Would it be possible to have an alternative to the physicalist world-view? If any type of dualism is not an option, I am tempted to consider an integrational world view, which was first claimed by Confucius under the notion of cheng. I would propose an integrational thesis that cheng of an entity is a power to realize the embedded objective of it in the context where it interacts with all others. The notion of compassion may be said to be both (...) dispositional and mental. Then, this notion is one candidate to shed lights on the integrational thesis. The thesis doesn't exclude roles the causal notion has to play in the integrational system. Rather it allows the causal notion in its proper place, not having to exclude other relational notions in the system. What it denies is that the causal relation is all there is among what is there. The notion of compassion is essentialist in two senses. The first is the sense in which Mencius said that compassion is necessary for one to be a human. The second is the sense that compassion is an essentialist disposition. "Compassion" does neither refer to a mental state nor reflect a human relation, but it denotes an abstract property, or a theoretical notion, which can be singled out by a Ramsey sentence. There are many challenges for the integrational thesis to meet. Some of them are how the integrational thesis could allow an essentialism of a kind?, Is there a way for the integrational view of language to meet the requirements of modal semantics?, and so on. The present paper may not able to explain all of these questions but it will try to suggest how to approach toward the task. (shrink)

Cet essai vise réfléchir sur le parcours du voyageur en insistant sur les liens multiples qui président à l’acte de marcher et à celui de la réflexion esthétique, en spécial, la peinture, la poésie et la performance. Si ces réflexions nous poussent vers une considération sur le temps et sa durée, nous essayons ici de les conduire sur les rapports entre l'Orient et l'Occident à cet égard. Nous allons illustrer ces différences et similitudes à travers la comparaison entre l’ascension du (...) mont Ventoux per Francesco Pétrarque (Arezzo 1304 – 1374 Arquà) et l’ascension du mont Lu per François Cheng (né à Nanchang 1929). -/- This essay reflects on the course of the traveler, emphasizing several links that govern the act of walking, aesthetics, with special attention to painting, poetry and performance. We hope to see how the East and the West reflect time and duration. We aim to illustrate these differences and similarities by comparing the ascent of the Mount Ventoux, by Francesco Petrarca (Arezzo 1304-1374 Arquà), and the ascent of the Mount Lu, by François Cheng (born in Nanchang 1929). (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 104, Issue 3, Page 606-622, May 2022.

What is the nature and structure of phronesis or practical wisdom? According to the view widely held by philosophers and psychologists, a person S is wise if and only if S knows how to live well. Given this view of practical wisdom, the guiding question is this: What exactly is “knowing how to live well”? It seems that no one has a clear idea of how to answer this simple but fundamental question. This paper explores knowing how to live well (...) (or “life know-how”) by showing how its nature and structure can be understood through contemporary epistemology of knowledge-how. I will achieve this by doing the following. In Section I, I highlight the two as-yet unanswered “integration questions” about life know-how. In Section II, I explain why the epistemology of knowledge-how has good potential to address the integration questions. In Sections III and IV, I construct two positions—intellectualism and anti-intellectualism—for the epistemology of life know-how and show how they address the two integration questions. In Section V, I show how the epistemology of life know-how established in the previous sections can be used in the philosophy of wisdom and the psychology of wisdom. (shrink)

古代中国明朝哲学家王阳明创立的心学已有七百多年，它继承了中国古代的哲学，比如孔孟之道和宋明理学等的内容，创立了心学。其理念在社会哲学领域深深地影响了中国、日本和朝鲜等东亚国家，甚至于间接地推动了日本的 明治维新运动，成为千年一圣。同时世界各地的学者对心学的研究和探讨也是层出不穷，但是总体而言，缺乏对心学理论体系性的探讨和研究。 本文从体系概念着手，结合心学的内容，经过梳理后整合成一个完整的、逻辑的和全面的心学体系。.

