Li (禮) and yi (義) are two central moral concepts in the Analects. Li has a broad semantic range, referring to formal ceremonial rituals on the one hand, and basic rules of personal decorum on the other. What is similar across the range of referents is that the li comprise strictures of correct behavior. The li are a distinguishing characteristic of Confucian approaches to ethics and socio-political thought, a set of rules and protocols that were thought to constitute the (...) wise practices of ancient moral exemplars filtered down through dynasties of the past. However, even while the li were extensive and meant to be followed diligently, they were also understood as incapable of exhausting the whole range of activity that constitutes human life. There were bound to be situations in life where there would be no obvious recourse to the li for guidance. As part of their reflections on the good life, the Confucians maintained another moral concept that seemed to cover morally upright exemplary behavior in these types of situations. This concept is that of yi or rightness. In this chapter, I begin with a brief historical sketch to provide some context, and will then turn to li and yi in turn. In the end, I will suggest how li and yi were both meant to facilitate the supreme value of social harmony that pervades much of the Analects and serves as its ultimate orientation. (shrink)

Much is said about what Kongzi liked or cherished. Kongzi revered the rituals of the Zhou. He cherished tradition and classical music. He loved the Odes. Far less is said, however, about what he despised or held in contempt (wu 惡). Yet contempt appears in the oldest stratum of the Analects as a disposition or virtue of moral exemplars. In this chapter, I argue that understanding the role of despising or contempt in the Analects is important in appreciating (...) Kongzi’s dao in two related though distinct ways: 1) exemplary individuals (such as the nobleman) regularly despise people and and hold them in contempt, and 2) reflecting on the targets of contempt might help uncover some tacit worries that Kongzi had concerning his own teachings on self-cultivation. In the concluding section, I state more general reasons why we might consider certain negatively valenced emotions such as contempt to be morally laudable. (shrink)

At first glance, it might seem an odd pairing: the Analects and Wittgenstein. Comparison between a classical Chinese philosophical text, whose primary topics were the cultivation of xiao and he, and the corpus of an early to mid-twentieth-century Austrian philosopher, whose primary topics had to do with logic, language, and the nature of philosophy, does not obviously recommend itself. Yet, I contend in this article that there is much to be gained from careful comparison between these two very different (...) pictures of philosophy, particularly where it comes to the practices of clarifying that which is confused or obscured. This study will aid primarily in developing Wittgensteinian... (shrink)

This article takes issue with the stereotype of "Confucianism" as authoritarian, a view common in discussions of modern China as well as in scholarship on early China. By studying the roles of master and students and the relationship between them in the Analects , it attempts to show that according to this text the master did not occupy a position of complete dominance over the student. Masters are not generally considered to be like fathers, and students have more room (...) to dispute with their master than previously recognized. In contrast to later depictions of Kongzi, he is not presented as infallible in the Analects , and his students do not always accept his opinions. Questioning the master is often a good quality in a disciple. The master-student relationship, while undoubtedly hierarchical, did not involve complete submission by the student. It is argued here that there is little basis for concluding that the Analects is fundamentally authoritarian in its depiction of teaching. It further suggests a need for a distinct understanding of teaching authority that is not modeled on political authority. (shrink)

After distinguishing three conceptions of virtue and its impact on ordinary attachments to external goods such as social status, power, friends, and wealth, this paper argues that the Confucian Analects is most charitably interpreted as endorsing the wholehearted internalization conception, on which virtue reforms but does not completely extinguish ordinary attachments to external goods. I begin by building on Amy Olberding’s attack on the extinguishing attachments conception, but go on to criticize her alternative, resolute sacrifice conception, on which the (...) virtuous retain their ordinary attachments to external goods but are able to master them and willingly settle for virtue. I argue that we should reject this view because, unlike the wholehearted internalization conception, it cannot capture the facts that virtue silences or attenuates attachment to viciously obtained external goods and that virtue grounds positive emotional and cognitive self-assessments that are incompatible with some ordinary attachments to external goods. (shrink)

