标签：ontology

The Great Blockchain of Being—Decentralized Philosophy in This Age (An Introduction to Blockchain Philosophy)

Philosophy & Thought2025.09.26
The Great Blockchain of Being—Decentralized Philosophy in This Age (An Introduction to Blockchain Philosophy)
I am in the process of building my own “blockchain philosophy” — not using philosophy to discuss blockchain, but using blockchain to construct “universality,” that is, whether it is possible to pursue universal knowledge in a decentralized (anti-absolutist, anti-dogmatic) way. Universality is philosophy’s eternal pursuit, yet in modern times it has fallen into confusion; I believe blockchain is one way of responding to this. Below is the preface I wrote for Blockchain Philosophy; perhaps this book could also be called The Great Chain (Block) of Being, or Using the False to Cultivate the True, and so on. This book will gather together everything I have learned in my life, so…
philosophy Heidegger Bitcoin blockchain
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2025年9月26日
Heavenly Endowment

Life & Notes2022.04.01
Heavenly Endowment
At 11:39 a.m. on April 1, 2022, a new life came squalling into the world. Yes, I have a daughter now~ I chose her name a few days earlier: Hu Tianyu. Don’t worry, I’m not suddenly going to turn into a shameless kid-showoff. Writing in the public sphere will not become excessively intimate. On the one hand, this post is a special commemoration; on the other, it is also an excuse to talk about certain general topics through my daughter’s name. Back in the day my grandfather gave me a name: “Tian Ding,” meaning roughly that my fate was decreed by Heaven. In the end, though, it was never used….
everyday life freedom Heidegger democracy
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2022年4月1日
The Ontological Basis of ‘Scarcity Makes Things Valuable’—With a Discussion of Why Bitcoin Is Valuable

Philosophy & Thought2018.01.22
The Ontological Basis of ‘Scarcity Makes Things Valuable’—With a Discussion of Why Bitcoin Is Valuable
This was originally meant to be a short piece about Bitcoin. On a whim I gave it a flashy title, but as I wrote it, it turned into a philosophical essay. In fact, the title is not all that outrageous. From the very beginning, what drew my attention to Bitcoin was that I saw it as an application of my own philosophical ideas. Over the following years, I have continued to use my philosophy of technology or media philosophy to interpret the significance of Bitcoin. By setting a fixed cap of 21 million, Bitcoin guarantees scarcity. As the saying goes, “what is rare is precious”; Bitcoin is so scarce, so…
philosophy Web3 Bitcoin value
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2018年1月22日
The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Garbage

History of Science & Scholarship2016.12.01
The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Garbage
Introduction: From Philosophy of Technology to Philosophy of Garbage 1. The Historical Absence of a Philosophy of Garbage 2. How Is Garbage Possible? 3. Garbage Has Existed Since Ancient Times 4. The Modernity of Garbage I. The World of Ideas That Rejects Decay 1. The Age of the World Picture 2. The One-Sidedness of the World Picture 3. Plato’s World of Ideas 4. Aversion to Mortality II. Intellectual Purism That Rejects Ambiguity 1. Binary Opposition 2. Is and Ought 3. Identity and Garbage 4. Kant’s “Discarding Method” III. Foundationalism That Rejects Recycling 1. The Triple Synthesis 2. Memory and Its “Recycling” 3. Learning and Technology 4. The Cycle of History…
technology media Heidegger phenomenology
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2016年12月1日
The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Garbage

History of Science & Scholarship2016.12.01
The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Garbage
Introduction: From Philosophy of Technology to Philosophy of Garbage 1. The Historical Absence of a Philosophy of Garbage 2. How Is Garbage Possible? 3. Garbage Has Existed Since Ancient Times 4. The Modernity of Garbage I. The World of Ideas That Rejects Decay 1. The Age of the World Picture 2. The One-Sidedness of the World Picture 3. Plato’s World of Ideas 4. Aversion to Mortality II. Intellectual Purism That Rejects Ambiguity 1. Binary Opposition 2. Is and Ought 3. Identity and Garbage 4. Kant’s “Discarding Method” III. Foundationalism That Rejects Recycling 1. The Triple Synthesis 2. Memory and Its “Recycling” 3. Learning and Technology 4. The Cycle of History…
technology media Heidegger phenomenology
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2016年12月1日
What Does the Mobile Phone Have to Do with Cooking? — The One and the Many of Technology

