标签：philosophy

Maid Cafés and “Professional Ethics”

Philosophy & Thought2012.02.03
Maid Cafés and “Professional Ethics”
Stirred by the Fang Yaohan incident, I wrote three articles in a row, which is already quite enough to have gotten my money’s worth. Since Han Han has also announced that he is stopping writing and not talking about it anymore, I may as well stop here too. So this article continues from the earlier piece “The Kingly Way”; everyone can skip the previous three articles, and we can continue talking about “morality.” We say that the kingly way is the path to supreme goodness, and supreme goodness is nothing other than “the best life.” But in the traditional sense, for a ruler, the kingly way merely provides one of…
philosophy freedom pursuit Marx
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2012年2月3日
“The Kingly Way” — The Road to the Supreme Good

Chinese Civilization & the Way of Chinese2012.01.26
“The Kingly Way” — The Road to the Supreme Good
You can read this article as a continuation of this earlier one: Freedom vs. Equality—I Am a Right-Wing Socialist In that essay I expressed a certain resistance to “equality”: equality in the sense of a condition for freedom, or equality as the rules that must be observed for the game of competition to unfold—those senses of equality I certainly support. But equality for equality’s sake, taking equality as a principle, is not something I agree with. So if one does not champion equality, must one necessarily tolerate “inequality”? Not necessarily. One reason for opposing “equality” is that it is an overly abstract concept; in fact, equality always requires a standard…
philosophy China freedom autobiography
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2012年1月26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
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
Introduction to the History, Philosophy, and Science Conference Handbook

Life & Notes2011.11.16
Introduction to the History, Philosophy, and Science Conference Handbook
This forum received strong support from students and teachers at various colleges and universities in the Beijing area, and the students took part with great enthusiasm. On behalf of the organizing committee, I would like to express our gratitude to all the students and teachers who participated in our forum in one way or another! Because of everyone’s enthusiastic support, we ultimately received as many as 80 submissions. But in the end only a little over twenty could be presented at the conference, and the remaining articles could not be printed in full either (only abstracts would be included). If we have disappointed the enthusiasm of the students who submitted…
philosophy everyday life science history of science
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2011年11月16日
Mathematics, Education, and Machines

AI & the Future of Technology2011.11.02
Mathematics, Education, and Machines
Today in discussion section, I listened to Brother Donglin’s report, and it felt wonderfully intriguing; some of my earlier scattered thoughts have become much clearer. What Brother Donglin discussed was the concept of “diagramming” in ancient Greek geometry. He pointed out that the geometrical constructions of the ancient Greeks cannot be understood as “construction” in the Kantian sense: the meaning of diagramming is not to provide some kind of “ontological proof.” Diagramming is undertaken for pedagogical and instructional purposes; the original meaning of “proof” is also a kind of showing, a process by which the teacher displays something to the student. “Geometrical diagramming, geometrical knowledge, and phronesis (practical knowledge, that…
philosophy technology science media
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2011年11月2日
Ye Men Gathering — Archived Old Essays

Life & Notes2011.10.30
Ye Men Gathering — Archived Old Essays
Today I went with Teacher Wu to attend Master Ye’s gathering. We went to a French restaurant in Sanlitun for a French meal; the portions were a bit small, but the steak was genuinely delicious. We sat at a Western-style long table, and there wasn’t much conversation during the meal. Besides the Wu school and Teacher Ye, I didn’t know anyone else either; I only introduced myself briefly together with Senior Brother Shengli and Senior Brother Han, the three of us third-generation disciples, to Teacher Ye while packing up, and I didn’t even give my name. I don’t know whether Teacher Ye still remembers me. Perhaps Teacher Ye still will…
philosophy everyday life
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2011年10月30日
Some Replies on the General History of Science BBS in the First Half of the Semester

Teaching & Courses2011.10.28
Some Replies on the General History of Science BBS in the First Half of the Semester
Before, I was busy cranking out papers and went several weeks without recording the students’ discussions. Today I’ve caught everything up in one go, and along the way I also pulled out some of my own replies; some of them may still be a bit interesting, though most of the views I’ve written about before too.. On Philolaus’s “Counter-Earth” People at the time believed that “ten” was the most perfect number, but with the Sun, Moon, gold, wood, water, fire, earth, and the Earth, that still only makes nine, so people guessed there must be another planet on the opposite side of the Earth, called the “counter-earth,” but has…
philosophy China history of science education
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2011年10月28日