Bo Mou

This volume is the first encyclopedia of Chinese philosophy that has ever been published in the English speaking world; it is a valuable reference book not only for those students and scholars in the field of Chinese philosophy but also for all philosophers who are interested in broadening their philosophical perspectives and in how some resources in another significant philosophical tradition could jointly contribute to fundamental philosophical concerns and issues. My strategy in this review is this: first, I will highlight a number of prominent features of this reference book at the surface level; and then, after a brief background introduction, I will make some comments on some distinct characteristics of the volume at a deeper level in regard to its editorial strategy and methodological approaches and in view of the relation of Chinese philosophy with Western philosophy.

In this paper, I give a metaphilosophical analysis of the core idea of deflationism by discussing some basic conceptual and methodological issues involved in the debate between deflationism and substantivism. In so doing, I argue for three positive points. First, the crux of the dispute between deflationism and substantivism is whether or not truth is substantive in its metaphysical nature and in its explanatory role in philosophical enterprises, rather than whether or not a minimal approach regarding conceptual resources is taken to explain truth; a minimal approach itself is philosophically innocent. Second, there is no intrinsic connection between the core idea of deflationism and the Tarski-style equivalence thesis, which is often identified as implying or supporting the former. Third, there are some unbridged fundamental gaps between the core idea of deflationism and various redundancy theses; these redundancy theses cannot be identified as the former, nor can they be used to justify the former on their own.

The dissertation consists of two parts: a negative part and a positive part. The negative part is a critical examination of a contemporary approach to the problem of truth, deflationism, which argues against the traditional substantive approach. The positive part provides an account of truth, called 'substantive quietism', which attempts to preserve and develop what are reasonable in the contrary theories. ;The approach of the critical examination is analytic and critical, not historical or expository. I focus on the core idea and the basic line of deflationism as a whole. The critical examination consists of a general characterization of deflationism and two case analyses . ;The basic moral drawn from the critical examination is this: there are different projects intended to answer different questions concerning truth; those theses in different projects might be compatible with each other; however, an advocate of a certain theory of truth might mistake what he has done actually for one project to meet the demands of quite another. My basic conclusion is this: in spite of its brilliant linguistic descriptions of the logico-syntactic function of the truth predicate, deflationism fails to justify its core idea, i.e., truth is not substantive, by virtue of the descriptions, because the substantive notion of non-linguistic truth turns out to be compatible with the linguistic descriptions. ;Drawing upon the morals from the critical examination, the positive part is a theoretical construction of substantive quietism, which consists of a theory of truth called 'substantive quietist theory' and my surrounding arguments on behalf of its adequacy. SQT is composed of an account of non-linguistic truth and an account of the linguistic truth predicate. The former provides a general definition of what it is to be a definition of truth and a definition of truth, attempting to capture our pretheoretic understanding of non-linguistic truth with minimal explanatory resources. The latter endeavors to characterize the situated uses of the truth predicate that constitute its raison d'etre by an epistemico-pragmatic notion of the truth predicate

In this article, through a comparative analysis of Dewey's and Laozi's relevant accounts, I examine a pragmatic insight concerning moral rules and moral experience to the effect that (i) fixed and formulated moral rules should not be taken as the final absolute moral authority, and (ii) attention needs to be paid to the moral agent's own moral experience that responds to the felt demands in concrete situations. The purpose of this paper is to enhance understanding the crucial points of the pragmatic insight and to look at how, in certain complementary ways, Dewey's and Laozi's distinct approaches could contribute to the pragmatic insight and learn from each other. I endeavour to show several points: (1) The pragmatic insight has its distinct metaphysical foundations in Dewey's and Laozi's accounts, whose combination could enhance each other's visions and overcome each other's limitations; (2) Both Dewey and Laozi reject some sharp dualism to look at the nature of moral experience that responds to the felt demands in concrete situations; in so doing, their distinct focuses on different aspects, or developing stages, of such moral experience could be complementarily coordinated into a whole; (3) Their characterisations of the pragmatic insight are also based upon their distinct but related naturalistic perspectives to human moral foundation; Laozi's approach could provide some constructive insight for and due natural limitations on Dewey's account.

: For the purposes of interpretation and constructive engagement, the structure and content of Confucius' version of the Golden Rule (CGR) is examined by elaborating its three dimensions as suggested in the Analects. It is argued that the CGR, which consists of two intertwined central ideas in Confucius' ethics, shu and zhong, involves three interdependent and complementary dimensions: (1) the methodological (i.e., the methodological aspect of shu), which consists of the principles of reversibility and extensibility; (2) the internal starting point (i.e., the substantial aspect of shu), which somehow points to the fundamental virtue ren and constitutes the internal starting point for applying the methodological principles of the CGR; and (3) the external starting point (i.e., zhong as one's sincere and devoted commitment to those established social constituents specified by the li, regardless of the involved moral recipient's social status), which constitutes the external starting point for applying the methodological principles of the CGR

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 : Pre-Han Period Classical Chinese Philosophy : From Han Through Tang Classical Chinese Philosophy : 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

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 : Pre-Han Period Classical Chinese Philosophy : From Han Through Tang Classical Chinese Philosophy : 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 paper is concerned with the issue of how predication is possible, as a significant common concern in the philosophy of language, metaphysics and semantics. A ‘subject-comment’ account is suggested in view of its constructive engagement with two relevant competing approaches, i.e., the traditional ‘subject-categorization’ account and the ‘topic-comment’ account. The suggested account views predication as a unifying two-level predication: the primary level of predication is made through recognizing and commenting on some particular attribute(s) of the subject’s semantic referent as a thick object (resulting in a weaker version of Russellian proposition) and the secondary level of predication through categorizing the subject’s semantic referent into a certain group via the Fregean conceptual content of the predicate.