The interaction between cavity modes and optical transitions leads to new coupled light-matter states in which the energy is periodically exchanged between the matter states and the optical mode. Here we present experimental evidence of optical strong coupling between modes of individual sub-wavelength metamaterial nanocavities and engineered optical transitions in semiconductor heterostructures. We show that this behaviour is generic by extending the results from the mid-infrared to the near-infrared. Using mid-infrared structures, we demonstrate that the light-matter coupling occurs at the (...) single resonator level and with extremely small interaction volumes. We calculate a mode volume of 4.9 × 10 from which we infer that only ~2,400 electrons per resonator participate in this energy exchange process. (shrink)

Yang Guorong is a contemporary philosopher with little need for introduction—and not only because he has been introduced here before.1 Professor Yang’s decades of prolific scholarship cover nearly...

Graphical AbstractWhereas clathrin-mediated endocytosis (CME) exists in all eukaryotic cells, we first detect classical dynamin in Ichthyosporid, a single-cell, metazoan precursor. Based on a key functional residue in its pleckstrin homology domain, we speculate that the evolution of metazoan dynamin coincided with the specialized need for regulated CME during neurotransmission.

Embodied Memories, Embedded Healing foregrounds the East Asian cultural beliefs and practices that shape the environmental consciousness of the twenty-first century. In highlighting such influences, this anthology also foregrounds the closely related new and exciting directions in ecocriticism.

This paper critically surveys Adorno's dialectical-philosophical perspective of communication, which addresses a question and a quest for humanity: "How is communication possible?" In my view, any discussion of Adorno's view on communication should start with his distinction of two concepts: mediation and communication. Mediation involves the ideological critique of illusory relations of objectivity. Communication, defined by Adorno as the never-ending confrontation and reconciliation between subjectivity and objectivity, comes after the epistemological critique of objective mediation. Therefore, the quest for communication always (...) involves a never-ending wrestling between subject and object, particular and universal, experience and information. As Adorno would argue, true communication is "a result not an illusion o f (non-) identity of self and others. If any authentic mediated communication is humanly possible, it is because such communication is inscribed in a dialectical-dialogical process and it can only be accomplished momentarily. (shrink)

This paper critically evaluates Habermas's social-philosophical exploration of the public sphere in the age of mass communication, which addresses a key question: "Is the public possible in the sociohistorical formation of the mass public sphere?" In his genealogical analysis of different public spheres from feudal to modern times, Habermas indicates that the emergence of inter-subjectivity is historically based upon the dichotomy of private / public (subjective/objective). He emphasizes the opposition of the "subjective side" of rationality to its "objective side" while (...) dealing with the public spheres in different historical periods. Habermas points out that the notion of the public can exist only at the face-to-face level communication. It is impossible for the (impersonal) masses to construct any sense of publicness, since there are no historical and social conditions in which the masses of working class can establish an "autonomous private sphere" outside of material production and consumption, as the bourgeoisie did. In this way, Habermas ambivalently argues that the public is not possible in the mass public sphere. (shrink)

Confucianism advocates the lofty moral ideal of “humane love” (ren ai 仁愛) and condemns immoral actions. Strangely enough, however, Mencius, a “paradigmatic Confucian intellectual” who believed that “a true man cannot be corrupted by wealth, subdued by power, or affected by poverty” (Tu 1989a: 15), highly commended such typically corrupt actions as bending the law for the benefit of relatives or appointing people by mere nepotism when he talked about Shun 舜 in the text of the Mencius. In the first (...) four sections of this article, I will address the issue of how Confucianism encourages a special kind of corruption through its fundamentally consanguineous affection. Then, in the remaining sections, I will try to respond to some criticisms of my views by a few Chinese scholars. (shrink)

The theme arises from the legal-academic movement "Law and Literature". This newly developed field should aim at two major goals, first, to investigate the meaning of law in a social context by questioning how the characters appearing in literary works understand and behave themselves to the law, and second, to find out a theoretical solution of the methodological question whether and to what extent the legal text can be interpreted objectively in comparison with the question how literary works should be (...) interpreted. The subject of justice and injustice has been covered not only in treatises of law and philosophy, but also in many works of literature: On the one hand, poets and writers have been outraged at the social conditions of their time. On the other hand, some of them have also contributed fundamental reflections on the idea of justice itself. (shrink)

