Research, innovation, and progress in the life sciences are increasingly contingent on access to large quantities of data. This is one of the key premises behind the “open science” movement and the global calls for fostering the sharing of personal data, datasets, and research results. This paper reports on the outcomes of discussions by the panel “Open science, data sharing and solidarity: who benefits?” held at the 2021 Biennial conference of the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies (...) of Biology, and hosted by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. (shrink)

This special issue arises from the observation that an exploration of the role of non-evidential considerations in epistemology through a broader lens is missing from the current landscape of philosophical research. The present collection of contributions fills this research gap by bringing together three central and much-discussed epistemological topics for which non-evidential considerations become relevant.

Hồ Mạnh Tùng và Hồ Mạnh Toàn đều là các nhà nghiên cứu trẻ trong lĩnh vực khoa học xã hội ở độ tuổi dưới 30. Mặc dù mới tham gia nghiên cứu khoa học chưa lâu, nhưng 2 anh em nhà họ Hồ đã có thành tích khoa học ấn tượng.

Non-Archimedean population axiologies – also known as lexical views – claim (i) that a sufficient number of lives at a very high positive welfare level would be better than any number of lives at a very low positive welfare level and/or (ii) that a sufficient number of lives at a very low negative welfare level would be worse than any number of lives at a very high negative welfare level. Such axiologies are popular because they can avoid the (Negative) Repugnant (...) Conclusion and satisfy the adequacy conditions given in the central impossibility result in population axiology due to Gustaf Arrhenius. I provide a novel argument against them which appeals to the way that good and bad lives can intuitively outweigh one another. (shrink)

This book examines the legal and moral theory behind the law of evidence and proof, arguing that only by exploring the nature of responsibility in fact-finding can the role and purpose of much of the law be fully understood. Ho argues that the court must not only find the truth to do justice, it must do justice in finding the truth.

Tại thị trường Châu Âu, Springer Nature cho biết có đến 4 quốc gia có hơn 70% tác giả đang lựa chọn công bố mở. Tuy nhiên, để đạt được 30% còn lại thì các nhà xuất bản như Springer Nature cần đưa ra các lựa chọn hấp dẫn và thuyết phục hơn là ép buộc các tác giả phải lựa chọn Open Access như yêu cầu hiện nay.

The hypergrowth and hyperconnectivity of networks of artificial intelligence (AI) systems and algorithms increasingly cause our interactions with the world, socially and environmentally, more technologically mediated. AI systems start interfering with our choices or making decisions on our behalf: what we see, what we buy, which contents or foods we consume, where we travel to, who we hire, etc. It is imperative to understand the dynamics of human-computer interaction in the age of progressively more competent AI. This essay presents five (...) premises to serve as starting points for building our understanding of the “interactions’ in human-computer interactions. (shrink)

In recent decades, the intertwining ideas of self-determination and well-being have received tremendous support in bioethics. Discussions regarding self-determination, or autonomy, often focus on two dimensions—the capacity of the patient and the freedom from external coercion. The practice of obtaining informed consent, for example, has become a standard procedure in therapeutic and research medicine. On the surface, it appears that patients now have more opportunities to exercise their self-determination than ever. Nonetheless, discussions of patient autonomy in the bioethics literature, which (...) focus on individual patients making particular decisions, neglect the social structure within which health-care decisions are made. Looking through the lens of disability and informed by the feminist conception of relational autonomy, this essay argues that the issue of autonomy is much more complex than the individualist model suggests. The social system and the ableist ideology impose various forms of pressure or oppressive power that can affect people’s ability to choose according to their value system. Even if such powers are not directly coercive, they influence potential parents’ decisions indirectly—they structure their alternatives in such a way that certain options are never considered as viable and other decisions must be made. This paper argues that, instead of only focusing on the individual act of decision-making, we need to pay attention to the social structure that frames people’s decision. (shrink)

Maximize Expected Choiceworthiness (MEC) is a theory of decision-making under moral uncertainty. It says that we ought to handle moral uncertainty in the way that Expected Value Theory (EVT) handles descriptive uncertainty. MEC inherits from EVT the problem of fanaticism. Roughly, a decision theory is fanatical when it requires our decision-making to be dominated by low-probability, high-payoff options. Proponents of MEC have offered two main lines of response. The first is that MEC should simply import whatever are the best solutions (...) to fanaticism on offer in decision theory. The second is to propose statistical normalization as a novel solution on behalf of MEC. This paper argues that the first response is open to serious doubt and that the second response fails. As a result, MEC appears significantly less plausible when compared to competing accounts of decision-making under moral uncertainty, which are not fanatical. (shrink)

I argue against pessimistic readings of the Buddhist tradition on which unawakened beings invariably have lives not worth living due to a preponderance of suffering (duḥkha) over well-being.

