Chalmers and Extended Mind

There seems to be a possible disanalogy in Professor David Chalmers' paper("Extended Mind", Issues in the Philosophy of Mind, The 22nd World Congress of Philosophy, Seoul, 2008), a disanalogy between stories of Eileen and Otto. One may ask them by saying "are you sure that the museum is on the 52nd street?" Eileen may promptly respond to the question by answering "yes, I am sure of my belief because I checked it yesterday". But Otto may take a few seconds of time to ponder how to formulate his position in connection to the question. Being a considerate man and/or being handicapped of memory trouble, Otto would say "If my notebook is reliable I may be certain of my belief to that extent".

The disanalogy between the two appears to be this: Whereas Eileen herself is authoritative as to what she believes, Otto ascribes the authority of his belief to his notebook. Anybody can question Otto by asking how he can appeal to the authority of a written text?

One of the further implications of this disanalogy is that Eileen and the questioner may come to share some personal relationship whereas Otto and the questioner are limited to having an informational relationship.

Stanley and Quine

The attempt in Professor Jason Stanley's paper("Referential Semantics", Issues in the Philosophy of Language, The 22nd World Congress of Philosophy, Seoul, 2008) to construct a functional formalism structure out of the notion of degree in 3.2 children looks successful. I would believe that anybody can agree that the expression "3.2 children" in a sentence "An average American family has 3.2 children" may be taken to refer to this structural entity. But not only everyday people on the street but also philosophers in this seminar of the philosophy of language may have used expressions of a kind like "3.2 children" long before any functional structure was there suggested.

My question is this. Is semantics descriptive or prescriptive? If it is prescriptive what would its purpose or value be? Is it to be computational or to be ontological of a particular kind like physicalism? If it is descriptive, is it to be descriptive of speaker's language use or of speaker's state of mind when he utters the sentence?

Suppose that Professor Alvin Plantinger constructed a formal function for the word "god" in his system. Would there be a difference between ways to construct a formal functional entity, Quinean and Stanlean?

Gendler and Nonratioanlity of Alief

One can grant in Professor Tamar Gendler's "Alief and Belief"(Issues in Epistemology, The 22nd World Congress of Philosophy, Seoul, 2008) that the architect of the Grand Canyon Observatory Glass Bridge may believe to be safe walking on the bridge and yet has an alief of trembling sensation.

But suppose that there is the knowledge of the perfect architectural safety for the bridge which consists of propositions p1~pn. Wouldn't it be the case that the more number of propositions p1~pn is somehow known to her in building the bridge to be increasing the less trembling sensation of her alief may take place? If this conjecture is plausible would he still be justified in believing that alief is neither rational nor irratioal?

Yamamoto on Friendship

Prof. Yoshihisa Yamamoto's paper on friendship('Thomas Aquinas on the Ontology of Friendship: Selfness and Otherness', The 22nd World Congress of Philosophy, Seoul, 2008) is rich in its metaphysical implications and full of insights. My reading of it was one of the opportunities of joy where I can experience of philosophizing.

As I read it, the basic structure of the paper may be summarized in the following 5 propositions. I took the last paragraph of the paper to mean the conclusion (5) and premises (1)~(4) may allow interpretations by which one can derive the conclusion.

1. A man is 'undivided in itself(unum)', holding his own uniqueness.
2. He is 'distinct from others(aliquid)',
negating something he can share with others.
3. Whatever exists is active(Thomistic ontology),
then the world is the organic totality of interactions among what there are.
4. Anything good is self-diffusive(Neoplatonic principle).
5. Friendship is a relationship
(5.1) among two independent individuals(1 & 2);
(5.2) of mutual betterment(3 & 4).

If this understanding of the paper is plausible, the notions of God, cause, finitude, and love which were introduced in the paper may not be necessary for the argument, while they may help some readers to understand the arguments.

I remember the conversations which Professors Yamamoto, Taesoo Lee and I shared at the Congress Dinner. Some of the questions raised at the time still linger in my mind. Is the notion of friendship (5) acceptable and persuasive? Even though it has a merit of allowing and/or requiring a universal friendship, aren't human beings finite in their resources in their emotion, time, and economy? If we take 'friendship' to mean a relationship among persons who love to share what they consider precious or pleasant, aren't this is too restricted and yet ordinary? Which is more beneficial and/or strategic for human kind, Aquinasian friendship or an ordinary one?

Intentionality of Cheng(誠): Toward an Organic View

Table of Contents

[1] Intentionality Principle, Divisional or Organic?
[2] A Conception of Cheng(誠)
[3] The Failings of the Physicalistic World View
[4] An Informational View of the World Holistic
Bibliography
Notes


[1] Intentionality Principle, Divisional or Organic?

The notion of intentionality[1] has been in the center of the debate
between dualism and physicalism quite some time. Dualism insists that
intentionality is the mark of mental phenomena which separates humans
from other animals whereas physicalism roughly claims that whatever there
is either reducible to some physical states or explainable in terms of some
physical language.

Which is more plausible? Physicalism, on the one hand, is
attractive as a philosophical world view but it raises more philosophical
problems than it solves. On the other hand, dualism is useful in explaining
much of human mental life but is not effective enough in explaining what is
to be an acceptable relationship between mind and matter.

Is there any other alternative? Where can we look for one? We
know that Asian tradition is full of organic world views. I am inclined to
think that one alternative world view may come from this background. This
paper tries to show that the notion of cheng(誠) intentionality is such a
candidate.

I will advance a thesis in this paper that cheng(誠) intentionality is
holistic. The notion is not only applicable to humans but also to other
phenomena. This may seem indistinguishable from physicalism in its
monistic settings. Since I believe that the notion of cheng(誠) is more
persuasive in explaining mental phenomena in evolutionary terms, I would
argue here that the thesis can also be supported by some notions like
that an information is a syntactical structure which reflects physical states
and that the physicalisitic view of the world is not sufficient.


[2] A Conception of Cheng(誠)

'Cheng(誠)' means moderation, rectitude, propriety, equilibrium,
lack of prejudice, objectivity, honesty, sincerity, devotion,
truthfulness, true heart; being respectful, honoring, making it true, being
careful about one's words. On the surface, the word seems to mean
many different things. But this impression may be weakened if one takes a
look at the root of the word. Cheng(誠) consists of two components,
yan(言) and chheng(成). ‘Yan(言)’ literally means language, metaphoric
principle or objective, whereas 'chheng(成)' connotes fulfillment, realization,
or arrival. Yet the notion of cheng(誠) remains a complex one as many
important notions are. I would like to offer 5 propositions in order to arrive
at an interpretation of cheng(誠) that I hope will render the notion more
clear, coherent, and illuminating.

The notion of cheng(誠) is certainly one of some key concepts in
Confucianism as one can see when Tzu Ssu regarded it as the central
theme of Confucian thought. It was highlighted in The Doctrine of the
Mean(中庸, Zhong yong),[2] one of four Confucian texts. Some scholars
interpreted 'cheng(誠)' anthropologically[3], limiting the notion exclusively to
that of devotion, sincerity, existential human being.

But my reading of the text points to a different direction. Two of
many texts which can support my reading are: "cheng(誠) is the way of
heaven whereas the practice of cheng(誠) is the way of the human(誠者
天之道也, 誠之者 人之道也)"; "cheng(誠) is the first and the last of all
things; if there is no cheng(誠) then there is nothing(誠者 物之終始, 不誠
無物)". Then the notion of cheng(誠) can be translated from the text
inclusively[4] as a notion of integration.[5] The following statement is what
we can arrive at by summing up those ideas in terms of integration:

2.1 The cheng(誠) of an entity is the power to realize the embedded
objective of it in the context where it interacts with all others.

What is integration? It may be seen from a third person point of
view, taking it to mean 'harmonizing' of two or more others and this is
sometimes called 'syncretism'. But I would, in this context, suggest that
integration is one's own bringing of elements of other systems together
into one's own body or system. The exegesis of the word ‘integration'
from the first person point of view may be seen as 'adjustment' or
'growing'. Integration is not an activity of some third party but that of the
one who attempts it himself. What one may call an "integrator" is
everywhere and all things in the world are integrators which
process informations given by their surroundings. The Cartesian tradition
used to call this integrator "mind" by limiting the scope of its function to
only humans, but the Confucian tradition(性卽理) calls "mind" any agent
that does integrate. This is another element of the notion of cheng(誠)
which can be expressed in the following statement:

2.2 'Mind' refers to the ability of not a single kind of entity but to that of
all entities of complex degrees in processing information.

The difference between the two traditions is obvious. Cartesian
scholars think that they can see the distinction between thought and
matter. It is possible, they thought, to think that humans can exist without
body but impossible to think that humans can exist without thinking. The
body is contingent on the human but thought is not. They apply this logic
to other things to conclude that the human is a thinking being but other,
non-human things are not. Dualism is thought to obtain thereby. But the
Cartesian modal argument is flawed in that it is only in the actual world that
an embodied person thinks. Is there any criterion of identity to distinguish
persons without bodies who thinks? Confucian students entertain an
organic view of the world, holding a thesis of continuity between human
and all other things.

2.3 cheng(誠) is a power of mind not only of human but also of all other things.
The continuity thesis is strengthened when evolution theory is
presented as an option for the explanation of the origin of species.
Suppose that the theory is taken as a hypothesis. Then, one is forced to
accept not only the evolution of our bodies but also that of our minds. We
are in a position to see that human history is continuous with the histories
of other entities.

2.4 If evolution reflects a history of species of what is better fit
then history represents an evolution of life forms of what is intelligent and just.