Traditional theories construe approximate truth or truthlikeness as a measure of closeness to facts, singular facts, and idealization as an act of either assuming zero of otherwise very small differences from facts or imagining ideal conditions under which scientific laws are either approximately true or will be so when the conditions are relaxed. I first explain the serious but not insurmountable difficulties for the theories of approximation, and then argue that more serious and perhaps insurmountable difficulties for the theory of (...) idealization force us to sever its close tie to approximation. This leads to an appreciation of lawlikeness as a measure of closeness to laws, which I argue is the real measure of idealization whose main purpose is to carve nature at its joints. (shrink)

I first give a brief summary of a critique of the traditional theories of approximation and idealization; and after identifying one of the major roles of idealization as detaching component processes or systems from their joints, a detailed analysis is given of idealized laws – which are discoverable and/or applicable – in such processes and systems (i.e., idealized model systems). Then, I argue that dispositional properties should be regarded as admissible properties for laws and that such an inclusion supplies the (...) much needed connection between idealized models and the laws they `produce'' or `accommodate''. And I then argue that idealized law-statements so produced or accommodated in the models may be either true simpliciter or true approximately, but the latter is not because of the idealizations involved. I argue that the kind of limiting-case idealizations that produce approximate truth is best regarded as approximation; and finally I compare my theory with some existing theories of laws of nature.We seem to trace [in KingLear] ... the tendency of imagination toanalyse and abstract, to decomposehuman nature into its constituentfactors, and then to construct beings in whomone or more of these factors isabsent or atrophied or only incipient. (shrink)

Shun argues that the distinction between first and third person is ill-suited to explain the complexities of anger. In this commentary, I first argue that, while the distinction is not uniquely important in characterizing anger and its variations, it can be distinctively important in illuminating the nature and normative significance of different forms of anger. Indeed, Shun’s own characterizations of anger in the paper seem to presuppose this importance. Secondly, I show that there are two related but distinct ways in (...) which one’s anger is ‘personally involved’: the first concerns how the offence is registered (e.g., whether it is perceived as targeting oneself), and the second concerns one’s emotional uptake of the offence. Lastly, I propose an alternative interpretation of Zhu Xi’s distinction between anger that ‘resides in things’ and anger that ‘resides in the self’, where the emphasis is not on whether anger is an appropriate response to a situation but on whether anger is properly encapsulated. (shrink)

The problem of transcendence and immanence is a central issue in every great religious tradition. It is indeed the understanding of the relation between the transcendent and man that determines the character of a religious faith. The transcendent, However, May assume different forms; it need not always be a supreme personal God in the judaeo-Christian sense. In the confucian tradition, Heaven is the transcendent; hence the problem of transcendence and immanence becomes the problem of heaven and man. In this article, (...) I have not followed a historical approach to trace the development of the idea of heaven and the idea of man in the confucian tradition. Instead, I have concentrated my studies on chung yung or the doctrine of the mean, Because the ideas developed in this document are most typical of the confucian reflection on the problem of transcendence and immanence. And I find that transcendence and immanence are a pair of interdependent concepts for the confucian philosophers. At the end of the paper, The contemporary significance of this view has also been considered. (shrink)

Introduction My fluid thinking began when Professor Laurence-Berger invited me to co-edit a panel of articles on Chinese Temporalities for the French academic journal Temporalités, centering on the relationship between the concept of Chinese temporalities and the several manifestations of China as a modern, national, political entity. I myself define the concept of temporalities in terms of its methodological meanings, by emphasizing its multidimensional nature: first of all, the concept of t...

In this paper, a criticism of the traditional theories of approximation and idealization is given as a summary of previous works. After identifying the real purpose and measure of idealization in the practice of science, it is argued that the best way to characterize idealization is not to formulate a logical model – something analogous to Hempel's D-N model for explanation – but to study its different guises in the praxis of science. A case study of it is then made (...) in thermostatistical physics. After a brief sketch of the theories for phase transitions and critical phenomena, I examine the various idealizations that go into the making of models at three difference levels. The intended result is to induce a deeper appreciation of the complexity and fruitfulness of idealization in the praxis of model-building, not to give an abstract theory of it. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to show that, instead of quantum probabilities, wave packets are physically real. First, Cartwright's recent argument for the reality of quantum probabilities is criticized. Then, the notion of ‘physically real’ is precisely defined and the difference between wave functions and quantum probabilities clarified. Being thus prepared, some strong reasons are discussed for considering the wave packet to be physically real. Finding the reasons inconclusive, I explain how the Aharonov—Bohm effect delivers the final punch. I (...) conclude that wave packets are the quantum objects that underlie the indeterministic quantum processes and have the propensity of displaying probabilistic (or indeterministic) behavior. (shrink)

