Dialectics and practical wisdom

Dialectics is essentially the method or logos in which categories of forms are combined to explain things. Dialectics was developed because reason faces difficulties in grasping the sensible world. Practical wisdom is knowledge about some things or certain person or persons because of its variable objects. But it is not entirely specific or only about a particular thing and without universality in any sense. As one kind of dialectics, it combines various elements to accord with the right logos, similar to the way in which various forms are combined in theory. Therefore practical wisdom as a combination or polymerization of elements can be regarded as another kind of logic, namely practical logic or dialectics. __________ Translated from Zhexue Dongtai 哲学动态 (Philosophical Trends), 2005 (4) by Xie Yongkang     

Mind and epistemic constructivism: Wang Yangming and Kant

This essay explores the philosophical insights of Zhu Xi, Wang YangMing, Kant, and Husserl and therefore proposes a new epistemic constructivism. It demonstrates that a knowing mind is a constructor, not merely a mirror-like copier or a camera-like copier in the experience of knowing. It argues that just as different kinds of machine produce kinds of product of different qualities, different kinds of mind produce different kinds of knowledge; to know X is to construct belief and understanding of X that has truth. Therefore, while Kant correctly indicated that before we set out to know things in the world, we should inquire what the mind can know, Confucian masters profoundly suggest that in order to know things in the world and know better, we should constantly expand our mind to the extent that it is broad（博）, great（大）, refined（精）and profound （深）so that our mind can know millions of things in the world.     

A cross-cultural study of hindsight bias and conditional probabilistic reasoning

Hindsight bias is a mistaken belief that one could have predicted a given outcome once the outcome is known. Choi and Nisbett (2000 Choi, I. and Nisbett, R. E. 2000. Cultural psychology of surprise: Holistic theories and recognition of contradiction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79: 890–905. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) reported that Koreans showed stronger hindsight bias than Americans, and explained the results using the distinction between analytic cognition (Westerners) and holistic cognition (Easterners). The purpose of the present study was to see whether hindsight bias is stronger among Easterners than among Westerners using a probability judgement task, and to test an “explicit–implicit” hypothesis and a “rule-dialectics” hypothesis. We predicted that the implicit process is more active among Easterners to generate hindsight bias, and that Easterners are more dialectical thinkers, whereas Westerners are more rule-based thinkers. French, British, Japanese, and Korean participants were asked to make probabilistic judgements in a Good Samaritan scenario (Experiment 1) and in a scenario including conditional probabilistic judgement (Experiment 2). In both Experiments, we presume that the implicit revision of causal models is made just by being given unexpected outcome information, and that explicit revision is made by being asked to point out possible factors for an unexpected outcome. In the results Easterners showed greater hindsight bias generally and it was greater in the Good Samaritan scenario. We conclude that the reason why hindsight bias was lower among Westerners is primarily that they tried to follow a rule to suppress the bias.     

Reasons of love: an introduction

One of the main reasons for philosophers to have embraced Humean constructivism rather than Kantian constructivism is a negative one: they believe that in the end Kantian constructivism is an unstable position. Their idea is that the Kantian constructivist can either choose to hold on to the idea of categorical reasons for action but in that case she has to be prepared to commit to (robust) moral realism (which both Humean and Kantian constructivists reject) or alternatively, she might reject (robust) moral realism but in that case she has to give up on the idea of categoricity. The aim of this paper is to defend Kantian constructivism against Humean constructivism and more specifically against recent objections raised by Sharon Street. I will do so by arguing that Kantian constructivism follows from formal, normative commitments that pertain to instrumental reasoning that Humean constructivists like Sharon Street themselves accept. More specifically I will argue that categorical reasons for action follow from applying the principle of instrumental rationality to the first-person perspective of an agent, provided that there are certain necessary means for action in general. From this follows, I will argue, that Humean constructivists should either become Kantian constructivists or that they have to become sceptics about normativity.     

Priority and Time

There is a puzzle about how to understand the conclusion of a successful instance of practical reasoning. Do the considerations adduced in reasoning rationalize the particular doing of an action, as Aristotle is sometimes interpreted as claiming? Or does reasoning conclude in the formation of an attitude – an intention, say – that has an action-type as its content? This paper attempts to clarify what is at stake in that debate and defends the latter view against some of its critics.     

Historical Analogies and the Definition of Interests: The Iranian Hostage Crisis and Ronald Reagan's Policy Toward the Hostages in Lebanon

Students of political psychology have long shown an interest in exploring how analogical reasoning affects decision-making. However, the existing literature on analogical reasoning has remained within the rationalist explanatory framework by assuming that an actor's interests can be deduced from that actor's position in a certain material structure, thus treating those interests as unaffected by the process of analogical reasoning. This assumption unduly restricts the role that analogies may play. Analogies can do more than simply allow decision-makers to figure out what specific policies will advance their preexisting interests—they can also determine the interests themselves. To demonstrate the benefits of moving the analogical literature beyond rationalism, this article explores the Reagan administration's policy toward American hostages in Lebanon, which culminated in the Iran-Contra scandal.     

