speed of being, any range of cognitive faculties with the privilege to (...) judge how the world ‘really’ is. In his view, what we think of as objects are recast as fields of constitutive tensions, cross-sections of processes, never in complete balance but always striving for it and always reconfiguring themselves accordingly. The human self is also understood as a fluctuating field, not limited to the mind but distributed all over the body and reaching out into its environment, with different constituents of the process constantly vying for control. The need for such a process philosophy has often been voiced, but rarely has there been an effort to develop it in a systematic and rigourous manner that leads to original accounts of identity, continuity, time, change, causality, agency and other topics. Throughout his new book, Raud engages with an unusually broad range of philosophical schools and debates, from New Materialism and Object-Oriented Ontology to both phenomenological and analytical philosophy of mind, from feminist philosophy of science to neurophilosophy and social ontology. Being in Flux will be of interest to students and scholars in philosophy and the humanities generally and to anyone interested in current debates about realism, materialism and ontology. (shrink)

Co-éditions avec la Maison descartes d'Amsterdam Les 29 et 30 novembre 1979 s'est tenu à la Maison Descartes (Institut Français d'Amsterdam) un colloque franco-néerlandais sur le thème de "L'Enfermement", sous la présidence de Charles Grivel du côté néerlandais et de Michel Deguy du côté français.Les intervenants venaient d'horizons divers. Poètes, comme Maurice Roche pour la France et Rein Bloem pour les Pyas-Bas. Psychanalyste: Anton Mooij. Sociologues: le néerlandais Pieter Nijhoff et le français Jean Duvignaud. Historiens: Robert Muchembled. Professeurs de (...) littérature française (Roger Kempf) et de linguistique (Teun van Dijk).Cette diversité dans la formation, cette convergence des points de vue, voilà peut-être ce qui a permis de cerner le difficile concept d'enfermement. S'agit-il bien d'ailleurs d'un concept? N'est-ce pas là un mythe à la mode? Toutes les civilisations, toutes les sociétés définissent et suscitent, chaque fois d'une manière différente et pour elles-même, une certaine expérience de l'enfermememnt. Pour la mort ou la sexualité sans doute, mais aussi pour l'art et le savoir: les idéologies ou les doctrines ne sont-elles pas aussi des formes de l'enfermement? Il s'agit alors de se demander pourquoi notre époque, et plus particulièrement une certaine situation de la société intellectuelle, valorise, non sans complaisance, cet "enfermement". (shrink)

In one of his essays on art, Dutch author and essayist Joost Zwagerman reflects on the work of South African artist Marlene Dumas. Zwagerman addresses in particular Dumas' My Mother Before She Became My Mother, painted 3 years after her mother died. In his reflections, Zwagerman proposes an interpretation of Dumas' work. He suggests that Dumas, in her art, does not accept the omnipotence of death. Maybe against better judgement, but Dumas keeps creating images that not only illustrate the desire (...) for meaning but also embody this desire. The image and the desire for meaning merge in Dumas' paintings. The painting itself becomes an autonomous 'desire machine', according to Zwagerman. In this article, a theological reading of Zwagerman's own posthumously published volume of poetry, 'Wakend over God', is presented, with a specific interest in art, death and God. The sacramental hermeneutics of Richard Kearney and the theopoetics of John Caputo are brought into the conversation to elicit the dimensions of faith and religion in Zwagerman's own 'desire machine'. (shrink)

Volume 11, Issue 1, March 2019, Page 48-60.

