分类：History of Science & Scholarship

On BBS’s Suitability for Academic Exchange: Online Forums Should Replace Academic Conferences

History of Science & Scholarship2008.06.12
On BBS’s Suitability for Academic Exchange: Online Forums Should Replace Academic Conferences
http://hps.phil.pku.edu.cn/bbs/read.php?tid=409 Before reading this post, you may as well first look at: the 4th and 5th floor of http://hps.phil.pku.edu.cn/bbs/read.php?tid=408. I have never attended an academic conference, so my understanding of the matter is purely speculative. If there are any inaccuracies or improprieties, please do point them out. Many activities are epochal: in a certain era, such activities possess important practical significance; yet as the times change, the original practical purpose may no longer be needed, or may be replaced by other activities, while the activity itself may still continue in form, becoming a symbolic, ritual, ceremonial, or recreational activity. Perhaps “academic conferences” will also be like this? Are there…
scholarship internet discussion public sphere
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2008年6月12日
Reading and Freedom (I)

Enlightenment & the Spirit of Freedom2008.06.03
Reading and Freedom (I)
In the essay “Reading as a Way of Thinking,” I said roughly this: if one merely sits there alone thinking desperately and turning things over and over, the effect is often counterproductive; one’s distress only sinks deeper and deeper, while the problem does not necessarily become any clearer. With the aid of reading, by contrast, one can both turn thinking into a pleasure and, with the help of books, carry out broader, clearer, and deeper reflection. However, not only is it not always a good thing to sit there daydreaming in silence, but burying one’s head in books is not always effective either. In particular, when someone reads with too…
philosophy scholarship freedom history
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2008年6月3日
An Overview of Theories of Human Origins (Animal Biology Assignment)

History of Science & Scholarship2008.05.28
An Overview of Theories of Human Origins (Animal Biology Assignment)
The second assignment for *Animal Biology* took me a full two days and more, the greater part of which was spent fruitlessly searching Chinese Academic Journals for reference papers. In the end I once again discovered that nine out of ten papers written by Chinese people are garbage; books are still useful. And among books, only those written by foreigners are useful. Although the bibliography includes two Chinese books, one a textbook and the other one I bought specially, both clearly plagiarize whole passages from Richard Leakey’s *The Origin of Humankind*. But does saying that a book is “compiled” rather than “authored” mean one can omit notes? Even if “compiled”…
philosophy book reading notes Chinese
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2008年5月28日
Kantian Ethics and “Anthropocentrism” (Draft)

History of Science & Scholarship2008.05.14
Kantian Ethics and “Anthropocentrism” (Draft)
Abstract: The “human-centeredness” represented by Kant has become the main target of contemporary environmental ethics, and whether nonhuman beings possess “intrinsic value” has become the focal point of controversy. Yet contemporary scholars’ interpretation of what exactly “intrinsic value” means is entirely different from Kant’s. Taking as its point of departure the “human-centeredness” widely criticized by environmental ethics, as well as basic ethical concepts such as “value” and “purpose,” this essay sorts through and comments on the features of Kantian ethics, and points out that environmental ethics’ criticisms of Kant are to a considerable extent based on misreading. This essay argues that the so-called human-centeredness in the Kantian sense is, in…
value Kant human nature paper
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2008年5月14日
On Feyerabend Quotations 5 (Philosophy, Science, and Language Games)

History of Science & Scholarship2008.01.26
On Feyerabend Quotations 5 (Philosophy, Science, and Language Games)
http://hps.phil.pku.edu.cn/bbs/read.php?tid=338 http://hps.phil.pku.edu.cn/bbs/read.php?tid=339 NewStudioOldJiang Selected Quotes from Feyerabend 5 “Catastrophes in the natural environment, war, the collapse of an ethical system that has been perfected, and political revolution, too, will transform human patterns of response, including important patterns of argumentation. Such transformation may well be a completely natural process, and the only function of rational argument may perhaps lie in this fact: it increases psychic tension, and this tension is the precursor of action’s eruption and the cause of that eruption.” (Against Method, 2) “An analysis of the relation between thought and action also shows that, in the growth of our knowledge and the growth of science, the roles played by…
science language game Wittgenstein
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2008年1月26日
The Difference Between “Argumentation” and “Bamboozling”