The truth table method, natural deduction, and the truth tree method, the three validity proving methods standardly taught in an introductory logic course, are too clumsy for the battlefield of real-life. The “short truth table” test is handy at times, but it stumbles at many other times. In this paper, we set up a general method that can beat all the methods mentioned above in a contest of speed. Furthermore, the procedure can be step-by-step paraphrased in a natural language, so (...) that, unlike the other methods, a real-life logical problem can be analyzed and explained in a real-life language too. (shrink)

关于人类意识起源和本质问题的探讨由来已久，各领域如哲学、社会学、生物学和心理学等都有不同定义和解释，但是至今为止都没有得到广泛的认同，主要原因是由意识的复杂性导致了各领域都不能全面、合理和充分地认识其 起源和本质，成为千古奇案，所以有必要对其进行深入探讨。 本文根据各学科的知识分析、汇总和归纳，得出如下结论：意识的起源来自自然物质；意识的本质为物质信息；意识的能力是物质信息的复杂度和有序度的利用程度；意识具有先天性、物质性、系统性、复杂性、动态性、差异性 和自我性属性 .

Tennis champion Maria Sharapova has a habit of grunting when she plays on the court. Assume that she also has a habit of hitting the ball in a certain way in a certain situation. The habit of on-court grunting might be bad, but can the habit of hitting the ball in a certain way in a certain situation be classified as intelligent? The fundamental questions here are as follows: What is habit? What is the relation between habit and skill? Is (...) there such a thing as intelligent habit? In this paper I expound the nature of habit by developing and defending a Rylean conception of habit, according to which an acquired disposition is a habit if and only if the manifestation of the disposition is repeated, automatic, and uniform. One implication of this conception is that there is no such thing as intelligent habit. A practical application in athletic expertise is that sport coaches can help athletes go beyond repeated, automatic, and uniform dispositions in sport. (shrink)

According to Dreyfusian anti-intellectualism, know-how or expertise cannot be explained in terms of know-that and its cognates but only in terms of intuition. Hubert Dreyfus and Stuart Dreyfus do not exclude know-that and its cognates in explaining skilled action. However, they think that know-that and its cognates (such as calculative deliberation and perspectival deliberation) only operate either below or above the level of expertise. In agreement with some critics of Dreyfus and Dreyfus, in this paper, I argue that know-that and (...) its cognates are constitutive of rather than external to know-how and expertise. However, unlike those critics, who argue for this point only from a phenomenological point of view, my argument adopts a (telic) normative point of view. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a virtue-theoretic approach to semantics, according to which the study of linguistic competence in particular, and the study of meaning and language in general, should focus on a speaker's interpretative virtues, such as charity and interpretability, rather than the speaker's knowledge of rules. The first part of the paper proffers an argument for shifting to virtue semantics, and the second part outlines the nature of such virtue semantics.

This paper uses Martin Luther and Mao Zedong's translation strategies to philosophize anew the dialectic between the national and the global in the history of revolutions. Luther and Mao each instigated a "revolution" by translating a universal faith into a vernacular; the end product in each case was the globalization of his vernacularized faith and the export of his local revolution all over the world. By vernacularizing a universal faith, Luther and Mao respectively inaugurated a new national idiom, a new (...) national identity and, in the case of Mao, founded a new nation. The far more intriguing phenomenon which I identify – and on which I seek to make my most original contributions is: Protestantism and Maoism developed global reach not despite, but because of, their insistence on a local translation-articulation of a universalist ideology. My paper attends to both the similarities and differences between Luther and Mao. (shrink)

A scarcity mindset is considered to impact consumer behaviors. Our research aimed to examine the moderating effect of the scarcity mindset on the relationship between mental accounting and hedonic (vs. utilitarian) consumption. We conducted an online experimental design (mental accounting: windfall gains vs. hard-earning gains; consumption: hedonic products vs. utilitarian products) and verified our hypotheses in two distinct samples: a student sample and an adult sample. Our results showed that consumers who received windfall gains tended to use it for hedonic (...) consumption rather than utilitarian consumption. Intriguingly, such an effect was insignificant under a high level of a scarcity mindset but significant under a low level of the scarcity mindset. Moreover, consumers who received hard-earning gains tended to spend the money on utilitarian (vs. hedonic) consumption. However, we did not detect the impact of the scarcity mindset on such effects. Our research suggested an asymmetric effect of the scarcity mindset on hedonic (vs. utilitarian) consumption under two different mental accounts. It highlights the important role of the scarcity mindset in consumer behaviors, which leaves avenues for future research to understand marketing promotion strategies for distinct products. (shrink)

