ProtoSociology Series

The idea of only one way leading to a modern society seems to be hardly tenable. But even if we agree to this, our theories and terms describing modernization are gained on our own Western history. So social science has to reconsider its basic terms to describe China’s modernization, and maybe even the understanding of modernization itself. The first of two volumes on China’s modernization, collects articles by leading Chinese and Western scientists focusing on the main conflicts and differences this process involves. In a first section – “Changing China: Dealing with Diversity” –, Björn Alperman analyses the terms “Class, Citizenship and Individualization in China’s Modernization”. Andrew Kipnis analyses the “Chinese Nation-Building as, Instead of, and Before Globalization”, while John R. Gibbins examines “Principles for Cosmopolitan Societies: Values for Cosmopolitan Places”. “On Modernization: Law, Business, and Economy in China”, the second section, deals with “Modernizing Chinese Law: The Protection of Private Property in China” by Sanzhu Zhu, “Chinese Organizations as Groups of People – Towards a Chinese Business Administration” by Peter J. Peverelli, and “Income Gaps in Economic Development: Differences among Regions, Occupational Groups and Ethnic Groups” by Ma Rong. The last section – “Thinking Differentiations: Chinese Origin and the Western Culture” – concentrates on the role of religion with articles by Richard Madsen (“Christianity and Hybrid Modernity in China”) and Thorsten Botz-Bornstein (“Confucianism, Puritanism, and the Transcendental: China and America”). Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom argues that Nathan Sharansky’s test for free nations should take regional variations into account in “China and the Town Square Test”. In “Metaphor, Poetry and Cultural Implicature” Ying Zhang examines if the Western understanding of metaphor can be transferred to Chinese language and culture. The additional rubric “On Contemporary Philosophy” involves three articles about the question “Can Science Change our Notion of Existence?” by Jody Azzouni, “The Epistemological Significance of Practices” by Alan Millar, and “On Cappelen and Hawthrone’s ‘Relativism and Monadic Truth’” by J. Adam Carter. Content and abstracts: www.protosociology.de

The idea of only one way leading to a modern society seems to be hardly tenable. But even if we agree to this, our theories and terms describing modernization are gained on our own Western history. So social science has to reconsider its basic terms to describe China’s modernization, and maybe even the understanding of modernization itself. The second of two volumes on China’s modernization collects articles by leading Chinese and Western scientists focusing on the main conflicts and differences this process involves. In the first section – “On Contemporary Theory of Modernization” – Manussos Marangudakis represents Shmuel N. Eisenstadt’s concept of “Multiple Modernities and the Theory of Indeterminacy”, one of the best elaborated perspectives on modernity. “Changing China: Dealing with Diversity”, the second section, examines how China copes with dissent and discusses the significance of law and a civil society. Merle Goldman begins with “Dissent of China’s Public Intellectuals in the Post-Mao Era”. The “Modernization of Law in China – its Meaning, Achievements, Obstacles and Prospect” is the subject of Qingbo Zhang. Scott Wilson presents a Gramscian analysis of civil society in “China’s State in the Trenches”. And Francis Schortgen and Shalendra Sharma study how China is “Manufacturing Dissent: Domestic and International Ramifications of China’s Summer of Labor Unrest”. “Neoliberalism and the Changes in East Asian Welfare and Education” is the focus of the third section. Beatriz Carrillo Garcia investigates the “Business Opportunities and Philanthropic Initiatives” in China. “Time, Politics and Homelessness in Contemporary Japan” is the subject of Ritu Vij. Different school books show the “Educational Modernisation Across the Taiwan Straits” by David C. Schak. And Ho-fung Hung discusses the role of China in globalization following the question: “Is China Saving Global Capitalism from the Global Cri-sis?” The additional rubric “On Contemporary Philosophy” involves three articles about “International Development, Paradox and Phronesis” by Robert Kowalski, “The World in the Head” by Robert Cummins, and “Communication, Cooperation and Conflict” by Steffen Borge. Content and abstracts: www.protosociology.de