Early Confucian “moral psychology” developed in the context of undoing reactive emotions in order to promote relationships of reciprocal recognition. Early Confucian texts diagnose the pervasiveness of reactive emotions under specific social conditions and respond with the ethical-psychological mandate to counter them in self-cultivation. Undoing negative affects is a basic element of becoming ethically noble, while the ignoble person is fixated on limited self-interested concerns and feelings of being unrecognized. Western ethical theory typically accepts equality and symmetry as conditions of (...) disentangling resentment; yet this task requires the asymmetrical recognition of others. Confucian ethics integrates a nuanced and realistic moral psychology with the normatively oriented project of self-cultivation necessary for dismantling complex negative emotions in promoting a condition of humane benevolence that is oriented toward others and achieved through self-cultivation. (shrink)

This paper introduces the Analects of Kongzi (better known to English-speakers as 'Confucius') to non-specialist readers, and discusses two major lines of interpretation. According to one group of interpretations, the key to understanding the Analects is passage 4.15, in which a disciple says that 'loyalty' and 'reciprocity' together make up the 'one thread' of the Master's teachings. More recently, some interpreters have emphasised passage 13.3, which discusses 'correcting names': bringing words and things into proper alignment. This paper argues (...) that both approaches are mistaken, based on interpolated and unrepresentative passages. The paper closes with a brief suggestion that the Analects reveals a thinker who emphasises cultivating virtues that allow for the appreciation of complex individual contexts, rather than one who seeks systematic generalisations. An afterword to the paper suggests that we should avoid both 'methodological dualism' (which posits a radical incommensurability between Western and Eastern philosophies) and 'the perennial philosophy' (which ignores differences in favour of similarities). (shrink)

Natural talent and diligent practice regularly lead to effortless virtuosity in many fields, such as music and athletics. Can the same be true of morality? Confucius’s wonderfully terse autobiography in the Analects suggests that, given the right starting materials and an appropriate curriculum of study, a program of moral self-cultivation can indeed lead to effortless moral virtuosity. But can we make sense of this claim from a contemporary perspective? This paper evaluates the plausibility of the moral ideal in the (...) Analects using resources from contemporary moral psychology. (shrink)

The ji 己self is a site, storehouse, or depot of individuated allotment associated with the possession of things and qualities: wholesome and unwholesome desires (yu 欲) and aversions, emotions such as anxiety, and positive values such as humaneness and reverence. Each person's allotment is unique, and its "contents" are collected, measured, reflected on, and then distributed to others. The Analects, Mencius, Xunzi, Daodejing, and Zhuangzi each have their own vision for negotiating the space between self and other. Works as (...) seemingly dissimilar as the Analects and Daodejing both agree that positive qualities located within the self should be shared with others, and that the self can be optimized rather than maximized through sharing, emptying, or clearing. Sommer compares the ji self with other terms for body and person current in classical times. This self is strongly individuated, but it exists primarily in relation to other human beings (ren 人 ). These "others" are almost never one's own kind and are usually people who fall outside one's ascribed familial and social relationships. Negotiations between self and other often reflect apprehension regarding degrees of distance, intimacy, worth, recognition, or understanding (zhi 知) between people. (shrink)

In the Lunyu, Confucius remarks on the implausibility—or impossibility—of a life lacking in xin 信, reliability (2.22). In existing discussions of Confucian philosophy, this aspect of life is often eclipsed by greater emphasis on Confucian values such as ren 仁 (benevolence), li 禮 (propriety) and yi 義 (rightness). My discussion addresses this imbalance by focusing on reliability, extending current debates in two ways. First, it proposes that the common translation of xin as denoting coherence between a person’s words and deeds (...) is inadequate. The translation fails to capture the longer-term consistency in a person’s actions and behaviours in different circumstances across time. Second, it explores how the Lunyu passages discuss the processes of learning that prepare a person for reliable action. (shrink)

Confucius aimed to overcome the Spring and Autumn period and achieve order by restoring the humanist tradition and putting it right. At the same time, Confucius distanced himself from discovering the order of natural things, which caused him to be regarded as a representative humanist philosopher. This interpretation could be misleading in that it overlooks the natural aspect of Confucian philosophy. To that aspect, this article asserts that a moral practice in Confucianism has a natural character. The point emphasizing the (...) natural character of Confucian philosophy must be argued in a way in that it does not disregard the humanist character of Confucian thought. This is possible by recognizing the dual aspect of Zhi (直), and I argue further that Confucius can be interpreted through the concept of moral naturalism. Definitions of Zhi in the Analects indicates that morality bases itself on forms of human life developed in a natural way. Confucius’s references surrounding Zhi underlie the concept that our moral beliefs and actions are not solely justified by reason alone but in a sense also depend on facts in the natural world, providing grounds to interpret his moral philosophy as a naturalism. On the other hand, that Confucius thinks Zhi alone cannot make one Ren differentiates his position from strong naturalism, which reduces the normative realm of morality to causal laws of nature. From his emphasis on the cultivation of the given dispositions to personality, one can infer that Confucius did not agree with the reduction of moral norms to natural facts. The duality of Zhi showing the aspect of morality being forced by nature while not negating the proper character of morality can be properly and coherently understood from the view of soft naturalism. (shrink)