This article argues for a new way to interpret Dōgen's theory of time, reading the notion of uji as momentary existence, and shows that many notorious difficulties usually associated with the theory can be overcome with this approach, which is also more compatible with some fundamental assumptions of Buddhist philosophy (the non-durational existence of dharmas, the arbitrariness of linguistic designations and the concepts they point to, the absence of self-nature in beings, etc.). It is also shown how this reading leads (...) to an innovative treatment of the concept of selfhood, viewing the self as the active openness of an existent to the surrounding world, with which it is able to identify through a mutual relation with other existents within the existential moment. This argument is supported by an alternative translation in the "momentary mode" of those extracts of the fascicle that introduce or elaborate on Dōgen's key concepts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Traditions and Tendencies:A Reply to Carine DefoortRein RaudIn 1899 William Aston, a British diplomat, published the first overall history of Japanese literature in English. In it, Japanese poetry is characterized as follows:Narrow in its scope and resources, it is chiefly remarkable for its limitations-for what it has not, rather than what it has.... Indeed, narrative poems of any kind are short and very few, the only ones which I (...) have met with being two or three ballads of a sentimental cast. Didactic, philosophical, political and satirical poems are also conspicuously absent. The Japanese muse does not meddle with such subjects, and it is doubtful whether, if it did, the native Pegasus possesses sufficient staying power for them to be dealt with adequately.([1899] 1977, p. 24)Nevertheless, Aston took it for granted that Japan had a literature and that one part of it was poetry, even if it did not quite live up to his expectations. Timothy Reiss, writing a century later, was not so generous: he argued that literature in the proper (i.e., his) sense of the word appeared in Europe in the seventeenth century "as part of a social solution to a crisis viewed explicitly at the time as at once logico-linguistic and sociopolitical" (1992, p. 5). As was fashionable at the time, Reiss' voluminous study also set out to prove that, once the crisis had been resolved, literature would also cease to exist.These two approaches can certainly be seen in the treatment of non-Western philosophical traditions as well. We might say that Aston's assessment of Japanese literature ("ingenious and inventive, but hardly capable of high intellectual achievement" [1899] 1977, p. 4) could perhaps be compared to the views of Christian missionaries and other early mediators of non-Western traditions, while the position of Reiss is similar to the position of those contemporary Western scholars who would like to reserve the right to define philosophy as narrowly as possible. In my comment earlier in this issue I tried to argue that neither of these positions, nor their derivates, is really satisfactory in the contemporary intellectual environment.In her thorough response, Carine Defoort has clarified most issues that provoked me in her initial article on this topic, particularly in emphasizing that her "family model" of philosophy is meant to be descriptive and not prescriptive. Nevertheless, I do find it a bit too pessimistic even as a description of the present situation, and I am also inclined to disagree with her certainty that "a world philosophy has not arisen and is not on the rise." Of course, a lot remains to be done in this area, but there is a clear tendency to the contrary, although this is perhaps due more to the contribution of Japanese rather than Chinese thinkers. A brief internet search reveals a considerable number of scholars who occupy professorial positions in philosophy (not Asian studies) departments at various universities around the world who list, for example, the Kyoto school philosophers or Dōgen in their research interests. Defoort as well does not have too high hopes of the Chinese tradition entering the field on a [End Page 661] more permanent setting because of the complexity of the language; on the other hand, not so many Western philosophers are proficient in Greek, either, but this is not perceived to be a major obstacle in their work. Moreover, although articles and books on Japanese thinkers sometimes appear that are on the naive side, relying on translations as they do, this situation does not necessarily have to stay the way it is.Nevertheless, Defoort is most certainly right in that the opposite number of philosophy departments, where Asian traditions are not considered to be proper philosophy, is, for the time being, much bigger. And some of them are in the most respectable institutions. However, when thinkers such as Jacques Derrida deny the status of philosophy to Chinese thought, one should remember that in many of these respectable institutions the label of "philosophy" is denied to the work of Derrida himself as well. If we refer to taijiquan not as taijiquan, period, but as "shadow-boxing," we have already granted... (shrink)

This paper examines six cross-sector partnerships in South Africa and Zambia. These partnerships were part of a research study undertaken between 2003 and 2005 and were selected because of their potential to contribute to poverty reduction in their respective countries. This paper examines the context in which the partnerships were established, their governance and accountability mechanisms and the engagement and participation of the partners and the intended beneficiaries in the partnerships. We argue that a partnership approach which has proven successful (...) in one context can be used as a valuable learning resource. However, a partnership's work, which includes all aspects of the partnership and its activities, cannot necessarily be transferred directly to another partnership without a thorough and locally informed analysis of the context in which it is implemented. In addition, we suggest that it is difficult to assess whether the good intentions behind partnerships were translated into real benefits for target groups as effective monitoring and evaluation procedures were not in place in the partnerships studied. Similarly, the absence of regularised governance and accountability systems in partnerships made it difficult to support partner and beneficiary participation and engagement. We conclude that there is a need to move beyond a 'one-size-fits-all' approach to partnerships and that partnership replication should focus more strongly on the transfer of learning about partnership processes instead of simply copying partnership activities. Moreover, the development of stronger mechanisms for assessing and ensuring accountability towards both partners and intended beneficiaries is required if partnerships are to meet their intended objectives. (shrink)