The year 1964 witnessed the polemics on "one divides into two" and "two combine into one" conducted in China's theoretical circles. Due to the sabotage of the "theoretical authority" and people like Guan Feng, this academic discussion was turned into a political mass criticism of the latter. During the Cultural Revolution, Lin Biao and the "gang of four" subjected comrades who advocated the theory of "two combine into one" or endorsed some of its viewpoints to brutal political persecution. Criticism of (...) the theory was a political frame-up. However, I think we should conduct realistic discussion and evaluation of it again as a theoretical issue, in the spirit of fostering democracy and "letting a hundred schools of thought contend." To my way of thinking, "two combine into one" is neither a metaphysical proposition nor a comprehensive generalization of the law of the unity of opposites. It is the generalization of the identity of contradiction in its first meaning. (shrink)

In this paper I construct Confucian moral realism as a metaethical theory that is compatible with, or even derivable from, traditional Confucianism. The paper is at once interpretative and constructive. In my analysis, Confucians can establish the realist's claims on moral properties because they embrace the view of a moralistic universe. Moral properties in Confucian ethics not only are presented as objective, naturalistic properties, but also are seen as 'causally efficacious'. There are several theses commonly endorsed by contemporary moral realists. (...) I will explain how many of the remarks by Confucius, Mencius, in Yijing, The Great Learning and The Doctrine of the Mean can be understood as implicit endorsements of these theses. I will also analyze the theses specific to Confucian moral realism. The paper will end with a brief defense of this form of realism. (shrink)

This paper aims at answering the simple question, “What is spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) in classical systems?” I attempt to do this by analyzing from a philosophical perspective a simple classical model which exhibits some of the main features of SSB. Related questions include: What does it mean to say that a symmetry is spontaneously broken? Is it broken without any causes, or is the symmetry not broken but merely hidden? Is the principle, “no asymmetry in, no asymmetry out,” violated (...) by SSB? What really distinguishes SSB from the usual types of symmetry breaking? (shrink)

I thought the organizer had invited me primarily to let everyone take a rest while I spoke, because what I had to say was relatively simple and superficial. I would be talking not about academic subjects, but mostly about my personal impressions.

According to Aristotle, the most characteristic activity of friendship is “living together” [to suzên]. This paper seeks to understand living together in the light of his famous, foundational claim that humans are social by nature. Based on an interpretation of Nicomachean Ethics 9.9, I explain our need for friends in terms of a more fundamental human need to appreciate one's life as a whole. I then argue that friendship is built into the very structure of human life itself such that (...) human living is living together. (shrink)

Philosophers debate over the truth of the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, the thesis that there is a morally significant difference between doing harm and merely allowing harm to happen. Deontologists tend to accept this doctrine, whereas consequentialists tend to reject it. A robust defence of this doctrine would require a conceptual distinction between doing and allowing that both matches our ordinary use of the concepts in a wide range of cases and enables a justification for the alleged moral difference. (...) In this article, I argue not only that a robust defence of this doctrine is available, but also that it is available within a consequentialist framework. (shrink)