Although current educational priorities tend to avoid strong moral positions, one of the world's most venerable yet persistently influential moral traditions not only lays out a number of major moral principles but also incorporates them into its pedagogy. Confucius teaches us about the importance of seeking knowledge, learning how to learn, applying ancient wisdom to contemporary situations, valuing virtue over material gain, following the Golden Rule, and living by our principles. He also has ways of assessing his own students' progress (...) in these matters. Confucius' pedagogy is an interesting model to consider and contrast with contemporary models. This chapter introduces these principles and assessments from the Analects and draws out some comparisons to and contrasts with two alternative theories in western moral thought, Augustine and John Dewey. -/- The accepted version of the paper is included here. Pagination does not match the published version. (shrink)

In this paper, I describe a sense of oneness that, while having its roots in a tradition of thought far removed from our own, might nonetheless be of relevance to persons today. It is not a oneness with all of humanity, let alone with all the creatures under the sky or all the elements of the cosmos. Nevertheless, it is a sense of oneness that transcends one’s own person and connects one to a larger whole. I will be calling this (...) conception that of a superorganism, to borrow a phrase the natural and social sciences. I reconstruct this sense of oneness by surveying conceptions of society in classical Confucian texts. I begin with passages from the > Analects> that can be interpreted as containing within them such a sense of oneness as superorganism. Later, I present what I take to be stronger evidence of a more explicit kind in the Daxue and Zhongyong chapters of the > Liji> . I then conclude by arguing that thinking of Confucian social and political philosophy in terms of a superorganism can be helpful in understanding why the entire project may have been ill founded. (shrink)

An overview of how friendship has been represented and assessed in the Confucian tradition, and particularly in classical Confucian texts such as the Analects and the Mencius. Themes covered include the relationship between the family and friendship, the ambivalence towards friendship in imperial China, and the connection between friendship and the Confucian ideal of personal cultivation. The chapter finishes by exploring novel conceptions of friendship and human relatedness suggested by the Confucian tradition.

Abstract Human by nature are social beings. They tend to connect and relate with one another in spite of the individual differences they possess. As to the famous quote of an English poet John Donne, “No man is an island.” Man should necessarily relate with one another in order to thrive. But bearing in mind the individual differences of human beings, we cannot exclude the possibility of chaos, disorder, and discordance. That is why in a diverse society, man needs a (...) moral guide in order to achieve a harmonious social life. Man needs to resort to ethical views and principles in order to enrich their nature as social beings. Throughout the history of philosophy, there were various ethical views being introduced by different philosophers. One of the great traditions that offered major contribution in the field of ethics was the Chinese or Oriental tradition. The most notable philosopher in Chinese thought was Confucius. In this paper, the researcher will investigate the concept of Virtue in the light of the Confucian Ren, Yi, Li, Zhi, and Xin. These are considered to be the five constant virtues of Confucianism. Ren is the virtue of benevolence and humanity; Yi is that of honesty and uprightness; Zhi is knowledge and wisdom; Xin is faithfulness and integrity; and Li is propriety, good manners, and worship. The researcher will try to discuss each concept in order to have a better outlook on Confucian ethics. These virtues serve as the basis in developing a harmonious society and good government. The main question of this paper is: What is Confucius’ view on the five constant virtues? This paper only limits to the book of Confucius entitled, “The Analects” which is also supplemented by different secondary sources. The first part of this paper will discuss the background of Confucius and the five constant virtues in general. The second part of the paper will be an exposition of the five constant virtues. Then, the third part of the paper will be a brief discussion on the notion of gentleman – the end of the five constant virtues. The last part is the conclusion of the paper. (shrink)

