The ‘Toward a Science of Consciousness’ conference – which has now become ‘The Science of Consciousness’ conference – recently (June 5-10, 2017) took place instead at the receptive venue of the Hyatt Regency in La Jolla, California. It was well-planned and organized, which is extraordinary considering that it had to be organized all over again within a month or two when the original Shanghai location was cancelled. Things ran smoothly at La Jolla and it was well attended for an (...) odd-year, non-Tucson setting. The Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies, Dr. Stuart Hameroff, and his able Assistant Director and logistics manager, Abi Behar Montefiore, deserve full credit for carrying off this last minute transfer, as do many others who worked in supporting capacities. (shrink)

At the very least, even though Chinese schools do not look very different from those in the West, China offers an opportunity for Philosophy for Children to question its basis, its methodology, its aims. It seems to be expressing a different cultural voice, and to be disposed to the kind of dialogue we are more used to claiming than practicing. Both Kunming and Shanghai provide, in their own ways, formidable contexts: the deep, strong and disciplined educators of Railway Station (...) School of Kunming and the scholarly, sophisticated and committed members of the Shanghai institute for Research in the Human Sciences seem determined to take Philosophy for Children, not just beyond their own limits as Chinese, but beyond the limits Philosophy for Children has already established for itself in the West. Philosophy for Children in China, then, looks like a wonderful opportunity to think ourselves--what we are as educators engaged in the practice of philosophy--again. An invitation to think ourselves again. Is this not what dialogue and philosophy are about? It’s up to us to accept the invitation. (shrink)

Over the years, as the all-encompassing processes of globalization and neoliberalization unfolded, the Popular Republic of China increasingly deepened its developmental policies intended to grow its technological and economic competitiveness. Chinese universities experimented with various forms of managerial techniques imported from the West, including those inspired by the neoliberal ideology. Their achievements in the field of tertiary education were so impressive that they easily became a source of inspiration for neoliberal managers aspiring to „excellence” all around the world. On the (...) other hand, in post-socialist Europe, stuck in an unsatisfying and unfulfilled search for ideal neoliberal productivity models, Romanian university managers are still obsessing with pushing their institutions among the ones listed by the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), while many Romanian researchers are seeking to publish in Chinese journals. Some of them look up with envy to the generous incentives that Chinese public universities are providing in order to increase their publication output. However, the interest for debating or critically understanding the governance behind all these trends is barely visible. More often than not, researchers and experts alike are happy to believe that their academic work has nothing to do with politics or ideology. Few are questioning the political bases of neoliberal reforms at home, and even fewer are trying to find out more about what really happens in China. In this paper I will try to incite questions or working hypotheses about the ideology of neoliberal competitiveness, encouraging Romanian readers to reflect upon issues and debates informed by the prestige-driven university reforms experimented over the last three decades by the Popular Republic of China. Also, the paper will provide some useful bibliographical suggestions for those who want to dive deeper and better understand recent policy directions adopted by the Communist Party of China in this field. (shrink)

Rorty, Pragmatism, and Confucianism, a collection of twelve essays on the work of Richard Rorty and its relation to Confucian thought, arose out of a conference in Shanghai in 2004, where participants were granted access to several of Rorty’s unpublished manuscripts. In his introduction, the editor Yong Huang states his desire to outline areas of shared interest in Rortian and Confucian thought. He notes, for example, the similarities between Rorty’s view that sentiment is “central to the moral consciousness” (p. (...) 2) and the early Confucian tradition’s stress on the enhancement and appropriate directing of feeling; in Rorty’s words, a more moral world is best created by telling a “long, sad, sentimental .. (shrink)