The evolution theory is apparently an optimistic one. This is
perhaps because it was developed from the view point of the survivors of
that processes. Certainly, there have been struggles and pains in the
processes of evolution. But the wholesome results of the evolutionary
processes in nature is such that survivors have become organically related
with each other. When we come to see nature from this perspective, we
can't help but perceive an eventual harmony in it, perhaps a cosmic
harmony. The notion of cheng(誠) expresses such an internalistic
optimism:

2.5 Cheng(誠) is realizing what can be the best in a given situation
in which a subject is involved with its surroundings at the time.[6]


[3] The Failings of the Physicalistic World View

I want to argue that Cheng(誠) intentionality may allow a basis
upon which to build an organic view of the world and, at the same time, to
replace the physicalistic point of view. Why do we need to reconsider
physicalism? There are several reasons.

Physicalism requires many notions to survive as a system:
reduction, supervenience, the closure principle, and causation, among
others. But these notions assume that there are at least two kinds of
language, mental and physical. For example, in order to reduce a mental
concept to a physical one, there must be some parallel, if not isomorphic,
structure between the mental language and the physical language. If one
has to allow such a structure then isn't so-called "phyicalism" a disguised
form of dualism? If reduction is real in one direction so must it be in the
other. If reduction is to be real, first the reducer and the reduced must be
real as well.

Physicalism assumes that there is one clear language which is
physical. For an example, many physicalists employ the notion of cause as
one standard whether a certain description is physical or not. If an event is
describable in terms of causation it is regarded as a physical event.[7] In
other words, if an event under a certain description can enter into some
causal relations with other events, then that description of the event counts
as physical.

But this criterion is problematic. For it is impossible to dictate
one causal description to any event or any object. For any description in a
final analysis is an interpretation. For an example, Brutus' killing Caesar
and Brutus' stabbing Caesar may be taken as one and the same physical
event but are given to us under two different psychological descriptions.
To explain why Brutus killed caesar may not be the same as to explain why
Brutus stabbed Caesar.[8] Likewise, as it is well discussed, my turning on
the light and my alerting a thief may be counted as the same physical
event. But my turning on the light causes the room to be illuminated but my
alerting a thief does not.

If there is not a single condition for an entity to satisfy in order to
be physical, could the physicalism be stated in a physical language? If a
physical language is not obtainable what could one think the physicalism is
like?

Suppose that physicalism is granted. One question among many is
concerned with the relation of logic and nature. Is a rock purely an
aggregate of material elements? How is the rock different from a rose
which should be another aggregate of material elements? One is naturally
inclined to admit that rocks and roses are constituted differently. But
exactly what is the difference between the two consittutions? When they
expand, contract, or grow aren't they in a type of informational states?

One further question is what is the structure of these informational
states which make rocks and roses different. Shouldn't we allow that they
are programmed differently, that they possess a different logic? Then, are
the programs and logic of these things physical or mental? Is a phyisicalist
prepared to say that they are material? This discussion on the relationship
of the two will continue in the next section.

Physicalism faces another challenge. It can be stated as follows: if
the body is a product of evolution, so must be the mind. One may be
tempted to deny the consequent in the conditional. Then how could he or
she remain intact without having to deny the antecedent? Of course there
is one option for the physicalist. It is to deny the reality of the mental. Is
there any other possibility?


[4] An Informational View of the World Holistic

There seems to be two versions of the informational view of the
world. One is that everything humans see and experience is a text to be
interpreted. This may be called "an epistemic version" which has been
developed from the Kantian transcendental theory of knowledge. The other
is that anything which exists in the world, whether it be sand, a plant, or a
bird, constitutes a system which interacts informationally with systems of
other things.[9] A stone or a flower receives a variety of appropriate in-put
from its surroundings and gives relevant out-put. This is "a processing
version" which I would like to focus on. For I came to believe that this
version allows a clear explanation of the continuity of humans and all other
things in the world.

F. Dretske ignores the ultimate difference between representations,
both artificial and natural. The former can be reduced to the latter which,
he thinks, is basic. He is ceratin that human mental content is thus
explained in his naturalistic terms. This representation results from its
dependence relationship[10] with the state of affairs in which it is found. Then
this natural representaion will be seen in human physiology, which is what
he calls a 'proto-belief'. His dependence relationship is eventually found to
be informational.

R.G. Millikan's strategy is evolutionary rather than causalistic.[11]
She thinks that proper functions and their teleology of biological beings
have been determined. That is, when we humans think in the way we do
what is involved in that thinking processes is determined evolutionarily
rather than in some mysterious way. For her, procedures to use
representations are the same as ways to represent and to determine the
representational contents.

D.J. Chalmers[12] goes further than Dretske by suggesting some
form of pan-psychism. Here rocks don't have a system of information
processing and thus have neither consciousness nor experience. But when
rocks are inflated or deflated they are in informational states which include
a system of quasi-consciousness. These may not be phenomenal qualia
but some proto-phenomenal qualia.

These three philosophers[13] have distinct ways of formulating their
own naturalism as to mental content. Their versions of naturalsim are not
fully worked out yet as has been pointed out.[14] But they seem to share the
belief that human intentionality is not a basis by which one can show that
human is essentially different from all other animals. To varying degrees,
I would believe, they are evolutionary, weakly or strongly, in explaining the
issue of human intentionality.

The evolutionary thesis may be criticized in that it is optimistic. For
it appears that human species are placed at the apex of the evolutionary
process. To my mind the appearance is not mistaken. For evolution and
devolution are not some physiological states which are independent of
description. They are rather described from the perspective of the survivors
of evolution. The notion of evolution may not carry with it the explicit thesis
that what has survived is for the better but the implicit thesis that those
which have survived are the fitter.[15]

Bibliography

Chalmers, David J., The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental
Theory, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Chung, Daihyun, Embodied Mental Content, Seoul: Acanet, 2001(In Korean).
Confucius(孔子), Analects, The Great Learning and The Doctrine of the
Mean(論語 Lun yu, 大學 Da xue, 中庸 Zhong yong, ), tr. James
Legge, Dover, 1971, Clarendon, 1893.
Davidson, Donald, "Causal Relations", 149-162; "Mental Events", 207-224;
both in Essays on Actions and Events, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980.
Dretske, Fred, Explaining Behaviour: Reasons in a World of Causes, MIIT Press, 1988.
Lee, Gyusung, "Sincerety", Wang Sungsan's Philosophy of Becoming,
Ewha Womans University Press, 2002(In Korean).
Lee, Kangsoo, "Philosophy of Human in Zhong yong", Understanding of
Ancient Chines Philosophy, Seoul: Jisiksanupsa, 2003(In Korean).
Lee, Sangun, Life and Learning of Togegye, Seoul: Somoondang, 1973(In Korean).
Lee, Seungchong. "Intentionality and Method(In Korean)", Philosophical
Issues in Korea, ed., Korean Philosophical Association, Seoul:
Chulhakgwa Hyunsilsa, 2000.
Legge, James, "Translator's Introduction" in Confucius, Analects, The
Great Learning and The Doctrine of the Mean, Dover, 1971, Clarendon, 1893.
Kim, Jaegwon, "On the Psycho-Physical Identity Theory", American
Philosophical Quarterly, 3(1966).
Millikan, Ruth Garrett, White Queen Psychology and Other Essays for Alice,
MIT Press, 1993.
Park, Jonghong, "Thoughts of Zhong yong", Complete Works of Jonghong
Park, Vol. 3, Hyungsul Pub. Co., 1982.
Searle, John & John Perry, "Intentionality", A Companion to the
Philosophy of Mind, ed., S. Guttenplan, Blackwell, 1994.
Shannon, C. E., "A Mathematical Theory of Communication", Bell Systems
Technical Journal, Volume 27(1948).7-85.
Yoon, Bosuk, "Intentionality and Naturalism(In Korean)", Philosophical
Naturalism, ed., Korean Society of Analytic Philosophy, Seoul:
Chulhakgwa Hyunsilsa, 1995.
Yoon, Sa-soon, "Modern Value of the Confucianist Ideal in 'Realizing Self
and Realizing Others(成己成物)'", Study of Confucian Thoughts,
Volume 26(2006): 5-19(In Korean).


