•  78
    Book Review: The World in the Wave Function - The Metaphysics of Quantum Physics by A. Ney (review)
    CHEOLHAK, Korean Philosophical Association 156 211-224. 2023.
    (English translation from the text in Korean) The assertion that both humanity and the external world share a fundamental unity has gained increasing recognition, particularly in light of the growing discourse surrounding quantum physics. This perspective draws parallels with conceptual frameworks found in Western idealism, Eastern Buddhism, and the philosophy of Zhuangzi. In examining the current state of scientific inquiry, one cannot overlook the profound impact of quantum mechanics on the f…Read more
  •  317
    Book review: D. J. Chalmers, Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy (review)
    Journal of the Society of Philosophical Studies, South Korea 138 (Journal of The Society of Philos): 143-156. 2022.
    At the time in which quantum mechanics engages in talks of multiverses and quantum technologies helps to realize a concept of metaverse, the so-called ‘virtual life’ has become the extended reality. Chalmers in his book rejects a dichotomy of reality and illusion and consctructs a trichotomy by adding virtuality in order to offer a proposition that a virtual world is a part of the extended reality. The author sees new philosophical challenges in this new reality. For an example, as we are bound …Read more
  •  192
    Book review: Zhang Hwe-Ik’s Lectures on Natural Philosophy (review)
    Philosophy 150 ((CHEOLHAK, Korean Philosophical): 333-343. 2022.
    Now it’s the time to hear lots of talks about crisis of philosophy and disappearance of humanities. One can assume that the trend of such dialogues is related to a culture that conviction on the modernistic absolute truth is waning and belief’s on postmodernistic pluralism gets strong. How could postmodoernism gain such a strong momentum? I could offer a hypothesis for the question, that is, that philosophy of quantum mechanics played an important role. In my mind, Zhang Hwe-Ik’s book explains h…Read more
  •  5
    Les dispositions : une analyse intégrationnelle
    with Nicole G. Albert
    Diogène 4 59-70. 2016.
    What sort of difficulties are faced by Humean and dispositional accounts of causality? On the one hand, Humean accounts explain the relation of causality in terms of contiguity, temporal priority, constant conjunction, and contingency, denying any notion of modality in light of the fact that there is no experiential impression of necessity involved in causation. But this is not persuasive as it does not accord with ordinary intuitions. On the other hand, many dispositionalists interpret causalit…Read more
  •  10
    Dispositions: An Integrational Analysis
    Diogenes 62 (2): 32-40. 2015.
    Whereas the Humean accounts of causality in terms of contiguity, temporal priority, constant conjunction, and contingency face difficulties of one sort, the dispositional explanations of causality in terms of reciprocity, simultaneity, ubiquity, and holism seem to meet difficulties of another sort. But the difficulties which dispositionalism faces may be dissipated if one can appeal consistently to the logic of naturalism, rather than to the grammar of an implicit dualism, for example, as it is …Read more
  •  10
    Dispositions: An Integrational Analysis
    Diogenes 62 (2): 32-40. 2015.
    Whereas the Humean accounts of causality in terms of contiguity, temporal priority, constant conjunction, and contingency face difficulties of one sort, the dispositional explanations of causality in terms of reciprocity, simultaneity, ubiquity, and holism seem to meet difficulties of another sort. But the difficulties which dispositionalism faces may be dissipated if one can appeal consistently to the logic of naturalism, rather than to the grammar of an implicit dualism, for example, as it is …Read more
  •  131
    For a while, life and environment have been regarded as two separate subjects, but recently life and environment are to be seen as different aspects of one single theme. There are able philosophers who maintain the connection of the two but Seokheon Ham is believed to present a more coherent case. To him, integration is not merely a property which is unifying various elements, but it has a deep ontological structure seen in his utterance “there is not a thing in the world which does not have a r…Read more
  •  204
    Singularity Humanities -Singularity robot is a member of human community
    Cheolhak-Korean Journal of Philosophy 131 189-216. 2017.
