In this talk, I will introduce my newly published book, ‘Meritocratic Democracy: A Cross-Cultural Political Theory’ (OUP 2024). The book brings together insights from parallel debates in contemporary Western and Confucian political theories to offer a new perspective on the function of political leaders in contemporary societies..
Political leaders remain under-examined in mainstream contemporary political theory. However, the political parties' crisis and new technological innovations in the media have led political leaders to consolidate unprecedented power in contemporary democratic societies. Most democracies resemble the so-called ‘leader democracy’ model, where political leaders play a central role in politics. The turn in democratic politics towards leader-centrism raises new normative questions. Granted that political leaders have become a central political agency in democratic societies, how can they contribute to democratic goals?
As a Confucian-inspired approach to political leadership, meritocratic democracy points to some of the preconditions that politicians of all political stripes must meet before occupying leadership positions within a democratic institutional framework. It argues that the Confucian ideas of virtue politics (dezhi, 德治) and benevolence (ren,仁) can inspire new institutional proposals to ensure that political leaders work for democracy (not against it). If ethical screenings were applied to the intra-party selection of future political leaders, they could enhance the moral quality of democratically elected political leaders. Intra-party ethical screenings do not oppose mechanisms of intra-party democracy but compensate for some of the shortcomings. They also present a compelling means for Confucian democrats to demonstrate that democracy is the optimal sociopolitical framework for realising the Confucian ideal of virtuous governance under the circumstances of modern politics.

Speaker
Prof. Elena Ziliotti
Assistant Professor, TU Delft

A longstanding question in cognitive science and philosophy is whether human language is evolved for thinking or for communication. That is, what is the “primary” function of language in humans? Ev Fedorenko’s lab has established that a language cortical network can be identified in each of our brains in only 15 minutes of scanning in fMRI, by contrasting language with a control task, like reading non-words, or listening to a language that you don’t understand (Fedorenko, Ivanov & Regev, 2024, Nature Reviews Neuroscience). Fascinatingly, this network does not respond to anything except language (e.g., Fedorenko, Piantadosi & Gibson, 2024, Nature). That is, the language network doesn’t respond to anything that you might think of as complex thought, other than language, such as music, social reasoning, arithmetic, spatial reasoning, even understanding computer code, or gesturing (in a non-conventionalized way). Second, I will summarize research from my lab (e.g., Gibson et al., 2019) and others that shows that human languages appear to be well-designed for communicative purposes. Given this background, we can ask the Whorfian question: whether having words for particular concepts affects how we understand those and related concepts (Sapir, 1921, 1929; Whorf, 1956; Kay and Kempton, 1984). There are at least two kinds of views for how to interpret the language-thought hypothesis. According to the Strong Whorfian view, there is a language and a set of concepts, such that only by learning the target language can the user now understand this set of concepts. If the function of language is indeed communication, then this suggests a second, weaker view, such that storing and retrieving particularly culturally-relevant concepts can be easier in one language vs another (Levinson, 2003b; Cantlon & Piantadosi, 2024), but a particular language is not needed in order to acquire any concepts.

Speaker
Prof. Edward Gibson is currently a Professor at the Department of Brain and Cognitive Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
 

Ted (Edward) Gibson. I was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. I went to Queens University (Kingston, Ontario) for undergraduate, graduating in 1985 with a B.Sc in math and computer science. I then got an M Phil in 1986 in Computer Speech and Language Processing from Cambridge (UK), and a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, USA) in computational linguistics in 1991. I have been a professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT since 1993. I also rowed at the 1984 Olympics, coming 7th in the coxless four for Canada. I work on all aspects of human language: the words, the structures, across many languages. I am married to Ev Fedorenko, a great neuroscientist of language and cognition. We have collaborated on many projects including Lana.