Our perception of where touch occurs on our skin shapes our interactions with the world. Most accounts of cutaneous localisation emphasise spatial transformations from a skin-based reference frame into body-centred and external egocentric coordinates. We investigated another possible method of tactile localisation based on an intrinsic perception of ‘skin space’. The arrangement of cutaneous receptive fields (RFs) could allow one to track a stimulus as it moves across the skin, similarly to the way animals navigate using path integration. We applied (...) curved tactile motions to the hands of human volunteers. Participants identified the location midway between the start and end points of each motion path. Their bisection judgements were systematically biased towards the integrated motion path, consistent with the characteristic inward error that occurs in navigation by path integration. We thus showed that integration of continuous sensory inputs across several tactile RFs provides an intrinsic mechanism for spatial perception. (shrink)

« Pourquoi les choses tiennent-elles ensemble ? » (Traité d'ontologie, 2009, p. 237). Cette citation me sert de départ à une réflexion sur la nature des relations liantes souvent appelées relations de comprésence à la suite de Russell, ces bundling relations qui nouent les propriétés ensembles pour constituer les objets ordinaires (tables, chaises, individus biologiques) selon la théorie du faisceau. De même que Frédéric Nef, je suis séduit par les nombreuses vertus philosophiques de ces relations liantes. Ma contribution ne portera (...) pas sur une critique ou une défense de ces relations mais sur l'étude de leur nature, et en particulier, de leur possible nature méréologique. Je vais esquisser rapidement certains aspects de la théorie classique du faisceau que je qualifierai de réaliste pour opposer ensuite les variantes réalistes à deux autres versions méréologiques de la théorie, que je qualifierai d'éliminativistes. (shrink)

The overflow debate concerns this following question: does conscious iconic memory have a higher capacity than attention does? In recent years, Ned Block has been invoking empirical works to support the positive answer to this question. The view is called the “rich view” or the “Overflow view”. One central thread of this discussion concerns the nature of iconic memory: for example how rich they are and whether they are conscious. The first section discusses a potential misunderstanding of “visible persistence” in (...) this literature. The second section discusses varieties of attention relevant to this debate. The final section discusses the most prominent alternative interpretation of the Sperling paradigm—the postdiction interpretation—and explains how it can be made compatible with a weaker version of the rich or overflow view. (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce and defend the recurrent model for understanding bodily spatial phenomenology. While Longo, Azañón and Haggard (2010) propose a bottom-up model, Bermúdez (2017) emphasizes the top-down aspect of the information processing loop. We argue that both are only half of the story. Section 1 intro- duces what the issues are. Section 2 starts by explaining why the top- down, descending direction is necessary with the illustration from the ‘body-based tactile rescaling’ paradigm (de Vignemont, Ehrsson and Haggard, (...) 2005). It then argues that the bottom-up, ascending direction is also necessary, and substantiates this view with recent research on skin space and tactile field (Haggard et al., 2017). Section 3 discusses the model’s application to body ownership and bodily self-representation. Implications also extend to topics such as sense modality individuation (Macpherson, 2011), the constancy- based view of perception (Burge, 2010), and the perception/cognition divide (Firestone and Scholl, 2016). (shrink)

It has a long history for the exploration of the origin and essence of human consciousness with different definitions and explanations in various fields such as philosophy, medicine, sociology, biology, and psychology. However, all of them had not been recognized so far. The main reason is that the complexity of consciousness leads to the inability of various fields to understand its essence fully, reasonably, and comprehensively, and there are still significant differences for it, and which have become an eternal mystery. (...) So, it is necessary to delve deeper into it. Here we show that this article concludes that the origin of consciousness comes from natural matter, the essence of consciousness is material information, the ability of consciousness is the degree to which the complexity and orderliness of material information are utilized, and consciousness has the attributes of congenital, materiality, systematicness, complexity, dynamics, difference, and selfness according to the analysis, summary and induction of knowledge from various disciplines. (shrink)

目前，世界上的哲学简单地可分两类，一是：唯物主义，二是：唯心主义，它们统治了哲学史几千年，相互争斗了几千年，但是都存在着，不分胜负，至少说明都有合理之处，当然也包括不合理之处。 如果把两者进行了升华，就是集合唯心主义和唯物主义各自的合理部分，摈弃了不合理部分，把它们合二为一，统一成一个系统的、合理的和广泛的哲学体系，那就是唯能主义。 .

