Wai Lok Cheung

It is an orthodoxy championed by Kripke that Frege’s theory of sense is a semantic theory. With Frege’s focus on abstract objects as examples, I point out that much can be learned from Kripke’s metaphysics and epistemology, but I disagree with him with my epistemological theory of sense. Abstract objects are the way they are necessarily, but concrete objects are often not; if sense is objective, is it then necessary? That Hesperus occupies a given position in the evening sky constitutes the sense of the proper name ‘Hesperus’, which, if one were to interact appropriately with others in a linguistic community using that name, one is to know, but Venus could have been knocked out of its course. If sense is modifiable, how is it still objective? Besides the exegetical contention that Frege’s theory of sense is epistemological, I will also develop a measure of objectivity along representation, or Vorstellung, which cuts across belief and knowledge. A representation reaching a given objectivity constitutes sense, and I explore whether objectivity is explained with justifiability thus. I propose a common ground conception of sense that is epistemological, which connects to the orthodoxy through linguistic conventionality.

Pritchard explains the putative failure of knowledge in the fake barn case using epistemic safety. I bring out the notion of epistemic luck, and interact epistemic competence with it through epistemic situation. I propose that evidence supervenes on epistemic situation, such that, given an epistemic success, the measure of epistemic luck of the corresponding epistemic act is degree 1.0 minus the degree of one’s epistemic competence. This provides a virtue-theoretic understanding of inductive inference, given that statistical intelligence constitutes an epistemic skill that is an element of epistemic competence. The upshot within virtue epistemology is the epistemic obligation to minimize epistemic luck through bettering one’s epistemic competence; from without, it seems epistemology, shall it need to explain inductive knowledge, cannot do without epistemic competence.

This study draws exclusively on Biblical sources to contrast an alleged self-righteousness from a liberal society with a hypocrisy putatively substantiated by religion, especially Christianity, through some hypocrisy from the Jews by descent identified by St. Paul. Furthermore, the paper distinguishes between the proclamation of someone going to Hell as an assertion of Biblical truth, and the venting of frustration through cursing others with a misinterpreted condemnation attributed to Jesus Christ. This distinction illustrates the integrity of the truth-bearer in contrast to the misusers of the Bible.

Practical encroachment may be understood with an influx of epistemic possibilities into the epistemic context through raising epistemic standard. The same piece of evidence no longer epistemically justifies the corresponding belief because of the extra alternative possibilities. I differentiate relevance into ethical relevance and epistemic relevance through practical interest, and note that, even though one lost confidence in some facts one used to know, one did not lose epistemic justification. I will illustrate the difference between making an epistemic justificatory difference to knowledge and its required precision, and making only an ethical justificatory difference about what one decides to do. If banks are not open on Saturday mornings, one would have to decide differently concerning when it is that one deposited one’s pay cheque, but the salience of the alternative does not constitute its epistemic relevance: one retained the epistemic justification to know that the bank will be open tomorrow all the same. One’s belief is thus still epistemically safe as before. Epistemic risk measures the likelihood of having committed an epistemic wrong, which is constituted by believing falsely. I propose a numerical relation between epistemic safety and epistemic risk as a result.

Evil does not accidentally wrong; it necessarily does so. With Jesus, we understand evil better through His mercilessness on Satan and its followers. Love your enemies, but not Satan, who constitutes enemy in spirituality. A genuine reconciliation is possible between enemies, if respect is understood correctly. It is so rare that the perpetrator offered the victim the satisfaction of retribution, with which the victim could have decided to forgive and not exact some earthly, mafia, justice. Christianity obligates forgiveness in this way: Christians are not Christ-like shall they retributed. The opportunity to forgive is a Godsend. This paper explores the respect restoration theory of reconciliation with the June Fourth Incident happened in Tiananmen Square as a case study. It both demonstrates and illustrates the truth of the theory through a reconstruction of events that are the only possible past with which the killing was not evil and the perpetrator forgivable.