“Concept” in a historic and systematic perspective In his paper “What Happened to the Sense of a Concept-Word?”, Carlo Penco deals with the boundary between semantics and pragmatics and discusses some misunderstandings in the shift from the sense/reference distinction in Frege to the intension/extension distinction in semantics. Building on Fodor, Margolis and Laurence Jacob Beck defends in “Sense, Mentalese, and Ontology” the latter Fregean view on concepts by arguing that the mind-independence of Fregean senses renders them ontologically suspect in a way that mentalese symbols are not. Maria C. Amoretti explores the model of Davidson’s triangulation and its specific role in concept acquisition. In “A Critique of David Chalmers’ and Frank Jackson’s Account of Concepts” Ingo Brigandt suggests a more pragmatic approach to natural kind term meaning, arguing that the epistemic goal pursued by a term’s use is an additional semantic property. Agustin Vicente, Fernando Martinez-Manrique discuss whether this variability in the languages generates a corresponding variability in the conceptual structure of the speakers of those languages in “The Influence of Language on Conceptualization: Three Views”. The connection between “Views of Concepts and of Philosophy of Mind—From Representationalism to Contextualism” is explored by Sofia Miguens, in respect of Edmund Husserl to Jocelyn Benoist. Richard Manning argues some “Changes in View: Concepts in Experience” with the main thesis that the content of perceptual experience must be conceived as concept-involving. In “Concepts and Fat Plants” Marcello Frixione suggests that typicality effects are more plausibly the consequence of some “ecological constraints” acting on the mind. What does cognitive neuroscience contribute to our philosophical under-standing of concepts? That is the main question for Joseph B. McCaffrey in “Con-cepts in the Brain: Neuroscience, Embodiment, and Categorization”. The volume is completed by articles on the historical perspective on concept, starting with “Conceptual Distinctions and the Concept of Substance in Descartes” by Alan Nelson. “The Concept of Body in Hume’s Treatise” is examined by Miren Boehm. Lewis Powell argues the “Conceiving without Concepts: Reid vs. The Way of Ideas”. And Thomas Vinci asks: “Why the ‘Concept’ of Spaces is not a Concept for Kant”, while Sonja Schierbaum reconstructs “Ockham on Concepts of Beings”. Content and abstracts: www.protosociology.de

This volume represents the first substantial collaborative work from Chinese and Western scholars on philosophy of language. We believe that recent developments in the Anglo-American philosophy and Chinese philosophy of language not only suggest a tableau of shared problems, but also a number of similar methods and goals. It is the goal of this volume to juxtapose these recent philosophical developments to illustrate the similarities between the traditions, but also to spur common dialogue and hopefully efforts to jointly engage shared philosophical problems. The issues engaged range from the role of cultural and biological factors in linguistic competence and language use, to figurative speech in different languages, the comparative study of work in semantics and philosophy, and the role of language in establishing the legal and ethical norms and values. Content and abstracts: www.protosociology.de

The papers collected in this volume all discuss the ways and extent to which the determinants of meaning must be public. In the philosophy of language there are currently two main traditions concerning the relationship between meaning and public phenomena. According to one tradition language is public in principle, so that there can be nothing to the meaning of linguistic expressions that cannot be accounted for in terms of the behaviour in context of linguistic subjects. According to the other tradition linguistic meaning is determined by the content of the mental representations that are expressed in overt speech acts. On such views, the properties of the mental are prior to language and linguistic meaning should be explained by appeal to mental concepts. There divergent traditions leave us with a question: Is linguistic meaning to be explained on the basis of a pre-linguistic biological or mental capacity which "goes public " in overt speech, or is it to be explained on the basis of pubic behaviour in context which "goes private "in thought, and which determines the contents of the mental?

The Joint Commitment Account: Critical Essays on the Philosophy of Sociality of Margaret Gilbert with Her Comments