This paper endeavors to understand the research landscape of finance research in Vietnam during the period 2008 to 2020 and predict the key defining future research directions. Using the comprehensive database of Vietnam’s international publications in social sciences and humanities, we extract a dataset of 314 papers on finance topics in Vietnam from 2008 to 2020. Then, we apply a systematic approach to analyze four important themes: Structural issues, Banking system, Firm issues, and Financial psychology and behavior. Overall, there have (...) been three noticeable trends within finance research in Vietnam: (1) assessment of financial policies or financial regulation, (2) deciphering the correlates of firms’ financial performances, and (3) opportunities and challenges in adopting innovations and ideas from foreign financial market systems. Our analysis identifies several fertile areas for future research, including financial market analysis in the post-COVID-19 eras, fintech, and green finance. (shrink)

Nghiên cứu nhằm tìm hiểu mối quan hệ giữa Chánh niệm tiêu dùng, Trải nghiệm thương hiệu, Gắn kết thương hiệu và Niềm tin thương hiệu ngành công nghệ thông tin tại TP. Hồ Chí Minh. Kết quả nghiên cứu cho thấy, Trải nghiệm thương hiệu tác động lên Niềm tin thương hiệu; Niềm tin thương hiệu tác động lên Gắn kết thương hiệu; Chánh niệm tiêu dùng tác động lên Gắn kết thương hiệu. Kết quả nghiên cứu cũng đóng (...) góp vào dòng các nghiên cứu về Trải nghiệm thương hiệu và đặc biệt là khái niệm Chánh niệm tiêu dùng, góp phần phát triển và ổn định thang đo kế thừa cho thị trường nghiên cứu Việt Nam. Nghiên cứu còn là bằng chứng thực nghiệm cho khái niệm nghiên cứu tương đối mới trong thị trường nghiên cứu về Chánh niệm trong tiêu dùng. (shrink)

A number of analytical philosophers have recently endorsed the view that the world itself is indeterminate in some respect. Intriguingly, ideas similar to the view are expressed by thinkers from Chinese Madhyamaka Buddhism, which may shed light on the current discussion of worldly indeterminacy. Using as a basis Chinese Madhyamaka thought, together with Jessica Wilson’s account of indeterminacy, I develop an ontological conception of indeterminacy, termed ontic indeterminacy, which centres on two complementary ideas—conclusive indeterminability and provisional determinability. I show that (...) OI is well-equipped to tackle several issues of worldly indeterminacy. My overarching aim is to present a viable and sustainable perspective on the subject of indeterminacy to enrich analytical philosophers’ insights into the intricate nature of reality. (shrink)

This article synthesizes the current theoretical attempts to understand human-machine interactions and introduces seven premises to understand our emerging dynamics with increasingly competent, pervasive, and instantly accessible algorithms. The hope that these seven premises can build toward a social theory of human-AI cocreation. The focus on human-AI cocreation is intended to emphasize two factors. First, is the fact that our machine learning systems are socialized. Second, is the coevolving nature of human mind and AI systems as smart devices form an (...) indispensable part of our cognitive scaffolds, thus, shaping how we perceive the world and ourselves. The seven premises include: primacy of social structures; human’s desire for freedom and autonomy; AI systems will form inseparable parts of our cognitive/affective scaffolds and can change our self-understanding; philosophy and humanistic foundations on human flourishing as a guide to human-AI interaction; mindsponge information-filtering process; acculturative process of how values change and emerge from human-AI interaction; overlapping Venn diagram of the human-human, human-nature, and human-machine interactions. This article concludes with a discussion on human agency in our entanglements with socialized machines and the illusoriness of the Cartesian agent view of the mind. (shrink)