In this paper, the elaboration of the concept of practical realist philosophy of science which began in the author's previous papers is continued. It is argued that practical realism is opposed to standard scientific realism, on the one hand, and antirealism, on the other. Standard scientific realism is challengeable due to its abstract character, as being isolated from practice. It is based on a metaphysical-ontological presupposition which raises the problem of the God's Eye point of view (as it was called (...) by Hilary Putnam). Joseph Rouse's conception of science as practice, Sami Pihlström's pragmatic realism, and even Ilkka Niiniluoto's critical scientific realism are interpreted as practical realist conceptions. Pihlström suggests that the contemporary scientific realist should be prepared to accept the pragmatically naturalized Kantian transcendental perspective on realism. It is argued, however, that this realistically naturalized Kantianism can be nothing more than practical realism, as originated by Karl Marx. (shrink)

The philosophical analysis of chemistry has advanced at such a pace during the last dozen years that the existence of philosophy of chemistry as an autonomous discipline cannot be doubted any more. The present paper will attempt to analyse the experience of philosophy of chemistry at the, so to say, meta-level. Philosophers of chemistry have especially stressed that all sciences need not be similar to physics. They have tried to argue for chemistry as its own type of science and for (...) a pluralistic understanding of science in general. However, when stressing the specific character of chemistry, philosophers do not always analyse the question ‘What is science?’ theoretically. It is obvious that a ‘monistic’ understanding of science should not be based simply on physics as the epitome of science, regarding it as a historical accident that physics has obtained this status. The author’s point is that the philosophical and methodological image of science should not be chosen arbitrarily; instead, it should be theoretically elaborated as an idealization (theoretical model) substantiated on the historical practice of science. It is argued that although physics has, in a sense, justifiably obtained the status of a paradigm of science, chemistry, which is not simply a physical science, but a discipline with a dual character, is also relevant for elaborating a theoretical model of science. The theoretical model of science is a good tool for examining various issues in philosophy of chemistry as well as in philosophy of science or science studies generally. (shrink)

The end of the Cold War brought about a new wave of proliferation of market economy and democracy. Both are spreading through purposeful efforts of Western exporters and Eastern importers as well as by way of example. These generally positive processes are not, however, without considerable negative side effects and setbacks. The article considers three pairs of dialectical contradictions: parallel democratization and introduction of free markets, democratization and liberalism, and democratization and nationalism. Naïve, hypocritical, and pragmatic approaches to democracy promotion, (...) as well as factors facilitating or hindering democratization (sometimes making it impossible) of specific societies, are analyzed. One of the central problems is the question of absolute or relative (contingent on time, space, and other factors) universality of democracy. The article concludes that democracy has to be mainly demand-driven, not supply-induced. It also considers to what extent external efforts can compensate for the weaknesses of domestic facilitators and what happens when there are attempts to export democracy to societies that are not ready for that. (shrink)

Busshō, one of the central fascicles of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō, is dedicated to the problematic of Buddha-nature, the understanding of which in Dōgen’s thought is fairly different from previous Buddhist philosophy, but concordant with his views on reality, time and person. The article will present a close reading of several passages of the fascicle with comment in order to argue that Dōgen’s understanding of Buddha-nature is not something that entities have, but a mode of how they are, neither in itself nor (...) for us, but in the total world-process. The relation between totality and particularity is not hierarchical, nor one of opposition, but conceived of a matter of perspective, which, as Dōgen shows, is both mediated and circumscribed by language. As a result, we can see that particularity of being is precisely what makes the totality of being accessible to every existent, not an obstacle to be overcome. (shrink)

: Presented here is a comparative analysis of spatiotemporal concepts in the thought of Nishida and Dogen, arguing that both thinkers articulate fundamental notions about being and self/subject through them. It starts with an analysis of the notions of 'world' (sekai) and 'place' (basho) as well as time and order in Nishida's work, which is followed by an effort to elucidate his philosophical position by comparing his views to those of Dogen and by demonstrating their similarity in several important aspects, (...) thus showing that Nishida's philosophy, regardless of its debt to Western influence, is firmly embedded in the tradition of Asian thought. (shrink)

The article traces the genesis of soku, a particle elevated to the status of an operator of dialectical logic by Japanese philosophers of the Kyto school, to a translation problem that occurred when Buddhist thought spread from India to China. On the basis of the analysis of its most famous locus of occurrence, a passage in the Heart Sutra, it is shown how eva, a Sanskrit particle with the function of distinguishing between logical types of sentences, was transformed into a (...) modifier of identity statements and an indicator of the inability of language to express deep-level Buddhist insights exhaustively. (shrink)