Notes

[1] For contemporary discussions of the notion, see John Searle & John Perry, "Intentionality", A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind, ed., S. Guttenplan(Blackwell, 1994), 379-386, 386-395; Seungchong Lee, "Intentionality and Method(In Korean)", Philosophical Issues in Korea, ed., Korean Philosophical Association(Seoul: Chulhakgwa Hyunsilsa, 2000).
[2]Confucius(孔子), Analects, The Great Learning and The Doctrine of the Mean(論語 Lun yu, 大學 Da xue, 中庸 Zhong yong, ), tr. James Legge(1815-1897, Dover, 1971, Clarendon, 1893).
[3]James Legge(1971), Jonghong Park(1980), "Thoughts of Zhong yong", Complete Works of Jonghong Park, Vol. 3, 612, 620, 608-20(In Korean); Sangun Lee, Life and Learning of Togegye(Seoul: Somoondang, 1973, In Korean).
[4] 4) Sa-soon Yoon(2006), "Modern Value of the Confucianist Ideal in 'Realizing Self and Realizing Others(成己成物)'", Study of Confucian Thoughts, Volume 26(2006): 5-19(In Korean); Kangsoo Lee(2003), "Philosophy of Human in Zhong yong", Understanding of Ancient Chines Philosophy(Seoul: Jisiksanupsa, 2003), 103-111(In Korean); Gyusung Lee(2001), "Sincerety", Wang Sungsan's Philosophy of Becoming( Ewha Womans University Press, 2002, In Korean), 240-243.
[5] 5) Professor Kwangse Lee of Kent State University suggested the translation in a conversation years ago.
[6] The notion of Cheng(誠) does not exclude elements of conflicts. It rather requires the process of sharp complains or great earthquakes if necessary before it eventually arrives at the stage of peace or harmony.
[7]Donald Davidson, "Causal Relations", 149-162; "Mental Events", 207-224; both in Essays on Actions and Events(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980).
[8]Jaegwon Kim, "On the Psycho-Physical Identity Theory", American Philosophical Quarterly, 3(1966): 277-85.
[9]C. E. Shannon, "A Mathematical Theory of Communication", Bell Systems Technical Journal, Volume 27(1948).
[10]The dependence relation between representation and states of affiars is not the relation between tokens c and f, but between types C and F. Then, an occurrence of token c indicates a token f but this token indication is not necessary. And the context may affect the indication relation and misrepresentation is allowed. Fred Dretske, Explaining Behaviour: Reasons in a World of Causes( MIIT Press, 1988).
[11]Ruth Garrett Millikan, White Queen Psychology and Other Essays for Alice(MIIT Press, 1993).
[12]David J. Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory( New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
[13]Daihyun Chung, Embodied Mental Content(Seoul: Acanet, 2001, In Korean), 169-240.
[14]Bosuk Yoon, "Intentionality and Naturalism(In Korean)", Philosophical Naturalism, ed., Korean Society of Analytic Philosopy(Seoul: Chulhakgwa Hyunsilsa, 1995), 203-214.
[15]A draft of this paper was read at the Seoul Conference of Asian Philosophy , organized by Korean Philosophical Association, June 1-2, 2007 at Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, South Korea, and this is to be published in 2008 at Philosophy and Culture: Metaphysics, Korean Philosophical Association.

*Daihyun Chung, “Intentionality of Cheng(誠): Toward an Organic View”, Philosophy and Culture: Volume 2 Metaphysics, Korean Philosophical Association, 2007: 33-40.

The Changing Nature of Knowledge and New Directions for the Humanities

Table of Contents

(I) Expansion of the Notion of Knowledge
(II) Predicaments of Human Conditions and New Directions for the Humanities
(III) The Humanities: Gap Between Universities and Cultural Realities
(IV) Verbal Languages and Digital Languages in the Humanities


Paik Nam-june created an art piece called "Descartes" (Picture 1) which is exhibited at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Gwachun, a town adjacent to Seoul. The work seems to say "My brain processes digitally therefore I am". Paik represents the Descartes of Rationalist Dualism as a robot of Physicalist Digitalism. As Paik's digital processes threaten to replace Descartes' mental processes, one comes to wonder how long the human mind will be considered as an essential part of human existence. Whereas Descartes philosophized the long-held dualist tradition of the West through his rationalist language, Paik led attempts in the art world to show the ubiquity and plasticity of digital languages through a series of his video art works. Here I will focus on how the monistic epistemology of logocentrism gives way to pluralistic epistemologies and explore the implications this change might have for new directions in the humanities.

(I) Expansion of the Notion of Knowledge

Many of us are familiar with Plato's Cave metaphor or the Biblical saying that "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free". Both of these seem to presuppose a special notion of knowledge, namely, what may be called "knowledge as the mirror of the reality". This view is saying that what we experience in this world are mere phenomena and that genuine reality lies outside the world of experience. What proceeds from these phenomena are doxastic opinions, which will lead us into never ending debate and confusion. However, if only we could reach true reality it will grant us one wholistic system of knowledge, which would unite the entire human race and set us all free at last. Western traditions suggest two routes leading to this reality: reason and religion. But intellectual communities under the influence of Descartes preferred the former to the latter, apparently believing that reason will take us from manifold and mutable appearances of the world to the simple reality governed by the transparent logical order.

If we can name this view "a realistic theory of knowledge", I believe a contemporary version of the theory is known as the model of "knowledge as justified true belief". It is believed that a true belief can be transformed into knowledge by means of reason, evidence, or justification. The notion of reason as the bridge connecting the phenomenal world and the real world became the notion of reason as a device to show the connection of a certain belief and its truth. This instrumental reason is again replaced by empirical notions like evidence or contextual notions like justification. The celestial realism becomes a terrestrial realism. While knowledge requires a belief to be true, the notion of the truth can't help but be the unilateral and singular notion of truth of reality. If one can accept the truth realism of knowledge, the justified true belief will constitute the necessary and sufficient condition for knowledge.

The realism tradition of knowledge faces two challenges, the Gettier counter examples and some research in semantics. The Gettier examples show that one can satisfy the necessary and sufficient conditions for having knowledge as required by classical epistemology without reaching knowledge. The Gettier problem triggers various attempts to overcome the counter examples to maintain the formal conditions for knowledge. Notions like evidence, inference, and causality have been investigated and theories like reliabilism, evidentialism, foundtionalism, and coherentism were examined. But those attempts appear to be overshadowed by current research in semantics.

If Descartes turned the age of metaphysics into that of epistemology, then Frege-Wittgenstein seemed to change the generations of epistemology into those of the philosophy of language, at least for a while. Philosophers in language raised many issues in epistemology though not directly. Justified true beliefs cannot be expressed without using sentences. But what is a sentence? Suppose that a sentence can obtain its meaning by an ordered pair of two sets of conditions, namely, the one which consists of conditions where the sentence can be true and one where it is false. Then, the meaning of the sentence can be understood in terms of the sort of realism mentioned above and there wouldn't be a problem. But the concept of truth becomes problematic. While the truth of a sentence cannot be presented independently of the sentence, the meaning of the sentence should be given by the conditions of the truth of the sentence. Wittgenstein fills the vacuum, left behind by the notion of truth, by the notion of the forms of life that members of a linguistic community are engaged in.1)

The distinction between truth semantics and communal semantics suggests another distinction, namely, that between theory and discourse. When meaning of a language is to be successfully given in terms of the truth theory, there will be the one true theory in the final analysis which will explain any problem. The truth semantics justifies the notion of theory. But if we may suppose that the communal theory of meaning is plausible, then there is not much to constrain us toward the one single theory of all. Rather, we are likely to have various communal discourses on any special issue in the concrete contexts of our lives. For example, information would be one illustration of pluralistic epistemologies. One may take an understanding of the notion of information as a syntactical structure rather than as a true sentence. The former and not the latter allows anything to be information which is digitally processed. Computers make it possible that we can access not only to verbal languages but also to sounds and pictures if they could be rendered syntactically. Now movies and music can be reached anywhere if they satisfy that syntactical requirement.

Human languages have evolved in accordance with the gradual growth of the forms(plural) of life of human kinds.2) Though there are various forms of life in human communities, human species as a natural kind share some important form(singular) of life, by which they can translate one language to another. If we are to prefer the community based discourse to the truth based theory, the epistemology we should choose may be some sort of discourse which our communal interests dictate that we pursue. The activities of the discourse are bound to be dialectical or pluralistic. The discourse will be inclusive of the questions of intellectual lives, communal advancements, and completions of individuals.

(II) Predicaments of Human Conditions and New Directions for the Humanities

What are the humanities? There are many ways to formulate the notion of the humanities. One of them would be that humanities are basically a teleological anthropology in the sense that they are attempts to humanize the world, in which people or individuals live and of which they are part. Humanization itself is open to various interpretations. It would be natural, then, that there are various versions of humanities relative to a tradition of how a human being has been understood. It is worthwhile to mention just three traditions. Since the East Asian tradition took the notion of gentleman(君子) as central to its anthropology it regarded Gyounghak(經學) as the core of humanities. Ancient Greece taught humanities to the sons of her citizens in accordance with her orientation of what the sense of the rights and duties of free members of a city should be. Later, the western Renaissance molded a notion of the human from the perspective that people need to be independent from much of the influence of the church and the application of that notion resulted in a new direction in the humanities.

The three traditions had different views on the conditions of human beings. To some, confusion-order could be the dominant human predicament. To others, it could be war-peace, famine-wealth, or oppression-freedom. But the contemporary communities in the global village, though they adhere to different heritages, have much more in common than they did in the past. Work and leisure, environment, information, sensuality and fitness are some of the issues which are of most concern to contemporary communities. It would be reasonable to make a conjecture to the effect that as history evolves, the human conditions which each epoch regarded as crucial, changes from those of survival toward those of realizing the human potential. In this respect, the history of the evolution of human conditions may be summed up as the evolution of humanization.

If the evolution of humanization could be any guide, it could suggest for us how to approach the disciplines of the humanities in this age of involved transformations. It is not clear to what extent the classical humanities expressed an interest in the modern social conditions. Some of the transformations we witnessed in the 20th century were profound. The human intellectual environment went through radical changes. Social sciences and natural sciences seem to double their activities every 10 years, not only enlarging the possibilities within their own fields but also maximizing their contributions to societies at large. But today many of us in the humanities, which are losing some of the attractiveness they enjoyed in the heyday of BIG theories, are busy specializing in particular topics. If we isolate ourselves as technicians in a specialized filed in the humanities, and don't concern ourselves with doing useful and effective research on qualitative conditions of life for people at large, it is only reasonable to expect that society will ask the empirical sciences to help enlighten their condition and receive quantified assesment of the present situation.

