Abstract I will explicate Zhuangzi's conception of wuwei as it is articulated in the image of the ?hinge of dao.? First, I will discuss the few actual instances of the term ?wuwei? in the Zhuangzi. Second, I will show that the text uses this imagery to suggest an adaptive or reflective mode of conduct. Third, I will analyse the metaphor of the hinge, and show how this metaphor can illuminate Zhuangzi's notion of wuwei and the behaviour of the realised person. (...) I will show that the hinge represents the way in which the ideal person responds to inevitability, and that Zhuangzi's ideal person could be described as ?perfectly well?adjusted?. Finally, I will demonstrate that this reading offers new meanings and textures to a text that has long been read in only certain ways, so that many of its subtleties have been overlooked. (shrink)

The story of Huayan Buddhism intertwines in many ways with many other more well‐known forms of Buddhist thought. The Buddhist concepts of upāya or “skillful means,” prajnapti from Yogācāra and paramārtha satya from Madhyamaka, justify a range of pragmatic propositions, which represent a healthy way of viewing the world. Upāya refers to the diagnostic and prescriptive skill of a buddha or bodhisattva, who is ostensibly able to discern a particular person's problem and recommend a helpful strategy for solving it. This (...) is a completely contextual approach, though, because different problems lead to different strategies. The metaphysics underlying Huayan's philosophy of totality is based on the central Buddhist model of interdependent causality known as prātityasamutpāda. (shrink)

In his A Theory of Justice, John Rawls suggests that a society's notion of justice informs its distribution of rights, obligations, and goods. For him, "justice as fairness" ensures that the principles dictating this distribution be agreed upon fairly. I will argue that there is no exact parallel in the Chinese tradition to what Rawls is calling "justice as fairness." Instead, we see serving a similar purpose an emphasis on the regulation of harmonious processes within the body of society. This (...) can be seen in the use of the Chinese word zhi (ÖÎ) to refer both to governing and to healing. In this sense, Chinese ideas about justice seem to come closer to Plato than to Rawls. (shrink)

In his book "Walden", Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) describes an experiment intended to determine what is essential in life. His analysis includes a critique of the excesses of material culture, concluding that the most important concerns for human beings revolve around the retention of what he calls "heat." I suggest that there are a number of interesting parallels between this analysis and a cluster of ideas generally describable as "protodaoist" and often attributed to the legendary and obscure figure known as (...) Yang Zhu or Yangzi. In particular, both of these models can be seen to relate one's efficient preservation of life force to the accomplishment of what I am calling one's "natural destiny," and both include a concomitant critique of material culture. In this essay I will define the concept of natural destiny and articulate and compare the two models' common concern with achieving it through properly economizing one's resources in the face of the diversion provoked by material attachments. (shrink)

I propose to consider chapter 1 of the famous, classic, and foundational Daoist text Dao De Jing, attributed to Laozi, in order to enable a non-expert to negotiate the subject of Daoism in a global philosophy context, and to further enhance the teaching of philosophy by introducing and emphasizing at least some of the controversies that inevitably surround interpretation of a classical set of texts and ideas. This forces students to see through simplistic dichotomies and form subtler conclusions, on their (...) own, and I suggest that this is what the teaching of philosophy should always involve, to be considered philosophy. (shrink)

Why has the labeled line versus across-fiber pattern debate of taste coding not been resolved? Erickson suggests that the basic tastes concept has no rational definition to test. Similarly, however, taste neuron types, which are fundamental to the across-fiber pattern concept, have not been formally defined, leaving this concept with no rational definition to test. Consequently, the two concepts are largely indistinguishable.

