Author: 胡翌霖

Freedom vs. Equality — I Am a Right-Wing Socialist

Enlightenment & the Spirit of Freedom2012.01.17
Freedom vs. Equality — I Am a Right-Wing Socialist
Last month I posted an article talking about my impressions of the two Wu teachers’ gathering, and as a result a commenter who was criticizing Professor Wu Tong showed up and we exchanged several rounds in the thread below. It’s not that I absolutely had to defend Professor Wu Tong; after all, my dealings with him have mostly been public and not much private, and I wouldn’t dare pound my chest and guarantee that he himself is beyond reproach. But taking the matter strictly on its merits, and judging only from the circumstances presented by the accuser, I still couldn’t help wanting to defend him: not only Professor Wu Tong,…
freedom autobiography value politics
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2012年1月17日
[Repost] Call for Papers for the 6th National Academic Conference on Phenomenology and Philosophy of Science and Technology

Site Matters2012.01.14
[Repost] Call for Papers for the 6th National Academic Conference on Phenomenology and Philosophy of Science and Technology
The 6th National Academic Conference on Phenomenology and Philosophy of Technology will be held in mid-November 2012 at South China University of Technology in Guangzhou, and papers are now being solicited from the national philosophy of technology community. The “National Academic Conference on Phenomenology and Philosophy of Technology” is an annual academic conference initiated by fellow scholars in China’s philosophy of technology community who have a special fondness for phenomenology. It aims to promote the “philosophical” character within the discipline of philosophy of technology, to connect philosophy of science and philosophy of technology, to foster a “pure” academic atmosphere, and to prepare for the arrival of the era of “post-natural…
scholarship philosophy of science phenomenology Wu Guosheng
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2012年1月14日
“Internet Addiction” Stems from a Craving for the “Real World”

AI & the Future of Technology2012.01.06
“Internet Addiction” Stems from a Craving for the “Real World”
The previous paragraph was about preparing my doctoral proposal, and I also couldn’t help thinking about the topics of two fellow students in my cohort—one working on the environment, the other on the network. In fact, both are academic directions I had envisioned in previous years, and I will eventually return to these two themes as well, so looking at my two fellow students’ topics, I couldn’t help feeling a bit covetous and eager. 5ningning wants to do a phenomenological study of the network, and Senior Brother Shengli suggested that we might as well first discuss the issue of “internet addiction.” I took that to heart too, and have had…
China technology media internet
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2012年1月6日
From Technical Code to Virtue Ethics: Table or Div? — Starting from the Ministry of Railways Ticketing Website

AI & the Future of Technology2012.01.05
From Technical Code to Virtue Ethics: Table or Div? — Starting from the Ministry of Railways Ticketing Website
The Ministry of Railways has finally rolled out an online ticketing system, and that alone is worth encouraging. Of course, it is debatable whether moving the advance-sale period for online tickets up by two days is a good idea; for migrant workers and other vulnerable groups who lack access to the internet, this is not very fair. I have already booked train tickets on this website three times (the first two times were round trips to the Winter Solstice conference), and each time I ran into one problem or another. Even when the Winter Solstice conference was still very much in the off-season for train tickets, I still encountered network…
China technology media commentary
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2012年1月5日
“Intentional History” and the Aim of Historiography

Culture & Public Commentary2011.12.28
“Intentional History” and the Aim of Historiography
After returning from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, where I attended the “Winter Solstice Conference,” I had the chance to meet teachers and students from Shanghai’s history-of-science circle, and I also took my senior and junior brothers around Shanghai for a bit. Although it took up a whole weekend that included the founding day of the PRC, it was still worthwhile. After I came back, Teacher Wu asked us to talk about our impressions. I said that, in my view, the biggest problem with the history of science in Shanghai is that it lacks philosophy. Of course, from a good perspective, this means that such history of science is relatively “pure”:…
philosophy history of science philosophy of science history
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2011年12月28日
On the Final Essay Question in the General History of Science Course: “The Key Machine of the Industrial Age Was Not the Steam Engine but the Clock”

