Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences

Intellectual Humility and Owning One's Limitations Abstract Intellectual humility is a worthwhile virtue. Whitcomb et al. (Philos Phenomenol Res 94(3):520, 2017) recently propose a novel account of intellectual humility. According to this account, intellectual humility consists of proper attentiveness to and owning of one's intellectual limitations. We argue that this account is in accordance with empirical work on intellectual humility, but it has two problems. It leaves open the possibility that one can be both intellectually humble and arrogant and that it does not adequately explain the strangeness associated with self-attribution of intellectual humility. Subsequently, we explore an interesting connection between intellectual humility and ignorance. Our view is that intellectual humility can lead to ignorance in the internalist sense, but this is acceptable, in that intellectual humility also gives rise to valuable epistemic standings, such as understanding and wisdom.

There are no Justified True Beliefs in Gettier Cases Abstract According to the standard interpretation of Gettier cases, they can be used to form significant challenges to the tradition of defining knowledge as justified true beliefs (hereafter "JTB"). This position naturally assumes that varieties of target beliefs involved in typical Gettier cases are all JTBs, namely, unified beliefs which are simultaneously justified and true. But I do not think this is true. Conversely, every target belief in typical Gettier cases should be cashed out as one or more beliefs, none of which is a genuine JTB. In short, there is no JTB in Gettier's JTB-hostile vignettes at all. Hence, no matter whether the JTB account of knowledge is correct or not, Gettier cases are not really relevant to it. In addition, although I agree to Mizrahi's (Logos Episteme 7(1):31–44, 2016) general observation that face-values of target beliefs cannot be taken for granted in all Gettier cases, I have made a further claim that there is no cross-board methodology to disambiguate the target beliefs in all Gettier cases.

An Indian Quasi-Fregean Theory of Number Abstract A very interesting account of the reference of number words in classical Indian philosophy was given by Maheśa Chandra (1836–1906) in his Brief Notes on the Modern Nyāya System of Philosophy and its Technical Terms (BN), a primer on Navya-Nyāya terminology and doctrines. Despite its English title, BN is a Sanskrit work. The section on "number" (saṃkhyā) provides an exposition of a theory of number which can account for both the adjectival and the substantival use of number words in Sanskrit. According to D. H. H. Ingalls (1916–1999), some ideas about the reference of number words in BN are close to the Frege–Russell theory of natural number. Ingalls's comparison refers to a concept of number in Navya-Nyāya which is related to the things numbered via the so-called "circumtaining relation" (paryāpti). Although there is no theory of sets in Navya-Nyāya, Navya-Naiyāyikas do have a realist theory of properties (dharma) and their theory of number is a theory of properties as constituents of empirical reality, anchored to their system of ontological categories. As shown by George Bealer, properties can serve the same purpose as sets in the Frege–Russell theory of natural number. In the present paper, we attempt a formal reconstruction of Maheśa Chandra's exposition of the Navya-Nyāya theory of number, which accounts for its affinity to George Bealer's neo-Fregean analysis. As part of our appraisal of the momentousness and robustness of the "circumtaining" concept of number, we show that it can be cast into a precise recursive definition of natural number and we prove property versions of Peano's axioms from this definition.

American Roth Abstract An analysis of the Philip Roth's sustained pursuit of his American identity mixed with his engagement with the trope of the American Adam is the center of this paper. From the outset of his career, Roth has sought to be understood as an American, not Jewish, writer. But as his career unfolded, the challenges of sustaining his American identity grew, whether in Portnoy's Complaint, Sabbath's Theatre or the American Trilogy. The confrontation between American and Judaic identities increasingly became his subject as his Jewish roots threatened his American identity stemming from a Protestant, if not Puritan, literary heritage. Coleman Silk and Swede Levov from The Human Stain and American Pastoral represent the challenge best summarized by Abe Ravelstein in Bellow's eponymous novel when he remarks that "as a Jew you are also an American, but somehow you are not." The paradox of Roth's entanglement with the trope of the American Adam is that he both pursues and denies this identity, accepting its heroism but acknowledging its impossibility. One moment he publically declares "if I'm not an American, I am nothing," but on the other, to be Roth he knows he must violate the Adamic ideal, prepared to renounce neither his American nor Jewish identities.

People's Justice: Socialist Law and Equity in China, 1921–1945 Abstract When people's justice was conceived in Republican China, it brought with it a socialist conceptualisation of law and equity, by which the prefix of 'people' was not merely a superfluous addition to the term of 'justice'. On the contrary, it emphasised a people-oriented approach in as much practising the law as correcting the law where arose a rigidity during its application. Such elements as class inequality and the supremacy of state interests were found therein, alongside with Mao's emphasis on the mass line policy. By dividing the period from 1921 to 1945 into three sections, namely 1921–1927, 1927–1934 and 1935–1945, this article aims to give a brief discussion of the evolution of people's justice, both as a concept and as a system of laws, in China, which may help us to better appreciate the socialist notions and traditions of law and equity.

