文学院祝贺本院学者并表扬他们杰出的学术成就︰

卓敏文化及宗教研究教授 - 彭丽君教授 (文化及宗教研究系)

2022年度校长模范教学奖 - 邢福增教授 (文化及宗教研究系)

2022年度青年学者研究成就奖 - 墨瞻史教授 (历史系)

2022年度研究生学术成果奖- 孙逸凡先生 (哲学系)

The different philosophical traditions as well as the different therapeutic concepts agree that they are based on "therapeutic principles" both theoretically and practically. My contribution would like to emphasize this connection, especially as it is usually ignored or at least undervalued in philosophical debates. And this is despite the fact that the two original scenarios - literarily by Sophocles’ "Oedipus" and philosophically by Socrates in Plato's "Art of Dialogue" - still vividly elaborate the basic chords of human existence, even if this is only noted in the double meaning of the Latin "laborare" as "simultaneously" of "to suffer" and "to work".
It is therefore not surprising that conceptual self-explanations and lucid horizons of thought on the one hand, and practical dialogue spaces between therapist and patient on the other, are not as different in terms of path and goal as one might initially assume.
In this sense, "therapies" are supports, promotions, even liberations of the human being with regard to its individual, intersubjective and social deep structures. This is not only obvious in the so-called Western hemisphere; this connection also proves to be fundamental in (East) Asian contexts.
With this in mind, my lecture follows a number of routes in which topoi such as 'I' and 'Self', 'We' and 'Others' or 'Strangers', 'Existence' and 'Meaning', 'Situativity' and 'Deep Structures' in their reciprocal conditional forms and above all with regard to their phenomenologically instructed "constitution processes". References to the decidedly therapeutic concepts of Viktor E. Frankl and Kimura Bin in particular would like to point out, among other things, that these foundations and insights are not only of cross-cultural relevance, but also actively contribute to the opening and shaping of 'intercultural and transcultural constitution processes'.

Online
No registration is required.
Meeting ID: 969 8769 8344
Link: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/96987698344

Face-to-face
Register by 21 March 2024
Link: https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=13685376

The human brain is remarkably efficient in language comprehension, capable of actively predicting upcoming semantic content and inferring implied communicative intentions. A fundamental question in cognitive neuroscience of human communication is understanding the neural dynamics that support the formation of these internally generated semantic/pragmatic interpretations. Although we know this process relies on a hierarchy of increasingly abstract representations and involves multiple cortical areas, the way these different system levels interact to achieve efficient comprehension is not fully understood. Our series of studies have shown that both semantic anticipation and intention interpretation consume time or cognitive resources, and are flexibly operated based on their relevance to the current communication task; the intentional level of meaning is not only (at lease in some situations) inferred from the intermediate-level representation generated during understanding but also mutually influences this intermediate representation later on; the coupling of the right TJP with other control, memory, and sensory brain areas plays a critical role in the processes of semantic anticipation and intention comprehension. These results suggest the critical role of active top-down generation processes in language comprehension and elucidate their specific cognitive processes and neural foundations.

I offer a new metaphysical account of what it is for an object to persist through change. On my proposed view, when an object undergoes change, this involves the object’s essentially having a determinable property (e.g., shape), which property is differently determined at different times (e.g., first as straight, then as bent). I argue that this account has advantages over existing accounts of persistence through change (including endurantism and perdurantism), including that it makes sense of how objects can be 'wholly present' at each time they exist, without inviting contradiction.

Joining the Talks Face-to-Face:
Public lecture: Register by 4 April 2024 | Seminar: Register by 18 Apr 2024
https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=13684365

Joining the Talks Online (No registration is needed):
Zoom Meeting ID: 957 0183 7605
https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/95701837605

The question of whether AI systems of sufficient complexity are conscious has been much in the news of late, especially as regards large language models such as LaMDA, ChatGPT, and GPT-4. But can we know or justifiably believe that a given AI system is conscious? Here I canvass strategies offered in response to the problem of other minds — the question of how we can warrantedly establish that persons or other animals are conscious — and argue that these strategies won't work for the case of AI, for reasons that appear to be insuperable. I conclude that we are not now, and will likely never be in position to warrantedly establish of any AI system that it is conscious.