AI & the Future of Technology2011.12.23
On the Final Essay Question in the General History of Science Course: “The Key Machine of the Industrial Age Was Not the Steam Engine but the Clock”
This time, since the usual workload was increased substantially, the final exam was relatively easier. Apart from the traditional term-definition questions—which have been raised to 14—there was only one essay question. Counted toward the total score, the essay question was worth the equivalent of 12 points, so one might roughly say it was the fourth short paper. 2. Essay question (30 points): citations must be proper (if you cite at all); plagiarism is forbidden. Why is it said that “the key machine of the industrial age was not the steam engine but the clock” (Mumford)? This final short paper also required proper citation, but after all, since this was an…
technology Introduction to Philosophy of Technology Wu Guosheng McLuhan
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2011年12月23日
Regarding the Third Assignment for Ke Tong: “On Bacon’s Science”

History of Science & Scholarship2011.12.19
Regarding the Third Assignment for Ke Tong: “On Bacon’s Science”
As final exams approach, the teaching assistants are all busy too… This time I was a bit lazy with the assignment and didn’t annotate and reply to each student one by one. In fact, last time I did annotate and reply individually, many people simply didn’t even look at my comments, and the citations were still nonstandard. That really disappointed me… Of course, if you would like to communicate with me, you can take the initiative to contact me. Given that this assignment was relatively open, the standards were also hard to set, and it was the final assignment, I suggest grading somewhat leniently, with 8 points as the basic…
philosophy science philosophy of science Scientific Revolution
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2011年12月19日
Love of Wisdom and Patriotism

Life & Notes2011.12.17
Love of Wisdom and Patriotism
Yesterday the two Wu teachers had a gathering, and Old Wu [Bei Wu laoshi] got quite drunk and launched into a grand speech. Unlike when he is drunk in other settings, he said many things that he would only say in front of his disciples. Teacher Wu mentioned that, during his lifetime, he would certainly PUSH us; gold always shines in the end, but don’t count on Teacher Wu living too long—we have to make a name for ourselves within fifteen years… (Although Teacher Wu said drunkenness means speaking logically, in fact there were still some problems at the level of logic.) In the end, Teacher Wu came to the…
philosophy China scholarship freedom
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2011年12月17日
Schneider, What’s the Matter with You? Or, on the Thickness of Media—An Interpretation of “The Phenomenology of Perception” 1.3.8

AI & the Future of Technology2011.12.13
Schneider, What’s the Matter with You? Or, on the Thickness of Media—An Interpretation of “The Phenomenology of Perception” 1.3.8
The Thickness of the Medium — Understanding Merleau-Ponty’s Schneider Case[1] What I am dealing with is section 8 of the third chapter of Part One of *Phenomenology of Perception*: “‘Symbolic Function’ and the Existential Structure of Disease.” From the title of the section alone, one can see that it occupies a very important position. In the preceding chapters, Merleau-Ponty introduced Schneider’s case and brought in two traditional explanatory approaches: mechanistic physiology tries to explain it in terms of damage to bodily functions, while intellectualist psychology tries to explain it at the level of consciousness. But Merleau-Ponty believes that neither can truly explain the possibility of pathology. So by this section,…
philosophy book reading technology notes
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2011年12月13日
Cookbooks and the History of Science and Technology

Culture & Public Commentary2011.12.12
Cookbooks and the History of Science and Technology
Last week in Brother Bu Tianshi’s class, he mentioned how a certain quantitative tendency entered the general consciousness of modern people. Brother Bu Tianshi said that in history, some things simply “happened”; the spirit of the age shifted, and sometimes there was not much in the way of a reason. Indeed, one cannot find a strict causal-law explanation in history, but one can still find many “explanations.” For example, I tend to explain the quantitative tendency of public thinking by the rise of print media. This is because printing brought with it an unprecedented demand for repeatability and operability, and this repeatability was realized through text rather than oral…
culture technology history printing
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2011年12月12日