How can we acquire understanding? Linda Zagzebski has long claimed that understanding is acquired through, or arises from, mastering a particular practical technê. In this paper, I explicate Zagzebski’s claim and argue that the claim is problematic. Based on a critical examination of Zagzebski’s claim, I propose, in conclusion and in brief, a new claim regarding the acquisition of understanding.

It remains controversial whether touch is a truly spatial sense or not. Many philosophers suggest that, if touch is indeed spatial, it is only through its alliances with exploratory movement, and with proprioception. Here we develop the notion that a minimal yet important form of spatial perception may occur in purely passive touch. We do this by showing that the array of tactile receptive fields in the skin, and appropriately relayed to the cortex, may contain the same basic informational building (...) blocks that a creature navigating around its environment uses to build up a perception of space. We illustrate this point with preliminary evidence that perception of spatiotemporal patterns on the human skin shows some of the same features as spatial navigation in animals. We argue (a) that the receptor array defines a ‘tactile field’, (b) that this field exists in a minimal form in ‘skin space’, logically prior to any transformation into bodily or external spatial coordinates, and (c) that this field supports tactile perception without integration of concurrent proprioceptive or motor information. The basic cognitive elements of space perception may begin at lower levels of neural and perceptual organisation than previously thought. (shrink)

The two volumes of _Maus_ composed by Art Spiegelman were the first graphic novels to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize. These volumes introduced a new genre of graphic novel in the form of comics. The present study examines the hierarchical content and subtexts of Maus and the unique presentation methods of comics. The researcher employed the concepts of “Threefold mimesis” proposed by the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, to see how Maus interpretate the Jewish history of suffering in Holocaust and the (...) postmemory. Spiegelman is the icon of the graphic novel world, however, so far research on his work still seems to be rare in Taiwan. This study starts from Ricoeur’s Hermeneutics, hope to elucidate how the new model of contemporary autobiographical comic was created. (shrink)

Xinxue （The philosophy of mind） founded by ancient Chinese philosopher Wang Yangming of the Ming Dynasty for over 700 years. Its ideas have deeply influenced East Asian countries such as China, Japan, and Korea in the field of social philosophy, and even indirectly promoted Japan's Meiji Restoration movement. At the same time, scholars from all over the world have conducted numerous studies and explorations on it, but overall, there is a lack of systematic exploration and research on it. This article (...) starts with the concept of a system, combines the content of Xinxue and integrates it into a complete, logical, and comprehensive system of Xinxue. (shrink)

This paper examines Aristotle’s vocabulary of pain, that is the differences and relations of the concepts of pain expressed by synonyms in the same semantic field. It investigates what is particularly Aristotelian in the selection of the pain-words in comparison with earlier authors and specifies the special semantic scope of each word-cluster. The result not only aims to pin down the exact way these terms converge with and diverge from each other, but also serves as a basis for further understanding (...) Aristotle’s philosophical conception of pain. (shrink)

When looking up at the starry sky, Socrates, the famous ancient Greek philosopher, raised three ultimate philosophical questions: "Who am I?" "Where am I from?" and "Where am I going?". For thousands of years, human beings have tried their best to think, research and explore it, involving various disciplines such as philosophy, medicine, psychology, physics, biology, and neurology, but they have not been widely recognized. This paper expounds the concept of "center" from the perspective of cosmology, world outlook and scientific (...) outlook for "I", and answers the question of "who am I?":"I am the center, the center is me". At the same time, it expounds the origin, essence, and attributes of consciousness, and answered the questions of "where do I come from?"："I come from dust" and "where do I go?"："I will return to dust". (shrink)

