Xiaoxing Zhang

The Western paradigm of philosophical practice assumes that philosophical arguments are independently comprehensible by the intellect, with spiritual exercises serving mainly to apply them in practical contexts. This paper argues that Daoism exhibits a drastically different model. Drawing on participant observation, we examine a Daoist group whose practice of Xingyi (形意) – a traditional Chinese martial art – is closely guided by the Daodejing. The meanings of this classical Daoist text are not fully accessible to the intellect alone; they are initially unsaturated and await enrichment through the embodied experience of qi. Rather than an independent text that unilaterally guides practice, the Daodejing stands in a reciprocal, dynamic relation with Xingyi: its meanings are revealed through practice, which they guide in turn. This inversion of the Western sequence of philosophical understanding and practical application poses a significant challenge to universal accounts of how philosophy ‘works’ in practical contexts.

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English. 作為中國本土宗教，道教對中國人的生死觀有潛移默化的影響。對於安樂死等現代醫學語境下的抉擇，有必要考察道教的可能態度。范瑞平提出：道教“貴生”，期求修行成仙，而安樂死剝奪成仙的機會，所以道教理應禁止安樂死。本文試圖説明：道教並沒有明確禁止安樂死的動機或理由。仙法流傳於道教門内。普通人無緣得見，本就沒有成仙的機會。而道門之外，普通人能否安樂死的最為相關的道教設定，或許是“命數”不可無端更改。然而，命數的考量同樣難以構成禁止安樂死的理由。 Given the influence of religious Daoism on the concepts of life and death in China, it is important to examine the Daoist stance regarding practical issues of modern medicine, such as euthanasia. According to Ruiping Fan, Daoism would prohibit euthanasia as a practice that deprives a person of the possibility of attaining immortality. We argue, however, that Daoism has no clear motivation or reason to forbid euthanasia. The methods for attaining immortality remain a secret exclusive to the Daoist community. Other people have no access to such methods and thus lack the opportunity to become immortal. Furthermore, the prevalent concept of “destiny” or “fate” provides no basis for rejecting euthanasia.

Discussions of know-how typically focus on task-types. This paper discusses know-how about non-repeatable task-tokens. I define ‘non-particular’ know-how as knowledge of how to complete a task-type and ‘particular’ know-how as knowledge of how to complete a task-token. Particular know-how holds philosophical value by exhibiting interesting features. First, based on an empirical study, I argue that particular know-how makes stronger ability requirements than non-particular know-how. This disparity arises, I propose, because particular know-how is relative to actual rather than normal circumstances. Second, the concept of downstream luck is applicable to particular know-how, not to non-particular know-how. The upshot is a multi-faceted pluralist approach to the essence of know-how.

Mystical experiences are often regarded as potential sources of epistemic justification for religious beliefs. However, the ‘disanalogy objection’ maintains that, in contrast to sense perceptions, mystical experiences lack social verifiability and are thus merely subjective states that cannot substantiate objective truths. This article explores a novel externalist response that involves the concept of angels. As spiritual beings, angels can directly perceive God and verify these perceptions in their celestial community. Thus, the ‘direct perception of God’ is not inherently incapable of social verification. While invoking angels might appear contentious, it coheres with the externalist approach of conceptualising cognitive states under hypothetical settings. Despite the differences between humans and angels and their lack of interaction for verification purposes, our approach remains valid because mystics not only exemplify the same general type of ‘direct perception of God’ as angels but can also be preliminary members of a wider celestial community.

In Appearance and Explanation, McCain and Moretti propose a novel internalist account of epistemic justification called phenomenal explanationism, which combines phenomenal conservatism and explanationism. I argue that the current version of phenomenal explanationism faces a dilemma: either it omits the awareness requirement but implies an implausible form of logical-mathematical omniscience, or it preserves the requirement but leads to a vicious regress. I suggest how phenomenal explanationism might be revised to avoid this dilemma.