「不動心」的本質是甚麼？ ─《孟子》〈知言養氣章〉的文理與義理 / 漢學研究 39.2 (2021): 1-37. Scholars have tended to focus on the implications of such philosophical terms as “flood-like qi” 浩然之氣 and “unperturbed mind-heart” 不動心 in Mencius 2A:2, but have failed to identify the common thread of this rather long chapter. This article argues that Mencius 2A:2 frequently alludes to Analects 2.4, and that this allusion is precisely the common thread holding 2A:2 together. According to Mencius’s interpretation, Confucius’s achievements in different ages as stated in Analects (...) 2.4 are all related to the political consideration of whether one ought to remain in a state and serve as its minister. In light of this, and with the support of other evidence from within the Mencius, it is argued that the question “would your mind-heart be perturbed?” at the beginning of the chapter can only mean “would your intention of leaving Qi 齊 be shaken by the fact that you had been appointed as its minister?” but not “would your intention of putting the Way into practice be shaken,” as suggested by Zhao Qi 趙岐 (?-210). Furthermore, it is shown that after the death of Mencius, his act of valor, namely leaving Qi despite having already been appointed as a Qi minister, had become a shared cultural memory of early Chinese intellectuals. Whenever mentioning “unperturbed mind-heart” in their works, early intellectuals consistently evoked Mencius’s unmoved determination to reject any inappropriate political appointment even though the position could bring them fame and material comfort. The rise of Zhao Qi’s misreading in his commentary to Mencius, however, has led to the loss of this cultural memory. -/- . (shrink)

This paper is intended as a gateway to two 2000-year-old manuscripts of the Analects. The first two sections discuss the archaeological context of the discoveries and analyse the manuscripts themselves, including characteristic features of the bamboo strips and the texts inked thereon and notable differences between these and other Analects versions. In these sections, I also critically evaluate present-day Analects studies and offer alternative hypotheses where there is room for debate. The third and final section of the (...) paper discusses what I consider the most fascinating (and most complex) issue regarding the manuscripts: their provenance. In that section, I examine when, where, and why the Analects was copied onto the bamboo strips. The ultimate goal of this paper is to present a nuanced understanding of the two bamboo manuscripts that conveys the fascinating insights they offer while also exploring the limitations of what these manuscripts can actually tell us. (shrink)

This article is to explore whether the achievement of moral character is the ultimate goal of higher education from a cross cultural approach. To discuss this study logically, three major research questions are addressed. First, what are the concepts of moral, ethics, and character? Second, what is the achievement of moral character from the Eastern and the Western perspectives? Third, what is the role of higher education for the achievement of moral character? To defend these research questions, the author uses (...) a descriptive content analysis method, with a cross cultural approach. In order to explore the questions, the researcher in this study sets several limitations. Moral character is generally limited to the ancient Greek philosophy and Judeo-Christianity as well as to the classical Chinese thought and religion. Specifically, the study is mainly focused on not only Plato's "Republic" and Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics," but Confucius' "Analects" and Mencius' "Scripture (The Works of Mengzi)." Additionally, this paper also adjusts the lenses on moral theories, especially moral character, cardinal virtues, social harmony, and the common good. Lastly, higher education is focused on the lenses of Canada and South Korea. The significance of this study is to provide basic theories and valuable resources about moral and character education for educational theorists and practitioners, finding the theories of moral and ethics in the Eastern and the Western thoughts and religions. (shrink)

van Els, Paul. "De Meester spreekt nu eindelijk Nederlands" (The Master Finally Speaks Dutch). Review of Confucius: de Gesprekken, by Kristofer Schipper. Filter 22, no. 1 (2015): 55–56.

Can it ever be morally justifiable to tell others to do what we ourselves believe is morally wrong to do? The common sense answer is no. It seems that we should never tell others to do something if we think it is morally wrong to do that act. My first goal is to argue that in Analects 17.21, Confucius tells his disciple not to observe a ritual even though Confucius himself believes that it is morally wrong that one does (...) not observe the ritual. My second goal is to argue against the common sense answer and explain how Confucius can be justified in telling his disciple to do what Confucius thought was wrong. The first justification has to do with telling someone to do what is second best when the person cannot do what is morally best. The second justification has to do with the role of a moral advisor. (shrink)

