Date: 10/23/2024

Time: 18:00-19:30

Place: Room 1605, The First Public Teaching Building

Speaker：Xu Difei

Moderator：Dennis Schilling

About the speaker:

Xu Difei is a full professor in School of Philosophy, Renmin University of China, and is the Chinese director of Confucius Institute of Bologna University. Her main interests of research include Symbolic Logic, Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mathematics and Metaphysics. 

Abstract:

The study of Forms and Name is a part of Chinese ancient logic, and plays an important role in ancient Chinese philosophies. The members of school of names are called debaters, which shows that Chinese ancient logic originates from debate. The core issue in the school of names is to elaborate the relationship between names and actuality, and their view of names and actuality is essentially a view of world from upside down, which is different from the traditional western world view from bottom up. In this lecture, Xu will introduce the basic principles of their thoughts and also analyze some claims made by the schools of names in order to show that there is no contradiction in these claims. Finally, Xu will also discuss about the significance of the school of names.