This essay explores the nature of spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) in connection with a cluster of interrelated concepts such as Curie's symmetry principle, ergodicity, and chance and stability in classical systems. First, a clarification of the two existing senses of SSB is provided and an argument developed for a proposal for SSB, in which not only the possibilities but also the actual breakings are referred to. Second, a detailed analysis is given of classical SSB that answers the questions: (i) how (...) we are justified in regarding it as a matter of chance, and (ii) why the breakings in it are equally probable. The answer provides some support to the applicability of ergodicity in special systems (such as ours). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Awful Patriotism: Richard Rorty and the Politics of KnowingDavid Palumbo-Liu* (bio)Richard Rorty. Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1998.This essay addresses the current debates surrounding what some have labeled the Two Lefts: a “cultural left” and an activist left. 1 Debate over this “divide” has made many strange bedfellows, but perhaps none quite so unheimlich as “liberal leftist” Richard Rorty and cultural conservative Harold (...) Bloom. To be sure, Rorty has often alluded to Bloom’s work, especially Bloom’s notion of “strong poets,” but in his most recent book, Rorty has appropriated Bloom in a particularly telling manner. In 1994, Harold Bloom published his polemic The Western Canon. At once eloquent and pathetic, it pressed all the right buttons. Bloom succinctly (or shall we say, reductively?) deployed his version of the “aesthetic” against any other approach. Cultural conservatives were gratified that someone of Bloom’s stature had done them the service of voicing their interests in a highly visible and contestatory manner; more moderate sorts squirmed uncomfortably at Bloom’s unabashed elitism and the shrillness of his tone; theorists and cultural studies folks were outraged at Bloom’s absolute ignorance of their work and his resort to parody instead of anything vaguely resembling an engaged critique; and ethnic, minority, queer, and feminist critics had more than enough to be insulted by in his racist and sexist arrogance. So far out is Bloom’s jeremiad that it probably came close to realizing his worst nightmare—it may have driven students screaming into all those horrid cultural studies classes to find out what was so seductive, so powerful as to corner The Canon. So I didn’t worry too much about The Western Canon. That is, until I read Richard Rorty’s essay “The Inspirational Value of Great Works of Literature” and its companion pieces in Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America. What was Rorty, a self-proclaimed leftist, doing, calling to his aid the social and cultural archconservative Harold Bloom?In the first part of my essay I ponder this strange alliance, particularly as it joins forces against ethnic studies (to be sure, its common target is more generally “theory” of any stripe or color, but I want specifically to address the issue of ethnic literary study). Rorty adapts Bloom’s School of Resentment to characterize what he calls a certain, bad “knowingness,” against which he poses “hope” and “inspiration.” I want to examine more closely the nature and content of that destructive “knowledge,” for it becomes clear that [End Page 37] this knowledge is for Rorty the recognition of Otherness as a politically (as opposed to “merely” ontologically) functional identity. This knowledge is disturbing to Rorty and deeply informs his notions of “patriotism” and Americanism. For him, such knowledge impedes the formation of a leftist politics. It is precisely the disjunction between the “knowing” discourse of the cultural left obsessed with identity politics and an activist political left (modeled after the old reformist left) that troubles Rorty.My essay will be largely devoted to showing how Rorty’s recent work develops his earlier work on “ethnocentrism” into an “Americanism” that erodes precisely the liberal foundations of that earlier work and discloses the weakness of its claims. I understand this development as compelled by a certain impatience with identity politics that is shared by a number of liberal and leftist critics of American political society, an impatience fueled perhaps not so much by a conservative threat as by a perceived threat from “within” progressive politics. Basically, I ask, how and why are knowledge and recognition of “difference” taken to immobilize progressive politics? To frame that same question in a slightly different manner—what is the presumed content of that “progressive” politics, and what assumptions do we have to make in order to arrive at that point of view?Against the rather odd Bloom/Rorty pairing, set against “knowledge,” one would naturally seek out an enemies list for possible allies. Rorty in fact begins his essay by providing us with one in the figure of Fredric Jameson, an archpractitioner of theory whose “antiromantic” skepticism Rorty finds both debilitating and... (shrink)