A critical study of marronage is urgent since certain anthropological and historical analyses have painted an image of slavery—and therefore of marronage as well—as something of the past. This text will demonstrate that marronage, rather than being simply flight from the plantation in a literal sense, also refers to flight from oppressive institutions through permanent institutional reconfiguration as well as to an existential state of Being. In this text I sketch out ways in which marronage is made manifest within and (...) outside Euromodernity, which I call maroon logics. Maroon logics consists of two interdependent modes of embodying freedom and struggling for liberation. On the one hand there is sociogenic marronage, elaborated by political theorist Neil Roberts in his book Freedom as Marronage (2015), which refers to permanent institutional change as a manifestation of marronage. On the other hand, there is what I call analectical marronage, which denotes resistance to the coloniality of being. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Philosophy is a collection of essays on important texts and figures in the history of Chinese thought. The essays cover both well-known texts such as the Analects and the Zhuangzi as well as many of the lesser-known thinkers in the classical and post-classical Chinese tradition. Most of the chapters focus on thinkers or texts in one of three important historical movements: Classical ("pre-Qin") Chinese philosophy, Chinese Buddhism, and the Confucian response to Buddhism ("neo-Confucianism" broadly (...) construed). (shrink)

This essay calls attention to an aspect of Confucius's notion of ren that has often been overlooked or even denied in much recent discussion of the topic. While the egalitarian aspect of ren, i.e., the idea that every human being has the potential to become a ren person, is frequently asserted, the leadership dimension of ren has for the most part been given short shrift. I argue that for Confucius, ren is the leadership virtue. This conclusion is mainly based on (...) a careful and systematic analysis of what may be called ?the definitional ren passages? and some ?elucidative ren passages? in the Analects. (shrink)

Based on key passages in The Analects, I develop a Confucian account of agency: more precisely, an account of the relation between agent and deed (action). The Confucian view is contrasted with "standard" causal accounts of action (e.g., Davidson, Searle), which hold that what makes an event an action is that it is intended. According to the Confucian account, the defining mark of action is not the causal involvement of a (prior) intention, but instead the expressive relation between agent (...) and action. What's distinctive about an action is that it is expressive of who the agent is; the action expresses one's character or self. For the Confucians, what one really intends (the content of one's intention) is not a prior state to the action, but is rather determined or settled by the action as it is completed. I then explore the implications of the Confucian account for our understanding of three moral-psychological phenomena: weakness of will, self-deception, and moral regret. (shrink)

This chapter discusses ren 仁, a major term in the Confucian Analects. It analyzes the range of meanings of ren across different conversations, paying special attention to its associations with other key Confucian terms such as li (禮 behavioural propriety) and zhi (知 understanding). Building on this analysis, the discussion focuses on ren in terms of how it is manifest in a person’s life. In particular, it expresses ren in terms of an exemplary life—a life lived well. The chapter (...) also dwells briefly on how this model of a good life can inform and enrich contemporary debates in ethics. (shrink)

In general, Confucians have taken a dim view of the law. They have felt warranted in this view by a reading of Confucius’ Analects 2.3 in which the Master apparently disparages law-centered governance. Two great Confucian philosophers, however, Zhu Xi and Jeong Yakyong (widely known by his pen name, Dasan), view the role of law in society differently. Like all Confucians, they teach the cultivation of virtue, but alongside building social harmony through ritual and good character, these two philosophers (...) perceive that social order also requires the penal law. In this paper, I argue that Zhu Xi and Dasan, and Dasan in particular, follow the evidentiary lead of the classical Chinese philosopher Mozi to support their legal philosophy. Mozi offered three standards for establishing truth claims: empirical evidence from common life, authoritative evidence, and evidence of outcomes. Mozi’s empirical standard takes evidence of common life from what ordinary people have seen. Zhu Xi and Dasan take the evidence of common life, not from what the people have seen, but from common understandings contained in the written language. They use this approach to arrive at a different understanding of Analects 2.3 than other Confucians, one that relates the content of that passage to Analects 12.17. They interpret the passage on a philological basis that supports the presence of penal law from a perspective of ordinary life. For authoritative evidence, Zhu Xi and Dasan like Mozi appeal to the authority of the ancient sages, who register their support for penal law. Dasan also follows Mozi’s evidentiary lead in the evidence of outcomes by fully developing a consequential picture of how the absence of law detrimentally affects society. On this point, Dasan establishes a new and revolutionary legal outlook that differs from that of Zhu Xi. I show Dasan taking lessons from the classical Legalists to arrive at this position warranted by the evidence of outcomes. Having satisfied the three evidentiary standards, Dasan thus establishes the importance of the penal law from a Confucian perspective. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's Nachlass: The Bergen Electronic Edition is the only CD-ROM to give you instant facsimile and text access to the 20,000 pages of the philosopher's Nachlass as catalogued by Professor von Wright in his 1982 publication The Wittgenstein Papers. -/- The result of 10 years of academic research and editorial work by the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen this electronic edition is the first scholarly resource to apply a uniform, well-documented, consistent set of editorial principles to the writings. (...) The CD-ROM is a joint publication between Oxford University Press and the Wittgenstein Archives and is published in Text & Facsimile and Text Only formats. (shrink)

