"Yang Xiong is the most useless of all. He was truly a rotten Confucian."Zhu Xi (11301200 A.D.)With this comment from Song Dynasty Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi, the work of Han Dynasty philosopher Yang Xiong (53 B.C.18 A.D.) was effectively relegated to the dustbin of Chinese intellectual history. While influential in the Later Han as the clearest expression of the Old Text Confucian school, Yang's Fa yan has received little attention from Western scholars and appears here in a rare annotated (...) English translation.Written during the transition between the Former and Later Han Dynasties, the Fa yan is a notoriously elusive text that was stylistically modeled on the Analects of Confucius. Denigrated by later Neo-Confucians for his association with Han usurper Wang Mang, Yang Xiong served both the Former Han and Xin imperial courts as a court poet and scholar, and was well known for being a reclusive personality, earning him a reputation as a "hermit at court." Most famous for his position that human nature is a mixture of good and evil, Yang Xiong's philosophy stands in clear contrast to the syncretic Confucianism of his day as a reformer's vision of proper self-cultivation and statecraft.This volume presents an annotated translation of the entire text, focusing on the passages that elucidate Yang's discussion of the core concepts of the Confucian school. The translator's commentary traces the text's major philosophical concepts to their roots in Warring States era philosophy, noting stylistic and conceptual allusions to the Analects and Mencius, among other texts. Also included are a discussion of Yang's biography and the influence of the eremitic ideal on his life and thought. (shrink)

In the course of his short literary life, Liu Na'ou travelled across four geographical areas: Taiwan, Japan, Shanghai and Beijing, as well as five cultural domains: Taiwanese, Japanese, French, English and Chinese. The transnational facet of Liu's modernist writing is not merely literary or cultural but political and historical. The earliest modernist writing in China was initiated on the basis of the colonial experience of Taiwan and the semi-colonial modernity of Shanghai. It became a “contact zone” in which various cultural (...) and political influences to contest with each other, signaling a process of power shifting in East Asia in the early 20th century. This article aims to reflect on theoretical issues ranging from nationalism, cosmopolitanism, colonialism and semi-colonialism, to the colonial modernity of East Asia, drawing upon Liu's modernist writings in 1928. (shrink)

Nationality and state are two different historical categories, yet the nationality community cannot be separated from the substance of the state. The existence of nationalities and national consciousness are inseparable from a given state category; the formation and sound development of national consciousness are inseparable from the nurturing by, and influence of, patriotism.

This paper analyzes legal fact-argumentation in the framework of the argumentation-based litigation game by Xiong :16–19, 2012). Rather than as an ontological one, an ALG treats a legal fact as a fact-qua-claim whose acceptability depends on the reasons supporting it. In constructing their facts-qua-claims, parties to an ALG must interact to maintain a game-theoretic equilibrium. We compare the general interactional constraints that the civil and common law systems assign, and detail what the civil, administrative, and criminal codes of mainland (...) China require of the suitor, the respondent, and the trier to establish their respective S-, R- and T-facts. We also offer an improved version of the legal syllogism. (shrink)

The concept of Tao occupies a core position in Taoism and even the entire Chinese classical philosophy. For philosophical Taoism, ‘Tao’ is the ultimate reality. Therefore, exploring Taoist epistemology, its role in governance, education and self-cultivation is necessary. The only way that can be approached beyond human ability to fathom ‘Tao’ is beyond mere reasoning or words. Thus, the basic guiding principles behind Taoism for approaching Tao are ‘no action’ and ‘no words’. In traditional Chinese philosophy, following Tao to cultivate (...) oneself is teaching, so as Taoism advocates the teaching of non-action beyond words. The educational thought of Taoist also strongly dismisses the notion of ‘learning’, which is at odds with the Confucians and majority of Westerns. However, Taoism does not negate the importance of learning to attain knowledge, while only opposes the so-called knowledge that is cumbersome, limited, rigid and antagonistic. According to the Taoist thought, children like all human beings are guided naturally and attain fulfillment in harmony with the rest of the world. Enlightenment is a continual and constant process that can be attained by gradual self-transformation until the Tao is realized. Teaching without words seems to be a negative method, while it actually possesses significance. Excessive addiction to knowledge and efficiency drifts modern education away from Taoism. Excavating the educational significance of Taoist ancient philosophical heritage can facilitate us understanding the true nature of education. (shrink)