This talk explores the hidden grammar revealed by tonotactic accidental gaps (unattested syllable-tone combinations) in Mandarin Chinese. In a corpus study, we found that gaps involving T2 (rising) and T3 (falling-rising) were over-represented, while those involving T1 (high level) and T4 (falling) were under-represented. Additionally, we observed fewer T1 gaps with voiceless onsets and more T2 and T3 gaps with voiceless onsets. This aligns with cross-linguistic patterns where low-f0-initial tones (e.g., T2/T3) are more compatible with voiced onsets, and high-f0-initial tones (e.g., T1) with voiceless onsets—a pattern not readily evident in the Mandarin lexicon. We then conducted a wordlikeness rating experiment with Mandarin listeners and used harmonic scores generated by the UCLA Phonotactic Learner to model speakers' tonotactic knowledge, as reflected in their wordlikeness judgments. The ratings of tonotactic gaps were best predicted by grammars incorporating cross-linguistic markedness constraints, particularly against voiceless onsets with low-f0-initial tones and voiced onsets with high-f0-initial tones. This hidden grammar was further attested in loanword adaptation, where tones were inserted according to voicing-tone preferences to repair illegal coda consonants (e.g., Meg à Méigé for voiced-T2; Hank à Hànkè for voiceless-T4), supported by both a loanword corpus and an online adaptation experiment. The potential source of this hidden grammar will also be discussed.

Speaker
Prof. Yu-An LU is currently a Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University.
 

Prof. Yu-An Lu holds a BA in Foreign Languages and Literatures from National Taiwan University, an MA in Linguistics from National Tsing Hua University, and a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Stony Brook University (2012). Currently a Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, her research interests and expertise include laboratory phonology, second language acquisition, phonetics, and Austronesian phonology.

To be held at the Chinese University of Hong Kong on 5–6 December 2024, this international conference brings together some leading scholars from Europe, United States, Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, as well as Ms. Bettina Wilhelm (Richard Wilhelm’s granddaughter) to commemorate the centenary and celebrate the significant legacy of the publication of Richard Wilhelm's German I Ging in 1924, a monumental event for the global dissemination and reception of the Yijing.

Speakers (in alphabetical order)

1. Prof. Iwo AMELUNG (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt)
2. Dr. Bjoern Aage C. BLIX (Hunan University)
3. Prof. Dennis K. H. CHENG (Education University of Hong Kong)
4. Prof. Michael HARRINGTON (Duquesne University)
5. Prof. Tze-ki HON (Beijing Normal University, Zhuhai campus)
6. Prof. Henrik JAEGER (University of Freiburg)
7. Prof. David KNECHTGES (University of Washington)
8. Prof. John T. P. LAI (Chinese University of Hong Kong)
9. Prof. LI Xuetao (Beijing Foreign Languages University)
10. Prof. Lauren PFISTER (Emeritus Professor, Hong Kong Baptist University)
11. Prof. SHEN Heyong (City University of Macau)
12. Dr. Jerry SWANSON (Independent scholar)
13. Mr. Andreas WEIS (University of Göttingen)
14. Ms. Bettina WILHELM (Independent scholar, film-maker)
15. Dr. Kar-Bo WONG (BNU-HKBU United International College)
16. Prof. WU Lijing (Hefei Normal University)
17. Prof. ZHANG Hua (Beijing Language and Culture University)
18. Prof. ZHANG Wenzhi (Shandong University)

Prof. Yi Zeng is a Professor from Chinese Academy of Sciences, serving as the Director at the Brain-Inspired Cognitive Intelligence Lab, and the International Research Center for AI Ethics and Governance. He is the founding director of Center for Long-Term AI, and the Beijing Institute of AI Safety and Governance. He is a member of the United Nations High-Level Advisory Body on AI. He is also an expert in the UNESCO Ad Hoc Expert Group on AI Ethics, an expert in the WHO Expert Group on the Ethics/Governance of Artificial Intelligence for Health, and a board member of the National Governance Committee of Next Generation Artificial Intelligence in China. He has briefed at the UN Security Council (9381st Meeting) on AI for International Peace and Security and been listed as one of the TIME 100 Most Influential People in Artificial Intelligence (TIME100/AI). His major research interests focus on Brain-inspired Artificial Intelligence, AI Ethics and Governance, AI Safety, AI for international peace and security, and AI for sustainable development.