In the 6th century, Paul the Persian used his own pen to write a summary of Aristotle's Peri Hermeneias in the Persian language. Severus Sebokht translated it into Syriac. This book is a transcription and translation of the Syriac manuscript of Paul the Persian's Peri Hermeneias and a comparison of it with Aristotle's original Greek text.

Background Retraction is a mechanism for alerting readers to unreliable material and other problems in the published scientific and scholarly record. Retracted publications generally remain visible and searchable, but the intention of retraction is to mark them as “removed” from the citable record of scholarship. However, in practice, some retracted articles continue to be treated by researchers and the public as valid content as they are often unaware of the retraction. Research over the past decade has identified a number of (...) factors contributing to the unintentional spread of retracted research. The goal of the Reducing the Inadvertent Spread of Retracted Science: Shaping a Research and Implementation Agenda (RISRS) project was to develop an actionable agenda for reducing the inadvertent spread of retracted science. This included identifying how retraction status could be more thoroughly disseminated, and determining what actions are feasible and relevant for particular stakeholders who play a role in the distribution of knowledge. -/- Methods These recommendations were developed as part of a year-long process that included a scoping review of empirical literature and successive rounds of stakeholder consultation, culminating in a three-part online workshop that brought together a diverse body of 65 stakeholders in October–November 2020 to engage in collaborative problem solving and dialogue. Stakeholders held roles such as publishers, editors, researchers, librarians, standards developers, funding program officers, and technologists and worked for institutions such as universities, governmental agencies, funding organizations, publishing houses, libraries, standards organizations, and technology providers. Workshop discussions were seeded by materials derived from stakeholder interviews (N = 47) and short original discussion pieces contributed by stakeholders. The online workshop resulted in a set of recommendations to address the complexities of retracted research throughout the scholarly communications ecosystem. -/- Results The RISRS recommendations are: (1) Develop a systematic cross-industry approach to ensure the public availability of consistent, standardized, interoperable, and timely information about retractions; (2) Recommend a taxonomy of retraction categories/classifications and corresponding retraction metadata that can be adopted by all stakeholders; (3) Develop best practices for coordinating the retraction process to enable timely, fair, unbiased outcomes; and (4) Educate stakeholders about pre- and post-publication stewardship, including retraction and correction of the scholarly record. -/- Conclusions Our stakeholder engagement study led to 4 recommendations to address inadvertent citation of retracted research, and formation of a working group to develop the Communication of Retractions, Removals, and Expressions of Concern (CORREC) Recommended Practice. Further work will be needed to determine how well retractions are currently documented, how retraction of code and datasets impacts related publications, and to identify if retraction metadata (fails to) propagate. Outcomes of all this work should lead to ensuring retracted papers are never cited without awareness of the retraction, and that, in public fora outside of science, retracted papers are not treated as valid scientific outputs. (shrink)

In this article, we discuss the continued circulation and use of retracted science as a complex problem: Multiple stakeholders throughout the publishing ecosystem hold competing perceptions of this problem and its possible solutions. We describe how we used a participatory design process model to co-develop recommendations for addressing this problem with stakeholders in the Alfred P. Sloan-funded project, Reducing the Inadvertent Spread of Retracted Science (RISRS). After introducing the four core RISRS recommendations, we discuss how the issue of retraction-related stigma (...) gives rise to recommendation #4, Educate stakeholders about retraction and pre- and post-publication stewardship of the scholarly record. This recommendation is important for training publishing professionals and realizing this recommendation will require further collaborative design work across scholarly communications. We highlight ongoing stakeholder work which is now re-starting the design cycle. We conclude with a discussion of ongoing activities facilitating uptake and refinement of RISRS research and the implementation agenda. (shrink)