This article considers the contemporary effective altruism (EA) movement from a classical Indian Buddhist perspective. Following barebones introductions to EA and to Buddhism (sections one and two, respectively), section three argues that core EA efforts, such as those to improve global health, end factory farming, and safeguard the long-term future of humanity, are futile on the Buddhist worldview. For regardless of the short-term welfare improvements that effective altruists impart, Buddhism teaches that all unenlightened beings will simply be reborn upon their (...) deaths back into the round of rebirth (samsāra), which is held to be undesirable due to the preponderance of duhkha (unsatisfactoriness, dis-ease, suffering) over well-being that characterizes unenlightened existence. This is the samsāric futility problem. Although Buddhists and effective altruists disagree about what ultimately helps sentient beings, section four suggests that Buddhist-EA dialogue nonetheless generates mutually-instructive insights. Buddhists – including contemporaries, such as those involved in Socially Engaged Buddhism – might take from EA a greater focus on explicit prioritization research, which seeks knowledge of how to do the most good we can, given our finite resources. EA, for its part, has at least two lessons to learn. First, effective altruists have tended to assume that the competing accounts of welfare converge in their practical implications. The Buddhist conception of the pinnacle of welfare as a state free from duhkha and, correspondingly, the Buddhist account of the path that leads to this state weigh against this assumption. Second, contrasting Buddhist with effective altruist priorities shows that descriptive matters of cosmology, ontology, and metaphysics can have decisive practical implications. If EA wants to give a comprehensive answer to its guiding question – “how can we do the most good?” – it must argue for, rather than merely assume, the truth of secular naturalism. (shrink)

Nhật Bản thường được biết đến là một cường quốc khoa học không chỉ ở Châu Á mà trên toàn thế giới với rất nhiều giải thưởng khoa học cao quý và sản lượng khoa học ổn định ở mức cao nhiều thập niên qua. Tuy nhiên, trong khoảng 10 năm trở lại đây, thế giới đã thường xuyên ghi nhận những vụ bê bối về đạo đức nghiên cứu tại Nhật Bản. Xem xét kĩ lưỡng nội dung chi tiết (...) các vụ bê bối có thể thấy Nhật Bản đang gặp phải những thách thức nan giải trong việc ngăn chặn và kiểm soát vi phạm đạo đức nghiên cứu. Một phần quan trọng của thách thức này là sự xung đột giữa một bên là những yếu tố có tính lịch sử và văn hóa, và bên kia là sự phát triển của công nghệ thông tin và xu hướng hợp tác quốc tế mở rộng. Nghiên cứu trường hợp của Nhật Bản có thể mang lại những bài học quan trọng trong việc xây dựng khả năng đào tạo và quản lí đạo đức nghiên cứu tại một nền khoa học mới hội nhập như Việt Nam. (shrink)

Virtue epistemology maintains that epistemic normativity is a kind of performance normativity, according to which evaluating a belief is like evaluating a sport or musical performance. I examine this thesis through the objection that a belief cannot be evaluated as a performance because it is not a performance but a state. I argue that virtue epistemology can be defended on the grounds that we often evaluate a performance through evaluating the result of the performance. The upshot of my account is (...) that when a belief is evaluated under performance normativity, what we evaluate is not belief, but cognitive performance. My account of virtue epistemology offers a simple explanation of why knowledge is more valuable than true belief. (shrink)

Plagiarism, which Indiana University’s Writing Tutorial Service defines as "using others' ideas and words without clearly acknowledging the source of that information", is often described as a major problem. However, standard definitions such as this one suggest only limited solutions to the problem: acknowledging sources or forbidding reuse. Since all scholarship involves engaging with the ideas of others and academic writing tends to reuse certain expressions, these solutions – though important – are of limited utility. This paper examines a type (...) of plagiarism to which the standard solutions do not apply: the reuse of linguistic models without sufficient attention to the logic or thoughts the texts express. We present two cases of plagiarism, from which we can see that plagiarism shows a gap between the written texts and the thoughts of the author. In order to fill the gap, one needs to know how to integrate not only the texts borrowed from others into one’s writing but also the thoughts expressed by the texts. Thus a satisfactory solution to the plagiarism problem requires not only writing skills but also logical thinking skills. (shrink)

