Comparative Philosophy Metadiscussion

I’m at the Pacific Division meetings of the American Philosophical Association, in Pasadena CA this year. I just presented a paper last night on rectification of terms (zhengming 正名) and on “term-guidance” in general. Also heard a very interesting argument about Zhang Zai, the neo-Confucian by Jung-yeup Kim; Kim gives a non-monistic reading of Zhang’s views on qi. On the same panel, Wei-min Sun gave an interesting argument addressing Joseph Needham’s puzzle about why science didn’t develop, in particular the “theoretical” sciences, in China–short answer: no system of deductive logic developed in China. I’ll post some stuff about these things next week after I get back home.

Right now I’m off to hear an “author-meets-critics” panel on David Wong’s book Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism (Oxford University Press, 2006). Here is a nice, detailed Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews review of it by Christopher Gowans. Enjoy, and feel free to comment on Wong’s project! I’ll try to take some notes during the session.