The year 2012 has witnessed worldwide celebrations of Alan Turing’s 100th birthday. A great number of conferences and workshops were organized by logicians, computer scientists and researchers in AI, showing the continued flourishing of computer science, and the fruitful interfaces between logic and computer science. Logic is no longer just the concept that Frege had about one hundred years ago, let alone that of Aristotle twenty centuries before. One of the prominent features of contemporary logic is its interdisciplinary character, connecting (...) across mathematics, philosophy, modern computer science, and even the cognitive and social sciences. -/- China is no exception. This special issue explores interfaces of logic with AI and other disciplines, and it attempts to give a bird’s eye view of the developing landscape of logic and AI in China. Our contributors come from computer science, AI, philosophy and linguistics, united by their interest in using formal logical tools and notions to deal with substantial problems in their fields. We are aware that AI is a vast area, and that the limitations of space in a volume like this may provide a somewhat incomplete or biased view. Still we hope that the six papers selected here illustrate the concerns and curiosity driving Chinese researchers, on topics shared with our colleagues around the world. -/- One of the active research areas in AI is planning under uncertainty, with incomplete knowledge, where a well-established logical framework is the action language of Son and Baral (Son and Baral 2001). This language can express the notions of sensing actions and making conditional plans. However, its current semantics is not yet satisfactory, since according to the semantics an agent would not have knowledge of what happens after a plan is executed, which can be a serious problem in a safety-critical environment. In their paper Proof Systems for Planning under Cautious Semantics (Shen and Zhao 2013), Yuping Shen and Xishun Zhao address this problem and propose a cautious and weakly cautious semantics for the action language. This new semantics enables the agent to know exactly what happens after executing an action. Hoare style proof systems are then proposed and proved to be sound and complete. What is more, the proposed new system reduces the reasoning complexity of the action language. -/- In Preferential Semantics for Plausible Subsumption in Possibility Theory (Qi and Zhang 2013), Guilin Qi and Zhizheng Zhang investigate another important issue in AI: how to handle exceptions in a knowledge-based system. This has become a hot topic in recent years, especially in ontological design, where description logics are widely used. The question then arises whether we can get a nonmonotonic extension of description logic. To answer this, the authors first propose three preferential semantics for plausible subsumption in the framework of possibility theory (Dubois and Prade 1985) and study their properties and their relationships. Then they introduce preferential subsumptions to a description logic-based knowledge system, and define an entailment relation of plausible subsumption. Moreover, they study reductions of the new semantics to standard semantics for an expressive description logic. -/- Counterfactual reasoning has been explored extensively by philosophers, cf. Lewis (1973), Stalnaker (1968). But in the last two decades, causal models have been proposed for modeling counterfactual reasoning by researchers in AI. In A Lewisian Logic of Causal Counterfactuals (Zhang 2013), Jiji Zhang studies classes of causal models and provides formal characterizations. In particular, a new logic system is proposed and proved complete for the class of ‘Lewisian models’ satisfying all the principles of David Lewis’s logic of counterfactuals. Moreover, Zhang compares his new framework with those of Lewis and Stalnaker, and also establishes formal connections with more recent approaches by Galles and Pearl, and by Halpern. -/- Consistency is a fundamental notion in logic, but it also plays a key role in many techniques for solving constraint satisfaction problems (Mackworth 1977). In Variable-Centered Consistency in Model RB (Li et al. 2013), Liang Li, Tian Liu and Ke Xu start with a discussion of i-consistency in ‘Model RB’ and ‘Model RD’, two models of random constraint satisfaction problems with growing domain size, then compare it with the notion of t-consistency and strong t-consistency in well-known earlier work by Freuder. After that, the authors define a new kind of variable-centered consistency, and show an upper bound on a suitably chosen parameter in Model RB and Model RD, such that up to this bound, all typical instances of Model RB are variable-centered consistent. -/- Language understanding is a cognitive process that human beings carry out every day. Metaphor is a pervasive phenomenon in natural languages, and its cognitive role calls for interpretation. There is a growing body of literature on cognitive mechanisms underlying metaphor. The paper An Ontology-Based Approach to Metaphor Cognitive Computation (Huang et al. 2013) by Xiaoxi Huang, Huaxin Huang, Beishui Liao, and Cihua Xu proposes a theoretical framework for metaphor understanding based on recent results from cognitive science (Shutova 2010). They then introduce ontology as a knowledge representation method, and present a new ontological model to formalize metaphor-based knowledge. An algorithmic description is provided using a quantitative measure of integrated degree, and its effectiveness is demonstrated. -/- Puzzles and their solution mechanisms are a recurrent theme in many fields. Dynamic epistemic logic (van Ditmarsch et al. 2007); (van Benthem 2011) is a recent framework that can handle information dynamics in knowledge puzzles. In Reasoning About Agent Types and the Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever (Liu and Wang 2013), Fenrong Liu and Yanjing Wang propose a new dynamic-epistemic logic that can specify different types of agents and analyse agents’ knowledge, communication and reasoning. To demonstrate its power, Smullyan’s well-known Knights and Knaves puzzles are formalized, as well as the Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever (HLPE) of Boolos (Boolos 1996). Moreover, a spectrum of new puzzles is found involving knowledge-based agent types, and their solution complexity is shown to be harder than that for existing logic puzzles. It is also shown that a version of HLPE in which the agents do not know the others’ types does not have a solution at all. -/- Finally, we would like to thank the editor of Minds and Machines, Gregory Wheeler, for his efficient assistance and kind support. We also thank Ties Nijssen at Springer for his encouragement to start this project at the first place. And of course, our appreciation goes to our authors, as well as all the colleagues who have helped us review the papers in this collection. (shrink)

