This article originated in a “cultural futures” course I taught in Seoul in 2007.1 As part of their semester project, students interviewed friends and family to identify futures that were likely to precipitate profound cultural shifts in their lives. Not surprisingly, “Korean unification” was at the top of students’ lists. After all, then-president Roh Moo-hyun had in many ways continued the “Sunshine” policies of his predecessor, President Kim Dae-jung, culminating in a largely symbolic train journey from the South (...) to the North in May 2007 and, perhaps more meaningfully, a new wave of emotional “separated family reunions” (isan’gajok sangbong). But what cultural and societal shifts might unification bring? Here .. (shrink)

The skepticism over unification in South Korea can be classified into three types: unification apathy, unification unease, and unification unilateralism or offensive unificationism. While the anxiety concerning unification cost and the disorder and misery that may accompany unification are important causes of both unification apathy and unification unease, the overwhelming influence of anti-Communism on all the spheres of our lives and the sense of ‘North Korea abhorrence’ which has been amplified by the (...) war experience and the recurrent North Korean provocation have maintained unification unilateralism. In order to solve the misunderstanding about unification cost, the 'division cost' and unification benefit should also be included in the calculation of it. In addition, for a successful response to the unification skepticism, it is necessary to strengthen and vitalize the unification education both at schools and in society. Especially in order to resolve the problems unification unilateralism poses in our society, we must find ways to weaken and dilute the division culture that has preserved the division system. (shrink)

이 글은 유럽의 통합과정이 한반도 통일과정 인식에 주는 시사점을 제시했다. 통합과 통일의 개념과 역학의 차이에 대한 논란에도 불구하고, 유럽통합의 목표, 방향, 접근, 지속 등의 차원으로 좁혀서 보면, 한반도 통일과정 인식에 주는 일정한 시사점이 있었다. 흡수통일을 배제한 국가연합제는 이념과 체제가 다른 남북한이 우선 접근할 수 있는 현실적인 통합목표이다. 남북한은 작은 쟁점에서부터 구심점을 형성하도록 하고 상호 합의된 분야별 제도들을 서로의 사회·경제적, 정치적 삶에 도움이 되는 방식으로 확장해 가야 한다. 협상과 협력, 하부구조와 제도 마련 등을 위한 정부간 역할은 중요하다. 이를 위해 남북한은 정부간 (...) 합의를 유지하면서 부분적인 면에서부터 초국가적 역할을 모색하는 부분통합을 점진주의적으로 추구하는 것이 바람직하다. 비정치분야에서의 단계적·점진적인 접근을 통해 정치분야로의 파급효과를 추구하며, 역류 및 지체효과를 방지하기 위한 정부와 정치관료의 역할을 중시하는 기능주의와 신기능주의적 접근방식은 대북접근의 기조로서 여전히 유용하다. 이러한 접근방식은 1970년대 이후 남북관계에서 순환적으로 나타났던 것이기도 하다. 6.15 공동선언은 1991년 기본합의서의 신기능주의적 접근방식을 복원한 의미가 있으며, 2007년 10.4선언은 6.15 공동선언의 부문별 확대를 추구하면서 신기능주의적 접근의 기조를 유지한 것이다. 6·15 공동선언 이후의 남북관계 변화는 일련의 규칙과 관행의 축적을 통한 제도적 역할의 증대, 다층적인 남북관계 구조의 형성, 남북한간 새로운 정체성의 형성과 공동의 규범을 증가시키려는 노력의 과정으로 볼 수 있다. 남북관계에서 이러한 과정을 발전시켜가는 것은 통합의 비용을 줄여가는 의미도 있다고 할 수 있다. 이 글은 유럽통합의 사례를 통해 한반도 통일과정 인식의 기조를 확인하고 있다는 점에서 통일교육의 인식적 기초로서 활용 가능한 의미가 있을 것이다. (shrink)

In the current literature on scientific explanation unification became unfashionable in favour of causal approaches. We want to bring unification back into the picture. In this paper we demonstrate that resemblance questions do occur in scientific practice and that they cannot be properly answered without unification. Our examples show that resemblance questions about particular facts demand what we call causal network unification, while resemblance questions about regularities require what we call mechanism unification. We clarify how (...) these types of unification relate to Philip Kitcher’s account, but also to causal and mechanistic accounts of explanation. (shrink)

이 논문은 북한의 도덕규범을 소학교용「공산주의 도덕」 교과서를 중심으로 분석하고 통일교육에 주는 시사점을 도출하였다. 이 연구는 북한 도덕규범의 실체를 실증적으로 분석하고 있으며,「공산주의 도덕」교과서에 기술된 사례를 근거로 통일교육의 내용적 기초를 확대하는 의미가 있다. 북한의 「공산주의 도덕」교과서에 나타난 도덕규범은 7가지 범주로 구성되어 있다. 그것은 ① 수령·당·인민에 대한 충실성, ② 사회생활에서의 혁명적 의리와 동지애, ③ 사회공동생활을 위한 공민의 도덕, ④ 사회주의 우월성, ⑤ 조국애, ⑥ 반제·반미·반일·반한, ⑦ 개인생활 도덕규범 등이다. 이러한 규범에서 나타나는 특징은 교조주의적 성격, 집단주의적 성격, 정치사상교양의 성격 등이었으며, 이러한 특징은 한 마디로 (...) ‘수령 중심의 체제유지를 위한 수단적 도덕규범’으로 요약된다. 통일교육에 주는 시사점으로는 첫째, 북한의 도덕규범은 결코 ‘도덕적’이라 할 수 없으며, 인권과 사회정의와 같은 도덕교육의 본질적 가치도 찾아볼 수 없다. 둘째, 교과서는 북한 교육의 이념에 충실하고 있는 매개체일 뿐이어서, 남북한 도덕 교과서의 통합 및 수렴 논의는 제한적인 의미를 가질 뿐이다. 셋째, 여전히 냉전 인식에 기초하고 있는 북한 도덕규범의 실상을 감안할 때, 북한에게 국제사회 변화의 추세와 남한 사회의 객관적인 실상을 제대로 알게 하는 정책적 접근이 중요하다. 넷째, 북한의 도덕규범에서 나타나는 전통가치 규범의 민족 동질성은 제한적일 뿐이며, 따라서 통일교육의 초점은 그보다는 보편가치의 중요성에 맞추는 것이 필요하다. (shrink)