The Humean Way to China: Beyond the Stereotype

David Hume seems to receive several stereotypes and commonplace sentiments about China regarding its religion, national character, government, practices and economy, that he goes on to dismantle. Doing so, he allows the eighteenth-century reader to look at China from a different perspective. This perspective can still be useful especially today, when the “immense distance” between China and Europe has been reduced and, as Hume would say, almost everything we use is Chinese. In the name of an ambivalent European tradition, we are often inclined to revive these commonplace sentiments (for example, the uniformity of Chinese character) and neglect that part of our own tradition that tries to understand what is behind them and that also offers us the tools to go beyond them. This study endeavors to assemble an array of Hume’s scattered remarks, consider them in their context, and explore their possible sources in order to obtain not only a more Humean China, but also a more Chinese Hume.     

Quasi-realism and the Humean Defense of Normative Non-factualism

Philosophical Studies -     

Humean Naturalism and the Problem of Induction

Naturalised epistemology has shunned rationality, a hallmark of humanity since ancient Greece. One of Quine's explicit motivations is that Hume's problem of induction cannot be solved. However, Hume himself suggests a solution and the narrow focus of the paper is to present a 'Humean Solution' which is an elaboration and defence of Hume's suggestion. What emerges will be argued to be a naturalised conception of rationality which makes naturalised epistemology more continuous with traditional epistemology's focus on rationality.     

In the beginning was the doing: the premises of the practical syllogism

If practical reasoning deserves its name, its form must be different from that of ordinary (theoretical) reasoning. A few have thought that the conclusion of practical reasoning is an action, rather than a mental state. I argue here that if the conclusion is an action, then so too is one of the premises. You might reason your way from doing one thing to doing another: from browsing journal abstracts to reading a particular journal article. I motivate this by sympathetically re-examining Hume's claim that a conclusion about what ought to be done follows only from an argument one of whose premises is likewise about what ought to be done.     

The chicken and the egg: a hindsight view of therapy

In this paper the authors suggest that instead of holding the view that the sequence of therapy follows the path of first interviewing and gathering data, then understanding and finally intervening on the basis of what is thought to be the cause of the problem, we could benefit from recognizing that the reverse view is equally plausible. According to this reverse view, which the authors call hindsight, therapists, unaware of it themselves, first come up with interventions and then, in hindsight, create explanations or particular ways of understanding problems in order to make their interventions seem rational and justifiable. A number of factors influencing therapists' choice of interventions are explored. Finally some potential advantages of the hindsight view are examined.     

Aristotle,Akrasia, and the Place of Desire in Moral Reasoning

This paper serves both as a discussion of Henry’s (Ethical Theory Moral Practice, 5:255–270, 2002) interpretation of Aristotle on the possibility of akrasia – knowing something is wrong and doing it anyway – and an indication of the importance of desire in Aristotle’s account of moral reasoning. As I will explain, Henry’s interpretation is advantageous for the reason that it makes clear how Aristotle could have made good sense of genuine akrasia, a phenomenon that we seem to observe in the real world, while maintaining non-trivial distinctions between temperance (sôphrosunê), self-indulgence (akolasia), self-control (enkrateia) and akrasia. There are, however, some interpretive challenges that follow from Henry’s account and this paper is intended to explain and resolve those.     

Kantian constructivism and the authority of others

I argue that Christine Korsgaard's Kantian constructivism cannot accommodate our obligations to others. Because she holds that all of our obligations are grounded in our obligating ourselves, she is committed to the view that our obligations to others are grounded in corresponding obligations to ourselves. Yet this conclusion is objectionable on substantive moral grounds. The problem is that she embraces an egocentric conception of authority, on which we originally have the authority to obligate ourselves whereas others only have the authority to obligate us because we grant it to them. The solution is to adopt a more thoroughly social conception of authority and autonomy.     

Reason and Love: A Non-Reductive Analysis of the Normativity of Agent-Relative Reasons

Why do agent-relative reasons have authority over us, reflective creatures? Reductive accounts base the normativity of agent-relative reasons on agent-neutral considerations like ‘having parents caring especially for their own children serves best the interests of all children’. Such accounts, however, beg the question about the source of normativity of agent-relative ways of reason-giving. In this paper, I argue for a non-reductive account of the reflective necessity of agent-relative concerns. Such an account will reveal an important structural complexity of practical reasoning in general. Christine Korsgaard relates the rational binding force of practical reasons to the various identities or self-conceptions under which we value ourselves. The problem is that it is not clear why such self-conceptions would necessitate us rationally, given the fact that most of our identities are simply given. Perhaps, Harry Frankfurt is right in arguing that we are not only necessitated by reason, but also, and predominantly by what we love. I argue, however, that “the necessities of love” (in Frankfurt’s phrase) are not to be separated from, but should be seen as belonging to the necessities of reason. Our loves, concerns and related identities provide for a specific and important structure to practical reflection. They function on the background of reasoning, having a specific default role: they would lose their character as concerns, if there was a need for them to be cited on the foreground of deliberation or if there was a need to justify them. This does not mean that our deep concerns cannot be scrutinised. They can only be scrutinised in an indirect way, however, which explains their role in grounding the normativity of agent-relative reasons. It appears that this account can provide for a viable interpretation of Korsgaard’s argument about the foundational role of practical identities.