The first seven chapters of the text, often called the Inner Chapters, are generally attributed to Zhuang Zhou (Chuang Chou), who, according to legend, lived in what is now known as Honan from approximately 370-286 BC. The rest of the text is often understood to contain fragments of material, some of which are sometimes attributed to the same author as the Inner Chapters, some of which are attributed to other authors, including representatives of the Yangzhu (Yang Chu) tradition. For the (...) sake of convenience, this article will refer to the author and/or authors of the text simply as Zhuangzi. (shrink)

This book is the outgrowth of a panel of papers on the theme of "memory," presented at the 1987 Annual Meeting of the Buddhism Section of the American Academy of Religion. Four of the contributors to this volume, including Western phenomenologist Edward Casey from SUNY Stony Brook, participated in that panel, though the papers were obviously further developed since that inceptional presentation. The book focusses on the crucial but heretofore almost entirely overlooked topic of memory and remembrance as it appears (...) in the Indian and Tibetan Buddhist traditions. There are 11 papers here, plus an editor's introduction, and though some of them seem to overlap somewhat, none makes any of the others completely redundant or unnecessary. The result is a very thorough and novel treatment of a crucially important subject for Buddhologists, and is further a fine example of Comparative Philosophy. (shrink)

The primary project involves an analysis of the phenomenon described as Ki-energy. This concept is found in some form or another and is called by a variety of names in a number of traditional yogic and medical technologies. Counterparts to Ki from other cultural traditions would be, for example: qi from the Chinese tradition; prana from the Indian traditions; nefesh or ruach from the Hebrew traditions; and so on. Phenomenologically, this life force accounts for the activity and "living-ness" of living (...) things. The attempt to conserve and cultivate this life force informs many yogic systems. (shrink)

Varieties of Ethical Reflection brings together new cultural and religious perspectives—drawn from non-Western, primarily Asian, philosophical sources—to globalize the contemporary discussion of theoretical and applied ethics.

Feminist science critics, in particular Sandra Harding, Carolyn Merchant, and Evelyn Fox Keller, claim that misogynous sexual metaphors played an important role in the rise of modern science. The writings of Francis Bacon have been singled out as an especially egregious instance of the use of misogynous metaphors in scientific philosophy. This paper offers a defense of Bacon.

A detailed examination of the philosophy of science of Evelyn Fox Keller, with special emphasis on her account of "objectivity" and her understanding of the methodology of Barbara McClintock.

Alan Gewirth’s Reason and Morality justifies certain fundamental moral principles and develops morality out of the basic structure of action. Contemporary literature exposes a critical flaw in the second stage of Gewirth’s argument contending that Gewirth fails to create agent-neutral moral claims. In order to provide a transfer of interests between agents, the solution to Gewirth’s problem, I argue that certain Rawlsian concepts buttress and are consistent with Gewirth’s argument for the normative structure of action.

John Fox argued that deductivism must be supplemented with ‘epistemic syllogisms’, non-deductive arguments whose vindication is trivial if deductivism is correct. I resist this attempt to surpass deductivism.

This essay is a case study of the self-destruction that occurs in the work of a social-constructionist historian of science who embraces a radical philosophy of science. It focuses on Thomas Laqueur's Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud in arguing that a history of science committed to the social construction of science and to the central theses of Kuhnian, Duhemian, and Quinean philosophy of science is incoherent through self-reference. Laqueur's text is examined in detail in order (...) to make the main point; a similar phenomenon in the work of the feminist historian of science Evelyn Fox Keller is then briefly discussed. (shrink)

I propose to consider the question, "Can machines think?" This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think." The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous, If the meaning of the words "machine" and "think" are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to (...) the question, "Can machines think?" is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words. The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the 'imitation game." It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart front the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either "X is A and Y is B" or "X is B and Y is A." The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B. We now ask the question, "What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?" Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, "Can machines think?". (shrink)

