This book approaches the topic of intercultural understanding in philosophy from a phenomenological perspective. It provides a bridge between Western and Eastern philosophy through in-depth discussion of concepts and doctrines of phenomenology and ancient and contemporary Chinese philosophy. Phenomenological readings of Daoist and Buddhist philosophies are provided: the reader will find a study of theoretical and methodological issues and innovative readings of traditional Chinese and Indian philosophies from the phenomenological perspective. The author uses a descriptive rigor to avoid cultural prejudices (...) and provides a non-Eurocentric conception and practice of philosophy. Through this East-West comparative study, a compelling criticism of a Eurocentric conception of philosophy emerges. New concepts and methods in intercultural philosophy are proposed through these chapters. Researchers, teachers, post-graduates and students of philosophy will all find this work intriguing, and those with an interest in non-Western philosophy or phenomenology will find it particularly engaging. (shrink)

In Hong Kong, transfer students encounter different challenges unfolding in their transition from community college to university study. However, limited research has been conducted to explore their discipline-specific challenges. To address this gap, in this study three engineering and science faculties were selected from which to collect data through 35 in-depth interviews with transfer students, followed by a thorough thematic analysis. With the concept of in-betweenness, three main themes were identified: “shifted the focus of study” academic excellence in community college; (...) future career in the university; and university life); “encountered challenges in the transition” non-matching program articulation; heavy study workload and its associated consequences; and non-specific administration arrangement and support from university); and “students’ voices to enhance learning experiences” modify the study duration; improve program articulation; improve social adjustment; and overseas exchange). The results of this study indicate the challenges faced by transfer students in their transition from community college to university and have implications for universities to design and implement appropriate strategies to prepare for the future. (shrink)

In this volume, phenomenologists from the West join hands with specialists from mainland China and Hong Kong to discuss the heritage of Husserl’s Logical Investigations. Readers will learn of the early reception of Husserl’s Logical Investigations in China and understand how Husserl’s doctrine of intentionality of consciousness has paved the way to a novel phenomenological explication of religious experience.

By his critical reflections on the crisis of modern civilization, Jan Patočka, phenomenologist of the Other Europe, incarnates the critical consciousness of the phenomenological movement. He was in fact one of the first European philosophers to have emphasized the necessity of abandoning the hitherto Eurocentric propositions of solution to the crisis when he explicitly raised the problems of a “Post-European humanity”. In advocating an understanding of the history of European humanity different from those of Husserl and Heidegger, Patočka directs his (...) philosophical reflections back to sketch a more profound phenomenology of the natural world insufficiently thematized in Husserl and absent in Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit. By virtue of its emphasis on the structural characteristics of movement, of praxis, and of the disclosure of the abyssal nature of human existence and of the original nothingness as the (non-)foundation of the phenomenal world, Patočka’s phenomenology of the natural world constitutes an opening towards the reception of Others and other cultures, in particular that of Chinese Taoist philosophy. (shrink)

It is well-known that the mature Foucault, while recognizing the influence of phenomenology on him during his youth, declared his anti-phenomenological position since his archeological breakthrough. This paper tries to argue and show that though phenomenology is an object of criticism of Foucault’s archaeology, it nonetheless plays a paradoxical and strategic role in the construction of the archaeological project. Though Foucault undertakes in The Birth of the Clinic a critical deconstruction of phenomenology as positivism, against the open anti-positivist declaration of (...) phenomenology itself, in the Archeology of Knowledge Foucault acknowledges that the opening of the space of archeology requires the practice of the “épochè of the épochè”, and in this sense archeology is a positivism too. That means also that archeology is possible only by the practice of the phenomenological operation of épochè in order to exit from phenomenology. This paradoxical and strategic usage of phenomenology in Foucault’s archeology is extended to his theory of discourse. For Foucault came to realize the limit of discursive practice: not only words signify but things signify too. If archeology wants to extend its domain of competence, it has to recur to description according to the way things show up themselves. This is nothing other than the basic methodological recommendation of phenomenology. Thus Foucault’s open declaration of his anti-phenomenological position is merely apparent, hiding his discrete paradoxical and strategic usage of the rich methodological resources of phenomenology. (shrink)

Initialement écrits à l’occasion de conférences données entre 1996 et 2016 en Asie, aux Amériques et en Europe, les onze chapitres de ce volume interrogent la possibilité, en partant de la phénoménologie, d’engager un dialogue interculturel entre l’Europe et l’Orient, et, en l’occurrence, la Chine. Comme l’indique déjà le sous-titre, l’auteur invite en fin de compte, pour entrer en un tel dialogue, à une nouvelle appropriation du concept merleau-pontien de chair, ce qui le conduit à forger l’...

