Medical argumentation in non-Western societies has attracted little attention. In line with the pragma-dialectical approach to the study of argumentation, this article identifies a prototypical argumentative pattern in Chinese medical consultations. In addition to institutional preconditions, whose relevance to the argumentative pattern has been well cited, a factor that may be equally important has remained unnoticed: the preference for certain drugs, treatments or therapeutic measurements on the basis of folk interpretations of medical phenomena in individual ethnic groups. These preferences may (...) be seen as cultural preferences in the medical domain. In this paper, a prototypical argumentative pattern of Chinese medical consultations is provided. Two levels of the pattern are distinguished and discussed: a basic argumentative pattern as presented in the pragmatic-dialectical approach and its extensions due to cultural preferences as well as institutional constraints. Illustrated by an exemplary analysis on the basis of empirical data collected from Chinese consulting rooms, the impact of cultural preferences on physicians’ strategic maneuvering in argumentation is identified and recognized. It is argued that the existence and impact of cultural preferences require attention in medical argumentation. (shrink)

Though he has become known to his detractors as a theorist who has replaced rational discourse with pure power in his theory of the decision, Carl Schmitt's notion of politics is, on a fundamental level, culturally and ethically based. This cultural and ethical conception of politics permeates his work, not only in texts about explicitly cultural issues, such as his 1916 study of Theodor Däubler's Expressionist Nordlicht or his meditation on the connection between politics and art in Shakespeare in Hamlet (...) oder Hekuba,1 but also in Political Theology, one of the key texts of his theory of decisionism. While commentators…. (shrink)

To identify relationships among entities in natural language texts, extraction of entity relationships technically provides a fundamental support for knowledge graph, intelligent information retrieval, and semantic analysis, promotes the construction of knowledge bases, and improves efficiency of searching and semantic analysis. Traditional methods of relationship extraction, either those proposed at the earlier times or those based on traditional machine learning and deep learning, have focused on keeping relationships and entities in their own silos: extracting relationships and entities are conducted in (...) steps before obtaining the mappings. To address this problem, a novel Chinese relationship extraction method is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the triple is treated as an entity relation chain and can identify the entity before the relationship and predict its corresponding relationship and the entity after the relationship. Secondly, the Joint Extraction of Entity Mentions and Relations model is based on the Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory and Maximum Entropy Markov Model. Experimental results indicate that the proposed model can achieve a precision of 79.2% which is much higher than that of traditional models. (shrink)

Unlike similar works, Xingxue Cushu 性學觕述 by the Italian Jesuit missionary Giulio Aleni sought to deliver the Christian doctrine into China by introducing Western medicine. The conflict between the Christian concept of the soul and the traditional psychic concept in China made the task difficult. Scholasticism rejects the idea that an individual’s soul may be physically divided or localized, whereas the Chinese tradition largely assumes the contrary and regards the heart as the center of one’s psychic powers or vitality. Aleni (...) addressed this conflict by reducing the mind to the function of the brain for sensitive memory. Chinese physicians accepted Aleni’s concept of brain-related memory. However, his claim of an immaterial soul was ignored, and the Western connection between brain and memory was misinterpreted and subjected to Chinese cardiocentrism; thus, the physically centered psychic concept that underlies Chinese philosophy persisted. (shrink)

If reaching out to others is often difficult and needing both kindness and skill, it is a tremendous achievement not only to succeed in the endeavor but to win the love and respect of others as well. This was the case with Giulio Aleni. One of the most respected missionaries since Matteo Ricci and Ricci's successor in the Chinese Jesuit Province, the Italian-born Father was referred to by his followers as the "Confucius from the West" : Ai Rulue, whose other (...) name was Siji, was an Italian. He came to China in 1613. He was invited by Xu Guangqi to Shanghai, and then moved to Zhejiang to preach. Later he entered Fujian at the invitation of Ye... (shrink)

ExcerptIf recent discussions of Schmitt in these pages have made a broad case for the centrality of culture for his thinking, the current issue both specifies and generalizes this approach. The specificity derives from our focus on one key text by Schmitt that is often passed over but is in fact crucial for understanding his work. The generality is a result of the breathtaking sweep of issues that this text opens up for the contributors to this issue: the relation of (...) sovereignty to popular will, the ontological status of modernity, the role of myth in society, the representational structure of…. (shrink)