There have recently been various empirical attempts to answer Molyneux’s question, for example, the experiments undertaken by the Held group. These studies, though intricate, have encountered some objections, for instance, from Schwenkler, who proposes two ways of improving the experiments. One is “to re-run [the] experiment with the stimulus objects made to move, and/or the subjects moved or permitted to move with respect to them” (p. 94), which would promote three dimensional or otherwise viewpoint-invariant representations. The other is “to use (...) geometrically simpler shapes, such as the cube and sphere in Molyneux’s original proposal, or planar figures instead of three-dimensional solids” (p. 188). Connolly argues against the first modification but agrees with the second. In this article, I argue that the second modification is also problematic (though still surmountable), and that both Schwenkler and Connolly are too optimistic about the prospect of addressing Molyneux’s question empirically. (shrink)

According to presentism, only the present exists. The view is in a bad dialectical situation since it has to face several objections based on physics and a priori arguments. The view remains nonetheless popular because it is, allegedly, more intuitive than alternative views, namely eternalism (past, present and future entities exist) and no-futurism (only past and present entities exist). In the essay, I shall not discuss whether intuitivity is an accurate criterion for ontological enquiry. I will rather argue that any (...) philosophically acceptable version of presentism entails highly counterintuitive consequences. Indeed, the presentist has to commit herself to substantial claims in order to provide an answer to two problems : the grounding problem and the cross-temporal relations problem. Therefore, if the main motivation for presentism is the willingness to stick with common sense intuitions, presentists should consider endorsing another view about existence in time. (shrink)

Xinxue （The philosophy of mind） founded by ancient Chinese philosopher Wang Yangming of the Ming Dynasty for over 700 years. Its ideas have deeply influenced East Asian countries such as China, Japan, and Korea in the field of social philosophy, and even indirectly promoted Japan's Meiji Restoration movement. At the same time, scholars from all over the world have conducted numerous studies and explorations on it, but overall, there is a lack of systematic exploration and research on it. This article (...) starts with the concept of a system, combines the content of Xinxue and integrates it into a complete, logical, and comprehensive system of Xinxue. (shrink)

The question of Who am I?” is the end of philosophy. The famous ancient Greek philosopher Socrates raised three ultimate questions in philosophy when he looked up at the starry sky: “Who am I?” “Where do I come from?” “Where am I going？”. For thousands of years, humans have explored and answered questions about them, including various disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, biology, and neurology etc., but none of them have been recognized. This article starts with the cosmology and worldview (...) of “Who am I?” and elaborates on the origin of “Who am I?” and the concept of “center”. (shrink)

The debate over the value of pleasure among Eudoxus, Speusippus, and Aristotle is dramatically documented by the Nicomachean Ethics, particularly in the dialectical pros-and-cons concerning the so-called argument from contraries. Two similar versions of this argument are preserved at EN VII. 13, 1153b1–4, and X. 2, 1172b18–20. Many scholars believe that the argument at EN VII is either a report or an appropriation of the Eudoxean argument in EN X. This essay aims to revise this received view. It will explain (...) why these two arguments differ in premises, contents and purposes, and why these distinctions matter for a proper assessment of Aristotle’s understanding of pleasure and pain in general and his dialectical art in particular. (shrink)