Background Caring practice begins with awareness of the suffering of patients in a given context. Understanding the interrelationship between the perceived ethical climate of the clinical environment and the ethical sensitivity and caring efficacy of nurses is crucial for strengthening the caring competency of nurses. Research aim This study aimed to examine the associations between the ethical climate of the clinical environment and the ethical sensitivity and caring efficacy of nurses and to investigate the mediating effect of ethical sensitivity on (...) the association between ethical climate and caring efficacy. Research design This was a quantitative study with a cross-sectional descriptive correlational design. The participants completed an online survey that measured the ethical climate, ethical sensitivity and caring efficacy using the Hospital Ethical Climate Survey, Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire-Revised and Caring Efficacy Scale, respectively. Participants and research context The study recruited 293 nurses from two general hospitals that provided acute in-patient and extended care in Hong Kong. Ethical considerations Ethical approval was obtained from the ethics committee of the university and the hospitals involved. Written consent was obtained from the participants. Results Ethical climate was associated with caring efficacy ( β = 0.340, p <.001) and ethical sensitivity ( β = 0.197, p <.001). After adjusting for ethical climate, ethical sensitivity was associated with caring efficacy ( β = 0.860, p <.001). Ethical sensitivity showed a significant mediating effect on the association between ethical climate and caring efficacy (indirect effect = 0.169, 95% confidence interval: 0.097 to 0.261), which accounted for 50% of the total effect. Conclusions The study reveals the complex and interwoven relationship between contextual and personal factors that affect nurses’ caring efficacy from an ethical perspective. It provides insights into the significant roles of ethical climate and ethical sensitivity in strengthening caring efficacy. The results suggest theoretical and clinical implications for professionalisation. (shrink)

This book, the fruition of twenty years of research and writing about phenomenology, carefully and insightfully traces the complex historical relations between phenomenology and non-Western thought over the last century. It also offers a critical diagnosis of the contemporary impediments to, and possibilities for, intercultural philosophy...

This is a composite review of three intriguing and provocative books that address the interconnections between East Asian and Western philosophy. Firstly, in _Phenomenology and Intercultural Understanding: Toward a New Cultural Flesh_, Kwok-Ying Lau thinks that phenomenology can help construct a “cultural flesh” between civilizations that encourages East-West philosophical dialogues, and that China needs to adopt Western terminology to facilitate an intercultural engagement. Merleau-Ponty’s “inter-world” can help this bridge. Secondly, in _Fundamentals of Comparative and Intercultural Philosophy_, Lin Ma and (...) Jaap van Brakel argue that Chinese thinkers of the modern world invent “Chinese philosophy” in order to engage with Western thought. In a distinct fashion, they incorporate a Wittgenstein-inspired scenario whereby the necessary precondition for comparative intercultural philosophy is the “attitude-toward-a-soul principle” alongside the “family resemblance principle” which includes the “no need to speak the same language principle” or no need for one tradition to adopt another’s terminology. Thirdly, in _Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought_, Eric S. Nelson proposes that intertextual analysis opens multi-dimensional spaces of interpretation to situate changing views of East-West encounters in Germany ranging from Hegel and Kant to Buber and Heidegger. Daoism, Confucianism, Chan and Zen Buddhism are sites for examination by Western thinkers that open portals to East Asian culture and philosophy. (shrink)

This study is a conceptual dialogue aimed at attaining insight into reading and developing postintentional phenomenology as intercultural philosophical inquiry. This conversation commences with the problem of Eurocentric phenomenology and introduces several examples of intercultural phenomenological attempts which fail to move beyond the validation of non-European philosophy using a Eurocentric viewpoint. The first section of this study introduces possible conditions and approaches for intercultural phenomenology, drawing mainly on Kwok-Ying Lau’s (2016) work on phenomenology and intercultural understanding, with a view (...) to extending the scope of phenomenological research beyond the limitations of a Eurocentric attitude largely influenced by and inherited from Husserl. The second section considers ways in which the understanding and approach of post-intentional phenomenology could be widened and deepened by the intercultural dimension, and vice versa. Building on these discussions, the paper concludes with a brief consideration of the implications for phenomenological research and of how an intercultural understanding and approach inform research design. Following “lines of flight” in these discussions, post-intentional phenomenology is proposed as an ethical and transformative inquiry. (shrink)