Theorists who advocate worldly (metaphysical or ontological) indeterminacy—the idea that the world itself is indeterminate in one or more respects—should address how we understand the signifying nature and function of language in light of worldly indeterminacy. I first attend to Sengzhao and Jizang, two leading thinkers in Chinese Sanlun Buddhism, to reconstruct a Chinese Madhyamaka notion of ontic indeterminacy. Then, I draw on the thinkers’ views to propose a provisional (non-definitive) understanding of the nature and use of language. Under this (...) understanding, an expression signifying a thing is provisional in that the expression connotes no determinate feature of the thing. (shrink)

This dissertation aims to revive wave theory in the philosophy of sound. Wave theory identifies sounds with compression waves. Despite its wide acceptance in the scientific community as the default position, many philosophers have rejected wave theory and opted for different versions of distal theory instead. According to this current majority view, a sound has its stationary location at its source. I argue against this and other alternative philosophical theories of sound and develop wave theory into a more defensible form. (...) Philosophers of sound tend to emphasise how sounds are experienced to be in their arguments. Most often, it is assumed that that which appears to be a distally located bearer of auditory properties in an auditory experience is a sound. Chapter 1 argues that if this distal entity is the sound source instead, many of the existing theories of sound will be severely affected. Chapter 2 discusses auditory perception and criticises the common assumption that we hear non-sound entities in virtue of hearing sounds. I show that this assumption begs the question against certain theories of sound and that the contrary view that sound sources can be directly heard is more plausible. If sound sources can be directly heard, then features commonly attributed to sounds based on auditory experiences might rather be features of sound sources. I examine eight of such features in Chapter 3. Only four of them survive. Chapters 4 and 5 review the existing theories of sound. After a taxonomy of existing theories of sound, each theory is criticised one-by-one. Some of them are problematic precisely because they rely on the implausible assumption that that which appears to be distally located in an auditory experience is a sound rather than a sound source. Lastly, Chapter 6 focuses on wave theory. It begins with two positive arguments for wave theory in general, followed by my replies to two common objections in the literature. I then move on to develop my version of wave theory. There are two core aspects of my view. The first one is a metaphysics of compression waves; the second is an account of what it is to hear compression waves. After comparing my view with a similar theory, I demonstrate the explanatory power of my view in two steps. First, the eight commonly accepted features of sounds examined in Chapter 3 are revisited. It turns out that my view can accommodate all of them. Second, explanations for four special sound-related phenomena are offered at the end of the chapter. I conclude in the last chapter with the suggestion that, as a philosopher, the best way to defend wave theory is to offer a better understanding of auditory perception which explains how compression waves are experienced. (shrink)

Virtue epistemology argues that knowledge is more valuable than Gettierized belief because knowledge is an achievement, but Gettierized belief is not. The key premise in the achievement argument is that achievement is apt (successful because competent) and Gettierized belief is inapt (successful because lucky). I first argue that the intuition behind the achievement argument is based wrongly on the fact that ‘being successful because lucky’ implicates ‘being not competent enough’. I then offer an argument from moral luck to argue that (...) virtue epistemologists should maintain that knowledge is no more valuable than Gettierized belief. (shrink)

For Bhartrhari, a fifth-century Indian grammarian-philosopher, all conscious beings—beasts, birds and humans—are capable of what he called pratibha, a flash of indescribable intuitive understanding such that one knows what the present object “means” and what to do with it. Such an understanding, if correct, amounts to a mode of knowing that may best be termed knowing-what, to distinguish it from both knowing-that and knowing-how. This paper attempts to expound Bhartrhari’s conception of pratibha in relation to the notions of meaning, understanding, (...) and knowing. First, I touch briefly on Bhartrhari’s views of consciousness and language, and examine at some length his indescribability thesis concerning the intuitive meaning of a sentence. Then, I delineate the general features of pratibha as intuitive understanding and discuss its probable range in relation to expert intuition and sense perception. Thereafter, I relate pratibha to the notion of knowing-what and show why these two notions are to be differentiated from knowing-that and knowing-how. The paper concludes with some remarks on the contemporary relevance of Bhartrhari’s conception of pratibha. (shrink)

In his essay “Things Do Not Move,” Sengzhao (374?−414 CE), a prominent Chinese Buddhist philosopher, argues for the thesis that the myriad things do not move in time. This view is counter-intuitive and seems to run counter to the Mahayana Buddhist doctrine of emptiness. In this book chapter, I assess Sengzhao’s arguments for his thesis, elucidate his stance on the change/nonchange of things, and discuss related problems. I argue that although Sengzhao is keen on showing the plausibility of the thesis, (...) he actually views the myriad things as both changing and unchanging and upholds the nonduality of motion and rest. In fact, the nonmoving thesis follows from the discernment that things change from moment to moment without there being any enduring stuff in the process. Among philosophical works that confer a higher ontological status on nonchange over change, Sengzhao’s essay is unique and well worth pondering. (shrink)

