On the Mind Dependence of Truth

The claim that truth is mind dependent has some initial plausibility only if truth bearers are taken to be mind dependent entities such as beliefs or statements. Even on that assumption, however, the claim is not uncontroversial. If it is spelled out as the thesis that “in a world devoid of mind nothing would be true”, then everything depends on how the phrase ‘true in world w’ is interpreted. If ‘A is true in w’ is interpreted as ‘A is true of w’ (i.e. ‘w satisfies A’s truth conditions’, the claim need not be true. If on the other hand it is interpreted as ‘A is true of w and exists in w’ then the claim is trivially true, though devoid of any antirealistic efficacy. Philosophers like Heidegger and Rorty, who hold that truth is mind dependent but reality is not, must regard such principles as “A if and only if it is true that A” as only contingently true, which may be a good reason to reject the mind dependence of truth anyway.     

How Truth Behaves When There’s No Vicious Reference

In The Revision Theory of Truth (MIT Press), Gupta and Belnap (1993) claim as an advantage of their approach to truth “its consequence that truth behaves like an ordinary classical concept under certain conditions—conditions that can roughly be characterized as those in which there is no vicious reference in the language.” To clarify this remark, they define Thomason models, nonpathological models in which truth behaves like a classical concept, and investigate conditions under which a model is Thomason: they argue that a model is Thomason when there is no vicious reference in it. We extend their investigation, considering notions of nonpathologicality and senses of “no vicious reference” generated both by revision theories of truth and by fixed-point theories of truth. We show that some of the fixed-point theories have an advantage analogous to that which Gupta and Belnap claim for their approach, and that at least one revision theory does not. This calls into question the claim that the revision theories have a distinctive advantage in this regard.     

The Holy,Catholic Theater: Exegesis of Life on the Stage

This article explores the theological/philosophical resonances of the theater. “Holy” and “catholic” are the key terms that shape the reflection. The holy is masked in the ordinary details of plays and musicals. Thus, it is fitting to say that the theater is “God-haunted,” a place of transcendence and transformation. The catholicity of the theater is found in acknowledging its inherent commitment to telling the whole truth, or at least endeavoring to tell what is true, about human existence. We are by nature story-telling creatures, and the narratives embodied in the theater aid in interpreting and reflecting on mystery and truth, in the exegesis of our lives and of our way of being in the world. Two plays and a musical are representative anecdotes that flesh out the ideas advanced in the essay—Equus, Auntie Mame, and A Chorus Line.     

中国哲学与文化之根——"象"与"象思维"引论

To grasp the truth in traditional Chinese classics, we need to uncover the long obscured “xiang” 象 (image) thinking, which has long been overshadowed by Occidentalism. “xiang thinking” is the most fundamental thought of human beings. The logic of linguistics all comes from “xiang thinking”. Through conceptual thinking, people can understand Western classics on metaphysics, yet they may not completely understand the various schools of Chinese classics. The difference between Chinese and Western ways of thinking originated in the difference of the basic views developed in the “Axial period”. Since Aristotle, Western metaphysical ideas have all been manifested in substantiality, objectivity, and being ready-made, whereas Chinese Taiji, Dao, Xin-xing, and Zen were manifested in the non-substantiality, non-objectivity, and non-ready-made-ness of a dynamic whole. To grasp substance, rational and logical thinking such as definition, judgment, and reasoning is necessary. On the other hand, to grasp Taiji, Dao, etc., which is a dynamic whole or non-substances, “xiang thinking”, which is related to perception and rich in poetic association, is essential. History has taught us a lesson, i.e., when we opened the window to logical thought, we closed that of “xiang thinking”. We should remember the words of Xu Guangqi, i.e., “To mingle harmoniously and understand thoroughly so as to excel”. Translated by Zhang Lin from Hebei xuekan 河北学刊 (Hebei Academic Journal), 2007, (5): 21–25     