이 논문은 다문화 시대의 한반도 통일론이 제기하는 세 가지 쟁점을 추출하고, 다문화주의가 시사하는 한반도 통일론의 방향성을 모색했다. 세 가지 쟁점은 다음과 같다. 첫째, 다문화 시대의 통일의 의미의 확대이다. 통일은 새로운 사회구성원들과 함께 한국 사회의 정체성을 새롭게 회복하고 분단으로 인한 사회적 갈등을 치유하는 수단이자 과정이 되어야 할 것이다. 둘째, 한반도 통일의 주체의 확장이다. 통일은 다중적 주체들의 참여에 의해 함께 만들어 가야 하는 과제가 되어야 할 것이다. 셋째, 민족공동체의 범주의 재해석이다. 다문화 시대의 민족의 관념은 세계차원의 문제와도 결합하여 정의에 대한 새로운 접근을 추구해야 (...) 할 것이다. 이러한 쟁점에 대해 다문화주의가 주는 함의는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 우리 사회의 다양한 구성원들이 통일을 추구해 가는 과정에서 우선 새로운 문화적 정체성의 필요를 인정하고 이를 위해 문화간 상호이해와 대화를 이루는 것이 중요하다. 이를 통해 문화간 다양성 속에 새로운 궤적으로서의 통일을 향한 통일문화적 정체성의 형성이 추구되어야 할 것이다. 둘째, 통일을 위한 다중적 주체들의 시민권을 확장해 가는 것이 필요하다. 우리는 확장되는 통일의 주체들을 단순히 시민으로 범주화하는 차원에 그치는 것이 아니라, 이들에게 시민적 권리와 함께 통일을 위한 시민으로서의 의무를 제시해야 하며, 통일에 참여하는 통일시민적 덕성의 가치와 본질을 강조해야 한다. 이를 위해서 시민사회, 가족, 교육체제, 사적 영역 등에서 통일시민적 덕성을 키우기 위한 중첩적인 노력이 추구되어야 할 것이다. 다중적 주체들은 민족국가 단위 내에서 민주주의를 잘 이루어 사회적 통합과 한반도 통일에 기여하며, 나아가 세계시민주의적 시민권에 대한 인식도 가질 수 있도록 해야 할 것이다. 셋째, 한반도 통일을 위한 민족․민족주의 담론이 보다 개방된 논리로 재구성되어야 한다. 우리의 민족․민족주의의 담론은 민주주의적이면서도 개방성을 담은 국제주의적 의미로 보완되고 구조화되어야 할 것이다. 우리는 보편적 인류애를 기반으로 한 국제주의적 보편성을 구현하는 체계를 갖추어 열린 민족주의를 표방하면서 국제사회의 평화와 화해․협력을 적극 구현해 가도록 해야 할 것이다. (shrink)

This Korean study replicated a previously published American study. The conceptual framework and method combined ethical enquiry and phenomenology. The research questions were: (1) What is nursing students’ experience of ethical problems involving nursing practice? and, (2) What is nursing students’ experience of using an ethical decision-making model? The participants were 97 senior baccalaureate nursing students, each of whom described one ethical problem and chose to use one of five ethical decision-making models. From 97 ethical problems, five content categories (...) emerged, the largest being health professionals (69%). The basic nature of the ethical problems was the students’ experience of conflict, resolution and rationale. Using an ethical decision-making model helped 94% of the students. A comparison of the Korean and American results yields important implications for nursing ethics education, practice and research. (shrink)

The object of this paper is to reply to Morrison's ([2000]) claim that while ‘structural unity’ was achieved at the level of the mathematical models of population genetics in the early synthesis, there was explanatory disunity. I argue to the contrary, that the early synthesis effected by the founders of theoretical population genetics was unifying and explanatory both. Defending this requires a reconsideration of Morrison's notion of explanation. In Morrison's view, all and only answers to ‘why’ questions which include the (...) ‘cause or mechanism’ for some phenomenon count as explanatory. In my view, mathematical demonstrations that answer ‘how possibly’ and ‘why necessarily’ questions may also count as explanatory. The authors of the synthesis explained how evolution was possible on a Mendelian system of inheritance, answered skepticism about the sufficiency of selection, and thus explained why and how a Darwinian research program was warranted. While today we take many of these claims as obvious, they required argument, and part of the explanatory work of the formal sciences is providing such arguments. Surely, Fisher and Wright had competing views as to the optimal means of generating adaptation. Nevertheless, they had common opponents and a common unifying and explanatory goal that their mathematical demonstrations served. Introduction: Morrison's challenge Fisher v. Wright revisited The early synthesis Conclusion: unification and explanation reconciled. (shrink)

I argued that the frameworks and mechanisms that produce unification do not enable us to explain why the unified phenomena behave as they do. That is, we need to look beyond the unifying process for an explanation of these phenomena. Anya Plutynski ([2005]) has called into question my claim about the relationship between unification and explanation as well as my characterization of it in the context of the early synthesis of Mendelism with Darwinian natural selection. In this (...) paper I argue that her methodological criticisms rest on a misinterpretation of my views on explanation and defend my historical interpretation of the work of Fisher and Wright. A statement of the problem Methodological differences: how to characterize explanation Historical matters: disagreements about details Explanation revisited: the possible versus the ‘merely actual’. (shrink)

Unification grammars are known to be Turing-equivalent; given a grammar G and a word w, it is undecidable whether w L(G). In order to ensure decidability, several constraints on grammars, commonly known as off-line parsability (OLP), were suggested, such that the recognition problem is decidable for grammars which satisfy OLP. An open question is whether it is decidable if a given grammar satisfies OLP. In this paper we investigate various definitions of OLP and discuss their interrelations, proving that (...) some of the OLP variants are indeed undecidable. We then present a novel, decidable OLP constraint which is more liberal than the existing decidable ones. (shrink)