Bài điểm thông tin khoa học về các tác động của COVID-19 tới thế giới xuất bản học thuật. Đăng trên EASE Vietnam SciComm System ngày 18-03-2020. Sau đó được website của Trung tâm ISR, Phenikaa University đăng lại ngày 25-03-2020.

Bài mới xuất bản vào ngày 19-5-2020 với tác giả liên lạc là NCS Nguyễn Minh Hoàng, cán bộ nghiên cứu của Trung tâm ISR, trình bày tiếp cận thống kê Bayesian cho việc nghiên cứu dữ liệu khoa học xã hội. Đây là kết quả của định hướng Nhóm nghiên cứu SDAG được nêu rõ ngay từ ngày 18-5-2019.

A number of contemporary philosophers think that the unqualified statement “X is unspeakable” faces the danger of self-referential absurdity: if this statement is true, it must simultaneously be false, given that X is speakable by the predicate word “unspeakable.” This predicament is in this chapter formulated as an argument that I term the “ineffability paradox.” After examining the Buddhist semantic theory of apoha (exclusion) and an apoha solution to the issue, I resort to a few Chinese Buddhist and Hindu philosophical (...) materials to rationally reconstruct a strategy for resolving the paradox. By introducing the mode of expression termed “indication,” together with the relevant notions of superimposition and of gesturing beyond the horizon, I show that expressing the ineffable does not necessarily involve irresoluble contradiction. It is also suggested that philosophers may need to acknowledge the relevance of the notion of ineffability for contemporary philosophizing. (shrink)

Satirical cartooning in Vietnam is subject to a complex dynamic: an increasingly liberalised and internationalised economy, and the rise of social media in a one-party state. This article examines what state-sanctioned satirical cartoons can reveal about the representation and management of political criticism in such a context. We find a growing trend of depicting corruption as a systemic problem, which is present in 45 per cent of the sample and in 70 per cent of the 20 most-viral cartoons in one (...) of Vietnam’s most popular magazines, Tuoi Tre Cuoi (Youth Humour). This trend can be interpreted as a change in the sensibility of audiences and a shift toward a more tolerant media landscape. The trend, however, may also be a worrying sign of the dual dangers of cynicism in Vietnamese politics: the development of apathy among audiences and the cynical use of art by authorities. Despite these concerns, we argue, political cartoons in Vietnam provide an important public avenue for collective political reflection and everyday social solidarity. (shrink)

The essay discusses the meaning of 'A story of a bird named Bìm Bịp', Vietnamese traditional folklore. Through contradiction between a bandit and a monk, the meaning of lies, violence, and enlightenment is being told.

Thứ hạng của quyển sách trên Amazon và phản hồi tích cực gần đây đã cho thấy rằng, cuốn sách mang cho độc giả quốc tế cơ hội để tìm hiểu về văn hóa Việt Nam qua những câu chuyện “được chế tác một cách điêu luyện".

Mahayana Buddhist philosophers’ attitude toward language is notoriously negative. The transcendental reality is often said to be ineffable. One’s obsession to apprehend the truth through words is an intellectual disease to be cured Attachment to verbal and conceptual proliferation enslaves oneself in the afflictive circle of life and death. Nevertheless, no Buddhist can afford to overlook the significance of language in preaching Buddhist dharmas as well as in day-to-day transactions. The point is not that of keeping silence. Rather, one should (...) understand and use language in such a way that one alludes to the unsayable reality and somehow escapes the bewitchment of language. Perhaps with this realization in mind, Mahayana Buddhist metaphysicians had fostered the penchant for using, at the sentential level, denials, negations and paradoxes to couch their views. In a similar vein but mainly at the word level, Dignaga (ca. 480-540 CE) the Yogacara epistemologist’ offered us a theory of language known as apoha doctrine in his landmark work Pramiinasamuccaya (henceforth PS). It is the purpose of this article to construe the doctrine. (shrink)