    [Abstract] Suppose that the Big Bang was the first singularity in the history of the cosmos. Then it would be plausible to presume that the availability of the strong general intelligence should mark the second singularity for the natural human race. The human race needs to be prepared to make it sure that if a singularity robot becomes a person, the robotic person should be a blessing for the humankind rather than a curse. Toward this direction I would scrutinize the implication of the hypothe…Read more
  •  217
    Human mind and human body have been separated from each other as belonging to familiar different categories. But what if we are supposed to admit a category of bodily posture? This is a paper to advance a thesis that mental content in bodily posture is a basis to integrate mind and body. First, what is the basis to claim that there is such a thing as a bodily posture? We humans all communicate each other not only through an ordinary language but also through human postures. Often human postures …Read more
  •  239
    The Western intellectual tradition is accustomed to the separation between the human sphere and the sphere of nature, whereas in the East Asian intellectual tradition the two are considered continuous. For good or bad, the Western dualist outlook, which considers mind and matter to be fundamentally distinct, received much philosophical attention in modern times. But how is the East Asian tradition of non-separation to be philosophically expounded? The idea that the human sphere and the sphere of…Read more
  •  248
    The ‘seeds’ Thoughts proposed by YU Youngmo and HAM Sukhun may each be summed up by propositions expressed in “People are a May-fly seed” and “Seeds embody the eternal sense”. They used “seed” to refer to humans or people on the one hand and placed the notion of seed in the holistic context of the Eastern Asian tradition on the other. Then, I seek to connect the anthropological notion and the holistic notion via cheng(誠) or integration. Zhungyong-The Doctrine of the Mean, one of 4 Confucian…Read more
  •  250
    What are some metaphysical fundamentals which constitute the reality? This question has occupied philosophers for a long time. The western tradition once dealt with conceptions of earth, air, water, fire, ether whereas the eastern tradition has studied notions like yin-yang(陰陽), taiji(太極), lichi(理氣). The question is now being researched under the name of physicalism or naturalism, and yet what is not yet clarified is the relationship between electromagnetic force as the fundamental of the physic…Read more
  •  343
    Whereas the Humean accounts of causality in terms of contiguity, temporal priority, constant conjunction, and contingency face difficulties of one sort, the dispositional explanations of causality...
  •  170
    Dispositions: An Integrational(誠) Analysis (on line)
    Diogenes, Special Issue on Korean Philosophy Today. 2017.
    Whereas the Humean accounts of causality in terms of contiguity, temporal priority, constant conjunction, and contingency face difficulties of one sort, the dispositional explanations of causality in terms of reciprocity, simultaneity, ubiquity, and holism seem to meet difficulties of another sort. But the difficulties which dispositionalism faces may be dissipated if one can appeal consistently to the logic of naturalism, rather than to the grammar of an implicit dualism, for example, as it is …Read more
  •  319
    Would it be possible to have an alternative to the physicalist world-view? If any type of dualism is not an option, I am tempted to consider an integrational world view, which was first claimed by Confucius under the notion of cheng. I would propose an integrational thesis that cheng of an entity is a power to realize the embedded objective of it in the context where it interacts with all others. The notion of compassion may be said to be both dispositional and mental. Then, this notion is one c…Read more
  •  149
    The Seed Thoughts proposed by YU Youngmo and HAM Sukhun may each be summed up by propositions expressed in “People are a May-fly seed” and “Seeds embody the eternal meaning”. They used “seed” to refer to humans or people on the one hand and placed the notion of seed in the holistic context of the Eastern Asian tradition on the other. Then, I seek to connect the anthropological notion and the holistic notion via cheng(誠) or integration. 『The Doctrine of the Mean』says that any ultimate int…Read more
  •  196
    Nouvelles orientations pour les sciences humaines
    Diogène 229 (1/2): 144-152. 2010.