이 논문의 목적은 ‘인권의 보편성’에 관한 세 가지 논의에 기초하여, 북한의 ‘우리식 인권론’을 비판적으로 평가하고, 통일교육에 주는 함의를 제시하는 데 있다. 통일교육은 북한 인권문제를 둘러싼 논리적 대립이나 이념적 갈등의 연장선에서 이루어져서는 안된다. ‘인권의 보편성’에 대한 진지한 이해에 기반한 함의가 통일교육의 기초가 되어야 한다. 인권의 보편성이 지닌 보편주의와 역사성에 대한 인식을 바탕으로 북한이 내세우는 인권관의 오류에 대해 평가할 수 있어야 한다. 인권개선을 위한 북한의 자구적인 노력에는 분명한 한계가 있다. 우리는 지속적으로 북한 인권문제에 관심을 갖고 지혜롭게 관여해 가야 한다. 통일교육을 통해 북한 (...) 인권개선을 위한 국내외의 사회적 연대가 중요하다는 점이 환기되어야 하며, 인권문화의 형성과 확산이 이루어져야 한다는 점도 강조되어야 한다. 최근의 보호책임 논의에서 보듯이, 국가주권을 제약하는 국제인권규범의 중요성은 갈수록 부각되고 있다. 통일교육은 인권 담론의 틀을 확장시켜 가는 데도 일조해야 한다. 북한의 인권 상황은 숙명적인 특수주의에 속해 있지 않다. 우리는 북한의 인권 상황에 담겨야 할 보편적 인권의 가치를 확인하고 적용해가는 데서 인권의 실천적 의미와 통일교육의 역할을 찾아야 할 것이다. (shrink)

The debate between the dynamical and the statistical interpretations of natural selection is centred on the question of whether all explanations that employ the concepts of natural selection and drift are reducible to causal explanations. The proponents of the statistical interpretation answer negatively, but insist on the fact that selection/drift arguments are explanatory. However, they remain unclear on where the explanatory power comes from. The proponents of the dynamical interpretation answer positively and try to reduce selection/drift arguments to some (...) of the most prominent accounts of causal explanation. In turn, they face the criticism raised by statisticalists that current accounts of causation have to be violated in some of their core conditions or otherwise used in a very loose manner in order to account for selection/drift explanations. We propose a reconciliation of both interpretations by conveying evolutionary explanations within the unificationist model of scientific explanation. Therefore, we argue that the explanatory power in natural selection arguments is a result of successful unification of individual- and population-level facts. A short case study based on research on sympatric speciation will be presented as an example of how population- and individual-level facts are unified to explain the morphological mosaic of bill shape in island scrub jays. (shrink)

This paper reviews the history of Korean Neo-Confucian thought from its introduction in the late fourteenth century until the end of the Joseon dynasty in the early twentieth century. With the founding of Joseon in 1392 the Neo-Confucian synthesis that had swept China was adopted in Korea, replacing the Buddhist establishment of the previous dynasty. The introductory section discusses the major figures in this transition and their grasp of the new metaphysical framework and ascetical theory which now supplemented the (...) traditional Confucian ethical core. The new teaching took deep root in the fifteenth century, but it did so in the context of succession problems leading to a series of “literati purges” of Confucians serving in government. The sixteenth century marked the coming to full intellectual maturity of the Neo-Confucian thought of the Cheng-Zhu school on the Korean peninsula. Toegye and Yulgok, the most famous names in Korean Neo-Confucian thought, represented opposing sides in the celebrated Four Seven Debate concerning the origination of feelings in the mind-and-heart. As the Mongols established the new Qing dynasty in China in the seventeenth century, Korean Neo-Confucians felt they had become the sole heritors and defenders of true civilization, leading to a period of intense and conflicted conservative orthodox orientation towards the Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucian school. In the intense factional struggles of the time the Yulgok followers of a faction led by Song Siyeol rose to dominance, and in the early eighteenth century the second most celebrated controversy, the Horak Debate, broke out within the ranks of this single intellectual lineage. The debate is best known for the question of whether and how humans and all other creatures share the same “original nature,” but it also inquired deeply into the accessibility of the original nature in techniques of meditative self-cultivation. The latter part of the eighteenth century is known for the emergence of a broad, loosely coordinated movement away from philosophical questions towards “practical learning,” or “Silhak” as twentieth century historians have named it. Philosophical inquiry continued to have a lively life well into the nineteenth century, however, with a deepening and radicalization of lines of thought established in the earlier debates, as well as some creative crossing and merging of the boundaries that separated the intellectual lineages of Toegye and Yulgok. (shrink)

이번 연구는 한국 다문화 사회에서 한반도 통일의 가치토대를 어떻게 확립할 것인지를 탐구하는데 주요 목적이 있다. 이번 연구의 주제는 다문화 구성원들, 특히 북한 주민들과 새터민, 외국인 노동자, 국제결혼 이주자 및 그 자녀들이 과연 한번도 통일의 가치를 공유할 수 있는지, 즉 한민족 정체성과 그것의 가치분담이다. 이를 위해 이번 연구에서는 ‘문화 개념의 다문화 수준별 적용’에 관한 기존의 연구논문을 활용하고, 그 한계를 밝히며, 이를 보완할 수 있는 하나의 대안으로서 ‘정서(emotion)'의 다문화적 적용 가능성을 제시해보고자 한다. 기존의 문화 개념의 적용의 양상은 다음과 같다. 첫째, 문화 개념을 (...) ‘의미의 패턴’으로 간주하는 경향으로서 주로 상징과 해석에 초점을 둔다. 이는 주로 타문화를 이해하는데 유용한 방식이라고 할 수 있다. 예컨대, 국제결혼 이주민이 초기 한국 사회의 정착시기에 한국 사회를 이해하는 방식이라고 할 수 있다. 둘째, 문화 개념을 지속적인 완전성을 향한 과정으로 이해하는 경향으로서, 이는 주로 자문화를 확인하는 방식이라고 할 수 있다. 예컨대, 국제결혼 이주민이 한국 사회에 정착하면서 본격적인 삶을 영위할 때 ‘한국인’으로서 정체성을 확인하는 방식이다. 하지만 이와 같은 기존의 연구성과를 북한 주민, 새터민, 국제결혼 이주민 가정의 자녀에게 적용했을 때에는 일정한 한계가 보인다. 첫째, 북한 주민들은 현재 북한 정권의 특성상, 다문화 사회에 대한 거부감이 크고, 단일민족주의를 이데올로기적 차원에서 이해할 가능성이 매우 크다. 즉 북한 주민들이 자문화 차원에서 민족정체성을 강하게 확인하더라고, 매우 폐쇄적이라고 할 수 있다. 둘째, 새터민의 경우에는 자문화 확인의 정도는 강하지만, 한국 사회의 정착과정에서 경험하게 되는 사회경제적 차별로 인해 자신들만의 정체성 확인에 그친다. 셋째, 국제결혼 이주민 가정의 자녀들과 그 부모들은 모두가 ‘한국인’이라는 정체성 수준은 매우 높았다. 다만 이주민 부모의 경우에는 자신들의 문화에 대한 정체성은 그대로 유지하고 있었다. 그러나 순혈주의의 측면에서 이들 모두에 대한 차별적 인식은 여전히 강하게 남아 있는 실정이다. 한반도 통일에 대한 가치의 토대는 다문화 구성원들 모두가 분담할 수 있는 ‘정체성’의 문제이다. 이를 삶의 영역에서 확인하고 전개할 수 있는 방안은 각 구성원들의 특성들을 모두 고려할 수 있을 때에만 가능하다. 기존 연구의 문화 개념을 다문화 수준별로 접근했을 때 근본적인 문제는 내면적으로 구성원들 모두가 한국 다문화 사회에서 한민족 정체성에 대한 어떤 공통된 분담을 가질 수 있는지에 대한 답을 명료하게 제시하지 못했다. 이런 점에서 다문화 사회에서 한반도 통일의 가치토대는 외면적이고 제도적인 문제라기보다는 내면적이고 정체성에 관한 문제이다. 이 문제는 결국 다문화 구성원들이 관계의 삶의 영역에서 도덕적 행위자라는 점에서 이들의 정서가 문화적으로 전개되는 과정에서 보다 세밀하게 진행되어야 할 것이다. (shrink)