Regulative virtue epistemology argues that intellectual virtues can adjust and guide one’s epistemic actions as well as improve on the quality of the epistemic actions. For regulative virtue epistemologists, intellectual virtues can be cultivated to a higher degree; when the quality of intellectual virtue is better, the resulting quality of epistemic action is better. The intellectual virtues that regulative epistemologists talk about are character virtues (such as intellectual courage and open-mindedness) rather than faculty virtues (such as sight and hearing), since (...) they don’t think that faculty virtues could be cultivated. This article refers to Xunzi’s philosophy, explaining how a regulative faculty-based virtue epistemology is possible. If this explanation works, on the one hand, a new branch of contemporary virtue epistemology is shown, and, on the other hand, a clear theoretical framework of Xunzi’s epistemology is constructed. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is twofold: First, to generalize Quine's epistemology, to show that what Quine refutes for traditional epistemology is not only Cartesian foundationalism and Carnapian reductionism, but also any epistemological program if it takes atomic verificationist semantics or supernaturalism, which are rooted in the linguistic/factual distinction of individual sentences, as its underlying system. Thus, we will see that the range of naturalization in the Quinean sense is not as narrow as his critics think. Second, to normalize Quine's (...) epistemology, to explain in what sense Quinean naturalized epistemology is normative. The reason I maintain that critics miss the point of Quinean naturalized epistemology is that they do not appreciate the close connection between Quine's naturalistic approach and his holistic approach to epistemology. To show this I shall reconstruct Quine's argument for naturalizing epistemology within his systematic philosophy, and focus specifically on his holism and its applications, on which Quine relies both in arguing against traditional epistemology, and in supporting his theses of underdetermination of physical theory and indeterminacy of translation. This is the key to understanding the scope and the normativity of Quine's epistemology. In the conclusion I will point out what the genuine problems are for Quinean naturalized epistemology. (shrink)

In ‘What Makes Killing Wrong?’ Sinnott-Armstrong and Miller make the bold claim that killing in itself is not wrong, what is wrong is totally-disabling. In ‘After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?’ Giubilini and Minerva argue for allowing infanticide. Both papers challenge the stigma commonly associated with killing, and emphasize that killing is not wrong at some margins of life. In this paper, we first generalize the above claims to the thesis that there is nothing morally wrong with killing per (...) se, so long as it is instant and unannounced. Then, from the perspective of social evolution, we explain why people refrain from killing others, the general guideline being that it is unadvisable to kill someone with whom you associate a Second Person Perspective (SPP). Finally, drawing from a seminal paper of Press and Dyson on the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma, we stress that an SPP without an SP (Second Person), or the other way around, can both lead to unwelcome results. (shrink)

Space tourism is an emerging field where few people have direct experience. However, considering the potential in the near future, it is beneficial to better understand how related information influences people’s attitudes about this new form of tourism. Employing information-processing-based Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics on a dataset of 361 respondents consuming content related to space tourism on Chinese social media, we found that induced happiness and impression are positively associated with willingness to try space tourism. Information authenticity positively moderates (...) these two associations. Our findings emphasize three aspects of information during the processes of reception and filtering: meaning, intensity, and trust. Since promotional materials for space tourism rely heavily on mental simulations rather than objective feedback, creative uses of digital technology are advantageous. However, precautions must be taken to prevent exploitation, such as false advertising, exaggeration, and emotional manipulation. (shrink)

The topic of this paper is the complex interaction between attention, fixation, and one species of change blindness. The two main interpretations of the target phenomenon are the ‘blindness’ interpretation and the ‘inaccessibility’ interpretation. These correspond to the sparse view (Dennett 1991; Tye, 2007) and the rich view (Dretske 2007; Block, 2007a, 2007b) of visual consciousness respectively. Here I focus on the debate between Fred Dretske and Michael Tye. Section 1 describes the target phenomenon and the dialectics it entails. Section (...) 2 explains how attention and fixation weigh in these debates, and argues that Dretske’s hyper-rich view fails precisely because he overlooks certain effects of attention and fixation. Section 3 explains why Tye’s view is also unsatisfying, mainly because he misconceives the degree of access. Section 4 then puts forward the positive model covariance, which has it that the degree of cognitive access tracks the degree of phenomenology, and contrasts it with Block’s view on the Sperling iconic memory paradigm. The paper ends with a discussion of levels of seeing, which involve crowding, indexing, and other visual phenomena. Change ‘blindness’ is a set of phenomena that was discovered about two decades ago, yet an entirely satisfying understanding is still lacking. To move forward, a more detailed understanding of attention and fixation is called for. (shrink)