Reflections on the original purpose of the classical humanities will throw some light on the role the current humanities can play in the contemporary world. Although many other explanations will be possible, the purpose can be briefly sketched as follows.

(1) The Humanities are an attempt, by means of the verbal or non-verbal language to broaden the possibilities of human freedom limited by natural or social constraints.

Proposition (1) does not reflect a particular tradition in the classical humanities, rather it summarizes a common theme which exists therein. If the proposition is plausible, then the goal of the classical humanities may be said to be to broaden the possibilities of human freedom. Apparently, the dominant human concern in the classical humanities was the categories of oppression and freedom.

It is not the case that all the activities of the classical humanities were performed by a verbal language. Non-verbal experiments and activities in natural sciences, social sciences and various arts were deeply involved in broadening human freedom and they can be considered disciplines of the humanities in that regard. But if we were to choose a paradigmatic activity of the classical humanities it should be "reading classics". Reading and understanding the classics were one sufficient condition for being a participant in the humanities. In this sense, the classical humanities may be called "understanding oriented humanities(u_humanities)".

What can we say about a new direction for the humanities considering the changed notion of knowledge and the different conditions of the contemporary world? Let me propose the following if I may.

(2) The humanities are an attempt, by means of language activities, verbal or non-verbal, to express what it is to be human.

I would like to give a name to the humanities which satisfies the conditions of (2), "expression oriented humanities(e_humanities)". What distinguishes the two types of humanities? They each have their own separate sufficient conditions for being a practitioner in the field of humanities: to maximize human freedom and to realize human potential. U_humanities successfully fulfilled the goals which they had set out to do through a long struggle. E_humanities take freedom as a necessary condition but not a sufficient one. E_humanities admit that there are still many people who are oppressed in various parts of the world but insist that freedom is no longer the most urgent value for the global community. There are new values which the humanities should concentrate on promoting at the present time. The humanities need to set new and higher objectives now that the ideal of freedom has, to the present extent, been realized.

What is expression as a new value of the humanities? The word "expression" has been used notably in three different senses. Firstly, the word was widely taken to denote some presentation of what was emotionally felt whereas "proposition" designated some contents of the conditions for the truth of a sentence. There seems to be an obvious dichotomy between emotion and reason, which is not acceptable. Secondly, "Expression" was often used to refer to those various units of language like phrases or sentences. There is no objection to such a use, but I don't think that this is to be the primary sense of the word. The part of the meaning of the word I would like to emphasize is its third meaning focused on the performative character. "Expression" is sometimes used to refer to some elements of action by which one shows her or his agency character, as in "Mary expressed her approval by nodding."

This notion of expression needs to be defined more concisely. Since it is apparent that all people are constantly expressing something in one sense or another, I would allow that human expression is ubiquitous. But the notion of expression may be open to the idea of the degree of its manifestation, for some people are able to express more humanly and richly than others.

The idea that the notion of expression is of ubiquity and of degree suggests need of the formulation of some principles. Otherwise the notion may not be too useful. Then I may propose a principle, which is, that the realization of oneself is fitted with realization of all others(成己成物). This proposition is vague as it stands but it may be developed further to be useful. I would take this to allow a perspective from which one may connect any sort of human expressions, being able to evaluate any of them. This may be one of many principles which can regulate human expressions as a means of providing new directions for the humanities.3)

(III) The Humanities: Gap Between Universities and Cultural Realities

I argued that our notions of knowledge and the humanities have been or need to be, changed. But I happen to believe, on the one hand, that there is a gap between the humanities taught in universities and cultural realities and, on the other, that social sciences and natural sciences have come to have direct relevance to changes in social realities. It is only the humanities that have not come far enough. This may be because the humanities have had verbal language as their primary language, and thus perhaps they have limited their activities only to the space of verbal languages.

Let us consider the proposition (2), that is, that humanities are an attempt, by means of language activities, verbal or non-verbal, to express what it is to be human. The question is how we can express this. People find themselves, at any given moment, located in a system, and the system, once established over a period of time, tends to oppress its weaker members. The social sciences attempt to describe and understand such phenomena by methods of descriptive analyses and try to solve the problems they have identified. The humanities, nevertheless, try to approach the same phenomena by imagining what else there could be which would allow all people freedom and to help them realize their potentials. If the social sciences are mainly an actualist endeavor, then the humanities are mostly attempts to imagine the best possible space for human realization. The humanities made use of verbal languages for this purpose in "imagining" what would be possible and have been successful in performing various linear thought experiments and syntheses. That may explain why some scholars in the humanities were tempted to go into what's called BIG discourses.

But the contemporary cultural realities cannot be limited to the realm of verbal languages. There are many non-verbal languages which are asking to be heard. Such languages create a pluralistic, complex, and rich culture. For example, the digital media claims to be language in its own right. The media already plays the dominant role in inducing people to consume information. And it is heading toward the point where it will help not only businesses, but also individuals to produce information. The interactive digital culture opens the age where "everyone produces information". The digital age is characterized by the universal consumption and production of information. One can agree that the humanities, in the realm of contemporary culture, are thriving and successful, and may wish that the humanities in the academia would likewise thrive.(Picture 2)

(IV) Verbal Languages and Digital Languages in the Humanities

If the humanities could become pluralistic in their employment of languages, this would open up territories for new disciplines in the humanities. For example, if they could accept verbal languages and digital languages, these two types of languages would come to have distinct roles.

Digital languages would make it possible to fuse the various independent topics of the different disciplines in the humanities into a more unified theme. Movies by directors like Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Woody Allen, JehKyu Kang (Picture 3), and Akira Kurosawa exemplify one perennial question, that is, what it means to be a human. These movies blend various areas in the humanities to present the total context where a human being struggles to locate himself. The plasticity of reality realized by digital languages is very welcome in the face of the recent regimentation of many disciplines in the humanities in the name of specialization.

Digital languages could play another important role as well. That is, the role of connecting the academic humanities with cultural humanities. It would be hard to expect a verbal language to fulfill such a role. The contemporary popular culture is already distancing itself from the culture of written language. Universities can not leave the future status of the humanities to the mercy of the cultural markets. Academicians should pay close attention to the social realities around them and offer assessments of them. It seems to me that the best way for scholars to participate in the social milieu is to produce digital contents. Digitally produced academic works can speak more eloquently about the future of the digital culture than traditional language-based works.

I don't intend to suggest that verbal languages will be totally replaced by digital languages. Verbal languages have been employed in the humanities to fulfill their traditional functions. They are imagination, interpretation, analysis, criticism, synthesis, memory and so on. I do not believe that there is a more powerful language than verbal language for such tasks. No wonder our predecessors have insisted on the primacy of this written language and tried to improve its effectiveness.

The tradition of the primacy of verbal languages in the humanities should be kept up in the future. This needs to be emphasized in light of the fact that the tradition has been challenged from various sectors. Pluralization of languages should be accepted but not at the cost of sacrificing the primacy of verbal language. Particular topics and specializations in the humanities can not be ignored in the age of popular digital culture and they need to be protected in terms of the total humanities communities.

In conclusion, the humanities require a balanced perspective on the use of languages, namely, the primacy of verbal language on the one hand and the utilization of other types of languages on the other. The verbal language will deepen our understanding of the human predicament and the pluralization of languages is going to enrich the human existence. Then, it is time to consider how to set a new goal on a higher level for the humanities.4)

Daihyun Chung, The Changing Nature of Knowledge and New Directions for the Humanities,
International Symposium on New Directions for the Humanities, UNESCO_South Korea & Korean Philosophical Association, December 12-13, 2002.

A Logic in the Conception of People

Table of Contents

I. The Problem
II. The Passive People
III. A Logic of Inquiry
IV. The Real Agent of the History
V. Conclusion

I. The Problem

It is well claimed and more often agreed that people(1) is the
subject who guides the history. And it is this thesis on the basis of
which many variations of expressions, left or right, come into being.
Examples of them would be names which start with 'People's Republic of'
or a statement that Government of the people, by the people, and for the
people will never be perished. But what is not clear is the exact
nature of the thesis or its logic. This paper aims to clarify the
notion.

What kind of thesis is it? Is it a factual thesis, a logical one,
or a postulate? How could we know whether it is true or not? What
should one do when she wants to persuade her friends on the thesis?
Factual observation of human histories does not show in one way or other
as to the verity of the thesis. If it is a postulate it ceases to be
compelling however well a tyrant of good will brings in his power to
make it to be the case. Then, I would submit in this paper that it is a
logical thesis, and that its truth can be shown through the structure of
some fundamental human thoughts. Thereby I may turn out to say that the
thesis is not merely contingently true but necessarily true.

What kind of move would be appropriate to advance the thesis? One
natural thing should be to take a look at the thesis to see any clear
defect or problem or to rewrite it in such a way to show that and to
start to tacke the problem from there. One plausible candidate for the
rewrite is that the passive people is the real subject who guides the
hitory. This second formulation of the thesis allows us a clear
question: what would be a link which could somehow turn the passive
peole to the real agent who guides the history?

Fortunately, there have been a few works which may be taken as
having concentrated themselves to search for such a link. This paper,
being critical in their approaches, agrees with them in that the linkage
is the crucial in the conception of people. I may classify them roughly
into three sorts: concientization, political participation, and
revolution.

The first type is to recommend that the passive people will turn
out to be the real agent of the history through conscientization of
historical senses of the people (Wansang Han; Inhoe Kim). The second
offers a diagonasis that people will remain passive so far as they are
alieanated from the political processes which are bound to affect their
lives and they will become real in the construction of the history when
they are allowed to play roles in the processes (Gwang Cho; Byungyoung
Ahn). The last insists that the proletariat will be the master of
history by eliminating reactionary forces through revolution.