Gareth Evans has observed that one merely needs to ‘look outward’ to discover one’s own beliefs. This observation of what has become known as belief ‘transparency’ has formed a basis for a cluster of views on the nature of introspection. These views may be well suited to account for our introspective access to beliefs, but whether similar transparency-based accounts of our introspective access to mental states other than belief can be given is not obvious. The question of whether a (...) transparency-based account can be generalized beyond beliefs is part of the larger issue whether introspection of different mental states can receive broadly the same account—whether introspection is unified. My aim is to examine one particularly thorough attempt at generalizing a transparency-based account of introspection due to Alex Byrne. I argue that the resulting view does not offer a unified account of introspection, even across a handful of mental states. In doing so, I highlight two difficulties most views on introspection that try to offer a unified account would have to face, even if they are not based in belief transparency. The subsequent move away from introspective unification has ramifications for several other philosophical debates, such as the architecture of the mind and our rationality. (shrink)

The greatest wish of the Baeda l people, or South Koreans, living in the Korean Peninsula is the unification of Korea. However, even when it has been 70 years since the outbreak of the Korean War, the two Koreas that used to be one nation are still in conflict. There have been many discourses on unification over the past 70 years, but these discourses still fail to create clear rules and a framework for unification. Discourses (...) from the perspective of biblical theology offer insight regarding the problems at stake as well as alternatives, but they do not offer perspectives on a definite solution. This article, in line with its statement on biblical theology, does not pretend to contribute to a clear-cut solution to meet the challenge of Korea’s unification. Rather, this article intends to contribute to the formation of an emotional consensus that can contribute to the unification of Korea by looking at the teachings about peace in the Gospel of Matthew. The article explores whether the notion of embracement, forgiveness and love written during the conflict between the Matthean community and Formative Judaism can be applied to help create an emotional bond between the two Koreas. The terms embracement, forgiveness and love found in the Gospel of Matthew are upheld as symbolising peace derived from opposition and conflict. Jesus taught us to overcome situations of opposition and conflict through embracement, forgiveness and love.Contribution: The purpose and contribution of this article was to discuss if the notions of embracement, forgiveness and love found in the Gospel of Matthew can be helpful for the emotional preparation of the peaceful unification of the Korean Peninsula by comparing the situations reflected in the Gospel of Matthew and that of the Korean Peninsula. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a novel solution to the well-known problem concerning two polarity items in Korean, amu-(N)-to and amu-(N)-rato, that show a complementary distribution within the set of typical NPI-licensing contexts. I present a uniform analysis of the distribution of these NPIs, where the complementary distribution follows from the opposite scope properties of the emphatic particles to and rato contained in the NPIs in question. As the- oretical background, I adopt Karttunen and Peters’s (1979, Syntax and (...) Semantics 11: Presuppositions (pp. 1–56). New York: Academic Press) and Wilkinson’s (1996, Natural Language Semantics, 4, 193–215) scope analysis of even, Lahiri’s (1998, Natural Language Semantics, 6, 57–127) analysis of Hindi NPIs, and Guerzoni’s (2002, Proceedings of NELS 32 (pp. 153–170); GLSA, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Mass.; 2004, Natural Language Semantics, 12, 319–343) analysis of the negative bias of yes/no-questions containing minimizers. The current analysis also lends further support to Guerzoni’s approach in that it bears out the prediction that in certain environments, a yes/no-question can be positively biased, i.e., only the positive answer is allowed as a legitimate answer in the context; this prediction was left unconfirmed in Guerzoni’s work. (shrink)

남한 내의 대북인식과 통일관에 대한 갈등은 민족주의를 어떻게 인식하고 해석하느냐와 밀접한 관련을 맺고 있다. 본 논문에서는 이러한 인식을 바탕으로 먼저 민족주의의 연원과 개념을 고찰해 보고자 한다. 다음으로 한국 사회에서 좌파와 우파가 민족주의를 어떻게 수용하고 해석했는지를 살펴볼 것이다. 그 바탕위에서 우리 사회에서 나타났던 좌파와 우파의 민족주의의 관점에 따른 대북인식과 통일관이 어떻게 전개되었는지를 고찰해보고자 한다. 마지막으로 올바른 민족주의적 관점을 통해 본 남한 사회의 대북인식과 통일관을 탐색해보고자 한다. 이 논문의 결론으로는 대북정책의 혼선을 지양하고 보수 민족주의의 진영과 진보 민족주의 진영 사이를 아우르는 대북정책과 통일정책을 (...) 마련하는 노력이 뒤따라야 한다는 점이다. (shrink)