Truth Values,Neither-true-nor-false,and Supervaluations

The first section (§1) of this essay defends reliance on truth values against those who, on nominalistic grounds, would uniformly substitute a truth predicate. I rehearse some practical, Carnapian advantages of working with truth values in logic. In the second section (§2), after introducing the key idea of auxiliary parameters (§2.1), I look at several cases in which logics involve, as part of their semantics, an extra auxiliary parameter to which truth is relativized, a parameter that caters to special kinds of sentences. In many cases, this facility is said to produce truth values for sentences that on the face of it seem neither true nor false. Often enough, in this situation appeal is made to the method of supervaluations, which operate by “quantifying out” auxiliary parameters, and thereby produce something like a truth value. Logics of this kind exhibit striking differences. I first consider the role that Tarski gives to supervaluation in first order logic (§2.2), and then, after an interlude that asks whether neither-true-nor-false is itself a truth value (§2.3), I consider sentences with non-denoting terms (§2.4), vague sentences (§2.5), ambiguous sentences (§2.6), paradoxical sentences (§2.7), and future-tensed sentences in indeterministic tense logic (§2.8). I conclude my survey with a look at alethic modal logic considered as a cousin (§2.9), and finish with a few sentences of “advice to supervaluationists” (2.10), advice that is largely negative. The case for supervaluations as a road to truth is strong only when the auxiliary parameter that is “quantified out” is in fact irrelevant to the sentences of interest—as in Tarski’s definition of truth for classical logic. In all other cases, the best policy when reporting the results of supervaluation is to use only explicit phrases such as “settled true” or “determinately true,” never dropping the qualification.     

A Butterfly Dream in a Brain in a Vat

Zhuangzi’s Butterfly Dream story can be read as a skeptical response to the Cartesian Cogito, ergo sum solution, for it presents I exist as fundamentally unprovable, on the grounds that the notion about “I” that it is guaranteed to refer to something existing, which Descartes seems to assume, is unwarranted. The modern anti-skepticism of Hilary Putnam employs a different strategy, which seeks to derive the existence of the world not from some “indubitable” truth such as the existence of myself, but from the meaning of some particular assertion I make. In this paper, I argue, however, that Putnam’s argument fails to deliver on the promise of showing the self-refuting nature of the skeptical hypothesis, as it relies on a double use of “I”, a fallacy of equivocation, reflecting an unsolved tension between the argument’s general premise, which is rather Zhuangzian in spirit, and his unwitting adoption of that unwarranted notion about “I”. I try to show further that the skepticism in Zhuangzi’s Butterfly Dream not only can be used to refute the proofs of the existence of the empirical I, but also is effective against accounts concerning the existence of the transcendental I.     

The problem of moral absolutes in the ethics of Vladimir Solov'ëv

Conclusion Moral absolutes were perceived, by Solov'?v, in a dual manner: a) from the side of content, of psychology, as when we speak of feelings, emotions, etc.; and b) under a formal aspect, as “ideas,” i.e. logically. Neither of these can be treated without relating to moral absolutes astrue, and without a rationalbelief in their truth, a truth that cannot be logically proved. In my opinion, our time has become keenly aware of the universally human value of Vladimir Solov'?v's ethics, of its humanist nature, oriented towards the everyday and the ideal tasks of man, and of the concrete direction of his philosophy of “practical idealism”.     

The Tenseless Copula in Temporal Predication

In this paper I explore how the tenseless copula is to be interpreted in sentences of the form “a is F at t”, where “a” denotes a persisting, changeable object, “F” stands for a prima facie intrinsic property and “t” for a B-time. I argue that the interpretation of the copula depends on the logical role assigned to the time clause. Having rejected the idea that the time clause is to be treated as a sentence operator, I argue: (1) that if “at t” is thought of as being associated with “a” or “F”, then the tenseless copula is most plausibly read as an “is” simpliciter; and (2) that if “at t” is treated as being associated with the copula, then the tenseless copula is most plausibly understood as expressing a disjunction of tensed copulas. I end the paper by explaining the importance of the issue. I indicate the ramifications interpretation of the tenseless copula has for the so-called problem of temporary intrinsics.     