Despite the productivity of basic cancer research, cancer continues to be a health burden to society because this research has not yielded corresponding clinical applications. Many proposed solutions to this dilemma have revolved around implementing organizational and policy changes related to cancer research. Here I argue for a different solution: a new conceptualization of causation in cancer. Neither the standard molecular biomarker approaches nor evolutionary biology approaches to cancer fully capture its complex causal dynamics, even when considered jointly. These approaches (...) map on to Ernst Mayr’s proximate–ultimate distinction, which is an inadequate conceptualization of causation in biological systems and makes it difficult to connect developmental and evolutionary viewpoints. I propose looking to evolutionary developmental biology to overcome the distinction and integrate the proximate and ultimate causal frameworks. I use the concepts of modularity and evolvability to show how an EvoDevo perspective can be manifested in cancer translational research. This perspective on causation in cancer is better suited for integrating the complexity of current empirical results and can facilitate novel developments in the investigation and clinical treatment of cancer. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to make use of Western metaphysical taxonomy to explicate the cosmological variances in Chinese philosophical schools, especially with regard to the debates among the Neo-Confucian thinkers. While I do not presume that Chinese philosophers dealt with the same Western issues, I do believe that a comparative study of this nature can point to a new direction of thinking concerning the metaphysical debates in Neo-Confucianism. This paper is divided into three parts. In Part I, I employ (...) Robert Nozick’s notion of natural cosmic state to analyze the fundamental difference between the Confucian and Daoist cosmologies. Even though this notion of natural cosmic state has no comparable match in Chinese philosophy, it may serve as a schematizing device for our comparative study of Chinese cosmology. In Part II, I employ Nicholas Rescher’s distinction between “laws of nature” and “laws for nature” to analyze the debate on the status of cosmic principle a between Zhou Dunyib and Zhu Xic on the one hand, and Zhang Zaid and Wang Fuzhie on the other. 1 In Part III, I employ the notion of supervenience, as defined by Jaegwon Kim, to argue that in the debate on the status of cosmic principle, it is Zhang Zai and Wang Fuzhi’s view that better preserves the causal relevance of cosmic principle. (shrink)

Cyclin-dependent kinase 5 has been implicated in Alzheimer's disease pathogenesis. Here, we demonstrate that overexpression of p25, an activator of cdk5, led to increased levels of BACE1 mRNA and protein in vitro and in vivo. A p25/cdk5 responsive region containing multiple sites for signal transducer and activator of transcription was identified in the BACE1 promoter. STAT3 interacts with the BACE1 promoter, and p25-overexpressing mice had elevated levels of pSTAT3 and BACE1, whereas cdk5-deficient mice had reduced levels. Furthermore, mice with a (...) targeted mutation in the STAT3 cdk5 responsive site had lower levels of BACE1. Increased BACE levels in p25 overexpressing mice correlated with enhanced amyloidogenic processing that could be reversed by a cdk5 inhibitor. These data demonstrate a pathway by which p25/cdk5 increases the amyloidogenic processing of APP through STAT3-mediated transcriptional control of BACE1 that could have implications for AD pathogenesis. (shrink)

The debate between ‘inclusive’ and ‘dominant’ interpretations of Aristotle's concept of happiness (eudaimonia) has become one of the thorniest problems of Aristotle interpretation. In this paper, I attempt to solve this problem by presenting a multi-step argument for an ‘all-inclusive’ thesis, i.e., the Aristotelian philosopher or contemplator, in the strict sense, is someone who already possesses all the intellectual virtues (except technē), all the moral virtues (by way of the possession of phronēsis), and considerable other goods. If this thesis is (...) correct, the inclusive and dominant interpretations will converge, for the philosopher turns out to be the happiest human being both in the inclusive and dominant senses. (shrink)

This article examines the problems and potential of Watsuji’s idea of education as ‘learning one’s place’. It begins with the theoretical foundations of this education in his view of space, time, and the practical nexus of acts, found in Ethics I. It then proceeds to his philosophy of education, first in Ethics II, and then in his heretofore under-researched book entitled Confucius. These will be connected to the contemporary discourse on Bildung and its implications for generality and agency in education. (...) However, Watsuji’s views bear the danger of traditional conservativism and a lack of freedom conferred on the individual, whereas individual freedom is essential to Bildung theory. These problems are explored in Ethics III via the questions of whether cultural and social change are possible as well as the role of individual agency in it. These allow us to arrive at a conditional possibility for Bildung in Watsuji that tries to connect people in a general way, while maintaining various forms of individual agency. (shrink)