ExcerptIn The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, Carl Schmitt describes the multiple ways in which parliamentarism can be beset by forces that undermine its coherence and legitimacy.1 Writing in the context of a fledgling Weimar Republic and few historical examples of successful transitions to republican and democratic government, he analyzes the structures of parliamentary democracy in order to evaluate its claims to legitimacy as well as the practical threats to its endurance as a system of government. His thinking was premised upon (...) his previous work on forms of dictatorship on the one hand and the idea of political theology on the other. By linking democracy to dictatorship and popular sovereignty to representation, Schmitt indicates how parliamentary democracy, though appealing to an ideal of rational discussion, nevertheless depends on a mythic basis for its legitimation. (shrink)

ExcerptHuman rights organizations for the past few decades have generally attempted to promote international law against the principle of state sovereignty in order to establish human rights norms worldwide. This approach presumes the universality of human rights is in fundamental opposition to the principle of sovereignty because this principle can be used by governments to shield themselves from outside criticism. By contrast, the U.S. State Department’s Report of the Commission on Unalienable Rights has outlined an approach that emphasizes not just (...) the compatibility between universal human rights and state sovereignty but even their dependence on each other.1 We see the results of this clash in the response to the Report by Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch and one of the expert witnesses during the commission’s proceedings.2 He sees in the Report’s foregrounding of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights “a frontal assault on international human rights law” because it shifts attention away from international law and toward more informal documents such as the Universal Declaration, which lays out a set of goals rather than legally binding commitments. (shrink)

ExcerptFred Siegel’s passing on May 7th of this year was a profound loss for us all. A frequent guest and participant at our events, he contributed to Telos from the 1980s to the 2020 publication of his last book, The Crisis of Liberalism: Prelude to Trump. His ideas had a defining impact on Paul Piccone and the journal’s development, laying the foundations for what would become the Telos populist critique of liberalism. With a keen ear for the right turn of (...) phrase to describe a complex idea, he titled his seminal essay for Telos “Is Archie Bunker Fit to Rule? Or: How Immanuel Kant Became One of the Founding Fathers.”1 Setting Archie Bunker as the representative of democracy against the intellectual Immanuel Kant, Siegel succinctly crystallized what was at stake as well as the audacity of his argument, especially for a Telos readership that was inclined to support German philosophy over American pop culture. In making his case for Archie Bunker, Siegel attacked with eloquence and perspicacity the intellectual foundations of liberal thinking. (shrink)

The Metaphysics of the Decision Recent attempts to merge democratic theory with political theology have had to face a fundamental difficulty in the approach to sovereignty. While Carl Schmitt bases sovereignty in the decision on the exception, this idea runs counter to the democratic idea that sovereignty resides with the people and therefore cannot be exercised by a single authoritative leader. This problem leads Jeffrey Robbins, for instance, to attempt to imagine political theology without sovereignty. For him, such an elimination (...) of sovereignty is necessary for democracy because the idea of a single sovereign contradicts the democratic…. (shrink)

摘 要 成中英從中西比較哲學的視角創造性地提出了本體詮釋學理論, 反思海德格爾與伽達默爾的本體論詮釋學, 揭示出其存在論中的價值缺失；並通過援引中國易學傳統中的道與本體發生, 以自本體與對本體的 “本體詮釋圓環” 使得認識論進路與本體論詮釋進路相結合, 實現了把價值維度和方法論融入了本體詮釋, 以推動當代詮釋學發展。本體詮釋學的創立, 開啟了 “本” 與 “體” 之間循環的本體綜合, 通過本體規範方法與通過方法條理化本體, 使得理解、 價值和方法構成一個有機的圓融整體, 指向了一種德福一致的本體展開, 即德 行詮釋學的發展可能。.