There is a difference bewteen the first two types and the last in
that the former allows piecemeal improvements within a stable system
whereas the latter requires discontinuity with the ancien regime. It
would be hard to say in a strict sense that the third type offers a
candidate for the link, since the proletariat before the revolution and
the master class after would not belong to the same continuous system
and should not constitute one and the same class. Anyway there could be
many variations of the three types or any of their combinations.

All of three types would face at least two questions. What is the
passive people before they were connected to the link? The people
before the linkage, according to these, looks to be incapable of
anything or ignorant of the primary fact that their name is the people.
They should be said to be nobody or nothing so that there is no place
for them in the history. The people before the linkage is not the
subject who guides the history. The three types share a structure of
linkage which results a self defeating conclusion like it.

The second question which the three types should be able to explain
is what the relation is among three elements: the passive people, the
linkage, and the class of intelligentsia. They are saying that the
passive people could not relate themselves to the link of their own. If
they could they would not have needed the link in the first place.
Then, the people would need some mediating force for the linkage, some
enlightened elites or party and the mediating intelligentsia would not
be considered as part of the people. Reading from the relation of this
kind, it seems clear who the subject of the history really is. The
three theorists are saying only by courtesy of the term that the people
is the master. Unless they provide a plausible explanation for the two
questions their notion of the linkage respectively would not work as
they want it to.

The problem for me is to search a link which overcomes the two
problems above. I would propose that the link could be found in a logic
of inquiry. Then, another rewrite for the thesis would be that the
passive people would be the real agent of the history in the realization
of the logic of inquiry. The third formulation of the thesis would
enable us to see our strategy more clearly to advance the thesis. We
will start with an examination of the ontological structure of the
passive poeple. Then, with a brief introduction of a logic of inquiry,
I will try to show how the logic provides the basis by which the passive
people is elevated to the status of the historical agent.

How would one be interested in studying the conception of people?
Is there any relevance for such a work? If there is any significance I
may make three points in regard to it. One is that the conept may have
a bearing to enlighten some notions like democracy(2) or justice(3).
While the latter conveys a moral or political idea the former seems to
offer an ontological basis on which the latter may place its
prescriptive anchor. A certain society may adopt its philosophy from
ideas other than those of democracy or justice. There have been ideas
of order, security, prosperity or victory which were the primary focus
of the philosophy of some mation. But what would be the basis by which
we could claim that the philosophy of society is to be the one rather
than the other? The basis of the choice is not only arbitrary but also
it could not be left to some principles of utility or patriotism of
certain individual or group of people. The choice could be shown to base
on our thesis. The study is an attempt to offer a philosophcial
foundatiuon for the human society.

Another is to suggest that such a philosophical conception may be
traced to a Korean tradition of Confucianism (Dongil Cho). The
conception according to this tradition may be divided into two opposing
perspectives. One is more a practiced view where the people is
interpreted as the object of ruling whether the ruler sees them
positively on one hand as those to whom he should offer grace(4),
peace(5), deliverance(6), or education(7), or negatively on the other
hand as those who express rebellion(7), grievance(8), or wildness(9).
The other is rather a canonical version where it views people as the
center from which all the principles follow. The people on this theory
is described in terms of people as the heaven(10), people's mind as
the heaven's mind(11), awareness of the heaven through observation of
people(12), people as the master(13), and people as the basis(14).

It is this canonical version which facilitates the present kind of
analysis. The English word 'people' of itself does not show clearly the
way to approach toward the analysis. But this version allows to relate
the Far East Asian word(14) for people and the rich tradition of
thoughts involved with it. Somehow, they translated the Western notion
of democracy as an institutionsal structure into Chinese characters
representing the philosophical thought of people as the master which has
been there from antiquity.

The last point for the significance of the present study is that it
would enable us to see some implications the coneption may have toward
various disciplines of social sciences and humanities. A new
understanding of what the experience of people is would allow much
richer and more real possibilities of worlds making of expressions in
arts and humanities. It is important to wait for humanistic Cinderella
and to dream an Utopia. But it is importans as well to participate in
the experience of the people and to see the priority of this perspective
(Buyngmoo Ahn; Yongbok Kim). And when a value comes in as one
interprets data in social sciences the conception of people could give
more open and concrete perspective to the introduction of the value than
the perfectistic view like Marxism or a general theory like humanism
(Wansang Han; Sangjin Hahn).

II. The Passive People

What is the passive people? How could one characterize them?
There are two modells possible to answer it. One is what one may call
'model of class'. For many pointed out features of the passive people
by using those words like 'oppression, exploitation, subjection to
domination, suffering, alienation, under-privelege, low income, no
education'. This model distinguishes humanity into two classes,
contrasting persons of people on one class and persons of extras on
the other.

When one thinks that those under such conditions are people he
recognizes them, singly or jointly, to be a sufficient condition for it
(Changyul Chung). When other says that people have such features he
sees them to constitute a necessary condition to be a people (Jooyun
Kim; Byungjik Ahn). When both of them are combined those features yield
the necessary and sufficient condition for being a people (Chongchul
Kim). And it would be convenient to subsume under the model of class
the view which suspects that this particular conception of people is
relative to particular forms of culture, Korean (Manyul Lee) or Asian
(Kunho Song).

Another to characterize the passive people is what I would call a
'model of degree'. This model is built on a notion of negation.
Negation is here understood as a name of the extension of all the states
of affairs which may be characterized as absence of order. Then, the
notion of negation would include in it not only ontological falsity and
epistimic distortion but also psychological suffering and physical pain.
I think theris a sense in which we san say that there is some order in
terms of their urgency for our attention in the human experience of
negation. One reason for this is that we can more easily agee with
conditions of unhappiness than with conditions of happiness. In the
realm of physical suffering, for an example, bleeding and allergy may
not require same sense of urgency of our attention. Going up to a more
gneral level, physical pains and deprivation of cultural experience may
not belong to the same category of the urgency. But the order of the
urgency is continuous rather than discontinuous, allowing a sense of
degree in it.

One may suppose that the degree of negation occurs between 1 and 0.
Then, people may be characterized as follows: one who has the degree of
negation more toward 1 is more of people and one wwho has it toward 0 is
less of people. Nobody has his degree of negation at the absolute value
1 or 0. Those who has the value toward 1 are closer to people and those
toward 0 are marginal to people. One may be tempted to think that the
understanding in terms of the negation degree sounds empty since every
human being would be part of people (Rakchung Baik; Ziha Kim). But the
point in question to be stressed is that people is to be understood,
not purely in their extension but in terms of the degree of negation,
severity of which many are subject to.

Which model could one choose? It looks hard to prefer one to the
other. The class model allows an intuitively clear extension of people
and sounds more congenial to an apparent intension of the word 'people'.
But the degree model requires that every one who is a human person
should not be separated from each other by some qualitative difference
but that every body is relalted to each other by degrees of quantifiable
negation of common bond. The class model will be embarassed by the
question of who the real subject of the history is, people or elites.
But the thesis in the context of the degree model sounds empty when it
says that people consists of all the human beings there are. Then, is
tere any consideration by which one may like one model better than the
other? I would attempt to formullate such a few considerations.

There may be two sorts of societies in principle: one where people
is already the subject of the history and the other where it is not yet
the case. I may call the former 'SAL' and the latter 'SOT'. Consider
the thesis that people is the subject who guides the history, and
compare different ways it could be used in each of two societies.

The thesis would be used, in SAL, to describe or report what's
happening there. It will be understood to be true of certain states of
affairs and people there would enjoy what they and their forefathers
accomplished. But in SOT, the thesis is not true or not yet realized.
How could it be used here? It will be used prescriptively rather than
descriptively. Its people would try to see that the moral force of the
thesis gain its effect. As two models for the notion of people appear
symmetric as to their merits and demerits, they also look, on
the surface, to be symmetric as to the use of the thesis.

But there loom at least two differences between the two models
which are not symmetric. The first is that there is nobody in SAL who
would satisfy the criteria of people of the class model whereas there
are those in SOT who satisfies that of the degree model. On the
criteria of the class model, the thesis is already fulfilled in SAL and
there is no one to be qualified to be a part of people. For members of
SAL have no longer those negative traits. In view of this result, some
suggested that the notion of people as the subject of the history is
tentative or provisional. For any one who suffers refuses to be
satisfied with the situation at hand but aims toward a life with the
human dignity (Juyun Kim; Jaichun Yu). Then, anyone who understands the
notion of people on the model of class should say that the class of
people simply disappears in SAL. But on the degree model people
struggles not only in SOT but they thrives in SAL. For people on this
model will never have their negativity in life at the absolute level of
0.

This leads us to the second consideration. On the class model, the
thesis is not false in SAL but empty in it. The irony is that the
thesis to the class model is prescriptive in SOT but is never materially
relevant. It has its use as a temporary slogan in SOT. One would
thereby suggest that people in SOT turn out to be in SAL parts of
citizens or of public. But on the degree model, the thesis remains
prescriptive both in SOT and SAL. Even in SAL people woulddd still have
some negativity and the thesis requires it to be protected from the
constant danger of being washed away. Then, the thesis on the degree
model carries the notion of necessity.

