标签：analytic philosophy

Philosophical Style and Attitudes Toward Love

Life & Notes2009.03.19
Philosophical Style and Attitudes Toward Love
I always say that my philosophy “starts from the classical,” specifically, more or less from Kant and those around him. But that is only an external explanation; as for what this “classical” actually contains, I have my own understanding. In my view, so-called “classical philosophy” represents a style and an attitude, one marked by an entire era. Roughly speaking, the history of Western philosophy can be divided into four eras: antiquity (ancient Greece), the Middle Ages, the classical period, and modernity.—Of course, my “classical” here is classical rather than ancient, the sense of “canonical.” A rougher division would be simply classical and modern; a finer one could add primordial times…
philosophy autobiography pursuit Greece
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2009年3月19日
The Benefits of Mathematical and Logical Training for Studying Philosophy

Philosophy & Thought2008.02.15
The Benefits of Mathematical and Logical Training for Studying Philosophy
Although I entered the philosophy department as an undergraduate, I still unabashedly identify myself as “from a science background.” Of course, the current Chinese practice of splitting high school students into arts and sciences is very bad; the so-called “science students” in high school are not necessarily all that “scientific” in any meaningful sense—after all, most of them choose physics. And it is even harder to say how much “literature” arts students have actually come into contact with—how can middle-school history, politics, and the like be called “literature”? But when I say I am “from a science background,” I do not mean that I was a high school science student;…
philosophy scholarship mathematics analytic philosophy
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2008年2月15日
Impressions and Notes on Heidegger and Schopenhauer

Philosophy & Thought2008.01.11
Impressions and Notes on Heidegger and Schopenhauer
This semester I only took these two courses: Heidegger’s *Being and Time* and Schopenhauer’s *The World as Will and Representation*. The day before yesterday I finally finished my paper on schedule, so this semester can be counted as a complete success. I still didn’t take these two courses very seriously; I skipped more than half the classes, and I only finished both books at the very last minute. But since the teacher for the Heidegger course was only giving rather general, introductory explanations, and the Schopenhauer course was even more centered on student presentations, skipping class didn’t really matter. At least I seized the opportunity to grit my teeth and…
book reading notes Heidegger phenomenology
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2008年1月11日
[Eng] Brendan Wilson: “A Brief Introduction to Philosophy”

Philosophy & Thought2007.07.28
[Eng] Brendan Wilson: “A Brief Introduction to Philosophy”
[English] Brendan Wilson: *A Brief Introduction to Philosophy*, translated by Weng Shaojun, Shanghai People's Publishing House, June 2007, 26 yuan Recently, a number of introductory books on philosophy and the history of philosophy have appeared on the market again. I have always been very interested in this kind of book. At the same time, perhaps I also hope to help later readers “verify” things a bit and improve my recommended reading list. Up to now, the introductory philosophy books I still place first are the three published by Guangxi Normal University Press—*The Tree of Philosophy*, *Big Questions*, and *An Introduction to Philosophy*—and this book has not surpassed those three. This…
philosophy book reading notes philosophy of science
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2007年7月28日
What Is the Story Behind Kant’s Hundred Thalers?

Philosophy & Thought2007.03.01
What Is the Story Behind Kant’s Hundred Thalers?
What’s the Story with Kant’s One Hundred Thalers? Xingding posted on 2007-03-01 22:12:32 What’s the Story with Kant’s One Hundred Thalers? At last, the grades for last semester’s courses finally all came out. Political Theory and the general elective were both3.0; both courses in religious studies were3.7; General History of Science, Research on Globalization Issues, and Popper’s Philosophy of History were all4.0. All in all, it was still very satisfying. Who would have thought that the grade for the last course to appear—Metaphysics—was only2.0, instantly canceling out the0.03 points ofGPA I had so painstakingly clawed my way up to. The reason this course’s grade came out so late was that…
philosophy Kant Kuhn analytic philosophy
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2007年3月1日
An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science

History of Science & Scholarship2007.01.16
An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science
I’ve long wanted to write an essay introducing philosophy of science to the younger students, but each time I started it I gave up halfway through. I hope today I can stick with it and finish. I no longer expect to find fellow travelers in philosophy of science at the undergraduate level, but even for those classmates who do not choose philosophy of science as their direction, I still hope to reduce a few of the many misunderstandings that philosophy of science has suffered from a little bit (for the moment, let me take my own understanding as the correct one; of course, my understanding may also be a misunderstanding—make…
philosophy science history of science philosophy of science
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2007年1月16日
Actuality and Possibility; and the Question of Academic Norms

Culture & Public Commentary2006.11.02
Actuality and Possibility; and the Question of Academic Norms
Yesterday’s dispute over globalization again flared up with ZW. In fact, the point at issue is the same as in last week’s and even earlier disputes: in the end, it all comes down to the use of words and concepts. Let me begin with the concrete issue: possibility and actuality. ZW pointed out that the “possibility” of a global government used by the student giving the report at the time was inappropriate, and that it might as well be changed to “actuality.” This is because the word “possibility,” in the context of analytic philosophy, refers to logical possibility—for example, that the sun will rise in the west tomorrow is logically…
philosophy culture scholarship pluralism
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2006年11月2日
On Learning Middle School Mathematics

Life & Notes2006.10.05
On Learning Middle School Mathematics
I had wanted to write this article before the summer vacation, but I never got around to it…… A teacher once said: if you can’t learn math well, you’re stupid; if you can’t learn English well, you’re lazy. I am obviously a lazy person, but apparently not stupid…… But in fact, although doing mathematics does indeed depend heavily on a certain kind of talent, and the fact that men are better at math than women is hard to deny, just as women are better at language than men, the influence of talent may show up more clearly in top-level mathematics competitions. For the mathematics required in elementary and middle school,…
everyday life education mathematics analytic philosophy
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2006年10月5日
Philosophy Has Become “Technique”

Philosophy & Thought2006.04.11
Philosophy Has Become “Technique”
Seeing Bohm say that the word philosophy originally meant the love of wisdom, and that now it has become a kind of technique. I also think that our age is deteriorating into reducing everything to various technologies, stripping every thing of its meaning; I believe people have already fallen into technicism…… (The Ghost in the Atom, p. 118) I have long known that Bohm inclines toward postmodernist philosophy, but his words still make sense: do the analytic philosophy and logical positivism of the Anglo-American world not amount to turning philosophy into a “technique”? Although they still retain philosophy’s emphasis on “questioning,” the “pursuit” behind the questioning has been muted, especially…
philosophy analytic philosophy meaning materialism
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2006年4月11日