It is widely maintained that doxastic norms that govern how people should believe can be explained by the truism that belief is governed by the correctness norm: believing p is correct if and only if p. This approach fails because it confuses two kinds of correctness norm: (1) It is correct for S to believe p if and only p; and (2) believing p is correct qua belief if and only if p. Only can (2) be said to be a (...) truism about belief, but it cannot ground doxastic norms. (shrink)

Truyền thông chính sách trên thế giới, đặc biệt là các nước công nghiệp phát triển, đang chịu ảnh hưởng lớn của chủ nghĩa tân tự do. Với bối cảnh là một nền kinh tế thị trường định hướng xã hội chủ nghĩa, công tác truyền thông chính sách tại Việt Nam có những đặc trưng về ưu thế và hạn chế riêng. Bài viết đưa ra những phân tich sơ bộ về ba thế mạnh và ba điểm hạn chế (...) tại Việt Nam về công tác truyền thông chính sách. (shrink)

Tóm tắt -/- Emotional AI hay AI cảm xúc là một nhánh của AI có khả năng nhận biết, diễn giải, mô phỏng và phản ứng với cảm xúc con người Các ứng dụng của AI cảm xúc có thể giúp cho người làm báo cải thiện lối hành văn của mình dựa trên phản hồi của độc giả, đồng thời hỗ trợ tòa soạn thăm dò ý kiến của độc giả. Một trong những rủi ro lớn nhất của AI (...) cảm xúc là tiềm tàng ô nhiễm không gian thông tin. Các thông tin có thể được làm giả và xuyên tạc với mục đích thao túng cảm xúc người đọc. Nhà báo cần hiểu biết đúng đắn về công nghệ AI và mô hình cảm xúc, không lạm dụng AI cảm xúc để tác động cảm xúc của người đọc, sử dụng công nghệ một cách minh bạch và đạo đức, và bảo vệ dữ liệu của độc giả. (shrink)

Especially over the past twenty years, a number of analytic philosophers have embraced the idea that the world itself is vague or indeterminate in one or more respects. The issue then arises as to whether it can be the case that the world itself is indeterminate in all respects. Using as a basis Chinese Madhyamaka Buddhist thought, I offer two reasons for the coherence and intelligibility of the thesis that all concrete things are themselves indeterminate with respect to the ways (...) they are. The first reason draws on a notion reminiscent of the picture of reality as an amorphous lump, while the second reason makes use of the relativity of conceptual perspectives and determinations. Assuming that the world is the mere totality of all concrete things, I show that there is a genuine metaphysical possibility of the world’s being indeterminate in all respects. (shrink)

For Jizang (549−623), a prominent philosophical exponent of Chinese Madhyamaka, all things are empty of determinate form or nature. Given anything X, no linguistic item can truly and conclusively be applied to X in the sense of positing a determinate form or nature therein. This philosophy of ontic indeterminacy is connected closely with his notion of the Way (dao), which seems to indicate a kind of ineffable principle of reality. However, Jizang also equates the Way with nonacquisition as a conscious (...) state of freedom from any attachment and definite understanding whatsoever. The issue then becomes pressing as to how we are to understand Jizang's notion of the Way. Does it indicate some metaphysical principle or reality? Is it actually a skilful expedient to lead one to the consummate state of complete spiritual freedom? How is this issue related to Jizang's conception of ontic indeterminacy? In this book chapter, I examine Jizang's key writings in an attempt to clarify his ontological position. (shrink)

Selim Berker argues that epistemic consequentialism is pervasive in epistemology and that epistemic consequentialism is structurally flawed. is incorrect, however. I distinguish between epistemic consequentialism and epistemic instrumentalism and argue that most putative consequentialists should be considered instrumentalists. I also identify the structural problem of epistemic consequentialism Berker attempts to pinpoint and show that epistemic instrumentalism does not have the consequentialist problem.