Speaker
Prof. Yi Zeng
Professor, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Director, Brain-Inspired Cognitive Intelligence Lab, Director, International Research Center for AI Ethics and Governance

We demonstrate how the conception of essence motivating essentialists to advance the thesis that essences ground modality—what we call the domain-fixing conception of essence—seems well-positioned to vindicate the necessity of essence. We do this by setting out various aspects of the picture thinking constitutive of the view. By regimenting some of its structural features, we show how they secure the necessity of essence. We then raise a circularity worry, due to Leech (2020), and show that the domain-fixing conception seems well-positioned to avoid it. Afterwards, we try to push past mere picture thinking in search of a precisification of the domain-fixing view. We consider three ways of making the domain-fixing conception of essence precise, and show that the most viable precisification is what we call the zero-grounding view. We then develop a circularity worry for the zero-grounding view. The upshot is a deepening of the concerns raised by Leech and others. In drawing out the modal implications of the picture thinking motivating essentialists to advance the thesis that essence grounds modality, we see that if essence entails necessity, it cannot, in so doing, ground it.

Speaker 
Prof. Taylor-Grey Miller
Assistant Professor, Brigham Young University

FIH Generative AI Workgroup Invited Speaker Series

Speaker:
Yucong Hao (Assistant Professor, Vanderbilt University)
"Sound studies in the Age of GenAI"

Lin Du (Postdoc, National University of Singapore)
"Digital Historical Forensics: A Computer Vision Approach"

Moderator:
Xuenan Cao (Assistant Professor, CUHK)

This talk addresses the challenges and opportunities afforded by the computational analysis of unreadably large textual datasets. Dr. Blaxill argues that historians have failed to grasp these profound opportunities. Despite the abundance of machine-readable data liberated by digitisation, there has been no widespread embrace of text mining, cliometrics, or a broad philosophical debate on the role of computing in history. This ambivalence has arisen mainly from apathy, sidelining computational analysis into a specialist methodological niche. This damages the intellectual vitality of the discipline and its capacity to engage with the dawning age of data science and associated developments in artificial intelligence.

This talk will showcase examples of text mining in action in modern British political history. Case studies will include election speeches from 1880-1910, the contributions of women in Parliament since 1945, and nineteenth-century election violence. Dr. Blaxill argues for a reopening of the wider methodological debate about historians and computers. This requires informed skeptics to come forward to engage with advocates to discuss how we face the future.

Speaker 
Dr. Luke Blaxill 
College lecturer in Modern British History at Hertford College University of Oxford

Luke Blaxill is college lecturer in Modern British History at Hertford College University of Oxford. He has published widely on text mining in History, especially British politics, including in Past & Present in 2024. His first book, The War of Words- the language of British Elections 1880-1914 was published in 2020 with the Royal Historical Society.

Divinity School of Chung Chi College - Public Lecture Session I

Topic: 從第一世紀羅馬帝國的歷史與文化遺產看聖經的大能 (in Chinese only)
Speaker: Prof. Alex Hon-Ho IP
Date: 19 Nov 2024 (Tue)
Time: 8:00pm – 9:30pm
Language: Cantonese (with simultaneous interpretation in Putonghua)
Platform: Online Zoom
Theme: Encountering the Other

Target Audience:
1. Individuals interested in pursuing theological studies.
2. Individuals who wish to experience the unique learning environment of the Divinity School of Chung Chi College, the only theological education institution within a Chinese public university.
3. Individuals with an interest in Christianity and theological topics.

Register: https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=13697858

Speaker
Prof. Alex Hon-Ho IP
Associate Professor, Divinity School of Chung Chi College, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Success on the job market: CVs and cover letters

Do you plan on applying for academic jobs? Want to know more about how to write an effective cover letter and CV?

Cover letters and CVs are the first things hiring committees review and the most important part of a job application. Join us for this 90-minute session, during which Profs. Benny Lim and Xuenan Cao, from the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, share their tips and strategies on how to write effective cover letters and CVs. The session will consist of a 60-minute sharing session by Profs. Lim and Cao, followed by a 30-minute Q and A. All are welcome!

Speaker 
Profs. Benny Lim and Xuenan Cao
the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, CUHK

Benny Lim is the Associate Professor of Practice in Cultural Management and Director of the Master of Arts in Cultural Management Programme at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK).
Xuenan Cao is Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies.