分类：Selected

Rethinking Human Nature in the Age of Technology — A Review of Technics and Time 1

Phenomenology & Heidegger2020.04.03
Rethinking Human Nature in the Age of Technology — A Review of Technics and Time 1
This article was published in the April 2020 issue of Book City Bernard Stiegler is one of the most influential living philosophers in the field of philosophy of technology, and in recent years he has also had a considerable impact in China. He himself often comes to China to give lectures and teach courses. The lecture notes from a course he taught in the Department of Philosophy at Nanjing University in 2016 have recently been published in collected form (Nanjing Lectures: Reading Marx and Engels in the Anthropocene—From The German Ideology to Dialectics of Nature). And the Chinese translation of the work that made his name in his early years,…
book reading technology Heidegger book review
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2020年4月3日
From “Information Blocks” to “Blockchains”: Blockchain as a Completion of the Internet

Web3 & Bitcoin2019.10.27
From “Information Blocks” to “Blockchains”: Blockchain as a Completion of the Internet
A commissioned piece riding a hot topic for JieMian. I’m currently in Hefei attending the annual conference on Chinese history of science, and I wrote this last night on my bed after a full day of meetings, so it’s a bit rushed. Still, this counts as my first article that departs from Bitcoin and talks specifically about blockchain. In my view, the core application of blockchain is undoubtedly still currency; blockchain technology divorced from currency, or from currency in the broader sense (securities, etc.), is basically just a gimmick. But that does not stop us from indeed being able to seek a place for blockchain technology in the history of…
China Web3 Bitcoin history of technology
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2019年10月27日
Was There Confucianism in the Ancient West?

Culture & Public Commentary2019.08.25
Was There Confucianism in the Ancient West?
The recent atmosphere has me a little like a startled bird, so I’m continuing to use encrypted mode. This article really isn’t worth encrypting; in a couple of days I may quietly decrypt it. A teacher has recently been disciplined over remarks about the Four Great Inventions, and that is truly shocking. I don’t want to reopen here the warning against a culture of informing on others; I only want to talk about the academic question. What makes this incident even more frightening than before is that the remarks that led to the punishment were not a political issue, but an academic one. Even the official media could not stomach…
culture China technology science
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2019年8月25日
The Responsibility of Intellectuals

Enlightenment & the Spirit of Freedom2019.08.22
The Responsibility of Intellectuals
Note: This article may not be reproduced; it is for Suixuan readers only. This article was written out of a sudden impulse. I had originally meant to dash off two paragraphs in one go, but the more I wrote, the more awkward it felt; in the end, I not only wrecked the thing, I couldn’t keep going either. But since, before I knew it, I had written more than seven thousand characters, I might as well post it. For archive purposes only. Emotions or attitudes, like thoughts and speech, are part of each person’s “freedom.” I have the right to worry myself sick, and I also have the right…
philosophy culture autobiography public sphere
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2019年8月22日
Personality Philosophy vs. Propositional Philosophy: On the Inevitability of the Decline of Continental Philosophy and the Immortality of Its Significance

History of Science & Scholarship2019.04.20
Personality Philosophy vs. Propositional Philosophy: On the Inevitability of the Decline of Continental Philosophy and the Immortality of Its Significance
I had mentioned this in passing on Weibo before, and because it was rather short, I didn’t plan to put it on the blog. Yesterday, at the small reading group, this question came up again, and after thinking it over I decided to post it after all, since it is ultimately a question about the basic orientation of philosophy. Byzantines Should Regard Themselves as Romans As a student of Wu, my philosophical position is of course inclined toward continental phenomenology, but in fact I am not very willing to call myself a phenomenologist or a continental philosopher. It is much like how, after the division of the Eastern and Western…
philosophy scholarship philosophy of science media
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2019年4月20日
Salute to the Strivers! — Striving for the Capitalist or Striving for All Humanity? (Comments on 996)

Culture & Public Commentary2019.04.15
Salute to the Strivers! — Striving for the Capitalist or Striving for All Humanity? (Comments on 996)
Recently I’ve posted someremarks on Weibo about the 996 issue, and there’s already quite a bit of text; I’ve excerpted it here and will also fill it out further What I was first responding to was Jack Ma’s representative statement: Last night I had a conversation with my colleagues at Alibaba about the hot-button issue of 996 at work. Today many young people are facing this problem. I think that if you choose to win your own happiness and success through struggle and effort, you may want to seriously reflect on what I’m about to say; but if you want your future to be happier and more joyful than ordinary…
China freedom commentary sociology
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2019年4月15日
Upgrading One’s Worldview Is Not So Easy—A Review of Worldview

History of Science & Scholarship2019.03.05
Upgrading One’s Worldview Is Not So Easy—A Review of Worldview
This is a commissioned book review, published in China Science Daily (2019-03-01, Section 7, Book Review) The original title was: Before “Cognitive Upgrading,” It Is Even More Important to Understand the Foundations of Cognition When it was published, the title was changed (for the better), section headings were added, and some omissions were made. For example, the rather severe criticism I originally made of the translation was toned down quite a bit; I was informed in advance by the editor that I agreed to that. In addition, the embedded “advertisement” (for the Department of History of Science at Tsinghua) was removed, and the short final passage on Greek pseudo-history was…
book reading history of science philosophy of science Aristotle
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2019年3月5日
Is Chinese Studies Anti-Science?

Chinese Civilization & the Way of Chinese2019.01.25
Is Chinese Studies Anti-Science?
At the request of China Science Daily, this was published in the January 28, 2019, issue of China Science Daily, page 1. Recently, two things within the education system have stirred up heated discussion: one is the “mind-boggling exam paper” from Beihai College of Art in Guangxi, and the other is Sun Nan and his wife sending their child to attend a “Guoxue class.” These incidents are by no means accidental isolated cases. Some commentators have already linked them to “Quan Jian,” seeing in them all the spread of a certain “anti-intellectualism,” or, to put it another way, a lack of public scientific literacy. The college that produced the mind-boggling…
China freedom commentary education
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2019年1月25日
Viète and the Transformation of Mathematics from Antiquity to Modernity

History of Science & Scholarship2018.11.09
Viète and the Transformation of Mathematics from Antiquity to Modernity
Published in the Chang’e supplement of Science and Technology Daily on November 9; I cobbled this piece together from a general invitation for submissions. Science and Technology Daily has launched a new column, “Stories from the History of Science,” which is rather good. If any students want to submit something, I can make the connection. Of course, the mentality of the traditional media is still rather old-fashioned—for example, they always hope to draw out some kind of scientific spirit… Viète (François Viète, 1540–1603) was a famous mathematician of the Renaissance. Contemporary middle school students are probably not unfamiliar with his name, because the “formula for finding the roots” of the…
science history of science history mathematics
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2018年11月9日
AR Glasses and the “Brain in a Vat”

AI & the Future of Technology2018.10.26
AR Glasses and the “Brain in a Vat”
My doctoral student Yao Yu recently gave a presentation in the reading seminar, discussing a phenomenological reconstruction of Putnam’s “brain in a vat” thought experiment. He chose the topic himself, and I thought it could be done, but I was very dissatisfied with what he actually produced. I won’t repeat my criticisms here; I’ll just briefly note here my own understanding of the “brain in a vat.” First of all, the reason Putnam proposed the thought experiment of the “brain in a vat” was absolutely not to reintroduce some new version of “external-world skepticism.” In the skeptical sense, there is nothing novel about a brain in a vat. I think…
technology phenomenology analytic philosophy VR
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2018年10月26日