This paper starts with an apparently provocative question – can we call the 2019 Water Revolution in Hong Kong a lesson of emancipatory education which awakens students’ critical consciousn...

This book approaches the topic of intercultural understanding in philosophy from a phenomenological perspective. It provides a bridge between Western and Eastern philosophy through in-depth discussion of concepts and doctrines of phenomenology and ancient and contemporary Chinese philosophy. Phenomenological readings of Daoist and Buddhist philosophies are provided: the reader will find a study of theoretical and methodological issues and innovative readings of traditional Chinese and Indian philosophies from the phenomenological perspective. The author uses a descriptive rigor to avoid cultural prejudices (...) and provides a non-Eurocentric conception and practice of philosophy. Through this East-West comparative study, a compelling criticism of a Eurocentric conception of philosophy emerges. New concepts and methods in intercultural philosophy are proposed through these chapters. Researchers, teachers, post-graduates and students of philosophy will all find this work intriguing, and those with an interest in non-Western philosophy or phenomenology will find it particularly engaging. (shrink)

Junior researchers can be abused and bullied by unscrupulous senior collaborators. This article describes the profile of a type of serial abuser, the White Bull, who uses his academic seniority to distort authorship credit and who disguises his parasitism with carefully premeditated deception. Further research into the personality traits of such perpetrators is warranted.

The spatial misrepresentation objection (SMO) against the wave theory of sound argues that if sounds are compression waves, then our auditory experiences are massively illusory for not representing sounds as propagating in the medium. Thus, it claims that the wave theory should be rejected because it is unreasonable to accept such an error theory of hearing. This paper presents a metaphysics of compression waves to show that the wave theory correctly implies that we cannot hear sounds as propagating. Moreover, I (...) argue that the SMO is based on a mischaracterisation of the phenomenology of auditory experiences. A new conception of auditory perception is then proposed to explain how a sound source and its compression wave are both represented in the same auditory experience. Finally, I compare my view with some alternative theories of sound. Overall, it is found that the SMO is more of an objection against the traditional conception of hearing than a challenge to the wave theory of sound. (shrink)

Contemporary workplaces are mostly hierarchical. Intrinsic and extrinsic bads of workplace hierarchies have been widely discussed in the literature on workplace democracy and workplace republicanis...

This paper explores the prospects for a Pritchardean epistemological disjunctivist account of memory knowledge. We begin by providing an overview of Duncan Pritchard's epistemological disjunctivist account of perceptual knowledge, as well as the theoretical advantages of such an account. Drawing on that account, we present and motivate our own Pritchardean epistemological disjunctivist account of memory knowledge. After distinguishing different sorts of memory and the different roles that memory can play in knowledge acquisition, we set out our account and argue that (...) the case for epistemological disjunctivism enjoys parity with the case for epistemological disjunctivism of perceptual knowledge. We also consider objections to our account. The first is from Joe Milburn and Andrew Moon, who argue against a general epistemological disjunctivism of memory on the basis of differences in memory types. The second objection arises from a Radford-like case whereby one's true belief is from memory even though one lacks rational support that is reflectively accessible to one. (shrink)

ABSTRACTDerrida’s philosophy starts with a law stated in The Problem of Genesis in Husserl’s Philosophy: “No analysis could present, make present in its phenomenon or reduce to the point-like natur...

In Prajñā and Reason Nishitani presents a powerful vision of philosophy as Absolute knowing. Nishitani’s conclusions are striking: Absolute knowing can only fulill its potential by beginning without any presuppositions and affirming the truth of contradiction. Because Hegel’s philosophy also purports to be a science of Absolute knowing, in Prajñā and Reason Nishitani develops his own account of the Absolute in conversation with Hegel’s philosophy. We reconstruct Nishitani’s reading and various critiques of Hegel, and thereafter evaluate its merits. Our inquiry (...) shows that Hegel too begins without presuppositions and affirms the truth of contradiction. As a result, we argue that Nishitani’s profound reflections on Absolute knowing draw him into close proximity with Hegel’s thinking and call us to re-think the very being of philosophy and philosophical practice today. (shrink)