There are some other grounds to prefer the degree model to the
class model. One may apply to the class model what's known as the
slippery slope argument. It is here to ask how the class model
theorists would distinguish people from those who are not. For their
alleged distincition presupposes that those negative properties they
appeal to can play a criteria for the distinction. And this role could
be performed only if they are absolute properties like triangle, person,
truth. But they are pain, poverty and alienation and these are relative
properties like tall, heavy, fat. For a property like being a person is
independent of any contex whereas a property like being tall depends on
the context where it is spoken. If the class model theorist is to say
that there may be marginal cases where it is hard to say who is people
it is like saying that it is oten hard to discriminate who is a person.

Another propblem to the class model is what place in history to
give to those other than people. The model seems to negate any role of
the residue in the history, which is contrary to our intuition. For the
residue would include not only those intellectual elites who are, even
to their admission, essential to keep people aligned to the direction of
the history but also those in political or economic powers and those in
social or cultural influences. The class model theorist may say that the
residue would play only a reactionary role in history. But does it sound
plausible?

I think I have a ground to prefer the degree model to the class
model. The ground is not decisive but it gives a reason enough to
choose one over the other. Yet there are problems for the degree model
as well. Those who are more of people or closer to the degree 1 of
negation do not know most of the time that they are of people or that
they are the subject of the history. This being the case, how could
they be the subject of the history? They even would not know what
direction the history should move to. The passivity of the people just
means absence of such sensitivity to the historical horizon. In what
sense, then could we say that they are the people who is the subject who
guides the history? Since we established some charaterization of the
people we are challenged to show exactly how this people is that subject
of the history. For this I will turn to an investigation of the logic
of inquiry as is presented by Hangi Choe.*

* I believe that there have been various attempts to construct a logic
of inquiry. Peirce made a great contribution on this field and Dewey
early recognized the fact. Whereas Popper makes the logic popular among
some contemporary scenes in philosophy of science Hegel's dialectics or
even Plato's dialogue appears to have influenced on such an
investigation. But there seem to be a problem with the Peircean
conception of the logic of inquiry. The conception presupposes the
tripartite notion of truth, consisting of notions of coherence,
correspondence, and verisimilitude. A problem is apparent on the strict
three part partition of the notion of truth: What is the real relation
of those three so that the notion of truth could be illuminated without
any appearance of conflicts?

Surprisingly there was a study of the logic of inquiry in the
middle of the nineteenth century philosophy in Korea which may provide
with a clue to overcome the difficulty. It was known as 'Silhak
(literally translated as Science of Content) philosophy' in the
tradition of Confucianism. Hangi Choe may perhaps be the most
philosophically minded among Silhak thinkers, having written numerous
books two of which are Theory of Content and Name, and Theory of
Inquiry.

Choe has a particulasr use of the word 'name'. He means by it any
part of language. He subsumes under it not only ordinary proper names
and common names but also predicates, syncategorematic vocabularies,
sentences, and theories. This kind of use may be understood perhaps by
his notions of names and contents. Any word to him ends up to be a name
of something whether it is an object, a property, an operation, a state
of affairs, or a system of thought.

III. A Logic of Inquiry

I believe that there have been various attempts to construct a
logic of inquiry. Peirce made a great contribution on this field and
Dewey early recognized the fact. Whereas Popper makes the logic popular
among some contemporary scenes in philosophy of science Hegel's
dialectics or even Plato's dialogue appears to have influenced on such
an investigation. But there seem to be a problem with the Peircean
conception of the logic of inquiry. The conception presupposes the
tripartite notion of truth, consisting of notions of coherence,
correspondence, and verisimilitude, each of which is crucial
respectively in the logic of formalism, the logic of semantics, and the
logic of inquiry. There is a problem on the strict three part partition
of the notion of truth: What is the real relation of those three so that
the whollesome notion of truth could be illuminated without any
appearance of conflicts?

Any logic of inquiry as is known so far seem to agree on quite a
few items and to build its case on those: that a hypothesis could be
falsified but not verified; that inquirers are, though not given a
truth, allowed to an access toward truths through such falsification
process; that hypotheses which are more falsifiable are more
informative and vice versa; that any hypothesis needs to be subject to
the scrutiny of renewed inquiry.

Let's have an illustration for this. Suppose that I want to drink
a glass of water and that there happen to be a glass of water on my
table. Then, I may form a hypothesis H to be such that the glass of
water on my table is drinkable. How could I test the hypothesis? I
will soon see that H would allow only certain kind of testing conditions
as legitimate, if it is a scientific hypothesis rather than a pseudo
scientific hypothesis, and that H entail an infinite number of
legitimate testing conditions.

One of the test conditions would be that if the glass of water
passes a particular chemical analysis of type A then the glass of water
does not contain cyanide. But there are, in principle, an infinite
number of chemical analyses possible for cyanide, and even for a
particular type of test A one can perfom an indefinite number of tests
still not to reach a certainty of the result for the test A.

What this logic shows is that H can be falsified but not verified.
We can know that a glass of water is not drinkable if it is not, but we
can never know that it is drinkable even if it is. But many tests allow
us to come nearer to the truth of the hypothesis or its verisilitude.
Then, we tend to accept a hypothesis not because it is shown to be true
but rather because the hypothesis is shown to resist some reasonable
falsification. We drink a glass of water not from the conviction that
the hypothesis is true but from the belief that there is reasonable
ground to regard the hypothesis to be not falsified yet, or from the
absence of the doubt that H is false.

The logic of inquiry crudely summarized above is apllicable
primarily to what's called 'scientific investigation' or to the practice
of natural sciences. But it could also be extended to a practice of
social engineering. The estension is possible since the epistemic mode
of the logic of inquiry could be turned to the engineering mode.

An example would clarify the extension. We suppose that every
human being wants to be happy and that every human society wishes to be
a happy society. Here comes a problem of the notion of happiness. But
I would not go in this in detail except by offering rough ideas on it.
Happiness is never merely a certain kind of pure psychological state.
It has some propostitional content such as some conditions we would like
to see realized. And the conditions have some restraining force
imposed. Otherwise any lunatic would be happy simply by stipulating his
own conditions he could meet and by sincerely believing that it has
come. Then, let's suppose that the following pair of definitions hold.

D1 An agent a, individual or corporate, is happy at t1 if and
only if a has a sense of fulfillment at t1 on the
condition C which a adopts at t0 as the condition of a's
happiness and C is justifiied as such at t0 and t1.
D2 A is unhappy at t1 if and only if a undergoes at t1 the
condition C which is justifiied as undesirable at t0 and
t1.

There is non-symmetry between notions of happiness and unhappiness
just as there is non-symmetry between notions of verification and
falsification. As D1 and D2 show, conditions of happiness may be
changing whereas those of unhappiness are not. It is more natural that
conditions of happiness should be changing since the agent of t1 where
he realized C of t0 should be seeking something other than C. This
implies that there is no constant condition for any agent, an individual
or corporate body. Another thing is that happiness requires the agent
to be aware of the self-fulfillment whereas unhappiness does require
neither any sense of unhappiness nor any other sort of dissatisfaction.
This entails that unhappiness condition could be constant, independent
of experience of a particular person or corporate of certain time. We
may conclude that it is difficult to agree on what constitutes a
constant condition of happiness but easy to agree on what is a constant
condition of unhappiness.

IV. The Real Agent of the History

How could this logic of inquiry be a mediating link between the
passive people and the real agent of the history? In order to answer to
this question I would like to devlop the notion of negativity in the
logic of inquiry to the notion of priority of negation in which the
passive people turns out to be the real agent of the history.

Contrast between happiness and unhappiness above would be more
heightened if we substitute a more concretely negative term P for C.

D20 A is negatively characterizable at t1 if and only if
a undergoes at t1 the condition P which is justifiied
as undesirable at t0 and t1.
D21 A is miserable at t1 if at t1 a feels physically painful
or is hungry many days or homeless.

The contrast, I would contend, shows that the priority of
negativity reigns over fields of inquiry and social engineering. For
falsification is at work in inquiry and constant conditions of
unhappiness could be more agreed on. Only self-righteous elites would
claim confidently that their principles are verified or sincerely that
they have prescriptions for happiness for all. For any claim of truth
of a hypothesis by an appeal to the process of verification or testing
would end up to be fallacious and so would any prescription of happiness
in similar manner.

But what is history? History is a story of devlopment of human
kinds. Then, is the history of humans a story of natural evolution of
them? Could it be a natural history of man? I would assume that it is
hard to claim it is. Suppose rather that it is a story of devlopment of
some important human workings. Then, how is the devlopment to be
evolved or executed if at all?

The logic of inquiry seems to suggest itself to be a clue on this.
I would propose that history is to evolve by paying attention to the
negativity of people. It could further be claimed that the negativity
is the sole dictator of the history. For there is no principles or
procedures other than this by which history is to be moved. The
negativity is the only legitimate locus of authority which could
justifiably dictate attentions of any person or any group of persons
when they are about to engineer a social policy. Thereby our thesis may
now be justified as plausible.

One may still be challenged to ask a question. Is
there any case where people commits a mistake? This is a serious
question. For the negative answer seems to make the seemingly important
thesis a trivial one. There should be a justification to claim

D3 People could not commit a mistake
in order to make the thesis of this paper interesting. I plan to defend
the claim D3 by showing that there is no one case possible where people
makes a mistake. Consider a sentential funtion as follows:
D30 x could not commit a mistake.
Suppose we take as an argument for the variable any of active agents
like folks, the world citizens, public, nation, the human beings, a
king, a hero, a president, a pope, and a philosopher. I should claim
that the resulting sentence is false.