Dans cet article, on suggère qu’un rôle central peut être assigné à la philosophie de la chimie dans la philosophie des sciences post-kuhnienne en général, et dans l’analyse du débat opposant le réalisme scientifique à l’anti-réalisme dans la philosophie des sciences standard. La philosophie des sciences construit la science comme une pratique plus que comme un réseau d’assertions. On soutient que le réalisme pratique permet d’éviter les défauts à la fois du réalisme scientifique standard et de l’anti-réalisme. On analyse un (...) livre important publié récemment, B. Bensaude-Vincent’s & J. Simon’s Chemistry — The Impure Science [Bensaude-Vincent & Simon 2008], et on interprète la position des auteurs comme une sorte de réalisme pratique. (shrink)

Recent decades have witnessed a sharp increase of interest in the cultures and regions of South and East Asia, owing in part to the prominent role Asian economies have played in the era of globalization. Asian Worldviews: Religions, Philosophies, Political Theories is a unique, reader-friendly introduction to the intellectual heritage of the region. Assuming no previous background in Asian cultural history, Asian Worldviews moves beyond chronological and geographic boundaries to present an integrated treatment of the beliefs, teachings, and ideologies that (...) have shaped the worldviews of approximately half of the global population. Rein Raud explores forms of knowledge in China, India, Tibet, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia, providing balanced coverage of all historical periods from antiquity to the modern day. -/- Asian Worldviews embraces the connections rather than the divisions between the religious and philosophical dimensions of South and East Asian thought, and emphasizes a robust engagement with each culture's political, social, and economic contexts. Clear, accessible chapters discuss the development of religious, philosophical, and political thought in India, China, and Japan, and provide succinct overviews of the history of ideas in Korea, Tibet, and Southeast Asia. Throughout the book, Raud uses a comparative approach to examine the mutual influence and productive dialogue, past and present, between Asian cultures as well as with the West, and considers the impact of various worldviews on the development of modern Asian societies. -/- Comprehensive and well-informed by recent developments in the scholarship, Asian Worldviews: Religions, Philosophies, Political Theories is an unparalleled resource for a broad range of courses in Asian studies, philosophy, religious studies, and global politics, as well as an excellent introduction for non-specialist readers looking for a contextual foothold in the rich cultural and intellectual history of South and East Asia. (shrink)

La couturière à la Réunion : figure ou actrice sociale? Cet article aborde les stratégies professionnelles des femmes libres dans une société esclavagiste, Bourbon (La Réunion) en 1847, confrontée à la nécessité d’introduire le travail libre. Dans ce contexte, les femme sont perçues comme actrices du changement social. L’augmentation des déclarations de l’activité de couturière révèle aussi l’appropriation de nouvelles valeurs, soumises cependant aux contraintes du genre et de l’environnement servile.