Mystical religious experiences typically purport to engage with the transcendent and often claim to involve encounters with spiritual entities or a detachment from the material world. Daoism diverges from this paradigm. This paper examines Daoist mystical experiences of bodily transformations and explores their epistemological implications. Specifically, we defend the justificatory power of Daoist somatic experiences against the disanalogy objection. The disanalogy objection posits that mystical experiences, in contrast to sense perceptions, are not socially verifiable and thereby lack prima facie epistemic value. We argue that some Daoist mystical bodily states, being essentially spatiotemporal, are exempt from this challenge. This leads to a broader understanding of mysticism and offers a partial resolution to the disanalogy objection.

Practical knowledge is discussed in close relation to practical expertise. For both anti-intellectualists and intellectualists, the knowledge of how to φ is widely assumed to entail the practical expertise in φ-ing. This paper refutes this assumption. I argue that non-experts can know how to φ via other experts’ knowledge of φ-ing. Know-how can be ‘outsourced’. I defend the outsourceability of know-how, and I refute the objections that reduce outsourced know-how to the knowledge of how to ask for help, of how to get things done, or of external contents. Interestingly, outsourcing differs from social cooperation, collective agency, testimonial transmission, and many other notions in social-epistemological debates. Thus, outsourcing provides not only a hitherto unconsidered form of know-how but also a novel way for knowledge to be social. Furthermore, outsourcing plausibly involves a ‘social’ cognitive extension that does not rest on EMT or HEC. Given the outsourceability of know-how, we must reconsider the nature of know-how and expertise, as well as the relation between non-experts and experts.

The gradation of know-how is a prominent challenge to intellectualism. Know-how is prima facie gradable, whereas know-that is not, so the former is unlikely to be a species of the latter. Recently, Pavese refuted this challenge by explaining the gradation of know-how as concerning either the quantity or the quality of practical answers one knows to a question. Know-how per se remains absolute. This paper argues, however, that in addition to the quantity and quality of practical answers, know-how also differs in how reliably the agent is supposed to fulfil the task given her default constitution. Intellectualism is still troubled by the gradability challenge.

The Cartesian thesis that some justifications are infallible faces a gradation puzzle. On the one hand, infallible justification tolerates absolutely no possibility for error. On the other hand, infallible justifications can vary in evidential force: e.g. two persons can both be infallible regarding their pains while the one with stronger pain is nevertheless more justified. However, if a type of justification is gradable in strength, why can it always be absolute? This paper explores the potential of this gradation challenge by rejecting Fumerton's recent ‘semantic decision' solution. On Fumerton's suggestion, the putative gradation of infallible justifications is essentially semantic. It concerns only how we use the relevant term but not how well we perceive the truth. Regardless of its intuitive appeal, Fumerton's solution does not cover all the related situations. There is an irreducibly epistemic sense in which infallible justifications vary in degrees.

Duncan Pritchard recently proposed a Wittgensteinian solution to closure-based skepticism. According to Wittgenstein, all epistemic systems assume certain truths. The notions that we are not disembodied brains, that the Earth has existed for a long time and that one’s name is such-and-such all function as “hinge commitments.” Pritchard views a hinge commitment as a positive propositional attitude that is not a belief. Because closure principles concern only knowledge-apt beliefs, they do not apply to hinge commitments. Thus, from the fact that a subject knows that he is sitting in a room, and the fact that the subject’s sitting in a room entails his bodily existence, it does not follow that the subject also knows that he is not an envatted brain. This paper rejects Pritchard’s non-belief reading of hinge commitments. I start by showing that the non-belief reading fails to solve the skeptical paradox because the reasons that Pritchard uses to support the non-belief reading do not exempt hinge propositions from closure principles. I then proceed to argue that the non-belief reading is false as it claims that hinge commitments, unlike ordinary beliefs, are rationally unresponsive—with the help of a scenario in which a subject’s experience is internally chaotic, we can safely conclude that the hinge commitment that one is not systematically mistaken about the world is equally responsive to one’s evidential situations.

Although the topic of basic act is controversial, theorists of agency normally agree that complex performances are based on comparatively simple ones. To the extent that we can attribute powers to agents over various tasks, it is also plausible to suppose that our powers over complex tasks are based on powers over the simple. Chisholm once formulated this idea in terms of the principle of the diffusiveness of power. In the present paper, however, we shall argue that the principle which articulates this intuitive idea is incompatible with the assumption that we can sometimes do otherwise.