Tasan Chong Yagyong (1762-1836) is one of the most creative thinkers Korea has ever produced, one of the country's first Christians, and a leading scholar in Confucian philosophy. Born in a staunchly Neo-Confucian society, in his early twenties he encountered writings by Catholic missionaries in China and was fascinated. However, when he later learned that the Catholic Church condemned the Confucian practice of placing a spirit tablet on a family altar to honor past generations, he left the small Catholic community (...) he had helped found and ostensibly returned to the Neo-Confucian fold. Nevertheless, the Christian ideas he studied in his youth influenced his thinking for the rest of his life, stimulating him to look at Neo-Confucianism with a critical eye and suggest new solutions to problems Confucian scholars had been addressing for centuries. A Korean Confucian's Advice on How to Be Moral is an annotated translation of Tasan's commentaries on the Confucian classic Zhongyong (usually translated as The Doctrine of the Mean) in which he applies both Confucianism and Christianity to the question of how to best develop a moral character. Written as a dialogue with King Chongjo, (r. 1776-1800) these texts reveal how Tasan interpreted his Confucian tradition, particularly its understanding of how human beings could cultivate morality, while the king's questions illustrate the mainstream Neo-Confucianism Tasan was reacting against. Tasan challenged the non-theistic standard, insisting that living a moral life is not easy and that we need to be motivated to exert the effort necessary to overcome our selfish tendencies. He had abandoned his faith by the time he wrote these commentaries but, influenced by Catholic works and determined to find a more effective way to live a moral life than non-theistic Neo-Confucianism provided, Tasan constructed a Confucian philosophy of moral improvement centered on belief in God. This translation, helpfully annotated for context and analysis, is an exploration of early Korean engagement with the West and a powerful guide to all those interested in Confucianism, Christianity, and morality. (shrink)

Mereological nihilism (henceforth just "nihilism") is the thesis that composition never occurs. Nihilism has often been defended on the basis of its theoretical simplicity, including its ontological simplicity and its ideological simplicity (roughly, nihilism's ability to do without primitive mereological predicates). In this paper I defend nihilism on the basis of the theoretical unification conferred by nihilism, which is, roughly, nihilism's capacity to allow us to take fewer phenomena as brute and inexplicable. This represents a respect in which nihilism (...) enjoys greater theoretical simplicity than its rivals which has not yet been explored, and which is immune to many of the objections which have been leveled against previous arguments for nihilism from nihilism's theoretical simplicity. Composition as identity might be thought to confer a similar degree of theoretical unification as nihilism. I end the paper by arguing that this is not the case. (shrink)

Given the diversity of explanatory practices that is typical of the sciences a healthy pluralism would seem to be desirable where theories of explanation are concerned. Nevertheless, I argue that explanations are only unifying in Kitcher's unificationist sense if they are backed by the kind of understanding of underlying mechanisms, dispositions, constitutions, and dependencies that is central to a causalist account of explanation. This case can be made through analysis of Kitcher's account of the conditions under which apparent improvements in (...) unifying power may be judged spurious. But to clarify what is at issue I consider an archaeological case in which debate about the merits of an ambitious explanatory account reproduces exactly the intuitions that divide Salmon and Kitcher. The case in question is the “demic-diffusion” account of contemporary linguistic diversity advanced by Renfrew in the late 1980s: the thesis that the diffusion of agricultural populations, itself attributed to demographic pressure, was responsible for the spread of the ancestral root languages (e.g., proto-Indo-Eurpoean) that account for the existence and distribution of linguistic macrofamilies. The credibility of this powerfully unifying argument pattern depends entirely on the plausibility of its claims about the conditions and mechanisms actually responsible for the explanandum, the spread of agriculture, and not on an elaboration of its unificationist virtues. (shrink)

We address the question of why particular laws were selected for the universe, by proposing a mechanism for laws to evolve. Normally in physical theories, timeless laws act on time-evolving states. We propose that this is an approximation, good on time scales shorter than cosmological scales, beyond which laws and states are merged into a single entity that evolves in time. Furthermore the approximate distinction between laws and states, when it does emerge, is dependent on the initial conditions. These (...) ideas are illustrated in a simple matrix model. (shrink)

Forecasts predicting the reunification of the Korean Peninsula were common throughout the 1990s. Since then, enthusiasm for such predictions has dampened, and though the fundamental assumption of reunification remains, predictions of when and how this will happen have been more restrained. Reunification leaves two unresolved yet interdependent issues: reunification itself, which is the urgent challenge; and the strategic issues that emerge from reunification, which have the potential to fundamentally transform strategic relations in the region of Northeast Asia. Within this (...) context, this paper examines the prospects of Korean reunification against the background of the interstate relations. Initially, it will establish the framework from which such scenarios will emerge: the historical background of the division, the extreme differences between the two states, the role played by the North Korean nuclear threats and the impact of the September 11, 2001 on the interstate relations, and finally general situation and relations in the East Asian region. Then, three possible scenarios of the unification will be developed: through peaceful integration, through the fall of North Korea or through a war. Summing up, even the death of Kim Jong Il will not bring change in the domestic and foreign policy of North Korea which is going to continue an aggressive approach toward the South. In the short-term reunification is definitely not in the interest of the current ROK administration, and the South has no intention of encouraging it. None of the considered scenarios envisions early reunification, and it seems that for the future, the status quo on the Korean Peninsula will remain. (shrink)

The quest for a ‘unified field theory’, which aims to integrate gravitational and electromagnetic fields into a single field structure, spanned most of Einstein’s professional life from 1919 until his death in 1955. It is seldom noted that Hans Reichenbach was possibly the only philosopher who could navigate the technical intricacies of the various unification attempts. By analyzing published writings and private correspondences, this paper aims to provide an overview of the Einstein-Reichenbach relationship from the point of view of (...) their evolving attitudes toward the program of unifying electricity and gravitation. The paper concludes that the Einstein-Reichenbach relationship is more complex than usually portrayed. Reichenbach was not only the indefatigable ‘defender’ of relativity theory but also the caustic ‘attacker’ of Einstein’s and others’ attempts at unified field theory. Over the years, Reichenbach managed to provide the first, and possibly only, overall philosophical reflection on the unified field theory program. Thereby, Reichenbach was responsible for bringing to the debate, often for the first time, some of the central issues of the philosophy of space-time physics: (a) the relation between a theory’s abstract geometrical structures (metric, affine connection) and the behavior of physical probes (rods and clocks, free particles, and so on); (b) the question of whether such association should be regarded as a geometrization of physics or a physicalization of geometry; (c) the interplay between geometrization and unification in the context of a field theory. (shrink)

Pirie's new book attempts a long-awaited Marxist analysis of the contemporary Korean state. It seeks to go beyond the binary opposition between neoliberal market-fundamentalism and Keynesian statism by persuasively demonstrating the indispensability of the state's role in the establishment of neoliberalism in Korea. It also provides an original and insightful analysis of the neoliberal regulation of finance in Korea. However, Pirie's central argument that the stable neoliberal régime of accumulation was established in Korea after the 1997 crisis can be (...) questioned in view of the trend in profitability, the same empirical evidence on which his argument rests. Pirie also needs to provide a more consistent Marxist class-analysis of capitalism in Korea. (shrink)