In this essay, I explore a metaphor in geometry for the debate between the unity and the disunity of science, namely, the possibility of putting a global coordinate system (or a chart) on a manifold. I explain why the former is a good metaphor that shows what it means (and takes in principle) for science to be unified. I then go through some of the existing literature on the unity/disunity debate and show how the metaphor sheds light on some of (...) the views and arguments. (shrink)

The concepts in the title refer to properties of physical theories and this paper investigates their nature and relations. The first three concepts, especially gauge invariance and indeterminism, have been widely discussed in connection to spacetime theories and the hole argument. Since the gauge invariance principle is at the crux of the issue, this paper aims at clarifying the nature of gauge invariance. I first explore the following chain of relations: gauge invariance $\Rightarrow $ the conservation laws $\Rightarrow $ the (...) Cauchy problem $\Rightarrow $ indeterminism. Then I discuss gauge invariance in light of our understanding of the above relations and the possibility of spontaneous symmetry breaking. (shrink)

The research programme of the philosophy of information (PI) proposed in 2002 made it an independent area or discipline in philosophical research. The scientific concept of ‘information’ is formally accepted in philosophical inquiry. Hence a new and tool-driven philosophical discipline of PI with its interdisciplinary nature has been established. Philosophy of information is an ‘orientative’ rather than ‘cognitive’ philosophy. When PI is under consideration in the history of Western philosophy, it can be regarded as a shift of large tradition. There (...) are three large traditions at large, known as Platonic, Kantian and Leibniz-Russellian. In the discussion of the position of the possible worlds, we have modal Platonism and modal realism, but both of the theories are made in the framework of Western philosophy. In this essay, it is argued that possible worlds could be seen as worlds in information, which is then an interpretation of modal information theory (MIT). Our interpretation is made on the basis of Leibniz’s lifelong connection with China, a fact often overlooked by the Western philosophers. Possible world theory was influenced by the Neo-Confucianism flourishing since the Song Dynasty of China, the foundation of which is Yijing. It could be argued that Leibniz’s possible world theory was formulated in respect to the impact of the thoughts reflected in Yijing, in that one of the prominent features is the model-theoretic construction of theories. There are two approaches to theory construction, i.e., axiom-theoretic and model-theoretic. The origin of the former is from ancient Greece and the latter from ancient China. And they determined the different features of theoretic structures between the oriental and occidental traditions of science and technology. The tendency of the future development of science and technology is changing from the axiom-theoretic to the model-theoretic orientation, at least the two approaches being complementary each other. To some extent, this means the retrospective of tradition in the turning point of history, and some of the China’s cultural traditions might become the starting points in formulating the future Chinese philosophy of science and technology. (shrink)

Current workflows in academic ecology rarely allow an engagement of ecologists with philosophers, or with contemporary philosophical work. We argue that this is a missed opportunity for enriching ecological reasoning and practice, because many questions in ecology overlap with philosophical questions and with current topics in contemporary philosophy of science. One obstacle to a closer connection and collaboration between the fields is the limited awareness of scientists, including ecologists, of current philosophical questions, developments and ideas. In this article, we aim (...) to overcome this obstacle and trigger more collaborations between ecologists and philosophers. First, we provide an overview of philosophical research relevant to ecologists. Second, we use examples to demonstrate that many ecological questions have a philosophical dimension and point to related philosophical work. We elaborate on one example – the debate around the appropriate level of complexity of ecological models – to show in more detail how philosophy can enrich ecology. Finally, we provide suggestions for how to initiate collaborative projects involving both ecologists and philosophers. (shrink)

In this essay I review four recent monographs on Chinese American history: Xiao-huang Yin's Chinese American Literature since the 1850s, Madeline Hsu's Dreaming of Gold, Dream of Home: Transnationalism and Migration Between the United States and South China, Young Chen's Chinese San Francisco 1850-1943: A Trans-Pacific Community, and Xiaojian Zhao's Remaking Chinese America: Immigration, Family, and Community, 1940-1965. Based on both English- and Chinese-language sources, the authors of these four books explore migration processes and the social origins of Chinese immigrants (...) from an international perspective and they reinterpret the cultural values of immigrants as fundamentally open, engaged, and cosmopolitan. Moreover, they characterize the Chinese American community as a dynamic, fluid, and flexible global network and place Chinese America in a larger historical context beyond that of a single nation. They have seriously challenged the American-centered and nation-based research paradigm and promoted a more transnational, transcultural, and multilingual approach to the history of Asian American experience. (shrink)