Along with the definition and advancement of theories on the "initial stage of socialism," studies on nationality theory are also entering a new and deeper stage, and a number of questions of theory need to be reconsidered and reexamined. Lexicographical works dealing with nationality matters published in China in recent years have furnished much enlightenment.

Recent discussions concerning the beginning problem of Hegel’s Logic have reached the agreement that any promised interpretation of the beginning of the Logic must reject opposition between the immediacy and mediation and embrace their unity instead. It is how this unity is understood that divides interpreters. Either the mediation precedes the immediacy and justifies it first, or a somewhat one-sided immediacy occurs first and waits to be mediated later in a circular justification. However, both concepts are confronted with their own (...) difficulties. To avoid these difficulties, I propose that the pure immediacy or pure being is justified to be the Logic’s beginning in virtue of its alternativelessness. Only it can measure up to the rigorous requirement implied by the nature of the beginning. (shrink)

本书从哲学、史学、伦理学、社会学和宗教学等不同角度,对荣辱观的形成和内涵、荣辱观在历史上的传承、以及不同时代荣辱观的异同与比较研究等一系列具有重要学术价值和现实意义的课题,展开多侧面的深入探讨。.

Hegel’s theory of indexicality appears in the first chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit, Sensuous-Certainty (SC). Current interpretations of the meaning of the universals that Hegel attributes to indexicals diverge from one another. Such interpretations can be divided into three groups: the universals as Fregean senses, as properties expressed by predicates in complex demonstratives, and as contrastive and recollective repeatability. I argue that all three exegeses face difficulties. Fregean senses, as referent-dependent modes of presentation, are particulars rather than universals. The (...) interpretation that appeals to predicates in complex demonstratives confuses referential indeterminacy with context sensitivity. The view of universals as contrastive and recollective repeatability misses the point of Hegel’s relevant arguments regarding universals. I propose to understand the universal in question as an indexical expression type akin to David Kaplan’s character (linguistic rules for expression use). In SC, Hegel argues for an expression/reference distinction by appealing to the context sensitivity of indexicals. (shrink)

The Dutch Book Argument shows that an agent will lose surely in a gamble (a Dutch Book is made) if his degrees of belief do not satisfy the laws of the probability. Yet a question arises here: What does the Dutch Book imply? This paper firstly argues that there exists a utility function following Ramsey’s axioms. And then, it explicates the properties of the utility function and degree of belief respectively. The properties show that coherence in partial beliefs for Subjective (...) Bayesianism means that the degree of belief, representing a belief ordering, satisfies the laws of probability, and that coherence in preferences means that the preferences are represented by expected utilities. A coherent belief ordering and a utility scale induce a coherent preference ordering; a coherent preference ordering induces a coherent belief ordering which can be uniquely represented by a degree-of-belief function. The preferences (values) and beliefs are both incoherent or disordered if a Dutch Book is made. (shrink)

The information age can be dated to the work of Norbert Wiener and Claude Shannon in the 1940s. Their work on cybernetics and information theory, and many subsequent developments, had a profound influence on reshaping the field of psychology from what it was prior to the 1950s. Contemporaneously, advances also occurred in experimental design and inferential statistical testing stemming from the work of Ronald Fisher, Jerzy Neyman, and Egon Pearson. These interdisciplinary advances from outside of psychology provided the conceptual and (...) methodological tools for what is often called the cognitive revolution but is more accurately described as the information-processing revolution. Cybernetics set the stage with the idea that everything ranging from neurophysiological mechanisms to societal activities can be modeled as structured control systems with feedforward and feedback loops. Information theory offered a way to quantify entropy and information, and promoted theorizing in terms of information flow. Statistical theory provided means for making scientific inferences from the results of controlled experiments and for conceptualizing human decision making. With those three pillars, a cognitive psychology adapted to the information age evolved. The growth of technology in the information age has resulted in human lives being increasingly interweaved with the cyber environment, making cognitive psychology an essential part of interdisciplinary research on such interweaving. Continued engagement in interdisciplinary research at the forefront of technology development provides a chance for psychologists not only to refine their theories but also to play a major role in the advent of a new age of science. (shrink)