Building on a distinction between two kinds of skepticism recently worked out by the American philosopher James Conant, we can differentiate the question of how to overcome the gap between two cultural horizons in intercultural dialogue from the question of how there could even be such dialogue, irrespective of its method, success or failure. While the first question concerns practical conditionality, that is, something we as philosophers have to achieve, the second question concerns transcendental conditionality. After making this distinction clear, (...) the paper presents three cases of recent scholarship on intercultural dialogue, each of which can be read as a response to those two forms of conditionality of intercultural understanding. Those cases are Jean-Yves Heurtebise’s notion of a “transcultural” philosophy, Eric S. Nelson’s work on “intercultural philosophy,” and Kwok-Ying Lau’s concept of a “cultural flesh.” However, while speaking to both forms of conditionality, they tend not to distinguish sufficiently their responses to the two problematics. (shrink)

A record of the words and teachings of Confucius, _The Analects_ is considered the most reliable expression of Confucian thought. However, the original meaning of Confucius's teachings have been filtered and interpreted by the commentaries of Confucianists of later ages, particularly the Neo-Confucianists of the Song dynasty, not altogether without distortion.In this monumental translation by Professor D. C. Lau, an attempt has been made to interpret the sayings as they stand. The corpus of the sayings is taken as an organic (...) whole and the final test of the interpretation rests on the internal consistency it exhibits. In other words, _The Analects_ is read in the light of _The Analects._This results in a truer understanding of Confucius' thought than the traditional interpretation and paves the way for a re-assessment of its importance in the history of Chinese thought and its relevance to the present day world.This volume also contains an introduction to the life and teachings of Confucius, and three appendices on the events in the life of Confucius, on his disciples, and on the composition of _The Analects._. (shrink)

Mencius, who lived in the 4th century B.C., is second only to Confucius in importance in the Confucian tradition. The _Mencius_ consists of sayings of Mencius and conversations he had with his contemporaries. When read side by side with the _Analects_, the _Mencius_ throws a great deal of light on the teachings of ConfuciusMencius developed many of the ideas of Confucius and at the same time discussed problems not touched upon by Confucius. He drew out the implications of Confucius' moral (...) principles and reinterpreted them for the conditions of his time. As the fullest of the four great Confucian texts, the _Mencius_ has been the required reading amongst Chinese scholars for two thousand years, and it still throws considerable light on the character of the Chinese people. (shrink)

Externalism with regard to mental content says that in order to have certain types of intentional mental states (e.g. beliefs), it is necessary to be related to the environment in the right way.

The Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter, University of Pennsylvania, was built in 1965 as part of the Advanced Research Projects Agency's Interdisciplinary Laboratories program intended to foster interdisciplinary research and training in materials science. The process that led to the construction of the four-story structure served as the focus of intense debates over the meaning and process of interdisciplinary research in universities. The location of the building, its size, internal design, and functionalities were all subject to heated (...) negotiations among patrons, scientists, and university administrators, to find the proper place of interdisciplinary materials science on the University of Pennsylvania's campus. Building on the recent work on laboratory architecture, this paper argues that the negotiations and controversies over the LRSM building were concrete representations of the broader struggle over the appropriate place of interdisciplinary research and training within a university. (shrink)

Measuring event-related potentials (ERPs) has been fundamental to our understanding of how language is encoded in the brain. One particular ERP response, the N400 response, has been especially influential as an index of lexical and semantic processing. However, there remains a lack of consensus on the interpretation of this component. Resolving this issue has important consequences for neural models of language comprehension. Here we show that evidence bearing on where the N400 response is generated provides key insights into what it (...) reflects. A neuroanatomical model of semantic processing is used as a guide to interpret the pattern of activated regions in functional MRI, magnetoencephalography and intracranial recordings that are associated with contextual semantic manipulations that lead to N400 effects. (shrink)

In Prajñā and Reason Nishitani presents a powerful vision of philosophy as Absolute knowing. Nishitani’s conclusions are striking: Absolute knowing can only fulill its potential by beginning without any presuppositions and affirming the truth of contradiction. Because Hegel’s philosophy also purports to be a science of Absolute knowing, in Prajñā and Reason Nishitani develops his own account of the Absolute in conversation with Hegel’s philosophy. We reconstruct Nishitani’s reading and various critiques of Hegel, and thereafter evaluate its merits. Our inquiry (...) shows that Hegel too begins without presuppositions and affirms the truth of contradiction. As a result, we argue that Nishitani’s profound reflections on Absolute knowing draw him into close proximity with Hegel’s thinking and call us to re-think the very being of philosophy and philosophical practice today. (shrink)

Manley and Wasserman criticize the conditional analysis of dispositions, arguing that whilst it invites the ‘strategy of getting specific’, this strategy creates more problems than it solves. I show that their understanding both of the phenomenon of masking and also of the strategy of getting specific is deeply defective, which wreaks havoc with their principal critique of the conditional analysis of dispositions.