    It seems that a new notion of language played an important role in seeing how notions like knowledge and humanities are to be understood anew. I believe that our notion of language is not only pluralistic in the sense that distinct verbal languages force us to see the world in different ways but also ubiquitous in the sense that anything which is seen by human eyes or which is processed digitally is a text in need of interpretation. Then, our notion of knowledge needs to be communal rather than …Read more
  •  260
    Integrationality(誠): A Metaphysical Basis for the Concept of Causation
    In Kihyeon Kim (ed.), Philosophical Analysis 17 (1), The Korean Society of Analytic Philosophy. pp. 1-20. 2016.
    Philosophers of dispositionalism deny the Humean account of causality in terms of constant conjunction, contiguity, temporal priority and contingency. And some of them go further to explain the causal relation not between events or objects, but between properties, in terms of reciprocity, simultaneity, ubiquity, intentionality and holism. But their exposition seems to remain fragmented even though they try to make use of the notions of intentionality and holim. I would inquire reasons why it is …Read more
  •  422
    Abstract: The so-called “crisis of the humanities” can be understood in terms of an asymmetry between the natural and social sciences on the one hand and the humanities on the other. While the sciences approach topics related to human experience in quantificational or experimental terms, the humanities turn to ancient, canonical, and other texts in the search for truths about human experience. As each approach has its own unique limitations, it is desirable to overcome or remove the asymmetry be…Read more
  •  370
    It seems that a new notion of language played an important role in seeing how notions like knowledge and humanities are to be understood anew. I believe that our notion of language is not only pluralistic in the sense that distinct verbal languages force us to see the world in different ways but also ubiquitous in the sense that anything which is seen by human eyes or which is processed digitally is a text in need of interpretation. Then, our notion of knowledge needs to be communal rather than …Read more
  •  335
    Intentionality of Cheng(誠): Toward an Organic View
    In Korean Philosophical Association (ed.), Philosophy and Culture: Metaphysics, . pp. 33-40. 2008.
    The notion of intentionality has been in the center of the debate between dualism and physicalism quite some time. Dualism insists that intentionality is the mark of mental phenomena which separates humans from other animals whereas physicalism roughly claims that whatever there is either reducible to some physical states or explainable in terms of some physical language. But both of them are deeply troubled. Is there any other alternative? Where can we look for one? We know that Asian traditi…Read more
  •  593
    A Redemptive Analysis of Suffering
    Philosophy Study 5 (10): 530-536. 2015.
    The notion of suffering carries with it aspects which are private and individual on the one hand and social and lingual on the other. I would pay attention to the latter part of the suffering notion, where the notion of suffering is recognized to be primitive by almost all the theories of human values. This primitive character allows a commensurable basis on the basis of which most plural theories share something in common to talk objectively to each other. In this paper I would like to offer t…Read more
  •  492
    As physicalisms of various kinds have faced difficulties in recent years, the time has come to explore possible alternatives, one of which is yinyang ontology. A yinyang theorist is expected to provide a plausible account of causation to replace the traditional notion of causation. The present paper is critical of the Humean tradition, which understands the relata of causal relations in terms of passive materiality so that humans use referential terms to describe causal relations constructively.…Read more
  •  546
    Indexical Realism by Inter-Agentic Reference
    Journal of Philosophical Ideas (Seoul National University) 3-33. 2017.
    I happen to believe that though human experiences are to be characterized as pluralistic they are all rooted in the one reality. I would assume the thesis of pluralism but how could I maintain my belief in the realism? There are various discussions in favor of realism but they appear to stay within a particular paradigm so to be called “internal realism”. In this paper I would try to justify my belief in the reality by discussing a special use of indexicals. I will argue for my indexical realism…Read more
  •  202
    Fitting: A Case of Cheng(誠) Intentionality
    Proceedings of the Xxii World Congress of Philosophy 39 35-41. 2008.
    Notions of fitting seem to be attractive in explaining language understanding. This paper tries to interpret "fitting" in terms of holistic (cheng, 誠) intentionality rather than the dualistic one. I propose to interpret “cheng” as a notion of integration: The cheng of an entity is the power to realize the embedded objective of it in the context where it interacts with all others; "Mind" refers to the ability of not a single kind of entity but to that of all entities of complex degrees in process…Read more