Chinese Chan or Zen Buddhism is renowned for its improvisational, atypical, and perplexing use of words. In particular, the tradition’s encounter dialogues, which took place between Chan masters and their interlocutors, abound in puzzling, astonishing, and paradoxical ways of speaking. In this chapter, we are concerned with Chan’s use of paradoxical language. In philosophical parlance, a linguistic paradox comprises the confluence of opposite or incongruent concepts in a way that runs counter to our common sense and ordinary rational thinking. One (...) naturally wonders about Chan masters’ rationales for their use of paradox. There are also concerns about whether the use violates the logical principle of noncontradiction to the effect that nothing can be both P and not-P all over in the same way at the same time. Chan became a viable Chinese Buddhist tradition during the Tang dynasty (618−907) and continued to develop for several centuries. The tradition had produced a huge literature; consequently, our investigation of its use of paradox cannot but be limited and selective. In the second section, I first sketch key ideas of Chan that are pertinent to our investigation and then examine the use of paradox in the sermons associated with certain Tang masters of the southern Chan. In the third section, I analyze the presence of paradoxical language in post-Tang encounter dialogues. The fourth section concludes. (shrink)

A virtue-based theory of right action aims to explain deontic moral principles in terms of virtue and vice. For example, it may maintain the following account of moral obligation: It is morally obligatory for an agent A to ϕ in circumstances C if and only if a fully virtuous and relevantly informed person V would characteristically ϕ in C. However, this account faces the so-called supererogation problem. A supererogatory action is an action that is morally praiseworthy but not morally obligatory. (...) Suppose John risks his own life to save a stranger, which is supererogatory rather than obligatory. However, a fully virtuous... (shrink)

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria pose a serious threat to our health. Our ability to destroy deadly bacteria by using antibiotics have not only improved our lives by curing infections, it also allows us to undertake otherwise dangerous treatments from chemotherapies to invasive surgeries. The emergence of antibiotic resistance, I argue, is a consequence of various iterations of prisoner’s dilemmas. To wit, each participant (from patients to nations) has rational self-interest to pursue a course of action that is suboptimal for all of us. (...) The standard solutions to prisoner’s dilemma look to realign cost-benefit such that individuals’ interests match those of the collective. However, the lack of a global organization to enforce an effective carrot-and-stick system makes it unlikely that we can solve the antibiotic resistance problem this way. I argue that our best chance might be an attempt to teach altruism and convince individuals to act not out of their self-interests. (shrink)

A number of traditional philosophers and religious thinkers advocated an ineffability thesis to the effect that the ultimate reality cannot be expressed as it truly is by human concepts and words. However, if X is ineffable, the question arises as to how words can be used to gesture toward it. We can't even say that X is unsayable, because in doing so, we would have made it sayable. In this article, I examine the solution offered by the fifth-century Indian grammarian-philosopher (...) Bhartrhari and develop it into a linguistic strategy based on the imposition-cum-negation method. The purpose is to show how we can non-contradictorily say, or rather indicate, the unsayable. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that many criticisms of McDowell’s naturalism of second nature are based on what I call ‘the orthodox interpretation’ of McDowell’s naturalism. The orthodox interpretation is, however, a misinterpretation, which results from the fact that the phrase ‘the space of reasons’ is used equivocally by McDowell in Mind and World. Failing to distinguish two senses of ‘the space of reasons’, I argue that the orthodox interpretation renders McDowell’s naturalism inconsistent with McDowell’s Hegelian thesis that the conceptual (...) is unbounded. My interpretation saves McDowell from being inconsistent. However, the upshot of my interpretation is that what is really at work in McDowell’s diagnosis of the dualism between nature and reason is the Hegelian thesis, not the naturalism of second nature. (shrink)

This paper is to propose a new form of Kant’s anti-skepticism argument in light of John McDowell’s works on disjunctivism. I first discuss recent debates between McDowell and Crispin Wright on disjunctivism. I argue that Wright wrongly downplays McDowell’s disjunctivism, whose metaphysical claim that our perceptual faculties directly engage in the world has an epistemological implication that should be able to dismiss the skeptic’s imagery as fictitious. However, McDowell does not clearly offer such an argument. I will show that we (...) can derive from Kant’s Fourth Paralogism of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason—which many scholars regard as Kant’s implicit commitment to phenomenalism—the requisite argument that makes us able to dismiss skepticism. (shrink)

This paper defends the strong thesis of ethical egoism, the view that self-interest is the exclusive standard of morally right action. The method of defense is that of reflective equilibrium, viz., back and forth reflection on intuitive judgments in particular cases and the principles that seem to explain our judgments, with the goal of aligning the two. The defense proceeds in three steps. First, I define what selfishness is and characterize what selfishness looks like in real life; an accurate depiction (...) of selfishness will show that selfishness, at least generally, is morally attractive. Second, I defend the view that helping others and not helping others is morally right when and because doing so serves one’s self-interest. Third, I defend the same position in regard to harming and not harming others. (shrink)