As far as I’m concerned, Korean moral education is facing the new challenge and new era. I’m teaching Korean secondary school studens as an Ethic teacher in high school and EBS lecturer as well. I’m worried about Korean education especially in middle and high school. There was missing thinking those parts cause an entrance examination, only for university in Korea. In this a serious worry, I found some exits from significant experience. First, I’d like to mention about (...) P4C (Philosophy for children) Program which was learned from Professor Mattew Lipman of Mont Clair State University in New Jersey, U.S.A. This program is emphasizing upon thinking skill including creative, critical, and caring thinking. The huge shift from knowledge based education to thinking based education inKorea contemporarily. Also Student-based education is new stream of Korean education system. Teachers think students come to school to get knowledge, parents think children can learn judgment at school which was "lost area.”All this things come from philosophy, when we ask for reason it is a philosophical question. For example, "Why is he a hero?”, “He is brave.” "Why is he brave?" Which is philosophical conceptualization? Every day life gives us some questions and concepts like: love, freedom and philosophy gives us answers to those question so without philosophy we cannot have happy life. In reality of Korean education system there is no independent class for philosophy. So philosophy can be taught in Korean language classes or social studies. I started using P4C program from Lipman: I taught students making questions or making stories. These exercising result was remarkable and amazing. So questions are thebeginning of discovering new knowledge. Even if the knowledge is known by other people students can enjoy the process of discovering new knowledge. They could also get thinking skills. (shrink)

Wayne Norman argues that there should be more similarity or unity between the justifications for markets and the extra-legal norms that apply to market agents. I question two aspects of his claim. First, why does Norman refer to this view as a view about the self-regulation of market agents? Agents could self-regulate with many different norms, not necessarily norms informed by the justifications for markets. Second, asking for more similarity might create problems in terms of the liberty of market (...) agents to pursue other morally relevant objectives. How are we to balance these other relevant objectives and the objectives of markets? (shrink)

This study investigates the relationship among ethical philosophy, thinking style, and managerial ethical decision-making. Based on the premise that business ethics is a function of culture and time, we attempt to explore two important questions as to whether the national differences in managerial ethical philosophies remain over time and whether the relationship between thinking style and ethical decision-making is consistent across different national contexts. We conducted a survey on Korean managers’ ethical decision-making and thinking style and made a cross-cultural, (...) cross-temporal comparison with the results presented by previous studies that surveyed Korean and US managers with the same questionnaire at different points in time. Our analysis revealed that Korean managers have become more reliant on rule utilitarianism for ethical decision-making over the last two decades, which is dominantly used by US managers, corroborating our convergence hypothesis built on social contracts theory. However, as opposed to previous research, we found that managers with a balanced linear and nonlinear thinking style do not necessarily make more ethical decisions compared to those with a predominantly linear or nonlinear thinking style. This study contributes to international business ethics literature by presenting a theoretical framework that may explain the convergence of ethical philosophies employed by managers in different national contexts over time, and that the relationship between thinking style and managerial ethical decision-making may not be universal, but contingent on contextual factors. (shrink)

Inquiry is an aim-directed activity, and as such governed by instrumental normativity. If you have reason to figure out a question, you have reason to take means to figuring it out. Beliefs are governed by epistemic normativity. On a certain pervasive understanding, this means that you are permitted – maybe required – to believe what you have sufficient evidence for. The norms of inquiry and epistemic norms both govern us as agents in pursuit of knowledge and understanding, and, on (...) the surface, they do so in harmony. Recently, however, Jane Friedman (2020) has pointed out that they are in tension with each other. In this paper, I aim to resolve this tension by showing that reasons for acts of inquiry – zetetic reasons – and epistemic reasons for belief can both be understood as flowing from the same general normative principle: the transmission principle for instrumental reasons. The resulting account is a version of epistemic instrumentalism that offers an attractive unity between zetetic and epistemic normativity. (shrink)

I argue in a non-reductive sense for a plausible epistemic principle, which can (1) theoretically and instrumentally unify or systematize all fallacies, and (2) provide a justification for using such a principle for characterizing an erroneous argument as a fallacy. This plausible epistemic principle involves the idea of an error in the method of justification, which results in a failure to provide relevant evidence to satisfy certain standards of adequate proof. Thus, all fallacies are systematically disguised failures to provide substantive (...) proof: a failure in the attempt to persuade rationally, as opposed to emotionally or rhetorically. I argue that the epistemic idea of begging the question is essential to this idea of a fallacy as an inadequate proof. (shrink)

The debate between the defenders of explanatory unification and explanatory pluralism has been ongoing from the beginning of cognitive science and is one of the central themes of its philosophy. Does cognitive science need a grand unifying theory? Should explanatory pluralism be embraced instead? Or maybe local integrative efforts are needed? What are the advantages of explanatory unification as compared to the benefits of explanatory pluralism? These questions, among others, are addressed in this Synthese’s special issue. In the (...) introductory paper, we discuss the background of the questions, distinguishing integrative theorizing from building unified theories. On the one hand, integrative efforts involve collaboration between various disciplines, fields, approaches, or theories. These efforts could even be quite temporary, without establishing any long-term institutionalized fields or disciplines, but could also contribute to developing new interfield theories. On the other hand, unification can rely on developing complete theories of mechanisms and representations underlying all cognition, as Newell’s “unified theories of cognition”, or may appeal to grand principles, as predictive coding. Here, we also show that unification in contemporary cognitive science goes beyond reductive unity, and may involve various forms of joint efforts and division of explanatory labor. This conclusion is one of the themes present in the content of contributions constituting the special issue. (shrink)

Cartesian closed categories (CCCs) have played and continue to play an important role in the study of the semantics of programming languages. An axiomatization of the isomorphisms which hold in all Cartesian closed categories discovered independently by Soloviev and Bruce, Di Cosmo and Longo leads to seven equalities. We show that the unification problem for this theory is undecidable, thus settling an open question. We also show that an important subcase, namely unification modulo the linear isomorphisms, is (...) NP-complete. Furthermore, the problem of matching in CCCs is NP-complete when the subject term is irreducible. CCC-matching and unification form the basis for an elegant and practical solution to the problem of retrieving functions from a library indexed by types investigated by Rittri. It also has potential applications to the problem of polymorphic type inference and polymorphic higher-order unification, which in turn is relevant to theorem proving and logic programming. (shrink)