命与天命:儒家天人关系的双重视角

As a pair of important categories in traditional Chinese culture, “ming 命 (destiny or decrees)” and “tian ming 天命 (heavenly ordinances)” mainly refer to the constraints placed on human beings. Both originated from “ling 令 (decrees),” which evolved from “wang ling 王令 (royal decrees)” into “tian ling 天令 (heavenly decrees),” and then became “ming” from a throne because of the decisive role of “heavenly decrees” over a throne. “Ming” and “tian ming” have different definitions: “Ming” represented the limits Heaven placed on the natural lives of human beings and was an objective force that men could not direct, but was embodied in human beings as their “destiny”; “Tian ming” reflected the moral ideals of human beings in their self-identification; It originated in man but had to be verified by Heaven, and it was therefore the true ordinance that Heaven placed on human beings. “Ming” and “tian ming” are two perspectives on the traditional relationship between Heaven and human beings, and at the same time Confucians and Daoists placed different emphasis on them. Translated by Huang Deyuan from Zhongguo zhexueshi 中国哲学史 (History of Chinese Philosophy), 2007, (4): 11–21     

Dual Intuitionistic Logic and a Variety of Negations: The Logic of Scientific Research

We consider a logic which is semantically dual (in some precise sense of the term) to intuitionistic. This logic can be labeled as “falsification logic”: it embodies the Popperian methodology of scientific discovery. Whereas intuitionistic logic deals with constructive truth and non-constructive falsity, and Nelson's logic takes both truth and falsity as constructive notions, in the falsification logic truth is essentially non-constructive as opposed to falsity that is conceived constructively. We also briefly clarify the relationships of our falsification logic to some other logical systems.     

"气"概念几个层次意义的分殊

In Chinese philosophy, although the concept of “qi” has numerous meanings, it is not completely without order or chaotic. Generally speaking, “qi” has several different levels of meanings, such as in philosophy, physics, physiology, psychology, ethics, and so on. On the philosophical level, “qi” is similar to “air,” and it is essentially similar to the “matter-energy” or “field” in physics, which refers to the origin or an element of all things in the world. It is from this point that the meanings of “qi” in physiology, psychology, ethics as well as aesthetics are derived. This paper analyzes the meanings of “qi” on five levels and seeks to clarify misunderstandings about “qi,” such as its alleged pan-vitalistic, conscious and pan-ethical characters. Translated by Yan Xin from Zhexue Yanjiu 哲学研究 (Philosophical Studies), 2006, (9): 34–41     

列维纳斯面对康德、黑格尔、海德格尔——当代哲学关于"存在论"的争论

Levinas subverts the traditional “ontology-epistemology,” and creates a “realm of difference,” the realm of “value,” “ethic,” and “religion,” maintaining that ethics is real metaphysics. According to him, it is not that “being” contains the “other” but the other way round. In this way, the issues of ethics are promoted greatly in the realm of philosophy. Nonetheless, he does not intend to deny “ontology” completely, but reversed the relationship between “ontology (theory of truth)” and “ethics (axiology),” placing the former under the “constraint” of the latter. Different from general empirical science, philosophy focuses more on issues irrelevant to ordinary empirical objects; it does have “objects,” though. More often than not, the issues of philosophy cannot be conceptualized into “propositions”; nevertheless, it absolutely has its “theme.” As a discipline, philosophy continuously takes “being” as its “theme” and “object” of thinking. The point is that this “being” should not be understood as an “object” completely. Rather, it is still a “theme-subject.” In addition to an “object,” “being” also manifests itself in an “attribute” and a kind of “meaning” as well. In a word, it is the temporal, historical, and free “being” rather than “various beings” that is the “theme-subject” of philosophy. Translated by Zhang Lin from Wen Shi Zhe 文史哲 (Journal of Literature, History and Philosophy), 2007, (1): 61–70     