What is the basis for arguing that a volunteer army exploits citizens who lack civilian career opportunities? How do we determine that a doctor who has sex with his patients is exploiting them? In this book, Alan Wertheimer seeks to identify when a transaction or relationship can be properly regarded as exploitative--and not oppressive, manipulative, or morally deficient in some other way--and explores the moral weight of taking unfair advantage. Among the first political philosophers to examine this important topic (...) from a non-Marxist perspective, Wertheimer writes about ordinary experience in an accessible yet philosophically penetrating way. He considers whether it is seriously wrong for a party to exploit another if the transaction is consensual and mutually advantageous, whether society can justifiably prohibit people from entering into such a transaction, and whether it is wrong to allow oneself to be exploited. Wertheimer first considers several contexts commonly characterized as exploitive, including surrogate motherhood, unconscionable contracts, the exploitation of student athletes, and sexual exploitation in psychotherapy. In a section outlining his theory of exploitation, he sets forth the criteria for a fair transaction and the point at which we can properly say that a party has consented. Whereas many discussions of exploitation have dealt primarily with cases in which one party harms or coerces another, Wertheimer's book focuses on what makes a mutually advantageous and consensual transaction exploitive and analyzes the moral and legal implications of such exploitation. (shrink)

When does a woman give valid consent to sexual relations? When does her consent render it morally or legally permissible for a man to have sexual relations with her? Why is sexual consent generally regarded as an issue about female consent? And what is the moral significance of consent? These are some of the questions discussed in this important book, which will appeal to a wide readership in philosophy, law, and the social sciences. Alan Wertheimer develops a theory of (...) consent to sexual relations that applies to both law and morality in the light of the psychology of sexual relations, the psychology of perpetrators, and the psychology of the victims. He considers a wide variety of difficult cases such as coercion, fraud, retardation, and intoxication. We can all agree that 'no' means 'no'. This book suggests that the difficult question is whether 'yes' means 'yes'. (shrink)

Explores language and mysticism, Buddhism and Zen, Christianity, comparative religion, psychedelics, and psychology and psychotherapy. Gold Winner for Philosophy, 2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards To commemorate the 2015 centenary of the birth of Alan Watts (1915–1973), Peter J. Columbus and Donadrian L. Rice have assembled a much-needed collection of Watts’s scholarly essays and lectures. Compiled from professional journals, monographs, scholarly books, conferences, and symposia proceedings, the volume sheds valuable light on the developmental arc of Watts’s thinking (...) about language and mysticism, Buddhism and Zen, Christianity, comparative religion, psychedelics, and psychology and psychotherapy. This definitive collection challenges Watts’s reputation as a “popularizer” or “philosophical entertainer,” revealing his concerns to be much more expansive and transdisciplinary than is suggested by the parochial “Zen Buddhist” label commonly affixed to his writings. The editors’ authoritative introduction elucidates contemporary perspectives on Watts’s life and work, and supports a bold rethinking of his contributions to psychology, philosophy, and religion. Peter J. Columbus is Administrator of the Shantigar Foundation in Rowe, Massachusetts. Donadrian L. Rice is Professor of Psychology at the University of West Georgia. Together they are the coeditors of Alan Watts—Here and Now: Contributions to Psychology, Philosophy, and Religion, also published by SUNY Press. (shrink)

This paper lays out the basic structure of any view involving coincident entities, in the light of the grounding problem. While the account is not novel, I highlight fundamental features, to which attention is not usually properly drawn. With this in place, I argue for a number of further claims: The basic differences between coincident objects are modal differences, and any other differences between them need to be explained in terms of these differences. More specifically, the basic difference is not (...) a difference in sort. A number of recent defenses of coincidence, which share the basic structure I outline, misidentify what, in their accounts, plays the basic role of addressing the grounding problem. More tentatively, I argue Coincident entities differ only in these modal properties, and properties they entail. In particular, they do not differ in properties like ‘being a tree,’ ‘being a statue,’ or aesthetic properties, and finally in light of how the account of coincidence offered addresses the grounding problem, the grounding problem provides no reason to prefer monism to pluralism. (shrink)

Olav Gjelsvik: Quine on Observationality: This chapter discusses the role of the observationality of objects in Quine's philosophy. It does it by providing an overview of some of the milestones in Quine's thoughts about observation and observation sentences, and in connection with each milestone it identifies some of the philosophical problems Quine responds to and deals with. To help us understand how his thinking developed, the chapter discusses some of these problems and evaluates his responses. The final part discusses both (...) details and the bigger picture, partly by relating Quine to philosophers before him and after him. (shrink)

The correspondence of a one-of-a-kind spiritual maverick who continues to influence thinkers of all stripes.

