Bo Mou

The _History of Chinese Philosophy_ is a comprehensive and authoritative examination of the movements and thinkers that have shaped Chinese philosophy over the last three thousand years. An outstanding team of international contributors provide seventeen accessible entries organised into five clear parts: Identity of Chinese Philosophy Classical Chinese Philosophy (I): Pre-Han Period Classical Chinese Philosophy (II): From _Han_ Through _Tang_ Classical Chinese Philosophy (III): From _Song _Through Early _Qing_ Modern Chinese Philosophy: From Late _Qing _Through 21st Century This outstanding collection is essential reading for students of Chinese philosophy, and will be of interest to those seeking to explore the lasting significance this rich and complex philosophical tradition.

In this article I intend, on the basis of some previous relevant works on the issue, to further examine a range of conditions for maintaining adequate methodological guiding principles concerning how to look at the relation between distinct methodological perspectives in comparative-engagement exploration in philosophy. The purpose of this paper is to explore how, in the global context, distinct approaches in philosophy can be engaged in order toconstructively talk to each other and make a joint contribution to the development of philosophy and society.

What I intend to do here are closely related three things. First, in response to Searle’s “reply” comments on my previous article “Searle, Zhuang Zi, and Transcendental Perspectivism”, I will clarify and further elaborate one of the central points concerning the “perspective” dimension and “perspective-transcending” dimension of consciousness there. Second, more substantially, I will strengthen my point by explaining the “double-aboutness” character of consciousness which is intrinsically related to the foregoing two dimensions of consciousness concerning its “hooking-up-to-objects” capacity; through a semantic-ascent strategy, I will also explain how the point has substantial theoretic implications for exploring the issue of how the cross-perspective engagement is possible. Third, I will explain how bridging Searle’s and Zhuang Zi’s resources in view of the double-aboutness character of consciousness can contribute to our understanding and treatment of the foregoing issue.

When doing philosophy, there is one norm-like common basis of which we have our pre-theoretic understanding (the “same-object-recognizing” understanding for short) to the effect that, given an object (to be under examination), there is a way that the object objectively is such that we can all talk about that same object even though we may say different things about it, neither resulting in “anything goes” nor bringing about radically different objects thus without genuine engagement. A theoretic examination of the metaphysical issue of the self-identity (as sameness) of given objects (or, in plain words and in a semantic ascent way, “how is it possible to talk about the same object differently?”) can enhance and refine the “same-object-recognizing” understanding as one significant common normative basis of doing philosophy in a constructive-engaging way. In this essay, with relevant theoretic resources of the enhanced account of relative identity and the refined characterization of the law of identity as explained in the recent literature, I examine the metaphysical issue of the self-identity (as sameness) of given objects in two closely related layers, i.e., the “way” layer and the “being” layer of “the way things are” regarding self-identities of given objects. In a holistic way, I first examine several distinct but representative types of (relative) sameness involved in the “way” part of self-identities of given objects; I then focus on five representative types of existential sameness in the “being” part at the “base” level of given objects. Their relation can be highlighted in this way: metaphysically, in the sense to be explained, distinct types of sameness at the “way” layer without existential sameness at the “being”-base layer is “empty” of base, while existential sameness at the “being”-base layer without distinct types of sameness at the “way” layer is “blind” to differentiation.

In this paper, I give a metaphilosophical examination of three major orientations in comparative studies (i.e., historical one, interpretation-concerned one, and philosophical-issue-concerned one) and four 'sins' that are oft-cited in critically evaluating a comparative study, namely over-simplification, over-use of external resources, exaggerated distinction, and blurring assimilation. I argue that the appropriateness of these 'sins' depends on orientations, purposes and methodological approaches in comparative studies and that, in those comparative studies with the interpretation-concerned and philosophicalissue- concerned orientations, due simplification, use of external resources and assimilation are not merely legitimate but also adequate or even necessary. In so doing, I explain how constructive engagement between Chinese and Western philosophy, or, more generally speaking, between different philosophical traditions, is related to contemporary development and resources of philosophy.