The analysis of the reciprocal relations of the discipline of philosophy and other cultural phenomena requires a few disclaimers. First of all, the characterization of philosophy as a cultural phenomenon along with literature, music and theater, or culinary arts, fashions and sports, rejects claims that philosophy somehow relates to absolute truths which transcend the limits of any particular cultural context and mean the same things for anyone who manages to reach the heights and/or depths necessary for that purpose. This also (...) entails that any pursuit of philosophy, including Buddhist philosophy in Japan, is only possible within the network of textualities and cultural practices that surround it, and the people engaged in it relate to the cultural codes and institutions of their environment just as they relate to the internal rules of their philosophy and its received heritage. Secondly, we have to acknowledge two major aspects in approaching any cultural phenomenon, namely, its texts and its practice. The texts produced by the people engaged in, say, philosophy or literature or cooking are distinct from, yet always related to, the practical aspects of that phenomenon, which determine who produces these texts, how and why they are produced, and how they are used and disseminated. Alternatively, seen from the aspect of practice, texts are a sort of by-product of what people do; for example, reciting Buddhist sutras does not imply a deep understanding of their semantic, textual, and philosophical content. Both of these aspects are equally relevant to the phenomenon as a whole, and neither can be sufficiently analyzed without the knowledge of the other. In this article, I will focus on some key categories and issues mainly as they have been reflected in the domain of literature, especially since it can be argued that literature is the filter through which Buddhist influence, and its philosophical aspect, in particular, has been mediated to other spheres of culture. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophies versus Philosophy:In Defense of a Flexible DefinitionRein RaudIt is strange that no one has taken up Carine Defoort's clearly formulated and timely argument about the intercultural tensions in interpreting what philosophy is, although the issue deserves at least a roundtable, if not an international conference.1 I doubt that this is because there is a general consensus that the matter is now settled, and I would therefore like to (...) develop the argument a bit further and offer a few additional factors to consider. It is also obvious that the problem is not limited to the subject of Chinese philosophy alone: all traditions of thought from all over the world, but most notably the Indian, Islamic, and Japanese heritages, are affected by the positions we adopt. As in most debates about the commensurability of cultural traditions, we can find differences when we look for them, and similarities if these are what we would like to see, so the "conflict of sensitivities"2 is also a matter of attitudes. My own position is that regardless of what we prefer to call the practice of deeper thought (and 'philosophy' is a very good name), it would be extremely useful for all of its participants, whatever their origin and upbringing, to find a common denominator for them to be able to exchange ideas and mutually enrich each other on its basis. In what follows I shall try to sketch a perspective from which this could, in my opinion, be theoretically grounded.Four PositionsDefoort has identified four possible points of view on the problem of whether classical Chinese thought could or should be called 'philosophy,' which could be summarized as follows.1. Chinese classical thought is not philosophy, because it does not satisfy the conditions of philosophy as it is generally and traditionally understood in the West.2. Chinese classical thought is philosophy, because it reveals the necessary characteristics if analyzed with the help of an appropriate (Western-type) observation language.3. Chinese classical thought can be called philosophy, but only if we redefine philosophy in order to accommodate some of its nontypical or clearly deviant features.4. Chinese classical thought should not be called philosophy, because philosophy is a culturally closed Western phenomenon with a limited scope and incapable of understanding fundamentally different modes of thought. [End Page 618]If we dismiss the birthright variety of the first position, we could label it essentialist, and its weakest point is certainly that Western philosophy has not remained unchanged during the course of history. It is highly doubtful that Socrates, Diogenes, scholastics, Nietzsche, and Gareth Evans could all be members of the same set if the same strict criteria were applied to all periods and all cultural settings in the same way, and, as Defoort herself stresses,3 the fact that seventeenth-century Jesuits (the basis of whose original worldview, we should think, was much farther from the Chinese than ours) had no problem in calling Chinese thought philosophy should show us that the paradigm shift of the thing called 'philosophy' has occurred in the West and is, so to speak, our problem and not theirs.Now, it is also possible that in some circles even some prominent names in the Western tradition do not qualify as real philosophers, in the sense in which Hegel was treated by Bertrand Russell4 and Heidegger was dismissed by Alfred Ayer5 in their respective histories of philosophy (while they nevertheless felt compelled to include chapters or passages on them). A definition of philosophy that puts forward such criteria that a considerable number of thinkers would have to remain outside its borders should be labeled sectarian-and it can still be met, even if ever less often, in some analytical schools of philosophy. It is my conviction, however, that in our globalizing world any definition that would leave non-European philosophy outside the borders of 'philosophy proper' should be considered sectarian in nature. The main problem that I have with Defoort's family model6 is precisely that in it the head of the family, who makes the decisions as to who can be adopted and who cannot, is always Western, and the... (shrink)

One of the most characteristic features of the philosophy of Dōgen is his idiosyncratic use of language, in particular, the replacement of expected semantic connections between two adjacent Chinese characters with improbable, but grammatically possible ones, from which new philosophical concepts are then derived. The article places this writing technique in the context of the linguistic changes that were taking place both in China and Japan at the time of Dōgen's writing as well as the general attitude of Chan/zen thinkers (...) toward language, arguing that the Chan/zen critique was not pointed to language as such, but its reified and alienated forms. Dōgen's concept-making could accordingly be seen as an effort to keep language ‘alive.’ The article offers two possible ways of interpreting his concepts: they can either be seen as relativisations of the mainstream reading norms, or as the creation of total semantic links in which all the existing ways of linking two characters are simultaneously possible. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this paper, I compare the idea of ‘substitution’, central to the later work of Emmanuel Levinas, to the idea of jinen hōni, or ‘natural acts’, proposed by Shinran Shōnin. For Levinas, ‘substitution’ meant the acceptance of responsibility for the suffering of the Other that one hasn’t caused, giving oneself up to ‘persecution’ and ‘accusation’ of the Other in absolute passivity. For Shinran, a similar passivity is implied by the unability of the ‘I’ to act in order to liberate itself (...) from its conditioned existence, a result which can be achieved by giving up one’s own agency in favour of the Other. For both thinkers, ethical selfhood is thus attainable only by forsaking of one’s worldly ego, described in remarkably similar terms, even though their understanding of alterity itself is radically different. (shrink)