This parable from the beloved philosopher Alan Watts tells the story of a confused fish who begins to chase his own tail in an effort to keep from falling to the bottom of the ocean. The poor fish becomes more and more anxious and exhausted, until the Great Sea speaks up to remind him of what was supporting him all along. This is a 32-page, fully illustrated picture book with illustrations from award-winning illustrator Khoa Le with a message every (...) bit as relevant now as when it first appeared in a periodical in the 1950s. (shrink)

This introductory textbook is an overview of the nature and the ethics of the many aspects of sex and love"--Provided by publisher.

Though less well known than his other work, Turings 1938 Princeton Thesis, this title which includes his notion of an oracle machine, has had a lasting influence on computer science and mathematics. It presents a facsimile of the original typescript of the thesis along with essays by Appel and Feferman that explain its still-unfolding significance.

Abstract This paper examines the treatment of thick ethical concepts in Williams's work in order to evaluate the consistency of his treatment of ethical and epistemic concepts and to assess whether the idea of a thick concept can be extended from ethics to epistemology. A virtue epistemology is described modeled on a cognitivist virtue ethics. Williams's genealogy of the virtues surrounding propositional knowledge (the virtues of ?truthfulness?) is critically evaluated. It is concluded that this genealogy is an important contribution to (...) the project of virtue epistemology. Thick concepts must not only feature in the account but will sustain more of the marks of objectivity than their ethical counterparts. This is so even on Williams's demanding assumptions. (shrink)

A textbook for the undergraduate who is meeting the Lebesgue integral for the first time, relating it to the calculus and exploring its properties before deducing the consequent notions of measurable functions and measure.

This chapter contains sections titled: From Liberalism to Republican Liberalism Cohen's Critique of Rawls A Liberal Republican Political Economy Liberal and Republican Approaches to Effective Political Agency The Republican Alternative Conclusion References.

Angela Ballantyne (2010) argues that international research is exploitative when the transactions between researchers and participants who lack basic goods do not provide participants with the maxi...

Philosopher Alan Watts describes his experiences with consciousness-changing drugs and the levels of insight that they can facilitate, illuminating questions about the nature of existence and the existence of the sacred. Originally published in 1962; new edition includes article on psychedelics written for the California Law Review"--Provided by publisher.

This highly original and compelling book offers an introduction to the art and science of social inquiry, including the theoretical and methodological frameworks that support that inquiry.

BackgroundThe merits and drawbacks of moral relevance models of addiction have predominantly been discussed theoretically, without empirical evidence of these potential effects. This study develops and evaluates a novel survey measure for assessing moral evaluations of patient substance misuse (ME-PSM).MethodsThis measure was tested on 524 health professionals (i.e., physicians, nurses, and other health professionals) in California (n = 173), urban France (n = 102), and urban China (n = 249). Demographic factors associated with ME-PSM were investigated using analyses of variance (...) (ANOVAs) and t-tests, with results suggesting that ME-PSM is higher among younger health professionals, nurses (when compared with physicians and other health professionals), and Chinese health professionals (when compared with French and American health professionals).ResultsResults provide preliminary support for the psychometric quality of the survey measure introduced in this study, including the existence of a single latent structure and partial invariance of collected data across countries.ConclusionThe survey measure for ME-PSM which was developed and tested in the current study appears to hold potential utility for use as a measure of moral views of patient substance misuse. With development, this measure may be used to examine moral evaluations, both as factors of stigma and of other clinical factors associated with the treatment of patients with substance use disorders. (shrink)