Plato’s nephew Speusippus has been widely accepted as the historical person behind the mask of the anti-hedonists in Phlb. 42b–44c. This hypothesis is supported by, inter alia, the link between Socrates’ char- acterization of them as δυσχερεῖς and the frequent references of δυσχέρεια as ἀπορία to Speusippus in Aristotle’s Metaphysics MN. This study argues against assigning any privileged status to Speusippus in the assimilation of δυσχέρεια with ἀπορία. Instead, based on a comprehensive survey of how δυσχερ- words were used in (...) classical antiquity, the semantic shift of δυσχέρεια can be explained in an alternative way. (shrink)

L'éternalisme implique une forme exotique d'éternité : toute entité, aussi éphémère soit-elle et quelle que soit sa localisation dans le temps, existe relativement à toute autre localisation temporelle. Cet essai vise, premièrement, à défendre l'éternalisme en exhibant les difficultés rédhibitoires du présentisme et du non-futurisme, et deuxièmement à examiner de quelle manière l'éternalisme pourrait être amendé à l'aune d'une affirmation que l'on trouve sous la plume de certains physiciens, à savoir que, fondamentalement, le temps n'existe pas. La disparition du temps (...) est-elle compatible avec la thèse éternaliste ? Enfin, en guise de conclusion, nous examinerons brièvement une conséquence curieuse de l'éternalisme : bien que mortels, nous sommes des êtres éternels. (shrink)

Les propriétés matérielles sont généralement appréhendées comme les propriétés d’une substance matérielle : cette chemise possède la propriété d’être bleue, cette chaussure la propriété d’être en bon état. Pourtant, on peut trouver plusieurs raisons de douter que les propriétés soient nécessairement les propriétés d’une substance matérielle, à la fois en métaphysique avec la théorie du faisceau, et en physique contemporaine à travers les notions d’énergie du vide et de champ. Or, si les propriétés ne sont pas les propriétés de substances (...) matérielles, on peut s’interroger sur la théorie de l’instanciation qu’implique une telle thèse. Dans cet essai, je m’emploierai à examiner la cohérence et la plausibilité de la thèse selon laquelle certaines, voir toutes les propriétés matérielles ne sont pas instanciées par une substance et la théorie de l’instanciation qui en découle. | : Material properties are generally construed as properties of material substances : this shirt has the property of being blue, these shoes are in good condition. However, one could think of several reasons to doubt that properties necessarily are properties of material substances both in metaphysics, with the bundle theory, and in contemporary physics, through the two notions of field and energy of the vacuum. But, if properties are not properties of material substances, what is the resulting theory of instantiation? Within the scope of this article, I will examine the consistence and plausibility of the view that several, if not all of, material properties are not instantiated by a substance and the theory of instantiation which follows from it. (shrink)

La physique contemporaine pourrait bien nous livrer un enseignement incroyable, à savoir que l'espace et le temps n'existent pas fondamentalement. Je présenterai succinctement les ontologies suggérées par les deux principaux programmes de recherche en gravité quantique : la théorie des cordes et la gravité quantique à boucles. Je soutiendrai ensuite qu'il est fructueux de prendre les différentes conceptions ontologiques de la conscience en philosophie de l'esprit en modèles pour la construction de solutions au problème de l'émergence de l'espace-temps.

This paper investigates the complicated relations between various versions of naturalism, behaviorism, and mentalism within the framework of W. V. O. Quine's thinking. It begins with Roger Gibson's reconstruction of Quine's behaviorisms and argues that it lacks a crucial ontological element and misconstrues the relation between philosophy and science. After getting clear of Quine's naturalism, the paper distinguishes between evidential, methodological, and ontological behaviorisms. The evidential and methodological versions are often conflated, but they need to be clearly distinguished in order (...) to see whether Quine's argument against mentalism is cogent. The paper argues that Quine's naturalism supports only the weakest version of behaviorism, that is, the evidential one, but this version is compatible with mentalistic semantics. Quine's opposition to mentalism is an overreaction from the behaviorist camp. By contrast, Jerry Fodor's objection to Jose Luis Bermudez is an overreaction from the opposite direction. (shrink)