Carl Hempel1 set the tone for subsequent philosophical work on scientific explanation by resolutely locating the problem he wanted to address outside of epistemology. “Hempel’s problem,” as I will call it, was not to say what counts as evidence that X is the explanation of Y. Rather, the question was what it means for X to explain Y. Hempel’s theory of explanation and its successors don’t tell you what to believe; instead, they tell you which of your beliefs (if (...) any) can be said to explain a given target proposition. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of how to understand the relationship between Cultural Evolutionary Science and the social sciences, given that they coexist and both study cultural change. I argue that CES is best understood as having a unificatory or integrative role between evolutionary biology and the social sciences, and that it is best characterized as a bridge field; I describe the concept of a bridge field and how it relates to other non-reductionist accounts of unification or integration (...) used in the philosophy of science literature. (shrink)

What makes certain definitions fruitful? And how can definitions play an explanatory role? The purpose of this paper is to examine these questions via an investigation of Frege’s treatment of definitions. Specifically, I pursue this issue via an examination of Frege’s views about the scientific unification of logic and arithmetic. In my view, what interpreters have failed to appreciate is that logicism is a project of unification, not reduction. For Frege, unification involves two separate steps: (1) an (...) account of the content expressed by arithmetical claims and (2) the justification of that content. The distinction between these steps allows us to see that there are two notions of definition at play in Frege’s logicist work, viz., one concerned with conceptual analysis, the other concerned with the construction of gap-free proof. I then use this discussion to explain how Frege employs his definitions to defend an epistemological thesis about arithmetic, and to clarify Grundlagen’s fruitfulness condition of definitions, and thereby address two interpretive puzzles from the recent literature. (shrink)

Live stream platforms have transformed the production and consumption of music, allowing KPop music to expand globally. Successful KPop idols are contrasted with large numbers of retired KPop performers, some of whom live in undesirable conditions. Drawing on the attachment theory, loyalty theory, and parasocial interaction theory, this study focuses on a unique group, comeback KPop performers, to examine how they acquire empathetic attachment and sustained loyalty from audiences through live stream shows, and the antecedents of these two variables. Answering (...) these questions seems important because comeback KPop performers have to interact with audiences without the financial and marketing support from entertainment agencies. The structural equation modeling of 288 responses from 176 Chinese and 112 Korean KPop audiences confirmed that empathetic attachment and sustained loyalty are positively associated with audience purchase intentions; sustained attractiveness and parasocial interactions function as antecedents of these two factors. The findings shed light on the comeback KPop performers who co-create value with audiences through live stream platforms, with theoretical contributions to the three theories mentioned above and managerial suggestions to KPop entertainment agencies, comeback KPop performers, and managers of live stream platforms. (shrink)

This article presents an overview of the institutional architecture and the organizing principles of the German welfare state, which is widely and rightly considered to be the model case of North West European Continental welfare states. The author's ambition is to be both systematic and historical in his presentation, emphasizing the process in which different layers of the historically evolved structure serve certain functions, such as poor relief, the protection of workers at work, the protection of workers outside of work, (...) the determination of wages, and the level of employment. In the second part of the essay, the question under discussion is of what happens to this structure under the impact of German unification, European integration, economic `globalization', and lasting labor market disequilibrium. The third and final part outlines a policy proposal that aims at the strengthening of social citizenship rights which replace the `worker' as the reference unit of social protection with the `citizen'. (shrink)

다문화 시대의 통일교육에서 민족주의와 다문화주의는 양자택일의 가치가 아니다. 분단의 현실과 다문화 추세가 복합적으로 나타나고 있는 우리 사회에서 두 가치의 조화가 필요하다. 이 논문은 민족주의와 다문화주의의 조화론적 관점에서 다문화 시대의 통일 이념으로서 ‘통일 민족주의’의 역할을 새롭게 설정해 보고, 그에 따른 통일교육의 방향을 찾아보았다. 다문화 시대의 민족주의와 다문화주의의 역할은 다음처럼 세 가지로 설정했다. 민족주의는 다양한 민족과 문화의 관점을 수용할 수 있는 방향으로 재구성되어야 한다. 다문화주의는 자유주의의 확장과 동시에 인권에 기반한 새로운 휴머니즘을 형성할 수 있어야 한다. 두 가치는 정치단위로서의 새로운 시민 공동체를 지향할 (...) 수 있어야 한다. 다문화 시대의 통일이념으로서 통일 민족주의는 시민권적 민족주의, 민주주의적 민족주의, 국제주의적 민족주의의 세 영역에서 역할해야 한다. 이를 위해 통일 민족주의는 새로운 민족 구성원의 기본권과 정치권 존중, 자발적 시민공동체로의 발전, 이질성과 다양성에 대한 관용과 조화, 포괄과 배제의 조화, 타민족과의 공존, 국제사회의 평화와 화해·협력 등의 가치를 추구해야 한다. 다문화 시대의 통일교육의 방향으로는 복수 혹은 다중심의 정체성 수용, 민족주의 의미의 재구성, 책임성의 동심원 확장, 세계시민 의식의 고양 등을 제시했다. 다문화 시대의 정체성은 복수이며 다중심의 것이다. 통일교육을 통해 한국인이면서 동시에 아시아인이자 세계인이라는 정체성을 가질 수 있도록 해야 한다. 배타적이고 종족적인 민족주의 개념은 보편적이면서 열린 한(韓)민족 개념으로 재설정하는 것이 필요하다. 다문화 시대의 통일교육은 우리 국가나 민족에 대한 건강한 애정을 기반으로 하면서, 그 책임성을 인류와 국제사회로까지 확장시켜 가는 일에 초점을 두어야 한다. 다문화 시대의 통일교육은 세계시민으로서의 의식을 고양시켜 세계 속의 한반도 통일에 대한 비전을 갖게 하는 일에도 관심을 두어야 한다. (shrink)