What is the distinction made here between the active agent in those
and the passive agent in people? Any active agent not only feels pain
but also believes that so and so is the case. In other words, any
belief involves with a sentence. Unless he is omniscient he is bound to
be ignorant of something. And this entails that he could be false in
some of his beliefs.

What about people as a passive agent? As I defined 'people'
exclusively in terms of some passive or negative qualities people is not
an agent who had any positive views or interpretaions about his or her
surrounding. People on this definition is the one who expereince
negativities, namely, anything negative which results from events,
decisions, or institutions so that we can say the result is physically
painful, economically hard, socio-politically oppressed, psychologically
miserable, or culturally deprived.

Two points are worthy to note. One is that the negative experience
of people is not sentential or propositional. If it is anything else it
is a negative phenomenal experience. The other is that for such a kind
of negative experience one does not have to be aware that he experiences
something in order for him to expeirence it. People is not required to
be able to identify any socio-politically oppressed experience in order
for him to experience it. Perhaps all he experience is something he
experiences as undesirable. That's all. The former ability requires
beliefs and then a frame of reference and comparision. But the latter
ability requires some awareness of some form of pains and this does not
have to involve with any theory.

I may then claim that people could not make a mistake. For people
do neither insist any claim, nor offer any of their beliefs, nor hope
for anything. People by difinition experience only things phenomenally
negative. Of course there may be cases where some pretend negative
experiences. But this does not constitute a counterexample against D3
since pretending and making errors are distinct. People could not make
a mistake about their having negative phenomenal experiences so far as
they are sincere in having them. An illustration might be helpful.
Suppose that Jones experiences some physical pain in his stomach and
sincerely says that he does. Is it possible sensibly to question
Jones's claim or his ability to know it? It is natural to allow that
Jones could not make a mistake about his having a pain so far as he is
sincere in claiming to have it.

But there is a big problem. People on my view, the human beings
and the world citizens are the same and their designating terms have the
same extension. How could one and the same persons have opinions about
something and no opinions at the same time? I may use a Quinean
example in order to shed a light on my reasoning.

Q1 All humans are rational.
Q2 All humans are two-footed.
Q3 All fetherless bipeds are two-footed.
Q4 All featherless bipeds are rational.

The point I would like to concentrate in this illustration is the
distinction between de dicto reading and de re reading in designating
expressions, 'humans' and 'featherless bipeds'. Aristotle might have
thought that Q1 is both de re and de dicto true, that Q2 is both de re
and de dicto false, that Q3 is only de dicto true, and that Q4 is de re
true but de dicto false.

Then I would conclude that D3 is de dicto true. Someone could
object to this reasoning by saying that what's real is de re truth
rather than de dicto one. There may be a time to say it but to ignore
the de dicto truth here is like to ignore difference or relavance to
make distinctions, among terms like 'Jewish nation', 'Jewish citizen',
'Jewish people', and the like. Certainly, there might have been the
case that all those terms denote the same extension. And yet they mean
distinct and various occasions require the use of different terms. One
may be a term to denote the same entity in view of blood ties, another o
legal status, still other of historical character and so on.

Another objection would be that de dicto truth is not a real truth
but is merely a definition of a language. This has a ring of truth in it
when we consider the type of

D4 The author of Tractatus Logico-Philosopjicus wrote Tractatus
Logico-Philosopjicus
to have just one reading. But the type could have another reading as in
D5 The author of Philosophical Investigation might not have
written Philosophical Investigation;
D6 Jones did not know that the husband of Alys Thomas succeeded
the Earldom on the death of his brother, but he knew
that the author of Principia of Mathematica succeeded to
the Earldom on the death of his brother.

Two descriptions of 'the husband of Alys Thomas' and 'the author of
Principia Mathematica' denote one and the same person, namely, Bertrand
Russell. Obviously what Joes knew under a certain language may not be
related to Jones under a different descriptions even though two forms of
expressions have the same truth value. Then it may be justified to say
that any fact comes under a certain expression just as one knows
something only under some description. Two sentences may have the same
truth value but should mean different so far as they are different
sentences. Then, a de dicto truth is not less true than a de re true.

V. Conclusion

There remains a lot of problems. I will take up only a few of them
for a discussion. One problem is how people could be a subject who
guides history, where people as defined sometimes does not know not only
who they are but also what direction the history should take. For any
real agent would presuppose posession of some relavant information and
of sense of choice.

The objction is understandable. A particular agency would require
a specific intention at hand. When Frege wrote 'Sense and Reference',
he could not have written it without specifically intending to write it.
One could not take a walk without intending it. But what we may call 'a
general agency' does not presuppose a specific intention. When Viscount
Amberley Russell fathered the author of 'On Denoting' as his third child
he could do it without having ever intended to father the author of the
paper as his third child. Most of the time we wake up from our sleep
without intending it and yet we do not ascribe this quality of waking up
to any non-animate objects. There are hosts of acts which do not
require such intentions: resent, feeling sorry, being ignorant, being
surprised, dreaming, and the like. Yet we are agents of those acts or
states whereas we usually do not ascribe these to other animals. People
may be said to be the subject of history in the sense of general agency.

Another problem which is often raised is that the notion of people
here is so all-inclusive to be vacuous. This would sound acute perhaps
only if one is to adopt the class model for the notion. I should
concede that the class model for the understanding of people has been
the Accepted Model since Marx. But what this paper is all about is
exactly to challenge the Received Notion and its implications.

People are the ones most of whom are faceless and nameless
(Younghak Hyun), and are commited crimes against often by responsible
elites (Namdong Suh). But it is people who all we as human being are,
suffering negativities of our own making, sharing this common bondage of
human destiny. The notion of people is what unites us all in our
historically necessary predicament whereas the notion of human being
unites us in our biologically determined condition.

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A Conceptual Understanding of Women's Studies

(1) You may ask me a question. That is, how a Korean man like me is reading a paper like this at a scenic place like Chiang Mai, Thailand? I am honored to address myself to some aspect of this question in front of distinguished scholars and university administrators.

I was trained in the tradition of analytic philosophy and I started to teach at Ewha Womans University in the year of 1977. Some students of mine kept asking me a question among others and were particularly skeptical about what's the use of analytic philosophy. It was the time when what's called 'analytic philosophy' was not that familiar around in Korea. There were many reasons for me to answer this question really good.

After many months of deliberations, I decided to take Philosophy and Sex (edited by R. Baker & F. Elliston; published by Prometheus Books, Buffalo, New York, 1975) as a text for a course called 'Philosophical Topic' in the fall semester, 1978. For each class session of the course, I presented a brief summary of each paper in the anthology, analyzing the arguments in it and led the class discussions. After the semester, I realized that I turned a feminist. Since then I have been called by my students sometimes 'a women's scholar', other times 'a sex expert'. I am proud of these titles.

(2) what was it that was powerful enough to make a conservative analytic philosopher a liberal feminist in one brief semester? I believe that it was the conceptual structure of the oppression of women which I was made appalled at in the period of three months. I would like to share with you here what I came to understand as the core of women's problem. This conceptual probelm may be illustrated in terms of five different cultural contexts.

(21) Historians of Korean Architecture notes that there was a shift in the concnept of residential architecture in the Middle Period of the Chosun Dynasty.1) It was the change from the notion of class- free architecture to that which observed the importance of class. In one residential manor there were at least three distinct housings and courts, one for gentlemen, another for servants, and the other for women.

Then, women were supposed to be engaged in what's called 'Anil'(家事, inner work or house work) at 'Anmadang'(內庭, inner court), they resided in 'Anchai'(內屋, inner house), and they slept only in 'Anbang'(內室, inner room). It was not strange for the master of the house to call his wife 'my Ansaram'(內者, inner mate).

Those different spaces have been defended by some as a mechnism to allow freedom for those different classes of people and to protect them from each other. Bur were they? The change of the architecture was due to Chu Hsi's(1130-1200) Neo Confucianism (School of Principles, 性理學), which noted importance of the patriarchical values. They may be summed up in this context in terms of the purity and the continuity of the paternal lineage. I am inclined to think that women were not protected but prisoned, by those spaces.

Korean women have lived not only in those architectural structure but also in those conceptual world. So have lived all Korean men. With this background it is almost a conceptual truth even today for a conservative husband to say to his outgoing wife that the inner work is the work to be done by the inner mate (roughly translated, house work is the share for the house wife). Then there is no conceptually persuasive rebut possible coming from the wife but only agonized silence.

(22) Many countries in East Asia share a culture of Chinese characters. In this culture they have one strand of ancient cosmologies in Yin-Yang (陰陽) theory. The theory, properly understood, is a functional theory, emphasizing notions of balance and harmony. Any one object has functions, both Yin (negative) and Yang (positive). For example, the Moon plays a Yin role toward the Sun but at the same time plays a Yang role toward the earth. The Yin-Yang theory was supposed to mirror the order of the nature and then it is to be the theory to explain human phenomena as well.

Enter scholars of one school of Neo Confucianism. They eliminated the functional character in the relative relationships between objects in the Yin-Yang theory. Instead they reified the relationships and absolutized them into a hierarchical scheme. We may call this particular explanation of the Yin-Yang theory 'the substantialization version'.

In this version, man is a Yang and woman is a Yin. And it is absolutely so. Then, woman is to follow man's wishes as the Moon is receptive only of what the Sun gives. Man rules over woman and woman obeys man. If a woman tries something deviant from this path she will be recognized as a renegade to the order of the nature or simply as an evil spirit. But remember that the language of Yin-Yang was the only language known to man and woman in East Asia for so long. They could not imagine anything in terms other than this.