River Cultures in World History—Rescuing a Neglected Resource Abstract This paper argues that historians have all but ignored the study of rivers and their impact on the development of human society. Apart from a somewhat terse acknowledgment of the importance of rivers in the development of ancient civilizations, from the Huang He to the Ganges, the Nile, and the Amazon, historians have by and large limited themselves to studying individual rivers, while ignoring the potential of comparative analysis of rivers. I call for a broader engagement by historians of all aspects of rivers, including their role in transportation, fishing, agriculture, industry, recreation, and the environment, people's cultural response to rivers, and the legal regimes that have grown up around them, with special reference to the role of rivers as political boundaries.

Land Reclamation in the Rhine and Yangzi Deltas: An Explorative Comparison, 1600–1800 Abstract In the early sixteenth century, the deltas of Rhine and Yangzi faced comparable ecological crises, but neither of these riverine societies was deterred by the mounting challenges. They independently developed divergent ways to not only defend against the encroaching water, but also reclaim new land from the water. This paper aims to examine the factors in the making of that transformation in these two riverine societies and to ask how they took different paths, why, and what were the implications of that divergence. In asking these questions, particular attention will be paid to the significance of technological and institutional breakthroughs in the Dutch case, such as highly efficient windmills for pumping water, the mapping of cadastral surveys with triangulation, the centralization of power in the local water boards (heemraden), and the involvement of the financial market. In the Chinese case, we focus on the importance of the developing domestic market, the relationship between state and society in local water management, and the formation of unique local land reclamation organizations.

Singular Terms for Numbers? Abstract In natural language, number-words can be used in two different syntactic ways: adjectivally, i.e., with the syntactic status of an adjective, as in (1) 'Mars has two moons,' and nominally, i.e., with the syntactic status of a noun phrase, as in (2) 'Two is even.' This syntactic difference is often taken to correspond to a difference in semantic function: adjectival number-words function as predicables, whereas nominal number-words function as singular terms. The view that nominal number-words function as singular terms is typically supported by appeal to certain tests for singular-termhood, tests that stem from the (neo-)Fregean tradition. In this paper, I argue that these tests do not support the view of nominal number-words as singular terms.

Freedom of Indifference: Its Metaphysical Credentials According to Crusius Abstract In the history of philosophy, voluntarists—that is, philosophers committed to some version of the freedom of indifference—have worried about its metaphysical credentials, but only a few, at least to my knowledge, have attempted to argue for more than its mere existence. Freedom of indifference is the option to choose between opposites in a given situation. In this paper, I present the ambitious attempt of the German pre-Kantian philosopher Christian August Crusius (1715–1775) to argue for the claim that we have freedom of indifference as a matter of hypothetical necessity. The point is that, in his view, there can be no actual world without freedom of indifference. This is not a logical but a metaphysical truth. I argue that a possible (motivational) reason for Crusius's choice to tread this slippery path is that he attempts to bestow some metaphysical dignity on the freedom of indifference. As a consequence, this metaphysical value of freedom of indifference shapes the relation between the divine and free, rational agents in a way that is completely different from a rationalist's conception such as Leibniz's. In this paper, I give a plausible interpretation of a metaphysical argument that has been neglected in the relevant literature.

Conceptualizing and Measuring Global Justice: Theories, Concepts, Principles and Indicators Abstracts The paper focuses on the conceptualization and measurement of global justice and discusses theories, concepts, evaluative principles, and methodologies related to the study of global justice. In this paper, we seek to clarify how to conceptualize global justice, how conceptual indicators can be selected and justified by theories, and how those indicators can be conceptually consistent with the concept of global justice. Global justice is a broad concept that is composed of multi-level and multidimensional aspects belonging to both normative and empirical realities. A coherent and integrated theoretical framework that covers the normative basis and various empirical dimensions is therefore much needed in order to address some of the basic and important questions under study. The paper seeks to synthesize the multiple theories and conceptions of global justice that exist in the academic discourse and literature into three main theoretical approaches to global justice—rights based, good based, and virtue based. These three approaches are a good sample of and reflect well the strengths of the different theoretical, intellectual and cultural traditions at play in the study of global justice. From this perspective, the synthesis of the three approaches is meant to provide us with a coherent theoretical framework that serves as the normative basis and justifies the selection of indicators for measurement.

Alexandros Sfakianakis
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