Semantic Information and the Correctness Theory of Truth

Semantic information is usually supposed to satisfy the veridicality thesis: p qualifies as semantic information only if p is true. However, what it means for semantic information to be true is often left implicit, with correspondentist interpretations representing the most popular, default option. The article develops an alternative approach, namely a correctness theory of truth (CTT) for semantic information. This is meant as a contribution not only to the philosophy of information but also to the philosophical debate on the nature of truth. After the introduction, in Sect. 2, semantic information is shown to be translatable into propositional semantic information (i). In Sect. 3, i is polarised into a query (Q) and a result (R), qualified by a specific context, a level of abstraction and a purpose. This polarization is normalised in Sect. 4, where [Q + R] is transformed into a Boolean question and its relative yes/no answer [Q + A]. This completes the reduction of the truth of i to the correctness of A. In Sects. 5 and 6, it is argued that (1) A is the correct answer to Q if and only if (2) A correctly saturates Q by verifying and validating it (in the computer science’s sense of “verification” and “validation”); that (2) is the case if and only if (3) [Q + A] generates an adequate model (m) of the relevant system (s) identified by Q; that (3) is the case if and only if (4) m is a proxy of s (in the computer science’s sense of “proxy”) and (5) proximal access to m commutes with the distal access to s (in the category theory’s sense of “commutation”); and that (5) is the case if and only if (6) reading/writing (accessing, in the computer science’s technical sense of the term) m enables one to read/write (access) s. Sect. 7 provides some further clarifications about CTT, in the light of semantic paradoxes. Section 8 draws a general conclusion about the nature of CTT as a theory for systems designers not just systems users. In the course of the article all technical expressions from computer science are explained.     

Antecedent-Relative Comparative World Similarity

In “Backward Causation and the Stalnaker–Lewis Approach to Counterfactuals,” Analysis 62:191–7, (2002), Michael Tooley argues that if a certain kind of backward causation is possible, then a Stalnaker–Lewis comparative world similarity account of the truth conditions of counterfactuals cannot be sound. In “Tooley on Backward Causation,” Analysis 63:157–62, (2003), Paul Noordhof argues that Tooley’s example can be reconciled with a Stalnaker–Lewis account of counterfactuals if the comparative world similarity relation on which the Stalnaker–Lewis account relies is allowed to be antecedent-relative. In this paper I show that taking comparative world similarity to be antecedent-relative results in a formal semantics which is a comparative world similarity semantics in name only.     

D. Z. Phillips and reasonable belief

As an illustration of what Phillips called the “heterogeneity of sense,” this essay concentrates on differences in what is meant by a “reason for belief.” Sometimes saying that a belief is reasonable simply commends the belief’s unquestioned acceptance as a part of what we understand as a sensible outlook. Here the standard picture of justifying truth claims on evidential grounds breaks down; and it also breaks down in cases of fundamental moral and religious disagreement, where the basic beliefs that we hold affect our conception of what counts as a reliable ground of judgment. Phillips accepts the resultant variations in our conceptions of rational judgment as a part of logic, just as Wittgenstein did. All objective means of determining the truth or falsity of an assertion presume some underlying conceptual agreement about what counts as good judgment. This means that the possibility of objective justification is limited. But no pernicious relativism results from this view, for as Wittgenstein said, “After reason comes persuasion.” There is, moreover, a non-objective criterion of sorts in the moral and religious requirement that one be able to live with one’s commitments. In such cases, good judgment is still possible, but it differs markedly from the standard model of making rational inferences.     

Structural correspondence between theories and convergence to truth

While “scientism” is typically regarded as a position about the exclusive epistemic authority of science held by a certain class of “cultured despisers” of “religion”, we show that only on the assumption of this sort of view do purportedly “scientific” claims made by proponents of “intelligent design” appear to lend epistemic or apologetic support to claims affirmed about God and God’s action in “creation” by Christians in confessing their “faith”. On the other hand, the hermeneutical strategy that better describes the practice and method of Christian theologians, from the inception of theological reflection in the Christian tradition, acknowledges the epistemic authority of the best available tests for truth in areas of human inquiry such as science and history. But this strategy does not assume that such tests, whose authority must be regarded as provisional, provides authority for the warrant of affirming claims constituting the confessed “faith”. By attributing theological import to claims advanced by appeal to the best available tests for truth in the practice of science, supporters of ID not only confuse the epistemic authority of these tests with the normative authority of a faith community’s confessional identity, but impute to scientific tests for truth a sort of authority that even goes beyond the “methodological naturalism” against which they counterpose their claims.     