Belief does aim at the truth. When our beliefs do not fit the facts, they cannot do what they are supposed to do, because they cannot provide us with reasons. We cannot plausibly deny that a truth norm is among the norms that govern belief. What we should not say is that the truth norm is the fundamental epistemic norm. In this paper, I shall argue that knowledge is the norm of belief and that the truth norm has a derivative (...) status. Only a knowledge‐first approach to epistemic normativity can explain why epistemic assessment has its inward‐looking focus. (shrink)

[File is the introduction to the monograph] -/- Abstract to monograph -/- How and whether thinking affects perceiving is a deeply important question. Of course it is of scientific interest: to understand the human mind is to understand how we best distinguish its processes, how those processes interact, and what this implies for how and what we may know about the world. And so in the philosopher’s terms, this book is one on both mental architecture and the epistemology of perception. (...) But there is a more human interest. How we make contact with the world, and with one another, is of the most basic of importance. We can make both sensory contact and cognitive contact with the world. The first is traditionally supposed to be determined by the biological nature of our sensory systems, while the second is at least partly determined by us, what we have learned, our experiences, and so on. The most basic claim of the book is that this is mistaken and importantly so. Our sensory contact with the world can also change and in a way that is importantly affected by the cognitive contact that we have, or have had, with the world. Thinking does not just affect perceiving, thinking improves perceiving. If this is true, it changes not only how we should theorize the mind, it changes how we should understand, as individuals, our place in and contact with the world. (shrink)

I argue for a new delimitation of what Kant means by ‘cognition [Erkenntnis]’, on the basis of the intermediate, transitional place that Kant gives to cognition in the ‘progression [Stufenleiter]’ of our representations and our consciousness of them. I show how cognition differs from mental acts lying earlier on this progression—such as sensing, intuiting, and perceiving—and also how cognition differs from acts lying later on this progression—such as explaining, having insight, and comprehending. I also argue that cognition should not be (...) confused with ‘knowledge [Wissen]’, insofar as knowledge represents the culmination of a separate orthogonal progression of acts of ‘holding-true’. Along the way, I show how having in focus the specific progression from representation, to consciousness, to cognition allows us to better appreciate the architectonic significance of the progression of Kant’s analysis in the first Critique, and also helps to illuminate the unity of Kant’s account of cognition itself across its variety of forms. (shrink)

"The Answer is blow'in in the wind" (Bob Dylan).

Anger dominates debates in the public sphere. In this article I argue that there are diverse forms of anger that merit different responses. My focus is especially on two types of anger that I label respectively arrogant and resistant. The first is the characteristic defensive response of those who unwarrantedly arrogate special privileges for themselves. The second is often a source of insight and a form of moral address. I detail some discursive manifestations of these two types of anger. I (...) show that arrogant anger is responsible for attempts to intimidate and humiliate others with whom one disagrees. Whilst resistant anger can be intimidating, it is also essential in communicating moral demands. (shrink)

I argue that using information from a cognitive representation to guide the performance of a primary task is sufficient for intellectual attention, and that this account of attention is endorsed by scientists working in the refreshing, n-back, and retro-cue paradigms. I build on the work of Wayne Wu, who developed a similarly motivated account, but for perceptual attention rather than intellectual attention. The way that I build on Wu’s account provides a principled way of responding to Watzl’s challenge to Wu, (...) according to which Wu’s style of account is unintuitively broad. The fact that I find unity in the practice of science puts us in a position to resist the claim that scientists studying intellectual attention are frequently failing to study the same thing. (shrink)

This paper discusses: (1) Anselm’s ontological argument and its criticism by Gaunilo; (2) Plantinga’s ontological argument and its criticism by Mackie and Sobel; and (3) a simplified version of Gödel’s ontological argument. It also looks carefully at (4) Kant’s attempt to show that it is impossible for there to be a successful ontological argument.