Joining the Talks Face-to-Face:
Public lecture: Register by 4 April 2024 | Seminar: Register by 18 Apr 2024
https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=13684365

Joining the Talks Online (No registration is needed):
Zoom Meeting ID: 957 0183 7605
https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/95701837605

工作坊邀请了研究院历史系学部主任卜永坚教授和人类学系的关宜馨教授介绍报读RPG课程的要点和注意事项。此外，本院博士生Ms. Evelyn Pei(翻译)和Ms. Miao Zixin(中国研究)也分享了她们的经历，她们同样是由本院授课式研究生课程 (TPG)升读至RPG课程。Evelyn 和Zixin 的分享为正在考虑是否报读研究式课程的同学提供了宝贵的意见。文学院副院长（教育）Jette Hansen Edwards教授表示，这次的工作坊提供了难得的机会，让教授与同学真摰对话，别具意义。

工作坊的讨论亦十分全面，涵盖了轮选准则、申请程序、面试策略，以及如何与将来职业发展相结合等。透过这个工作坊，本院希望能够启发同学进一步思考自己是否适合修读研究式课程，并为他们提供建设性的资讯。

中大文学院支持全球学生追求学术和研究抱负，欢迎有意在本院就读的学生或深造的在职人士浏览我们的网页，获取更多课程资讯。

This presentation focuses on infertility and utilizes the theory of medical pluralism and its framework to discuss pluralistic medical strategies and their relationships to the local infertile women in Guangxi, China. The social  and cultural environment has created a local fertility culture, in which fertility not only ensures the continuation of the family line but also defines a woman's role and life meaning. Infertility is considered as "different", which leads to women having low self-esteem, having damaged social relationships, and living in a precarious marriage. As a result, pursuing reproductive success becomes the center of the infertile women's lives. In the medical pluralism of the local infertile women, Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) occupy a core position, and Traditional Chinese Medicine and Sacred Treatments are important supplements to ARTs. ARTs repair the body's "obstacles", Traditional  Chinese Medicine regulates the body's balance, and Sacred Treatments relieve psychological anxiety. Indeed, they complement each other, giving infertile women the confidence they need to continue treatment and contributing to reproductive success.

The lecture examines the role of Sudan in Western foreign policy imperatives in the immediate postwar/early Cold War period. Archival research shows that the status of Sudan acted as a poison pill for Egypt and Britain (the co-domini), with both countries using the question of Sudan’s self-determination to harden diplomatic positions that were contradictory, while United States officials, constrained by their limited understanding of the vexatious postwar dimensions of Anglo-Egyptian relations vis-à-vis Sudan, sought to avoid Sudan being used as an obstacle to a negotiated settlement. On the one hand, the British upheld the question of Sudanese self-determination to forestall quitting the region and surrendering its military presence in the Canal Zone as tensions surrounding Arab-Israeli relations escalated. On the other hand, the Egyptian Government, dominated by Wafdi nationalists, held firm that any negotiations over the future of Sudan could only take place after Britain had ended its military presence in the Canal Zone. The lecture argues that the subrosa decision by the British Government in 1951 to disagree with Egypt over Sudan because of its moral implications rather than over Britain’s increasingly controversial presence in Suez doomed efforts at negotiating a new Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of Alliance and this set the stage for an accelerated British evacuation of both Sudan and Suez.

ZOOM Meeting Link: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/99088684183

The rise of the passport and the history of identity documents has been largely explained as a matter of building the state by policing belonging and monitoring the movements of subjects and citizens. This talk complicates that picture by recovering the role of labour control in the practice of documenting identity in England, from the main early modern legislation of the servant testimonial or pass system in the Statute of Artificers (1563) to the economic crisis of the 1690s. The statute required people to carry documents known as "testimonials" when they finished their agreed term with their masters and sought employment elsewhere. Historians have generally assumed that this system was not put into practice. But new archival evidence presented in this talk suggests instead that masters and servants did use testimonials, at least for exceptional cases. The ephemeral nature of the documents means that their history must be researched from the epiphenomenal traces left behind.

ZOOM Meeting Link: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/99088684183

You are cordially invited to join the book talk on 19 March, in which Dr Tina Shrestha will discuss her new monograph Surviving the Sanctuary City: Asylum-Seeking Work in Nepali New York. Dr. Shrestha is an academic author and ethnographer affiliated with Waseda University. Her book Surviving the Sanctuary City discusses the production of migrant labor and suffering through asylum enforcement. It also addresses the cultural logic of suffering and the rethinking of this form of precarious labor. This book has received the 2023 Shelley Fisher Fishkin Book Prize honorable mention.

Speaker: Dr. Tina Shrestha (Waseda University)
Date: Tuesday, 19 March 2024
Time: 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm
Mode: In-person
Venue: Leung Kau Kui Building, LG7, CUHK