With the quickly rising popularity of smartphone among adolescents over the past decade, studies have begun to investigate the relationship between smartphone addiction and Eysenck's personality traits. Despite numerous studies on this topic, however, findings have been mixed and there is a lack of consensus regarding this relationship. Thus, this meta-analysis aimed to explore the relationship between smartphone addiction and Eysenck's personality traits in Chinese adolescents, as well as its possible moderators. Through literature search and screening, 33 studies were included, (...) comprising 79 independent effect sizes with a total of 17, 737 subjects. A random effects model was selected, and it was found that smartphone addiction was positively associated with psychoticism and neuroticism, but not significantly associated with extroversion. The moderating effect test showed that sex and year of study publication had significant influences on the relationship between smartphone addiction and psychoticism, and the year of study publication had a significant influence on the relationship between smartphone addiction and neuroticism. This study is the first meta-analysis on the relationship between smartphone addiction and Eysenck's personality traits among adolescents in China, and the results have helped to clarify the controversy of previous studies regarding this relationship. (shrink)

This paper explores the cooperation mechanisms for the prisoner’s dilemma game, a canonical example for studying cooperation mechanisms, with Bayesian games. By the approach allowing simultaneous moves with the assumption that the players might be self-interested or norm-following, we establish four possible Bayesian game models, all of which are cooperation mechanisms for the prisoner’s dilemma game except for the model in which one of the two players must be self-interested.

The juxtaposition between selfie and quotation is an emerging user-generated Facebook content. This exploratory study is the first to show how Facebook users self-represent themselves through Relational Processes, based on the intertextuality between these verbal and visual modes. Relational Processes refer to the process of characterizing, identifying or describing a person or entity. In this study, 132 Facebook quotations were categorized into three types of Relational Processes based on the users’ selfies. The clauses were restated into I-expressions to center the (...) users’ multimodal experiential and egocentric positioning. The findings revealed that Attributive Relational Processes, such as “I am happy,” predominated in the self-quotation juxtaposition. These relational processes are then discussed based on the potential social projections within the Philippine cultural circuit, namely: the Filipino culture of “inggit” (envy); crab mentality; being social climbers; and the neoliberal and neocolonial status of the Philippines as channeled through the Western-driven quotations. Overall, we argue that the juxtaposition of these two semiotic modes can lead to the creation of a new persona of the Facebook users, enhancing their digital self-remodeling and self-representation. (shrink)

In contemporary educational theory, the concept of ‘nature’ has been restricted to the ‘inner nature’ of humans, reflecting Western philosophy’s focus on introspection and essence. This shift has excluded the ever-growing natural world from the realm of inner nature, relegating it to an external entity and creating a divide between human nature and the natural world. This division has led to educational challenges because of the lack of references for self-reflection and guidance from the spirit of naturalness. In contrast, traditional (...) Chinese philosophy does not view ‘Ziran’ (often translated as ‘naturalness’) as a separate or dichotomous concept like Western ‘nature’. Instead, Ziran encompasses all things in the world as harmonious entities that embody the metaphysical Dao and spiritual essence. This holistic perspective represents the highest form of existential wisdom, bridging Dao’s realms and human experience and, guiding education toward spiritual transcendence. Ziran thus offers a fundamental value system for education, emphasizing relevance, process, and life-serving practices as essential models because of its enduring vitality. (shrink)

"Il s'agit de la traduction en français de l'ouvrage intitulé "Propos sur la loi" écrit par le philosophe confucianiste chinois Yang Xiong (53 av. J.C.-18).