The _History of Chinese Philosophy_ is a comprehensive and authoritative examination of the movements and thinkers that have shaped Chinese philosophy over the last three thousand years. An outstanding team of international contributors provide seventeen accessible entries organised into five clear parts: Identity of Chinese Philosophy Classical Chinese Philosophy (I): Pre-Han Period Classical Chinese Philosophy (II): From _Han_ Through _Tang_ Classical Chinese Philosophy (III): From _Song _Through Early _Qing_ Modern Chinese Philosophy: From Late _Qing _Through 21st Century This outstanding collection is essential reading for students of Chinese philosophy, and will be of interest to those seeking to explore the lasting significance this rich and complex philosophical tradition.

This book demonstrates how, through cross-tradition engagement, insights from the Chinese philosophical tradition can work with relevant resources from modern logic and contemporary philosophy to enhance our understanding of two basic principles of logic: the law of identity and the law of non-contradiction. The law of identity and the law of non-contradiction are widely accepted principles in logic. However, there are disagreements as to how to understand and treat the genuine structures and contents of these two basic principles. This book provides a holistic inquiry into these principles for the sake of enhancing our understanding and treatment of them from the vantage point of cross-tradition engagement. It begins by offering a philosophical interpretation of three classical texts in Chinese philosophy in their contexts: the Bai-Ma-Lun in Gongsun Long's texts, the Xiao-Qu in the Later Mohist texts, and Lao Zi's Dao-De-Jing in classical Daoism. The author explains an innovative dual-track characterization of relative identity that is informed by relevant resources from these texts as well as Western philosophical traditions. He shows how this cross-tradition engaging approach can make constructive and significant contributions to the jointly concerned fundamental issues of identity and reference in logic, philosophy of logic and language, metaphysics, as well as philosophy more generally. Cross-Tradition Engagement on the Laws of Logic will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of logic, philosophy of language, Chinese philosophy, and comparative philosophy.

The purpose of this study is to suggest and explain an engaging approach to three distinct types of (alleged or genuine) semantic paradoxes, the White-Horse-Not-Horse Paradox, the Ultimate-Unspeakable Paradox, and the Liar Paradox, in a unifying way that is sensitive to distinct features of them. Although the three types of semantic paradoxes address distinct types of objects, and although their seemingly paradoxical features are different (alleged or genuine), their distinct structures and contents can be understood and treated on the same common ground, which is jointly conceived in people’s pretheoretic understandings of truth and of the double-reference feature of people’s basic employment of language (saying something about an object), and from the unifying vantage point of a double-reference approach.

In this theme essay for the addressed special-theme section in this special issue of the journal Comparative Philosophy commemorating the first anniversary of the International Society for Comparative Philosophy toward World Philosophy, I intend to give an elaboration of the theme “comparative philosophy as a general way of doing philosophy through cross-tradition engagement toward world philosophy”, which has been explicitly presented and formally stated through its recent academic-organizational channel CPWP and focuses on via the Journal’s and CPWP’s jointly organized international conference. The theme “comparative philosophy toward world philosophy” as a whole marks a momentous accumulating point of the significant development of comparative philosophy as a general way of doing philosophy through cross-tradition engagement regarding its “direction” dimension, through the constructive-engagement strategy in theoretic exploration and reflective practice especially since the beginning of this century.

The aim of this essay is to give a meta-philosophical and meta-methodological characterization of some central characteristic features comparative philosophy as a general way of doing philosophy through cross-tradition engagement toward world philosophy. This is elucidated by presenting a holistic account of the conditions for maintaining adequate methodological guiding principles for appropriately and effectively considering different approaches to philosophy. This essay is meta-methodological in character: Given that comparative philosophy sets out to explore how to adequately look at contraries (especially those from different philosophical traditions, but not limited to them, methodologically speaking), and given the self-reflective philosophical nature of comparative philosophy, exploring adequacy conditions for how to look at contraries is meta-methodological in character but also a significant part of comparative philosophy per se. This meta-methodological exploration in comparative philosophy is neither exhaustive nor exclusive: It is not exhaustive because comparative philosophy as a whole has other substantial contents; it is not exclusive because this suggested account itself is open-ended and can include further adequate conditions that would be complementary to the current set from the holistic vantage point, which is exactly one ending point of this essay.