Reproduction,familiarity, love,and humaneness: How did confucius reveal “humaneness”?

This article draws out the subtle connections among the various sorts of categories—“sheng 生 (reproduction),” “qin 亲 (familiarity),” “ai 爱 (love),” and “ren 仁 (humaneness)”—focusing on the following: Confucius found the original significance of “reproduction” to be sympathy between males and females, and upon further study he found it extended to the.affinity of blood relations, namely “familiarity.” From “familiarity” he came to understand “love” that one generates and has for people and things beyond one’s blood relations, in other words, the empathic heart or the feeling of empathy itself. From here he anticipated rende 仁德 (the humane and virtuous) level of “fan’ai zhong 泛爱众 (universal love for all people)” or “fan’ai wanwu 泛爱万物 (universal love for all creatures).” The article further makes the point that in order to meet the conditions for the perfection of “humaneness” which has neither any excesses nor any deficiencies, Confucius ultimately developed a means, that is, “the golden mean,” which indicates that his ancient understanding of life and growth produced in Confucius a profound shift in the focus of human concern from “ming 命 (fate)” to “Dao 道 (the Way).”     

A new discourse on Xunzi��s philosophy of language

Xunzi’s philosophy of language was mainly unfolded through the “discrimination of ming 名 (names) and shi 实 (realities)” and the “discrimination of yan 言 (words) and yi 意 (meanings).” Particularly, the “discrimination of names and realities” was centered on the propositions that “realities are realized when their names are heard” and that “names are given to point up realities,” including the view on the essence of language such as “names expect to indicate realities” and “conventions established by usage,” the view of development of language such as “coming form the former usage and being newly established,” and the view of functions of language such as “discriminating superiority and inferiority and differentiating identities and differences”; while the “discrimination of words and meanings” mainly contained two aspects: One was that words could completely represent meanings while it could not do so on the other hand, and the other was that the Dao should be grasped through “an unoccupied, concentrated and quiet mind.” Xunzi’s philosophy of language stressed both language’s value attribute and its cognitive attribute, and it is the greatest achievement of pre-Qin dynasty’s philosophy of language.     

论"观物"与"观无"——儒学与现象学的一种融通

In traditional Chinese expressions, guannian 观念 (ideas) are results of guan 观 (viewing). However, viewing can be understood to have two different levels of meanings: one is “viewing things,” that is, viewing with something to view; another is “viewing nothing,” that is, viewing with nothing to view. What are viewed in “viewing things” are either physical beings—all existing things and phenomena—or the metaphysical being (for example, the “Dao as a thing”). In both cases, something is being viewed. What is viewed in “viewing nothing” is the being itself, or “nothing,” in which there is nothing to view. According to Confucianism, the existence of “nothing” manifests itself as life sentiments, especially the sentiment of love, which is the very root and source of benevolence; moreover “viewing nothing” is, in essence, a perception of life. Life sentiments or the perception of life is “the thing itself ” prior to any being or any thing. Translated by Liu Huawei from Sichuan Daxue Xuebao 四川大学学报 (Journal of Sichuan University), 2006, (4): 67–74     

Pragmatic encroachment,stakes, and religious knowledge

It is commonly held that epistemic standards for S’s knowledge that p are affected by practical considerations, such as what is at stake in decisions that are guided by that p. I defend a particular view as to why this is, that is referred to as “pragmatic encroachment.” I then discuss a “new argument against miracles” that uses stakes considerations in order to explore the conditions under which stakes affect the level of epistemic support that is required for knowledge. Finally, I generalize my results to include other religiously significant propositions such as “God exists” and “God does not exist.”