For the last several decades, dispositional properties have been one of the main topics in metaphysics. Still, however, there is little agreement among contemporary metaphysicians on the nature of dispositional properties. Apparently, though, the majority of them have reached the consensus that dispositional ascriptions cannot be analysed in terms of simple counterfactual conditionals. In this paper it will be brought to light that this consensus is wrong. Specifically, I will argue that the simple conditional analysis of dispositions, which is generally (...) thought to be dead, is in fact an adequate analysis of dispositions. I will go on to discuss Mumford’s view of dispositions from the perspective of the simple conditional analysis of dispositions. (shrink)

Ethics education matters! Contrary to some common beliefs that ethical behavior is inborn, this study suggests that education does matter. This paper examines ethics education and its relationship with students’ ethical awareness and moral reasoning. Attitudes Towards Business Ethics Questionnaire and 10 vignettes were deployed as the major measurement instruments. It is hypothesized that students with ethics education will have both a greater ethical awareness and ability to make more ethical decisions. Hypotheses were tested in two undergraduate business courses at (...) a major research university where 707 students were sampled. Results suggest that ethics education improved students’ ethical awareness and moral reasoning. Interestingly, results also seem to show that students’ readiness moderated their learning outcomes. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to investigate the use of a newly developed design game called BLOCKS to stimulate awareness of ethical responsibilities amongst engineering students. The design game was played by seventeen teams of chemical engineering students, with each team having to arrange pieces of colored paper to produce two letters each. Before the end of the game, additional constraints were introduced to the teams such that they faced similar ambiguity in the technical facts that the engineers involved (...) in the Challenger disaster had faced prior to the space shuttle launch. At this stage, the teams had to decide whether to continue with their original design or to develop alternative solutions. After the teams had made their decisions, a video of the Challenger explosion was shown followed by a post-game discussion. The students’ opinion on five Statements on ethics was tracked via a Five-Item Likert survey which was administered three times, before and after the ethical scenario was introduced, and after the video and post-game discussion. The results from this study indicated that the combination of the game and the real-life incident from the video had generally strengthened the students’ opinions of the Statements. (shrink)

An association between age-related hearing loss and Alzheimer's Disease has been widely reported. However, the nature of this relationship remains poorly understood. Quantification of hearing loss as it relates to AD is imperative for the creation of reliable, hearing-related biomarkers for earlier diagnosis and development of ARHL treatments that may slow the progression of AD. Previous studies that have measured the association between peripheral hearing function and AD have yielded mixed results. Most of these studies have been small and underpowered (...) to reveal an association. Therefore, in the current report, we sought to estimate the degree to which AD patients have impaired hearing by performing a meta-analysis to increase statistical power. We reviewed 248 published studies that quantified peripheral hearing function using pure-tone audiometry for subjects with AD. Six studies, with a combined total of 171 subjects with AD compared to 222 age-matched controls, met inclusion criteria. We found a statistically significant increase in hearing threshold as measured by pure tone audiometry for subjects with AD compared to controls. For a three-frequency pure tone average calculated for air conduction thresholds at 500–1,000–2,000 Hz, an increase of 2.3 decibel hearing level was found in subjects with AD compared to controls. Likewise, for a four-frequency pure tone average calculated at 500–1,000–2,000–4,000, an increase of 4.5 dB HL was measured, and this increase was significantly greater than that seen for 0.5–2 kHz PTA. There was no difference in the average age of the control and AD subjects. These data confirm the presence of poorer hearing ability in AD subjects, provided a quantitative estimate of the magnitude of hearing loss, and suggest that the magnitude of the effect is greater at higher sound frequencies.Systematic Review Registration:https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/, identifier: CRD42021288280. (shrink)

In this essay, I investigate the origins of Chinese migrant transnationalism and its personal and social consequences. I propose a theoretical perspective that turns on a synthesis that I shall call “cultural functionalism,” a synthesis that attempts to reconcile functionalism and postmodernism. My argument is that Chinese transmigrants overcome modern alienation through a two-way approach: first, a strong participation in and full commitment to community development and connectivity within the Chinese diaspora ; and, second, a religio-cultural renaissance—both being conceived of (...) as constituting a putative “cultural contract” and “social capital” nexus. (shrink)