This thesis presents an interpretation of David Hume’s essay ‘Of the Standard of Taste’. The most distinguishing feature of this interpretation is the emphasis placed on the significance of Hume’s general philosophical position in a faithful reading of this philosophical classic. The success of this interpretation will show that Hume’s essay should be read as an integral part of his system of philosophy. There are three parts in this thesis. The first part is an overview of some key aspects of (...) Hume’s philosophy which are relevant to my interpretation. Unlike many contemporary philosophers in the analytic tradition, Hume is a systematic thinker. A faithful reading of his works should take his general philosophical framework seriously. Therefore, this overview of his system serves as the general background of the next two parts. The second part is a discussion of Hume’s aesthetic thought. More specifically, it provides an exposition of his view on beauty and judgements of beauty. This part completes the stage-setting for the development of my interpretation, by helping the reader form a more specific conceptual framework for understanding Hume’s essay. The third part develops an interpretation of ‘Of the Standard of Taste’ according to what has been provided in the previous two parts. It starts with an outline of the essay, which indicates Hume’s aim in writing it. After that, a few sections are devoted to some central elements of the essay. The last section of this part discusses four controversies concerning Hume’s essay. These discussions establish the strength of this interpretation, or at least, the fruitful prospect of an interpretative project that integrates Hume’s essay into his whole system. (shrink)

By his critical reflections on the crisis of modern civilization, Jan Patočka, phenomenologist of the Other Europe, incarnates the critical consciousness of the phenomenological movement. He was in fact one of the first European philosophers to have emphasized the necessity of abandoning the hitherto Eurocentric propositions of solution to the crisis when he explicitly raised the problems of a “Post-European humanity”. In advocating an understanding of the history of European humanity different from those of Husserl and Heidegger, Patočka directs his (...) philosophical reflections back to sketch a more profound phenomenology of the natural world insufficiently thematized in Husserl and absent in Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit. By virtue of its emphasis on the structural characteristics of movement, of praxis, and of the disclosure of the abyssal nature of human existence and of the original nothingness as the (non-)foundation of the phenomenal world, Patočka’s phenomenology of the natural world constitutes an opening towards the reception of Others and other cultures, in particular that of Chinese Taoist philosophy. (shrink)

This article examines Schelling’s understanding of Laozi 老子. It begins with Schelling’s reception of Laozi’s text and its translation. The main part of this article focuses on Schelling’s discussion of Laozi in his Philosophy of Mythology. It then compares some of the key concepts mentioned in Schelling’s comments and their respective counterparts in Laozi: nothingness and wu 無, portal and abyss, reason and dao 道, name and concept, nature and ziran 自然, and so on, and analyzes the possible reasons for (...) his sympathetic understanding of Laozi as against his own philosophical system. The main argument is that Schelling’s romantic tendency means that he can have an alternative understanding of Laozi. Finally it concludes with a few remarks on the differences between Schelling and Laozi in terms of their philosophical systems and methods. (shrink)

It is usually believed that the concept of ‘qiwu 齊物’ in the Zhuangzi means ‘equalizing things’. This reading of the Zhuangzi, however, presupposes that things are originally separated and exist independently. The equality of things is just a mental construct in a specific state of mind. In this paper, we will argue that this reading does not stand; what Zhuangzi does in the ‘Qiwulun 齊物論’is to examine how myriad things are created from the original oneness. According to Zhuangzi’s philosophy of (...) thing, things are created by objectification through fact and value imposing. Oneness is therefore not a mere perspective but the condition for things being objectified. This understanding of the things’ being is comparable to Heidegger’s classification of thing and equipment, but it differs from Heidegger by its special implication on the Daoist liberation. (shrink)