(23) Montesquieu wrote a book called Persian Letters.2) Since it was not a scientific description there must be much gap between the Persian reality and what the book portrayed. But we will limit ourselves to what the book says of one Persian family.

Usbek had Roxan as his primary wife and carried many concubines at their seraglio, their residence compound. The master was residing in Paris, writing letters not only to his wife and some of his beloved concubines but also to his servant captain. The title of the book came therefrom. The captain was to rule all the men and women in the seraglio including his master's primary wife. The women were separated from each other while their master stayed in the seraglio but they were united while he was away and the captain was in charge.

Montesquieu stressed the socialization of women, their sexual fidelity and the instituition of monogamy. But he claimed 'that it is nature which has distinguished men by their reason and strength and women by their charms, and that the sexual boldness of men and the shame and resisteance of women are likewise dictated by nature'.3) Montesquieu may not have intended to endorse the seraglio structure in the Persian family. But I wonder how far he could distantiate himself from it. The ideology of nature he imported into his conception of gender appears different neither from that of the substantial version of Yin-Yang theory nor from that of the seraglio form of life.

(24) There is a clear example of sexual stereotypes also in the Judeo-Christain tradition. It is 'the Creation of Adam', painted by Michaelangelo on the ceiling fresco in the Sistine chapel. The painting is powerful and moving even hundreds years later.

But there are numerous puzzles in the painting. The focal point in the painting is the meeting of the index finger of the Creator and that of the first man. But the message of the canvas dictates the viewer's attention to the male symbol of young looking Adam. For it was supposed to be the physical origin of the human race. Not one thing of women's role was hinted at all here.

God was portrayed as a male, a powerful man, even though the painting was designed to show the creation of the first man. And yet God wore clothes on, perhaps afraid to show his male symbol. God's clothes is a puzzle because God himself considered clothes as a consequence of the human fall. And take a look at angels surrounding God. They are women and children. The painter might not have intended them to be human. But they are full of human representations.

One thing which is clear is this. If Adam was to be the first of the human race then God and angels could be represented as other than male or female. God was dominant and male; angels were subservient and female or children. This is one powerful symbolism which contributed to construct one sexual stereoype. The painter may protest by asking how to give personhood to God and angels if not by allowing them particular human forms. I may concede that the sexual ideology in the painting is not the painter's making. But he blindly followed that of the Judeo-Christian tradition. And it may be remembered that many ancient paintings of Buddha are androgynous.

(25) There is one interesting English word which I would like to consider. It is 'feminine'.4) We all know what the word means. It may be assumed that this English expression may be translated into any known language with meaning similar to its English counterpart. Then it can be said that the analysis of the English word may be applied to other languages as well.

What does the word 'feminine' refer to? It denotes a property or a set of properties. They would be properties like being pretty, tender, elegant, unassuming and shapely. We see the adjective can be used to describe those properties. Then, the word 'feminine' has a symmetric relation to the word 'masculine' so far as the latter designates an independent set of properties such as being tall, sturdy, strong, and bold.

But the story seems to go farther than this. Is there any other way in which those adjectives may be used? When we say 'she is feminine', what we often intend to say is not merely to describe those aspects she has but also to say that she is satisfying what she had to satisfy. This indicates the word is used not merely descriptively but also prescriptively.

'Feminine' is a word of criterion which all persons called 'woman' are expected to live by. Then, if a girl is outgoing by personality she has to subdue it. If a woman is in fact not pretty she has to do something to look pretty. But if a boy is in fact not tall still he does not any obligation to be tall. If he is masculine it is good for him, but if he is not it is yet all right with him. The word 'masculine' here does not have a prescriptive use. When half of the human race are born woman they are born conceptaual prisoners of the word 'feminine'. But the other half are born man and free.

(3) If the five analyses above are plausible it would be reasonable to infer a few conclusions from them: (31) Women in general have been oppressed; (32) The oppression of women is conceptual; (33) The conceptual oppression is due to ignorance of rights of women if not due to intention; (34) The resulted oppression is instituitional and systematic.

I am not taking more time to explain the four conclusions above. Rather, I will consider some other charateristic features of the oppression of women: the paradox of oppresion and the exaggeration of the problem.

There has been a question whether the term 'oppression' is too strong to describe precisely the nature of pains which women went through. If you oppressed your enemy succesfully there must be several requirements you satisfied. One of them would be that you need to have intention to oppress him. But in case of what's called 'the oppression of women', who is the one that intended to oppress women? There seems no occurent intention on the part of any reasonable social instituition nor latent one to oppress women. So goes the thesis of the exaggeration of the problem.

But the thesis is weaker than it sounds prima facie. When Oedipus killed the King Laius they said that Oedipus killed his father. Oedipus himself agreed to this, even though Oedipus did not kill him under the intention to kill his father. Generally speaking, physical actions like 'hitting', 'running over', 'shooting', are ascribed to an agent when he is in a causal chain to result that event described by the action expressions even though he did not have the relevant intention. And I believe that the oppression of women is a kind of action which is physical.

There could be another argument against the exaggeration thesis. Suppose there was a good Christian farmer living in the South of the US one hundred years before the civil war. He employed several slaves but he treated them good. Personally speaking, he did not have any intention whatsoever to oppress them. But we say that he was a slave holder and we ascribe him a moral blame. For he belongs to the social structure where some human beings are not treated as persons.

What's wrong with the oppression of women? This sounds a dumb question to ask. For nobody would deny its truth. But the seriousness of the question needs to be recognized. It is wrong for one human being to oppress another human being. It is worse that one individual is oppressed by the rest of the human kind. It is still worse that the half of the human race is oppressed by the whole human society. But the seriousness of the question goes farther than this.

Philosophers used to say that any human being cannot be a dictator without hurting his own person. Dictator is the one who dictates his people against their will. In the dictatorship he objectifies not only his people but also his own person. This logic can be extended to the notion of oppression: The oppressors of women end up to oppress their own persons. I will call it 'the paradox of oppression'.

(4) I happen to believe that what's called 'Women's Studies' is a legitimate science. It seems to me a science which seeks oppression-free form of life where all women and men are both humane. Being convinced of the paradox of the oppression, I support the integration of Women's Studies into the university curiculum.

Whenever there is a move to introduce Women's Studies into university curiculum there is some sort of objection against or reservation to, the effort. I suspect that the reason can be divided into two. The first is the question whether Women's Studies is a science for such a merit. The second is a belief that 'Women's Studeis' is nothing but a women's movement under the academically sounding title.

(41) What is a sciene? Its defining chracter has been the degree of coherence of a system. or the explanatory power of the system, depending on whcich the academic community chooses as the model of science, mathematics or physics. It seems now that there is not a formal condition which a system should satisfy to be a science. Rather it is whether a new candidate has a distinct problem area which academic communities recognize to be worthy of investigations.

The notion of oppression of women is the key term to identify the scientific character of Women's Studies. For the notion suggests the identity for the proper problem area of this new science. The problem is to be the area where the oppression of women takes place systematically. I would propose that the problem area consists of Family, Work, and Sex. There could be more items to be added, old and new.

It was said that there has been a pattern according to which many of new sciences went through to become a respectablly legitimate science. I believe that Political Sceince started it and Sociology followed it. Business Administration, Library Science and recently Cognitive Science joined the club. The pattern is that the new sciene starts as a multi-disciplinary science, goes through stages of cross-disciplinary science and inter-disciplinary science, and, if all goes well, they say it ends up happily with trans-disciplinary science.5)

I believe that Women's Studies has been coming through such pattern. People would properly disagree on where of the four stages Women's Studies would stand at the present moment. One thing which appears certain to me is that Women's Studies has better chance to go all the way to become a fully legitimate science than many of social sciences started earlier.6)

(42) What is the relationship between Women's Studies and what's called 'women's movements'? One may be tempted to say that Women's Studies is one of many kinds of women's movements. To my mind, the assertion is more false than true. The assertion would be true if it allows that any of real women's movements presuppose some understanding of actual predicament of women's lives. But the major thrust of the assertion tends to imply that knowledge is not necessary for a movement and hence it is false.

Let me explain what I mean by this distinction between Women's Studies and women's movements. Of course, I believe that Women's Studies 'seeks oppression-free form of life where all women and men are both humane'. This science of itself does not get you that form of life but it helps people to get it. Women's Studies is like Business Administration. BA as a science does not make you money but it helps you to run a business to make money. There is a world of difference between inventions of new techniques and deployments of them. The difference is like that between literary criticisms and literary works.

Women's movements are topic-centered. Some examples of them are education, work, leisure, political rights, abortion, rape, divorce, etc. Most of women's movements are organized by groups of individuals who are concerned with one of those topics. They are shy from reconstructing the society holistically but they are just aiming to eliminate the urgent problem before their eyes. Women's movements are in this sense piecemeal, bottom up, and passive.

But Women's Studies saw that what's called problems of women are not piecemeal but holistic. The solution it suggests is top down. It requires a change of ways of thinking. Women's Studies do not blame any particular individual nor a group of people, as women's movements do. Rather it takes out the whole ways of life as the culprit for the oppression of women. Some feminist activists criticize Women's Studies to be too abstract in this regard. The criticism is right, but I think that Women's Studies could be seen as more active than the activists.

Then, Women's Studies is a science and not a movement. It helps women's movements to have a goal and reasoning for those movements. For any goal is given only top down. Some feminist scholars are activists. They will be ok only if they are not negligent to fulfil their academic obligations. 7)


Daihyun Chung
Ewha Womans University
The Chiang Mai Conference on Gender, February 23-26, 1994