Although Chan, or Zen, Buddhism traditionally claimed itself as a special transmission outside doctrinal teachings that eschews the written word, it has long been praised for its improvisational, atypical, intriguing, and intricate use of words. Prominent Chan masters are characteristically skillful in employing paradoxical and aporetic phrases, figurative and poetic expressions, negations, questions, repetitions, and so forth, to express their thoughts, indicate their awakened states of mind, cut off the interlocutor’s habitual dualistic thinking, or evoke in him or her an (...) experience of awakening. This fact, among others, has led some contemporary scholars to claim that the Chan experience of awakening does not... (shrink)

Bài viết này tóm lược các điểm quan trọng và những triết lý xã hội trong Tầm nhìn Xã hội 5.0 (Society 5.0) của Nhật Bản, đồng thời đưa ra bài học cho Việt Nam trong việc hình thành một xã hội “lấy dân làm gốc”, được hiện thực hoá bởi trí tuệ nhân tạo (AI). Nhằm tiến tới một xã hội nơi con người được đặt làm trung tâm đồng thời chung sống hài hoà với công nghệ ngày càng (...) thông minh, năm gợi ý cụ thể cho Việt Nam đã được đưa ra: Tầm nhìn lấy con người làm trung tâm; Góc nhìn đa chiều về mối quan hệ giữa người và máy; Lấy AI làm động lực phát triển kinh tế-xã hội; Cách tiếp cận từ dưới lên trên và thúc đẩy tính tham gia trong việc thiết lập tầm nhìn; và Tính bền vững và bao quát trong các ứng dụng của AI. (shrink)

This essay briefly summarizes the key characteristics and social philosophies in Japan’s vision of Society 5.0. Then it discusses why Vietnam, as a developing country, can learn from the experiences of Japan in establishing its vision for an AI-powered human-centric society. The paper finally provides five concrete recommendations for Vietnam toward a harmonic and human-centric coexistence with increasingly competent and prevalent AI systems, including: Human-centric AI vision; Multidimensional, pluralistic understanding of human-technology relation; AI as a driving force for socio-economic development; (...) Bottom-up, participatory approach for building the vision; and Sustainability and inclusion in the adoption of AI. (shrink)

According to the neo-Aristotelian moral tradition, every living thing has an ultimate end: To flourish as a member of its species. This view of the ultimate end shapes inquiry into what is the ultimate end of human living things. In this paper, I develop an alternative view of the ultimate end of a living thing: The ultimate end is only to survive, not as a member of a species, but as a living thing. There are four steps to my development. (...) First, I criticize the prevailing species-based view of the ultimate end. Second, I argue that other-regarding behavior is not normative for living things; only survival is. Third, I elucidate a new and what I take to be correcting understanding of survival. Fourth, I programmatically develop the idea that inquiry into human well-being and into morality (for human beings) should be understood as aspects of inquiry into human survival. (shrink)

This paper defends the view that intrinsic benefit to a human being consists exclusively in survival. It takes as its point of departure the neo-Aristotelian view that inquiry into intrinsic benefit to a human being should take place within a wider theory of intrinsic benefit to living things, generally. The paper first argues that the neo-Aristotelian view that intrinsic benefit to a living thing consists in flourishing as a member of its species, is mistaken. Rather, intrinsic benefit to a living (...) thing consists in survival, and not survival as a member of its species, but survival simpliciter. A refined understanding of survival is developed in the paper. The paper then applies this Survivalist account of intrinsic benefit to human beings: The things we take to be good for human beings—e.g., pleasure, desire-fulfillment, etc.—are good to the extent and because they promote the one intrinsic benefit of survival. (shrink)

To explain why we should be structurally rational – or mentally coherent – is notoriously difficult. Some philosophers argue that the normativity of structural rationality can be explained in terms of substantive rationality, which is a matter of correct response to reason. I argue that the psychological phenomena – positive illusions – are counterexamples to the substantivist approach. Substantivists dismiss the relevance of positive illusions because they accept evidentialism that reason for belief must be evidence. I argue that their evidentialist (...) stance would imply that we are caught in unsolvable dilemmas arising from positive illusions. (shrink)