Tian-tai Buddhism and Hua-yan Buddhism can be viewed as the two most philosophically important schools in Chinese Buddhism. The Tian-tai school was founded by Zhi-yi (Chih-i) (538-597 A.D.). The major Buddhist text endorsed by this school is the Lotus Sutra, short for “the Sutra of the Lotus Blossom of the Subtle Dharma.” Hua-yan Buddhism derived its name from the Hua-yan Sutra, translated as “The Flower Ornament Scripture” or as “The Flowery Splendor Scripture.”1 The founder of the Hua-yan school was a (...) Chinese monk named Du-shun (557-640 A.D.). The second patriarch of Hua-yan is Zhi-yan (602-668 A.D.), who studied with Du-shun. However, it is generally acknowledged that the real founder of Hua-yan Buddhism is its third patriarch, Fa-zang (643-712 A.D.). He introduced the division of “the Realm of Principle” and “the Realm of Things,”2 which was developed by Hua-yan’s fourth patriarch Cheng-guan (738-839? A.D.) into the defining thesis for Hua-yan Buddhism – the “four dharma realms”: the Realm of Principle, the Realm of Things,3 the Realm of the Noninterference between Principle and Things, and the Realm of the Noninterference of All Things. (shrink)

Kripke's puzzle is an old and familiar story. It was put forward in Kripke's 'A puzzle about Belief.'[1979] But even today it still has such a charm that people are drawn to it time and time again. In this paper I shall use his puzzle as the stepping stone for developing a new description theory of proper names. Kripke tries to defend his direct reference theory against the charge that it cannot explain the role of proper names in an epistemic (...) context (such as belief, thought, etc.). There are many famous puzzles involving substitution salva veritate for different names of the same referent, and the description theory can easily dissolve them by suggesting that different names have different senses. These puzzles were considered to be defeating the direct reference theory of proper names. Kripke thus tries to demonstrate a similar puzzle that does not involve different names, and thus does not involve different senses. Using his principle of disquotation and principle of translation,1 Kripke presents a puzzle which involves a Frenchman Pierre who is attributed the following set of beliefs: (1) Pierre believes that London is pretty. (2) Pierre believes that London is not pretty. According to Kripke, the two belief reports attribute a contradiction to Pierre, even though Pierre himself cannot be interpreted as being inconsistent.2 Kripke also discusses another puzzle which invokes only the principle of disquotation and no translation is involved. This is the example of Peter’s two beliefs concerning the politician/musician Paderewski. In this case, we get a similar set of contradictory belief reports: (3) Peter believes that Paderewski has musical talent. (4) Peter believes that Paderewski has no musical talent. (shrink)

In numerous papers Jaegwon Kim argues that nonreductive materialists (i.e., those philosophers who believe that there are no irreducible non-physical objects in the universe, and yet there are irreducible psychological properties which are indispensable in intentional psychological explanations) face two problems. One is that intentional mental properties are not causally relevant; the other is that explanations appealing to these properties are excluded by explanations appealing to physical, in particular, microphysical, properties.1 The first problem can be called the problem of epiphenomenalism. (...) The second problem is what Kim calls the problem of explanatory/causal exclusion. Epiphenomenalism is not just a problem for nonreductive materialists, but a problem for psychology (as a science of psychological explanation), and for anyone who believes that our thought is the cause of our action. Kim argues that the exclusion problem, on the other hand, is especially a problem for nonreductive materialists. Nonreductive materialists typically buy into the principle of the causal closure of the physical domain, according to which "any physical event that has a cause at time t has a physical cause at t..... [I]f we trace the causal ancestry of a physical event, we need never go outside the physical domain." [Kim 1989b, p. 280] One cannot reject this principle unless one is willing to go back to Cartesian dualism. But the problem is, if all causation is done at the physical level, then there is no causal work left for mental kinds. If mental kinds do not play any causal role, then intentional psychological explanations that appeal to mental properties are not warranted. Therefore, Kim concludes, nonreductive materialism is an untenable position. Some nonreductionists (Davidson, Dretske, LePore & Loewer, Jackson & Pettit, for example) have tried to argue for the causal relevancy of mental properties from an.. (shrink)