Political theorists frequently utilize the ‘firm–state analogy’ (FSA) to support the arguments for democratic governance in firms. This article presents the FSA as an analogy with both justificatory and epistemic functions. Its justificatory function provides valid justificatory strategies for workplace democracy, while its epistemic function offers models that shape the understanding of corporate power. In this article, four limitations of the justificatory function of the FSA are identified: (i) the problem of ambiguity, (ii) the boundary problem, (iii) the issue of (...) normative redundancy, and (iv) the universality problem. Furthermore, the article argues that the epistemic function of the FSA fails to adequately address some of the most concerning forms of corporate power wielded by large, particularly multinational, corporations in the realm of international trade. As a result, the FSA misses crucial reasons for the normative desirability of democracy in corporate governance. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, Volume 53, Issue 2, Page 221-238, Summer 2022.

It is well-known that the mature Foucault, while recognizing the influence of phenomenology on him during his youth, declared his anti-phenomenological position since his archeological breakthrough. This paper tries to argue and show that though phenomenology is an object of criticism of Foucault’s archaeology, it nonetheless plays a paradoxical and strategic role in the construction of the archaeological project. Though Foucault undertakes in The Birth of the Clinic a critical deconstruction of phenomenology as positivism, against the open anti-positivist declaration of (...) phenomenology itself, in the Archeology of Knowledge Foucault acknowledges that the opening of the space of archeology requires the practice of the “épochè of the épochè”, and in this sense archeology is a positivism too. That means also that archeology is possible only by the practice of the phenomenological operation of épochè in order to exit from phenomenology. This paradoxical and strategic usage of phenomenology in Foucault’s archeology is extended to his theory of discourse. For Foucault came to realize the limit of discursive practice: not only words signify but things signify too. If archeology wants to extend its domain of competence, it has to recur to description according to the way things show up themselves. This is nothing other than the basic methodological recommendation of phenomenology. Thus Foucault’s open declaration of his anti-phenomenological position is merely apparent, hiding his discrete paradoxical and strategic usage of the rich methodological resources of phenomenology. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Many recent works on the methodology of intercultural philosophy point to a fundamental dilemma of the discipline: if there is a common ground for intercultural understanding, then the essence of this ground is universal instead of multi-cultural; if there are irreducible and incommunicable factors in different cultures, then complete understanding seems to be impossible. In this paper, I propose that this dilemma is founded on the assumption that intercultural philosophy is equivalent to intercultural understanding. I argue that, however, intercultural (...) philosophy should begin with questioning. Instead of understanding another culture using one’s own conceptual scheme, intercultural questioning puts one’s conceptual scheme and traditional worldview into question. The new questions obtained by phenomenologically reducing traditional thought will become a ground for intercultural dialogue without reducing one’s culture to another culture. Finally, I will use a case in Chinese philosophy to demonstrate the process of intercultural questioning. (shrink)

William C. Frederick proposes a naturalistic business ethics. Many commentators focus on the issues of naturalistic fallacy, deprivation of freedom of the will, and possibility of important and universal moral values in business ethics. I argue that an ethics being naturalistic is not a worry. The issue of deprivation of free will is irrelevant. Yet there are urgent questions regarding the possibility of important and universal moral values, which may prevent Frederick’s view from getting off the ground.

Among the many theories that explain the becoming of all things in the universe, there is a metaphysical viewpoint that all things are originated from one pure origin which is preceded by nothing. This metaphysical viewpoint can be called the idea of genesis. Derrida proposes that this concept of ‘genesis’ itself is founded upon a contradiction; ‘genesis, …, brings together two contradicting meanings in its concept: one of origin, one of becoming.’, p. xxi.) Based on this paradox, Derrida proposes that (...) all philosophical attempts to recover the pure origin here-and-now, which are categorized as the metaphysics of presence, are impossible. In this paper, I argue that Derrida’s criticism is based on the Augustinian question of time which presupposes that only the present moment is real. Recovery of the origin therefore means to reduce the non-present to the present. I contend that Daoism can respond to Derrida’s criticism because it possesses a nested idea of time—the idea that each present is encompassed by a deeper level of present as the background context. Accordingly, the recovery of origin does not mean to return to an elapsed past but a deeper context of all occurrence. This explains why dao, when it is understood as the origin of things in the world, does not succumb to Derrida’s criticism. Furthermore, it provides an alternative solution to the Derridean paradox of genesis. (shrink)