In the educational hypermedia domain, adaptive systems try to adapt educational materials according to the required properties of a user. The adaptability of these systems becomes more effective once the system has the knowledge about how a student can learn better. Studies suggest that, for effective personalization, one of the important features is to know precisely the learning style of a student. However, learning styles are dynamic and may vary domain-wise. To address such aspects of learning styles, we have proposed (...) a computationally efficient solution that considers the dynamic and nondeterministic nature of learning styles, effect of the subject domain, and nonstationary aspect during the learning process. The proposed model is novel, robust, and flexible to optimize students’ domain-wise learning style preferences for better content adaptation. We have developed a web-based experimental prototype for assessment and validation. The proposed model is compared with the existing available learning style-based model, and the experimental results show that personalization based on incorporating discipline-wise learning style variations becomes more effective. (shrink)

InDialectic of Enlightenment Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno argue that reason, which claims to lead to truth, is always instrumental reason—a form of domination based on violence. Enlightenment, which aspired to emancipate society from the violence of myth, ends by reenacting this violence and turning back into myth.2 Jürgen Habermas attacks this argument for falling prey to an unbridled scepticism that fails to appreciate the achievements of modernity.3 For him, Horkheimer's and Adorno's radical critique of reason is analogous to Nietzsche's (...) critique of science and morals in On the Genealogy of Morality to the extent that a claim to truth…. (shrink)

本书分综论、中国哲学研究、本体诠释学研究、西方哲学研究、伦理与管理等七部分,具体包括:“成中英哲学思想的发展与意义”、“成中英《易》说研究”、“孔子的方法学”等。.

ExcerptOne of the most disappointing human rights debacles in the last few years was the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. For those who still take an interest,1 the human rights situation there has become horrendous, with Human Rights Watch documenting the denial of schooling and employment to women, extrajudicial killings, and torture.2 Moreover, in a severe rebuttal to those who supported the withdrawal, Taliban rule has created the conditions for a renewal of terrorist groups that can now develop and (...) train in Afghanistan with impunity.3 There is also a good case to be made that the U.S. withdrawal there emboldened Putin to invade Ukraine, calculating that the United States and its allies no longer have the stomach for protracted conflicts in order to prevent human rights abuses. It may be that we have traded a low-grade conflict in Afghanistan for a high-intensity one in Ukraine.4 The lesson here is that the struggle for human rights, while beginning as a moral problem about our common responsibilities, can only be taken seriously when we consider its political ramifications. What do we owe to our fellow humans, and what sacrifices should we make in order to fulfill those responsibilities? (shrink)

ExcerptIt hardly needs mentioning that liberal democracy is facing a number of threats today, both internal and external. Even if the political parties in the United States cannot agree on the main source of the threats, they both believe that democracy is in danger. Democrats point to the January 6 Capitol riot and Trump’s role in it as examples of the way in which liberal democratic procedures are being directly attacked. Republicans point to the Democratic-backed court cases against Trump as (...) well as the FBI’s favoritism toward Democrats in their public announcements before elections as evidence that the legal system and the administrative state are being used to shut out political opponents. Both parties point to violations of free speech rights at college campuses, yet they also both seek to establish limits to those rights in defense of liberal democratic values. (shrink)

ExcerptAs we consider the recent turmoil at our colleges and universities, it seems nearly incomprehensible that college students, faculty, and many politicians have been supporting Hamas’s terrorism against Israel. The disconnect between the anti-Israel and the pro-Israel perspectives has revealed to the world both that there is a profound rift in our educational establishment and that what is happening is symptomatic of a larger problem that has grown over many decades. Since the problem has exceeded the limits of the academy (...) and has begun to influence foreign affairs, in ways that have undermined allies such as Israel, and domestic policy, for instance in our approach to the freedom of speech, the problem of higher education is in fact a problem of our entire constitutional order. I would like to describe the problems at our colleges and universities, some of the causes, and possible strategies for reversing the deterioration of higher education. (shrink)

John Henry Newman begins his Idea of a University by claiming that the university “is a place of teaching universal knowledge.”1 But instead of referring to “universal” and all inclusive as Newman suggests, the word university was originally derived from the medieval Latin sense of universitas, meaning “a society, company, corporation, or community regarded collectively.”2 Newman's effacement of the corporate origins of the university in favor of universality reflects a transformation of the university in the course of the 19th century (...) from a corporate body with particularist interests to one with a claim to an autonomous universality transcending all particular…. (shrink)

The old political exigencies which justified the expansion of government budgets for higher education (the space race, the Cold War, the growth of state bureaucracies) have now given way to demands for reductions in government spending, even for weapons. Though the decline in government support for higher education has been partially made up by parents of undergraduates for the last decade, college tuition increases are approaching their limits. On the one hand, colleges and universities confront reduced budgets and cuts in (...) faculty and programs. On the other hand, the general public, including students and parents who pay rising tuitions, feel…. (shrink)