AI & the Future of Technology2015.11.12
What Does the Mobile Phone Have to Do with Cooking? — The One and the Many of Technology
The previous post mentioned one of Wu’s core objections, namely, his view that science is singular, whereas technology is plural. At the time he gave an example: branches of science such as physics, chemistry, and biology ultimately promise that they can be reduced to a unified foundation, and therefore their historical development is also interconnected. But what about the relations among various technologies, such as between mobile phones and cooking technology? If various concrete technologies are mutually independent, then where does their unity in history come from? My brief reply at the time was this: the reason various technologies can be “unified” is that “life” is unified. And I also…
technology everyday life history of science media
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2015年11月12日
Travel Notes from the Shenyang–Benxi Conference (Shenyang Section)

History of Science & Scholarship2015.10.08
Travel Notes from the Shenyang–Benxi Conference (Shenyang Section)
The annual conference on phenomenology and philosophy of technology has once again come to a successful close. This year it was hosted by Northeastern University and held in Shenyang and Benxi from September 24 to 28. In my travel notes from the Lushan conference in 2013, I wrote: Since going to Nanning in 2009 to attend the Third Conference on Phenomenology and Philosophy of Technology, I have now participated in five consecutive conferences. Apart from Nanning, where I only wrote a little “miscellaneous notes,” I wrote full-on conference takedowns for Hailar, Yangma Island, and Guangzhou. It has already become a case of riding a tiger and finding it hard to…
technology media phenomenology Scientific Revolution
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2015年10月8日
Media as Environment — A Rough Philosophical Reading of Media Ecology

History of Science & Scholarship2014.09.25
Media as Environment — A Rough Philosophical Reading of Media Ecology
This is the draft of the talk I’m preparing to give tomorrow at Tsinghua; by then I’ll basically plan to read straight from the script, of course after finishing I’ll probably also expand on certain parts extemporaneously depending on how things go… This talk aims to offer a brief and accessible overview of the basic claims of my dissertation. My dissertation involves many problems, and the relationships among its chapters are originally rather loose, so it is not very easy to distill. Here I can only focus on a few core concepts. Since I have avoided the most abstruse parts (ontology and transcendental philosophy) and the most concrete parts…
philosophy technology history of science media
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2014年9月25日
A Natural History of Media—McLuhan’s Method

History of Science & Scholarship2013.08.10
A Natural History of Media—McLuhan’s Method
1. Introduction: Literary Style or Research Method? Marshall McLuhan (1911–1982) was the most influential and at the same time the most controversial media thinker of the twentieth century. As a pioneer or founding figure of the media ecology school, his reputation rose and fell dramatically: he was once elevated to the altar, and then quickly neglected and forgotten. With the dawn of the network age, he came once again to be widely known in academic circles and indeed throughout the cultural world as a “prophet-sage,” yet some still regard him as a mountebank who merely uses gibberish to hoodwink the public. These two images are not really contradictory. So-called prophets…
media Heidegger McLuhan paper
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2013年8月10日
Human-Centricity or Humble Solipsism? — A Discussion of Whether Heidegger’s Philosophy Is a Philosophy of Subjectivity

Phenomenology & Heidegger2013.04.01
Human-Centricity or Humble Solipsism? — A Discussion of Whether Heidegger’s Philosophy Is a Philosophy of Subjectivity
Jing Qi reposted an article by Ran Shi, “Is Heidegger’s Early Philosophy a Philosophy of Subjectivity?,” as well as the related discussion—among the participants were Jing Qi, Ran Shi (who is this, anyway? His blog is rather interesting), Professor Meng Qiang, and Professor Li Zhangyin, among others. I also chimed in. My comments leaned toward Ran Shi, and were also endorsed by him, but as always I was still set in opposition to Jing Qi (which, of course, is a very good thing). For the context of the discussion before and after, you can go look on Jing Qi’s or Ran Shi’s blog; I won’t reproduce it here. I’ll simply…
philosophy Heidegger Aristotle discussion
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2013年4月1日