It is discerned what light can bring the recent historical reconstructions of maxwellian optics and electromagnetism unification on the following philosophical/methodological questions. I. Why should one believe that Nature is ultimately simple and that unified theories are more likely to be true? II. What does it mean to say that a theory is unified? III. Why theory unification should be an epistemic virtue? To answer the questions posed genesis and development of Maxwellian electrodynamics are elucidated. It is enunciated (...) that the Maxwellian Revolution is a far more complicated phenomenon than it may be seen in the light of Kuhnian and Lakatosian epistemological models. Correspondingly it is maintained that maxwellian electrodynamics was elaborated in the course of the old pre-maxwellian programmes’ reconciliation: the electrodynamics of Ampére-Weber, the wave theory of Young-Fresnel and Faraday’s programme. To compare the different theoretical schemes springing from the different language games James Maxwell had constructed a peculiar neutral language. Initially it had encompassed the incompressible fluid models; eventually – the vortices ones. The three programmes’ encounter engendered the construction of the hybrid theory at first with an irregular set of theoretical schemes. However, step by step, on revealing and gradual eliminating the contradictions between the programmes involved, the hybrid set is “put into order” (Maxwell’s term). A hierarchy of theoretical schemes starting from ingenious crossbreeds (the displacement current) and up to usual hybrids is set up. After the displacement current construction the interpenetration of the pre-maxwellian programmes begins that marks the commencement of theoretical schemes of optics, electricity and magnetism real unification. Maxwell’s programme surpassed that of Ampére-Weber because it did absorb the ideas of the Ampére-Weber programme, as well as the presuppositions of the programmes of Young-Fresnel and Faraday properly co-ordinating them with each other. But the opposite statement is not true. The Ampére-Weber programme did not assimilate the propositions of the Maxwellian programme. Maxwell’s victory over his rivals became possible because the gist of Maxwell’s unification strategy was formed by Kantian epistemology looked in the light of William Whewell and such representatives of Scottish Enlightenment as Thomas Reid and Sir William Hamilton. Maxwell did put forward as basic synthetic principles the ideas that radically differed from that of Ampére-Weber approach by their open, flexible and contra-ontological, genuinly epistemological, Kantian character. For Maxwell, ether was not the ultimate building block of physical reality, from which all the charges and fields should be constructed. “Action at a distance”, “incompressible fluid”, “molecular vortices”, etc. were contrived analogies for Maxwell, capable only to direct the researcher at the “right” mathematical relations. Key words: J.C. Maxwell, unification of optics and electromagnetism, I. Kant, T. Reid, W. Hamilton . (shrink)

This article is to analyze the unification consciousness of liberals and conservatives about the unification problem. To this purpose, the writer asked the subjects regarding which political position they take, including liberal and conservative views indirectly with the Moral Foundation Theory. 79 experts, who have majored in moral philosophy and 1,200 common citizens were subjected to investigation. The total number of participants is 1,279. The investigation used a face-to-face survey to the common citizens, and an online survey to (...) the experts. Structured questionnaires were exploited as a research tool. This paper extracted only a few topics of the questionnaire as follows: current inter-Korean relations, inter-Korean policy satisfaction level of current regime, necessity for unification, unified way, and so on. The survey for common citizens has a 95-percent confidence level with a sampling error of plus or minus 2.83. The complete enumeration survey was conducted for 442 experts, who have e-mail addresses and are members of the Korean Ethics Studies Association at the same time. Only 79 members gave an answer to this survey: rate of response was 17.9%. The survey period was from September 23 to October 8. Followed by editing-coding-key-in-programming, collected survey data was analyzed with statistical package, SPSS PC+ (ver12.0). According to the research result, understanding difference in accordance with an individual political position appears more clearly rather than position difference of liberals and conservatives in accordance with objective criteria for inter-Korean relations and unification problem. (shrink)

This essay discusses Korean Neo-Confucian conceptions of the self and the important practice of self-cultivation in Neo-Confucian culture. Although approaching the question and practice from different perspectives, these conceptions reflect a foundation in reverence for knowledge, righteousness, propriety, and benevolence. Basic comparisons are then drawn between Neo-Confucian and Western conceptions of the self and self-cultivation. In particular, Michel Foucault’s work on self-cultivation as embedded in social discourses or practices suggests that Neo-Confucian self-cultivation also can be described through a (...) microphysics of reverence. Two examples from modern Korean culture are considered in order to demonstrate how a microphysics of reverence reveals replication and reinforcement of existing social practices in the guise of self-cultivation. (shrink)

When I was first invited by Prof. Kim Yong -pyo, editor of the IJBTC, to review this book, I declined, due to the fact that Prof. Park was my teacher and mentor at SUNY Stony Brook, not only as a graduate student, but as an undergraduate as well. For this reason I was afraid that I would not be able to bring the requisite critical distance to the task. After having had the opportunity to read the book, however, I changed (...) my mind, for two main reasons: I realized that it might be personally satisfying to take the opportunity to re-engage myself in the kind of Buddhist soteriological discourse that originally attracted me to Buddhist Studies to begin with, and the potential for lapses in proper critical distance notwithstanding, I felt that there is some sense in which I could bring some insights into the appraisal of this book probably only accessible to myself, given my long relationship with Sung Bae Park and my deep personal interest in his project. So I hope readers of this review will accept it with these factors in mind. There is one question that we may want to ask before dealing with a book like this: Is there a place in our Buddhist Studies academia for the discussion of personal religious experience, or for the investigation of the phenomenon of religiosity? I know of more than a few who would answer such a question with an outright "no." Others might say, "It depends upon how one goes about it." And still others may be very excited by such a prospect. (shrink)

We discuss the following problems, plaguing the present search for the “final theory”: (1) How to find a mathematical structure rich enough to be suitably approximated by the mathematical structures of general relativity and quantum mechanics? (2) How to reconcile nonlocal phenomena of quantum mechanics with time honored causality and reality postulates? (3) Does the collapse of the wave function contain some hints concerning the future quantum gravity theory? (4) It seems that the final theory cannot avoid the problem of (...) dynamics, and consequently the problem of time. What kind of time, if this theory is supposed to be background free? (5) Will the dynamics of the “final theory” be probabilistic? Quantum probability exhibits some essential differences as compared with classical probability; are they but variations of some more general probabilistic measure theory? (6) Do we need a radically new interpretation of quantum mechanics, or rather an entirely new theory of which the present quantum mechanics is an approximation? (7) If the final theory is to be background free, it should provide a mechanism of space-time generation. Should we try to explain not only the generation of space-time, but also the generation of its material content? (8) As far as the existence of the initial singularity is concerned, one usually expects either “yes” or “not” answers from the final theory. However, if the mathematical structure of the future theory is supposed to be truly more general that the mathematical structures of the present general relativity and quantum mechanics, is a “third answer“ possible? Could this third answer be related to the probabilistic character of the final theory? We discuss these questions in the framework of a working model unifying gravity and quanta. The analysis reveals unexpected aspects of these rather wildly discussed issues. (shrink)