Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Whenever a sitting president presides over an international conflict, whether a war or police action, they must provide the people with an accounting of the engagement as well as garner support for ongoing operations. The United States has seen many different foreign entanglements, from the French and Indian War to the War on Terror. Times have changed and technology has advanced. However, something that has not changed is the need for the president to suggest that the military engagement is in the best interest of the country and the people. This paper examines the ways that the executives of the past have used the State of the Union Address to discuss the issue of war and elicit support from the public at-large. What is surprising, however, is not that they use this public forum to address the important issue. The surprise is the incredible similarity between the wartime presidents regarding the type of rhetoric that is used in these communications. Although we might suggest that contemporary presidents would use “modern” language and rhetorical stylings that would be markedly different from those presidents of the 18th and 19th centuries, observation and analysis of State of the Union Addresses suggests that, when faced with military conflict, presidents of varying eons tend to espouse incredibly similar verbiage. This study not only provides important commentary on presidential wartime rhetoric, but also brings questions regarding a “modern” versus a “traditional” rhetorical presidency to light.

Publication Type: Session Presentation
Abstract: The presenter first explores the reasons why we need a separate cultural course, which has a different focus from a language course, and then shares his experience and ideas with the audience on the development of the cultural courses. A sample lesson of a Chinese cultural course will be provided to audience for discussion.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Over the past several decades, scholars of liberal and democratic theory have shown an increasing interest in the role that various virtues might play in promoting the good/free society. Yet within this recent “return” to the virtues, one quality that has been almost entirely left out of the discussion is humility. In this paper I critically address this lacuna and offer a defense of a particular form of humility, what I call democratic humility. Before making my case for democratic humility as an essential virtue for liberal citizenship under conditions of diffuse pluralism, I first explore some of the problems with humility by tracing its intellectual and moral history within the Jewish and Christian traditions. Next, I explore the “hidden” relationship between humility and pride in order to ask, with Hume and Nietzsche, whether humility is any kind of virtue at all. With this moral and historical terrain established, I offer an account of humility that seeks to address some of the historical difficulties with humility while arguing that the idea of humility, recuperated as an ethos of civic attentiveness, may be one of the most important virtues for late-modern societies marked by incommensurable ethical and cultural pluralism.

Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: In the second half of the 20th century the Scandinavian countries have shown that a virtuous combination between a generous and protective welfare state and a thriving and efficient market economy is not only desirable, but also possible. Despite the turbulences of the 1990s, the Nordic “social model” is still a beacon for all those who care about social justice and economic growth in the era of globalization. But the thorny question is: how can the two be reconciled in the other countries? And can the two be reconciled within the EU? The second question is thornier than the first one, for it presupposes an understanding of the “architectural” rationale and mission of the EU itself. Is the EU a new “home-in-the-making”? Or is it merely a “commons” amongst distinct national homes – a level playing field for economic transactions? And in this latter case how can we make sure that the logic of the commons goes hand in hand (or, as a minimum, does not clash) with the logic of the homes?
Such questions lie today at the heart of political debates all over Europe. And they rank at the top of the preoccupations of ordinary people. European citizens are keen supporters of both “solidarity” and “Europe”. But they perceive an increasingly problematic link between the two. This paper will suggest a diagnosis of the objective, institutional roots of the current predicament and will discuss scenarios and proposals on how to possibly address it.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: All explanations are “efforts to deprive puzzles, mysteries, and blockages of their force, and hence, existence" (Brown, 1963: 41). In everyday usage many kinds of statements may serve as explanations. While the search for explanations is also at the heart of social science, most social scientists would agree that scientific explanations must meet higher standards than those of everyday life or of magical systems, for example. A scientific explanation, it is widely believed, removes the puzzling character of a phenomenon by giving its cause. Some mechanism is found, the phenomenon is shown to be a specific case of some law-like generalization, or a gap in initial conditions is discovered and filled. But there is a different genre of explanation that is usually overlooked in accounts of scientific explanation. This is explanation by conceptual breakthrough. A conceptual breakthrough removes the problematic character of a phenomenon by inventing some new way of looking at the phenomenon that breaks through a blockage in thought. It accomplishes this, not by finding previously unknown facts or law-like generalizations or mechanisms, but by seeing things in a new way. New knowledge in science often consists of such imaginative breakthroughs. The problematic character of a puzzling phenomenon is often rooted in assumptions that have been taken to be self-evident, or held unconsciously. Such assumptions are often provided by some conceptual framework, theory, paradigm, or commonsense way of looking at reality. Scientific discovery often consists of such a wrenching away from taken-for-granted ways of thinking. Known facts or data are seen in a new way, a new vision is invented. To be sure, an explanation by conceptual breakthrough must work. The phenomenon to be explained (the explicandum) must be deducible from the explicans that is, from initial conditions and law like generalizations, or mechanisms. Yet it is the removal of a blockage in thought, a new imaginative construction, or some new way of looking at the facts that solves the problem that gave rise to inquiry. It is thus the conceptual breakthrough, not new facts, mechanisms, or law-like generalizations that actually do the explaining. The new vision represented by a conceptual breakthrough may include as signal some of what had been excluded as noise by the vision it replaced. Or, it may exclude as noise information that figured as signal in the replaced explanatory account. In this paper, a view of explanation as problem-solving is provided, which integrates various kinds of causal and stochastic explanation with conceptual breakthrough. I argue that there can be genuine growth of or improvement of knowledge which, rather than giving a cause, consists in breaking out of old, established ways of thinking, and inventing new ways of interpreting or constructing the facts. It is the new vision or discovery, not new facts or laws that solves the problem.