Nothingness is inconceivable, yet at the same time it is not inconceivable because it is actually referred to. I propose several accessibility relations to illustrate that nothingness is not an object at all. The fictional object that Sherlock Holmes is belongs to the domain of some semantic context, but the fictionally fictional object that nothingness is does not. Based on this idea, I will also discuss the semantics of “Nothingness does not exist”. How is it that it is not an object, unlike Sherlock Holmes, but we attribute to it nonexistence?

Humanity obligates respect. To respect someone is to intend what the person intended that one intends. A daughter respected her father if if he intended that she rests regularly, then she does so with the correct motive. Jesus’ Greatest Commandment, through the Worship of Yahweh identified via the First Commandment, interacts love with respect. If to love is to value the loved one’s welfare, valuing it for its own sake differentiates a malignant form of love from one out of respect. From gender, through ethnicity and humanity, I bring out the theological insight from us being created in the image of God. Why respect? Because we are human. But why does humanity obligate respect? Because Yahweh commanded so. The vice of idolatry, ecologically, is constituted by self-disrespect – a form of worship that demeans and defiles oneself. That we are grateful to be Designed thus enlightens our life.

An intentional fallacy is committed when one sets the goal of getting to the author’s intention. In this paper, I restore authorial authority, through proposing a situational hermeneutic. It obligates, when engaging with a text, stepping into the author’s shoes. Instead of focusing only on the ideas of the author, I emphasise the importance of knowing how the text relates to the author’s world through identifying the referents. This priority of reference over meaning resonates with Chad Hansen’s black-box analogy in contravention of Eurocentrism, which focuses on the mentality of the author. I develop an externalism from his apparent linguistic behaviourism, by bringing out the mental element, referential intention, in my pragmatic theory. I will argue for the importance of knowledge of situation of the author in doing hermeneutics, with the Daodejing as an example.

Stewart Cohen’s epistemic responsibility conception of epistemic justification in illustrating the problem of the new evil demon is assessed through some virtue-theoretic attempts, notably by Timothy Williamson and Clayton Littlejohn, whose accounts provide a good departure point to differentiate epistemic blamelessness through epistemic excusability via exercise of epistemic competence with epistemic recklessness. Some failure of epistemic sensitivity is through epistemic recklessness, and its epistemic blameworthiness is understood thus. I shall, having set the stage of epistemic justification in relation to epistemic responsibility, present my theory of epistemic reason, and of reason in general, by describing reason as knowledge of obligation. Having distinguished reasonableness from rationality, I will also present a safety theory of reasonableness, and correspondingly a measure of reasonableness, beyond my knowledge of obligation conception of rationality.

A realist Daoism is best illustrated through contrasting with something less robust. Chad Hansen’s Daoism may be understood as a linguistic constructivism and is thus a good candidate. I challenge his interpretation of the Zhuang-Zi and respond with a realist understanding of daos. The resultant realist Daoism is to be understood given a Daoist realism from Lao Zi’s Dao-De-Jing, whose realist flavour is constituted by some dao sometimes, if not always, outrunning us. The present paper thus situates Zhuang Zi better as inheriting Daoism from Lao Zi, contributing to classical Daoism with a relativity that is realist. I submit a sinological hypothesis about wu-wei, from a theory of wei that grapples with the two senses of the Chinese word: one about doing, another fictitiousness. I venture further a philosophical hypothesis that in a realist Daoism, an artificiality that is bad, such as hypocrisy, differs from some other artificiality that though involves pretence is of real Daoist value. The present Daoist realism comes with a Dao externalism, illustrated with a wanderer wandering in nature, when their paths outrun them. Even with a dao, instead of the Dao, the externalism enables an artist’s performance in their own style having a success condition that also outruns them, such that one always could have done better. A humanism that entails the possibility of an aesthetic competence embodying the Dao is explored.