The article deals with the differences of the notion of 'object' or 'thing' in natural languages, concluding that some languages are by their structure more object-biased while others are more event-biased and proceeds to analyse how two common Japanese words, mono and koto , both meaning 'thing', have been treated in 20th-century Japanese thought, notably in the philosophical works of Watsuji Tetsurô, Ide Takashi, Hiromatsu Wataru and Kimura Bin. All of these thinkers represent different schools and trends (Watsuji could be (...) called a cultural particularist, Ide was an Aristotle scholar, Hiromatsu a Marxist and Kimura is a psychiatrist), but come to similar conclusions in this respect, allowing us to regard event-biased and object-biased linguistic constructions as manifestations of two different, but equally necessary cognitive faculties. (shrink)

In many of his works, Zygmunt Bauman has expressed a critical position regarding the politics of multiculturalism, showing how it can be and has been used to downgrade the problems of inequality and uneven access to education, while sequestering minorities in their inherited cultural situations, which are portrayed by the leaders of such communities as “fortresses under siege”. While agreeing with his critique of unequality, this article shows that the target of his criticism are not the honest efforts to find (...) a modus vivendi for multicultural societies that would preserve cultural identities while opening them up to a common social ground, but essentializing and simplifying political discourses that make use of multicultural vocabulary in order to promote other agendas. The article further develops a model in which to view the interests and legitimate rights of individuals and groups and shows how conclusion arises as a result of manipulating them. Finally, the article compares the cultural attitudes and relations to their particular environment of two groups, immigrant minorities and expats, and comes to the conclusion that expats, normally people who come from economically equal or wealthier backgrounds share many of the problems usually associated with immigrant cultural communities in contemporary societies, thus demonstrating that the discourse of multiculturalism can and should be legitimately and fruitfully separated from the discussion of other social problems. (shrink)

Carnap’s work was instrumental to the liberalization of empiricism in the 1930s that transformed the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle to what came to be known as logical empiricism. A central feature of this liberalization was the deployment of the Principle of Tolerance, originally introduced in logic, but now invoked in an epistemological context in “Testability and Meaning”. Immediately afterwards, starting with Foundations of Logic and Mathematics, Carnap embraced semantics and turned to interpretation to guide the choice of a (...) theoretical language for science. The first thesis of this paper is that recourse to an intended interpretation led to a partial retrenchment of the conventionalism implied by the Principle of Tolerance. It required that the choice of a language be based on abstraction from a context; this procedure later became a component of the process of explication that was distinctive to Carnap’s mature views. The interpretive origin of formal systems also ensured their likely syntactic consistency, an issue on which Carnap was strongly criticized by figures such as Beth and Gödel. The second thesis of this paper is that this reliance on an intended interpretation enabled constructed formal systems to be relevant to the development of empirical science. (shrink)

In reference to the different approaches in philosophy(of medicine) of the nature of (medical) technology,this article introduces the topic of this specialissue of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, that is,the way the different forms of medical technologyfunction in everyday medical practice. The authorselaborate on the active role technology plays inshaping our views on disease, illness, and the body,whence in shaping our world.

The idea that natural languages shape the way we think in different ways was popularized by Benjamin Whorf, but then fell out of favor for lack of empirical support. But now, a new wave of research has been shifting the tide back toward linguistic relativity. The recent research can be interpreted in different ways, some trivial, some implausibly radical, and some both plausible and interesting. We introduce two theses that would have important implications if true: Habitual Whorfianism and Ontological Whorfianism. (...) We argue that these offer the most promising interpretations of the emerging evidence. (shrink)

The present study examines cross-cultural differences in people’s concept of lying with regard to the question of whether lying requires an agent to _say_ something they believe to be false. While prominent philosophical views maintain that lying entails that a person explicitly expresses a believed-false claim, recent research suggests that people’s concept of lying might also include certain kinds of deception that are communicated more indirectly. An important drawback of previous empirical work on this topic is that only few studies (...) have investigated people’s concept of lying in non-Western samples. In the present study, we compare people’s intuitions about lying with indirect deceptions (i.e., presuppositions, conversational implicatures, and non-verbal actions) in a sample of _N_ = 255 participants from Russia and _N_ = 300 participants from the United Kingdom. Our findings show a strong degree of similarity between lie ratings of participants from Russia and the United Kingdom, with both samples holding it possible for agents to lie with deceptive statements and actions that do not involve the agent _saying_ something they believe to be false. (shrink)