A common strategy for simplifying complex systems involves partitioning them into subsystems whose behaviors are roughly independent of one another at shorter timescales. Dynamic causal models clarify how doing so reveals a system’s nonequilibrium causal relationships. Here I use these models to elucidate the idealizations and abstractions involved in representing a system at a timescale. The models reveal that key features of causal representations—such as which variables are exogenous—may vary with the timescale at which a system is considered. This has (...) implications for debates regarding which systems can be represented causally. (shrink)

Intuitively, we can conceive of the existence of a conscious state as a pure activity that does not necessarily require a body (or even a brain). This idea has found new support in certain recent theories that present the possibility of a totally disconnected and disembodied consciousness. Against this hypothesis, I argue that human experience is intrinsically embodied and embedded, though in a specific way. Using Sartre’s phenomenology of the body, I first analyze the concept of consciousness as intentionality and (...) a world-disclosing activity, thus explaining how conscious activity can only be expressed through a body that is spatiotemporally related to the world. Then, I argue that bodily consciousness does not necessarily imply the actual presence of an anatomical body but, rather, a process of spatialization and temporalization (hodological space and temporal synthesis) through the “spatiotemporal body”. Finally, I test my thesis by critiquing some cases of apparent disembodied/disconnected consciousness, i.e., dreams, out-of-body experiences, and the brain-in-a-vat scenario. (shrink)

This contribution addresses the anthropocenic challenge from a dialectical perspective, combining a diagnostics of the present with a prognostic of the emerging future. It builds on the oeuvres of two prominent dialectical thinkers, namely Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Hegel himself was a pre-anthropocenic thinker who did not yet thematise the anthropocenic challenge as such, but whose work allows us to emphasise the unprecedented newness of the current crisis. I will especially focus on his views on (...) Earth as a planetary process, emphasising that the “spirit” of technoscience is basically monitoring the impacts of its own activities on geochemistry and evolution. Subsequently, I will turn attention to Teilhard de Chardin, a palaeontologist and philosopher rightfully acknowledged as one of the first thinkers of the Anthropocene whose oeuvre provides a mediating middle term between Hegel’s conceptual groundwork and the anthropocenic present. Notably, I will discuss his views on self-directed evolution, on the on-going absorption of the biosphere by the noosphere, and on emerging options for “sublating” the current crisis into a synthetic convergence towards the Omega point. I will conclude that, after disclosing the biomolecular essence of life, biotechnology must now take a radical biomimetic turn ; that reflection itself must become distributed and collective; and, that the anthropocenic crisis must be sublated into the noocene. (shrink)

Background: In the context of globalization, Vietnamese universities, whose primary function is teaching, there is a need to improve research performance. Methods: Based on SSHPA data, an exclusive database of Vietnamese social sciences and humanities researchers’ productivity, between 2008 and 2019 period, this study analyzes the research output of Vietnamese universities in the field of social sciences and humanities. Results: Vietnamese universities have been steadily producing a high volume of publications in the 2008-2019 period, with a peak of 598 articles (...) in 2019. Moreover, many private universities and institutions are also joining the publication race, pushing competitiveness in the country. Conclusions: Solutions to improve both quantity and quality of Vietnamese universities’ research practice in the context of the industrial revolution 4.0 could be applying international criteria in Vietnamese higher education, developing scientific and critical thinking for general and STEM education, and promoting science communication. (shrink)

Can an AGI create a more intelligent AGI? Under idealized assumptions, for a certain theoretical type of intelligence, our answer is: “Not without outside help”. This is a paper on the mathematical structure of AGI populations when parent AGIs create child AGIs. We argue that such populations satisfy a certain biological law. Motivated by observations of sexual reproduction in seemingly-asexual species, the Knight-Darwin Law states that it is impossible for one organism to asexually produce another, which asexually produces another, and (...) so on forever: that any sequence of organisms (each one a child of the previous) must contain occasional multi-parent organisms, or must terminate. By proving that a certain measure (arguably an intelligence measure) decreases when an idealized parent AGI single-handedly creates a child AGI, we argue that a similar Law holds for AGIs. (shrink)

Holmes exists is false. How can this be, when there is no one for the sentence to misdescribe? Part of the answer is that a sentence’s topic depends on context. The king of France is bald, normally unevaluable, is false qua description of the bald people. Likewise Holmes exists is false qua description of the things that exist; it misdescribes those things as having Holmes among them. This does not explain, though, how Holmes does not exist differs in cognitive content (...) from, say, Vulcan does not exist. Our answer builds on an observation of Kripke’s: even if Holmes exists, he is not in this room, for we were all born too late. (shrink)