This paper adopts a transnational approach to a global issue. I bring together two different traditions—Derridean deconstruction and Buddhism--to address world conflicts as well as intra- and inter-national calls for apology in the global age. Derrida and Buddhism are brought together for good reasons. The “cosmos” underpins both kinds of praxis. The kosmos-polis is the context which prompts Derrida to interrogate forgiveness anew; Buddhism has telling insights to offer on the cosmic effects of karma which could help move us beyond (...) global conflicts. Both deconstruction and Buddhism are radically anti-essentialist; both destabilize concepts of “self” and substance; both push aporetic thinking to the extreme where language, concepts, and ontology deconstruct themselves. Both seem to hold out new alternatives for world peace where existing “institutions of forgiveness” have failed. My examination of these similarities however, are linked up with my analyses of their critical differences. Central to the divergence I demonstrate between Derrida and Buddhism is how the two tackle the Abgrund of forgiveness. Derrida rethinks forgiveness in the groundless ground of “forgiving the unforgivable.” In Buddhism, the groundless ground (samsara-nirvana) of forgiveness can be traced to the “forgoing of the self.” One cannot give up one’s claim if one cannot give up (parts of) the self in the first place. In contrast to Derrida’s “impossible but necessary” forgiveness, Buddhism offers a “possible but unnecessary” forgiveness. For Derrida, forgiveness necessitates forgiving the unforgivable. For Buddhism, nothing is unforgivable. By giving up the self, there is no victim, no aggressor, and no sin to forgive in the first place. (shrink)

This paper reexamines Theophrastus’ Metaphysics 11a18–26, an obscure testimony about Speusippus, the second head of the Platonic Academy. As opposed to the traditional interpretation, which takes this passage as Theophrastus’ polemic against Speusippus’ doctrine of value, I argue that he here dialectically takes advantage of, rather than launches an attack on, the Platonist. Based on this new reading, I further propose a revision and a reassessment of the ‘gloomy metaphysics’ of Speusippus which will shed new light on his ethics.

applies Lacan to analyze racial violence and colonialism.

In the present article, I attempt to relate Saul Kripke's “sceptical paradox” to some issues about the self; specifically, the relation between the self and its mental states and episodes. I start with a brief reconstruction of the paradox, and venture to argue that it relies crucially on a Cartesian model of the self: the sceptic regards the Wittgensteinian “infinite regress of interpretation” as the foundation of his challenge, and this is where he commits the crucial mistake. After the diagnosis, (...) I attempt to sketch my own model of the self and its mental states and episodes. This tentative picture binds meaning and the self together, stressing the subjective aspect of meaning without committing the same fallacy. The solution ventured here is relatively independent of the secondary literatures on the sceptical paradox of following rules, for it aims to provide a new angle to understand and meet the challenge presented by the sceptic. (shrink)

The paper originated as an examination of the philosophical and historical (dis-) continuities that ran from Buddhism, through Schopenhauer, to Freud and Lacan. Due to the excessive length of the paper, the editor advised to drop the part on Schopenhauer.

Drawing from Bakhtin and Habermas, I will show how the different voices in Gordimer's novel seem to be enacting a democratic public sphere in which no voice is granted authority over others – a public sphere which carries the promise of countering the social and political hierarchies established by the racist South African regime. The promise, however, turns out to be an illusion. As I will demonstrate, the possibility of an Enlightenment bourgeois public sphere which the novel seems to be (...) gesturing at is being irreparably undermined by racism. In a country where the Enlightenment aspiration to universalism and equality before the law are glaringly contravened by racism, Rosa Burger is painfully aware of her inability to fully access the predicament of the blacks. As such, Burger’s daughter remains only Burger’s daughter, and the children of Soweto the children of Soweto; at no point in the novel do they truly intermingle. Despite the fact that both are fighting racism – and the novel is devoted to the “coming-of-age” of both kinds of children – Rosa Burger remains only the daughter of a Bürger at the end of the novel, not the daughter of South Africa, much less to say the daughter of Black South Africa. She has finally “come into her own,” but the “self” she manages to realize is at best that of a disillusioned bourgeois individual (that of a disillusioned Bürger, so to speak) – a “self” that recalls Hegel’s “beautiful soul.” To appropriate György Lukács’s language, Bürger’s Daughter could be described as “modern bourgeois literature bear[ing] witness against bourgeois society.”. (shrink)