When analyzing complex longitudinal data, especially data from different educational settings, researchers generally focus only on the mean part (i.e., the regression coefficients), ignoring the equally important random part (i.e., the random effect variances) of the model. By using Project English Language and Literacy Acquisition (ELLA) data, we demonstrated the importance of taking the complex data structure into account by carefully specifying the random part of the model, showing that not only can it affect the variance estimates, the standard errors, (...) and the tests of significance of the regression coefficients, it also can offer different perspectives of the data, such as information related to the developmental process. We used xxM (Mehta, 2013), which can flexibly estimate different grade-level variances separately and the potential carryover effect from each grade factor to the later time measures. Implications of the findings and limitations of the study are discussed. (shrink)

This dissertation aims to revive wave theory in the philosophy of sound. Wave theory identifies sounds with compression waves. Despite its wide acceptance in the scientific community as the default position, many philosophers have rejected wave theory and opted for different versions of distal theory instead. According to this current majority view, a sound has its stationary location at its source. I argue against this and other alternative philosophical theories of sound and develop wave theory into a more defensible form. (...) Philosophers of sound tend to emphasise how sounds are experienced to be in their arguments. Most often, it is assumed that that which appears to be a distally located bearer of auditory properties in an auditory experience is a sound. Chapter 1 argues that if this distal entity is the sound source instead, many of the existing theories of sound will be severely affected. Chapter 2 discusses auditory perception and criticises the common assumption that we hear non-sound entities in virtue of hearing sounds. I show that this assumption begs the question against certain theories of sound and that the contrary view that sound sources can be directly heard is more plausible. If sound sources can be directly heard, then features commonly attributed to sounds based on auditory experiences might rather be features of sound sources. I examine eight of such features in Chapter 3. Only four of them survive. Chapters 4 and 5 review the existing theories of sound. After a taxonomy of existing theories of sound, each theory is criticised one-by-one. Some of them are problematic precisely because they rely on the implausible assumption that that which appears to be distally located in an auditory experience is a sound rather than a sound source. Lastly, Chapter 6 focuses on wave theory. It begins with two positive arguments for wave theory in general, followed by my replies to two common objections in the literature. I then move on to develop my version of wave theory. There are two core aspects of my view. The first one is a metaphysics of compression waves; the second is an account of what it is to hear compression waves. After comparing my view with a similar theory, I demonstrate the explanatory power of my view in two steps. First, the eight commonly accepted features of sounds examined in Chapter 3 are revisited. It turns out that my view can accommodate all of them. Second, explanations for four special sound-related phenomena are offered at the end of the chapter. I conclude in the last chapter with the suggestion that, as a philosopher, the best way to defend wave theory is to offer a better understanding of auditory perception which explains how compression waves are experienced. (shrink)

Purpose – The aim of this study is to study the implementation of G2B initiatives for small- and medium-sized enterprises in Hong Kong, focusing on the underlying importance, benefits and challenges. Design/methodology/approach – The context of this study was initially established based on comparisons with B2B initiatives. However, it is also learned from the literature that the transformational aspect of e-Government development has not been materialized, whereas the extended web assessment method, the three-ring model and DeLone and McLean’s IS success (...) model were therefore identified to derive and build the theoretical G2B success model, thereby developing the online survey instrument of this study. Specifically, a positivist paradigm was adopted to investigate the impact of each G2B success factor on the overall satisfaction with using the G2B systems under examination from the perspective of SMEs, rather than simply placing emphasis on the number of electronic services provided and the investments spent. Findings – The research findings were compiled based on both the multiple regression analysis and EWAM analysis results, thus making the necessary improvements in the appropriate service aspects of the G2B systems concerned. Originality/value – The main study concluded that prevalent G2B initiatives in Hong Kong have been largely connected to pursuing conservative paradigms in public service provision. The new e-Government strategic agenda is therefore laid out for increasing the overall transparency of new public management based on the provision of resilient-based public services, thereby advancing the democratic empowerment of all the G2B stakeholders involved and also maximizing the multifold effects of value creations. (shrink)

An association between age-related hearing loss and Alzheimer's Disease has been widely reported. However, the nature of this relationship remains poorly understood. Quantification of hearing loss as it relates to AD is imperative for the creation of reliable, hearing-related biomarkers for earlier diagnosis and development of ARHL treatments that may slow the progression of AD. Previous studies that have measured the association between peripheral hearing function and AD have yielded mixed results. Most of these studies have been small and underpowered (...) to reveal an association. Therefore, in the current report, we sought to estimate the degree to which AD patients have impaired hearing by performing a meta-analysis to increase statistical power. We reviewed 248 published studies that quantified peripheral hearing function using pure-tone audiometry for subjects with AD. Six studies, with a combined total of 171 subjects with AD compared to 222 age-matched controls, met inclusion criteria. We found a statistically significant increase in hearing threshold as measured by pure tone audiometry for subjects with AD compared to controls. For a three-frequency pure tone average calculated for air conduction thresholds at 500–1,000–2,000 Hz, an increase of 2.3 decibel hearing level was found in subjects with AD compared to controls. Likewise, for a four-frequency pure tone average calculated at 500–1,000–2,000–4,000, an increase of 4.5 dB HL was measured, and this increase was significantly greater than that seen for 0.5–2 kHz PTA. There was no difference in the average age of the control and AD subjects. These data confirm the presence of poorer hearing ability in AD subjects, provided a quantitative estimate of the magnitude of hearing loss, and suggest that the magnitude of the effect is greater at higher sound frequencies.Systematic Review Registration:https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/, identifier: CRD42021288280. (shrink)

In this essay, I investigate the origins of Chinese migrant transnationalism and its personal and social consequences. I propose a theoretical perspective that turns on a synthesis that I shall call “cultural functionalism,” a synthesis that attempts to reconcile functionalism and postmodernism. My argument is that Chinese transmigrants overcome modern alienation through a two-way approach: first, a strong participation in and full commitment to community development and connectivity within the Chinese diaspora ; and, second, a religio-cultural renaissance—both being conceived of (...) as constituting a putative “cultural contract” and “social capital” nexus. (shrink)

Purpose This study aims to develop an interdisciplinary political theory of data justice by connecting three major political theories of the public good with empirical studies about the functions of big data and offering normative principles for restricting and guiding the state’s data practices from a public good perspective. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on three major political theories of the public good – the market failure approach, the basic rights approach and the democratic approach – and critical data studies, this study synthesizes (...) existing studies on the promises and perils of big data for public good purposes. The outcome is a conceptual paper that maps philosophical discussions about the conditions under which the state has a legitimate right to collect and use big data for public goods purposes. Findings This study argues that market failure, basic rights protection and deepening democracy can be normative grounds for justifying the state’s right to data collection and utilization, from the perspective of political theories of the public good. The state’s data practices, however, should be guided by three political principles, namely, the principle of transparency and accountability; the principle of fairness; and the principle of democratic legitimacy. The paper draws on empirical studies and practical examples to explicate these principles. Originality/value Bringing together normative political theory and critical data studies, this study contributes to a more philosophically rigorous understanding of how and why big data should be used for public good purposes while discussing the normative boundaries of such data practices. (shrink)

Work is an integral part of modern society. However, the question of the normative conditions that distinguish just from unjust work has been under-investigated in political theory. This article, b...

In this volume, phenomenologists from the West join hands with specialists from mainland China and Hong Kong to discuss the heritage of Husserl’s Logical Investigations. Readers will learn of the early reception of Husserl’s Logical Investigations in China and understand how Husserl’s doctrine of intentionality of consciousness has paved the way to a novel phenomenological explication of religious experience.