Jinzhou Ye 叶金州

the task of philosophy

Tue, 08 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

: Neo sees through the constructed world in movie Matrix

Philosophers see through appearances of the world, directly arriving at the essence, or so they aspire.

Unlike empirical scientists who use observation and experiments to probe the exact shape and pattern of the world on its different layers, philosophers are not equipped with this type of investigational probe. On the other hand, they do have their own unique devices, that is, conceptual analysis. With this tool in hand, philosophers can distill the very structure of how we understand, perceive, value, and act upon the world and ourselves. In other words, philosophers are equipped with a distinctive type of lens, helping them see through the appearances of the world and ourselves, which often obscure and distract people from the real and the true.

This “seeing through” should be the core skill of any philosophical training and teaching; failing this, philosophy graduates cannot really survive in this overly competitive and highly specialized era. At the meantime, once this “seeing through” is basically completed, the philosophy graduate can expand her core skills to cover not only conceptual analysis, but also conceptual design, to help positively change the world for the better.

分析哲学是否有人文关怀？

Fri, 23 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

小结

以语言分析为中心的hardcore分析哲学似乎难以植入人文关怀，但以苏二条为特征的分析进路哲学则并没有如此困难。

引子

近日著名逻辑学家克里普克去世，网上纪念和悼念者甚多。引发了一些讨论和争论，有些涉及到克里普克作为一个个体的功过得失，另一些则触及了他所代表的一个学术范式的基本特征，即分析哲学是否具有人文关怀。

立场

胡星铭和南星分别代表了一种略有差异的立场，他们的意见交换体现了一种友好而规范的学术交流。然而，这种本是“百家争鸣、百花齐放”（感谢王巍兄的界定）的个人观点交流，却因为北大外哲所公众号的官方推送而产生了一些异样。若这代表的是北大外哲的官方或集体态度，就其在国内哲学界的号召力而言，这就不止是观点交流了，多少有点大佬站台打擂的味道。

讨论

Kenneth：你要说非常hardcore的分析哲学，那肯定是没啥人文关怀的；但你要非说现在英语世界里很多做伦理学和政治哲学的不是分析哲学，大家也未必能接受，他们跟欧陆也还是有非常显著的差异。
yejzh：澄清一下挺好的。胡星铭其实有点有意模糊hardcore和generic两种分析哲学之间的界限，意图让国内学界不再对分析哲学持有那么强的敌意，但南星显然不买账，因为汉语语境下“分析哲学”的确通常指hardcore。葛四友老师的“analytic approach”似乎是个更好的折衷。

Focus on Practical Philosophy

Tue, 21 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

No one can do all things, even the most talented genius can cover only a small range of what is there for exploration, although relatively wider than others. To be wise, to use the original name of philosophy, is to do the most essential things and put all other things aside.

The administrative move from the teaching & research unit of western philosophy to that of ethics marks a timely reorientation in my academic work. I can now focus on what I am really interested in, namely practical philosophy, including most importantly political philosophy, moral psychology, and social ontology. As teaching requires, I may also touch a bit of meta-ethics. And this is already a wide field, wider than I can effectively cover.

Hello world!

Mon, 04 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This site will mainly post my reflections on political philosophy, moral philosophy and philosophical methodology in general. It will also cover professional development stuff, especially for my students at Huazhong University of Science & Technology. I care about the development of students especially at the undergraduate level and will use this site as a written summary of professional development talks I intend to give. Each talk will correspond with a written post on this site and, when appropriate, a PDF presentation.

Contributions may also come from other faculty members from our school of philosophy at HUST and I welcome any input readers or colleagues/friends at other institutions may have.