Toward a Gongfu Reconstruction of Confucianism —Responses to Comments by Huang Yong,Fan Ruiping,and Wang Qingjie

Responding to comments of my recent book, Understanding the Analects of Confucius, by Huang Yong, Fan Ruiping, and Wang Qingjie, this paper looks to highlight one of its major features—that it is a contemporary continuation of the Chinese tradition of doing commentary both as a way of allowing classic texts to unfold their rich meanings in the context of different times, and as a way for the commentator to express his or her own views. It strives to explain how a gongfu reconstruction of Confucianism can explain the apparent inconsistency between advocating rule-like instructions next to its encouragement of the art of flexibility, and to reveal what is more fundamental about Confucianism—rather than a system of rigid moral rules, it is an art of life. This gongfu interpretation would lead to the view that Confucianism does not depend on metaphysical truths as its justification, although it does need to hold metaphysical views as a way of affirming its values, which are justified through the excellence of life to which they lead. While the gongfu approach more accurately reflects Confucius’ own philosophical orientation, and it is therefore used to determine technical details such as what interpretations to put into translation of a text and what interpretations to list in the annotations as alternatives, it is, in the author’s humble view, also a unique contribution that the Chinese tradition can offer to world philosophy.     

Principlism,Pragmatism, or Reconstructionist Confucianism? —Some Comments on Ni Peimin’s English Translation of the Analects

This essay provides a few critical points of view on Ni Peimin’s recent English translation of the Analects. It shows that his translations of ren into “human-heartedness” and of li into “ritual propriety” may indicate a willingness to recast these Confucian concepts in the modern ideology of western subjectivism or individualism, whereas Confucianism is not in the direction of such ideologies. Moreover, while Ni seems to offer a “no-rule” view of Confucian virtue ethics, he cannot deny the existence of moral rules and principles in the Confucian system. It is insufficient for him to emphasize the importance of Confucian “instructions” or “methods” as he does without explicating their relations to Confucian rules. Additionally, Ni’s gongfu Confucianism provides a necessary and healthy step back from the contemporary principlism that has been dominant and popular in contemporary politics, ethics, and applied ethics, but Ni goes too far in denying the importance of the moral rules and principles that are implicit or explicit in the Confucian ritual practices and upheld in Confucius’s Analects.     

Arguing ‘for’ the Patient: Informed Consent and Strategic Maneuvering in Doctor–Patient Interaction

As a way to advance integration between traditional readings of the medical encounter and argumentation theory, this article conceptualizes the doctor–patient interaction as a form of info-suasive dialogue. Firstly, the article explores the relevance of argumentation in the medical encounter in connection with the process of informed consent. Secondly, it discloses the risks inherent to a lack of reconciliation of the dialectical and rhetorical components in the delivery of the doctor’s advice, as especially resulting from the less than ideal conditions of the internal states of the doctor and the patient, and the lack of symmetry in their status.     

Holding One’s Own

There is a tension with regard to regulative norms of inquiry. One’s commitments must survive critical scrutiny, and if they do not survive, they should be revised. Alternately, for views to be adequately articulated and defended, their proponents must maintain a strong commitment to the views in question. A solution is proposed with the notion of holding one’s own as the virtue of being reason-responsive with the prospects of improving the view in question.

An examination of message-relevant affect in road safety messages: Should road safety advertisements aim to make us feel good or bad?

Drawing upon the multiple roles of affect posited by Elaboration Likelihood Model, the current paper examines the effectiveness of message-relevant affect. Specifically, humourous and fear-evoking anti-drink driving messages are examined in terms of perceptions of relative influence on self and others (i.e., the third-person effect) and their performance on a range of persuasion outcomes. The influence of involvement, response efficacy, and gender on persuasion outcomes is also examined. Participants (N = 201) viewed two advertisements and completed two questionnaires: the first, assessed pre-exposure attitudes and behaviour and immediate-post exposure attitudes and intentions; the second, 2–4 weeks later, assessed attitudes and behaviour. The results revealed, as predicted, interactions of the key variables and evidence of the greater persuasiveness of negative appeals immediately after exposure whilst greater improvement of positive appeals over time. The findings highlight the importance of continuing the exploration of positive appeals as a persuasive alternative to negative appeals.     

森田疗法与认知行为疗法的比较分析

规律是客观的,而规则具有主观性,虽然两者本质上不同,但他们又是相关的。从口腔临床医学规则的制定过程来看,我们不难得出结论:口腔临床医学规则的制定要遵循临床医学的一般规律,突出口腔临床医学的特点,并受到我国经济、文化、政治等因素的影响,且随着这些因素的改变而改变,以适应新的环境条件。     

材料规则难度对内隐与外显协同学习的影响

选取两种规则难度的人工语法字母串.采用强分离的实验程序,探索了材料规则难度对内隐学习、内隐与外显的协同学习的影响.结果显示: (1)规则难度较大的限定状态人工语法学习中,内隐学习成绩显著好于外显学习;而在难度较小的双条件语法学习中,外显学习显著好于内隐学习. (2)在两种规则难度的材料学习中,内隐与外显的协同学习成绩均好于单独的内隐或者外显学习,具有优势效应. (3)内隐学习获得的规则知识具有可迁移性.     

Loyalty and Creativity in a Disciplinary Organization

The relationship between loyalty to rules and the creativity that attempts to improve those same rules was examined among Norwegian army officers deployed in international operations. Today's army officers are faced with rapidly changing work conditions and unpredictable enemies, both of which challenge and outdate rules and routines. They thus may experience that they are either guided by too few or inadequate rules, or by many rules that need to be constantly updated. Assuming that following rules is advantageous to officers, then, contrary to classical theory, it was hypothesized that officers scoring both low and high on loyalty to rules would score high on creativity. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed a significant U‐shaped relationship between loyalty to rules and creativity.     

Some Closure Properties of Finite Definitions

There is no known syntactic characterization of the class of finite definitions in terms of a set of basic definitions and a set of basic operators under which the class is closed. Furthermore, it is known that the basic propositional operators do not preserve finiteness. In this paper I survey these problems and explore operators that do preserve finiteness. I also show that every definition that uses only unary predicate symbols and equality is bound to be finite.     

Are There Any Rules?

The ``model of rules' that Ronald Dworkin attacks is an absurdmodel of law, if rules are taken to be standards that have nounspecified counterinstances, and whose application isalways uncontroversial. Dworkin gives good reason to thinkthat there are no such standards or virtually none in (e.g.)English law. But the model of rules is not misconceived, asDworkin claims. Rather, it needs a better understanding of the idea of a rule. I argue that the view that the law of a community is a system of rules needs to meet an importantchallenge that Dworkin has raised for jurisprudence: to accountfor the fact that legal rights and duties are frequentlycontroversial. I give an account of social rules thatexplains why controversy over their application in particularcases is common, and can be deep. So controversy gives noreason to reject the model of rules.