History of Science & Scholarship2008.01.22
The Difference Between “Argumentation” and “Bamboozling”
Sometimes, out of irony, I also call activities such as argument, persuasion, and admonition “brainwashing.” But if we really press the matter, I must insist that “argument” and “brainwashing” are by no means equivalent. In fact, we can all feel the difference between the two; otherwise we would not laugh at the “brainwashing” displayed in Zhao Benshan’s comic sketches. First of all, the purposes of “argument” and “brainwashing” are simply not the same. On the one hand, the former requires the other person to “actively” come to accept it, whereas the latter only requires the other person to “passively” receive it; on the other hand, the former is oriented toward…
scholarship modernity democracy science communication
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2008年1月22日
On “Feyerabend Quotations”

History of Science & Scholarship2008.01.22
On “Feyerabend Quotations”
Xinzhai Lao Jiang Quotations from Feyerabend I’m a fanatical admirer of Feyerabend, so from now on I’ll post some of the old gentleman’s quotations whenever I have nothing better to do: A free society is one in which all traditions have equal rights and equal opportunities to enter the centers of power (this differs from the usual definition: that everyone has equal rights to enter the positions defined by one special tradition—namely, the tradition of Western science and rationalism). A tradition acquires these rights not because it is important to outsiders, but because it is meaningful in the lives of those who participate in that tradition. Science in a Free…
philosophy science freedom politics
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2008年1月22日
The Politics and Jurisprudence Behind the Philosophy of Science

History of Science & Scholarship2008.01.21
The Politics and Jurisprudence Behind the Philosophy of Science
From Plato onward, from the “freedom” of ancient Greece to the “Enlightenment” of the modern era, the issues of philosophy of science and political philosophy have always been entangled, impossible to disentangle. By the time we reach the “official history” of twentieth-century philosophy of science, we see this especially clearly: from Popper’s liberalism to Kuhn’s “revolution” and then to Feyerabend’s anarchism, the development of philosophy of science was practically a debate in political philosophy. Looking back at the history of thought from ancient Greece to the Enlightenment, we can be certain that philosophers of science borrowing political terminology is by no means merely a coincidence or a metaphor. Ancient Greece…
science politics Kant Plato
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2008年1月21日
[Repost] Related Discussion on “Zhang Tiankan: For Maglev, We Must Persuade the Public with Scientific Evidence zz”

History of Science & Scholarship2008.01.21
[Repost] Related Discussion on “Zhang Tiankan: For Maglev, We Must Persuade the Public with Scientific Evidence zz”
http://hps.phil.pku.edu.cn/bbs/read.php?tid=316&fpage=1&toread=1 It is obvious that the discussion in this thread is mainly aimed at Teacher Tian (the Lean Knight). Schopenhauer’s swagger is long gone; what is being displayed now is basically my own swagger. Personally, I find this sort of dispute quite interesting. Although such arguments are hard to develop into something profound, they can still expose problems fairly well. Many of the ways I now phrase things first emerged in similar disputes—in the past on Teacher Liu’s and Teacher Jiang’s blogs, and now with BBS as an even better venue. I’ve been eagerly hoping that someone would come to my blog too and “provoke” me. How interesting that would…
science discussion sociology scientism
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2008年1月21日
A Tentative Discussion of Schopenhauer’s Spirit of Rationalism

History of Science & Scholarship2008.01.10
A Tentative Discussion of Schopenhauer’s Spirit of Rationalism
The epigraph to the first part of *The World as Will and Representation* quotes Rousseau: “Step out of childhood, my friend, awaken!” What did Schopenhauer want to express by this line? We might as well compare it with a fable he wrote late in life: “A mother, with the hope of educating and cultivating her children’s minds, lets them read Aesop’s fables; but they soon send the book back, and the eldest, precocious child says: this is not the sort of book we read; it is too childish, too silly; you cannot make us believe that foxes and wolves can talk, and we shall read nothing of the kind again!…
phenomenology knowledge Kant paper
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2008年1月10日