NEWSLETTERS | The American Philosophical Association APA Newsletters SPRING 2017 VOLUME 16 | NUMBER 2 ASIAN AND ASIAN-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHERS AND PHILOSOPHIES HISPANIC/LATINO ISSUES IN PHILOSOPHY INDIGENOUS PHILOSOPHY PHILOSOPHY AND COMPUTERS PHILOSOPHY AND MEDICINE PHILOSOPHY AND THE BLACK EXPERIENCE PHILOSOPHY IN TWO-YEAR COLLEGES TEACHING PHILOSOPHY VOLUME 16 | NUMBER 2 SPRING 2017 © 2017 BY THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION ISSN 2155-9708 Table of Contents Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and The Best of Both Worlds: Philosophy in African Philosophies ...................................................... 1 Languages and English Translation ......................... 57 From the Editor .......................................................... 1 Therapeutic Nations: Healing in an Age of Indigenous Human Rights ....................................... 64 Submission Guidelines and Information ................... 2 Philosophy and Computers ............................. 69 The Upside of Non-Specialist Teaching: A Reply to Cline .......................................................... 3 From the Editor ........................................................ 69 Fundamentalist Thinking in Chinese Maoist From the Chair ......................................................... 69 “Thought Remolding” ................................................ 6 What Is Computer Science? .................................70 A Brief Note on the Probable Place of Origin of Madhusūdana Sarasvatī and the Influence of Why Think That the Brain Is Not a Computer? ......... 90 Caitanyaite Movement on Him ................................ 11 From Biological to Synthetic Neurorobotics Call for Papers .......................................................... 15 Approaches to Understanding the Structure Hispanic/Latino Issues in Philosophy ............ 17 Essential to Consciousness (Part 2) ......................... 97 From the Editor ........................................................ 17 Kant on Constituted Mental Activity ...................... 109 Calls for submissions ............................................... 17 I Am, Therefore I Think .......................................... 121 The Solace of Mexican Philosophy in the Age of Call for Papers ........................................................ 126 Trump ....................................................................... 17 Philosophy and Medicine.............................. 127 Repealing Obamacare: An Injustice to Hispanics ... 19 Reflections on Procreative Asymmetry ................. 127 Latinx and the Future of Whiteness in American Democracy ............................................................... 21 Against the Interpretation of Homosexuality as Disability................................................................. 130 Eudaimonia and Neltiliztli: Aristotle and the Aztecs on the Good Life ...................................................... 25 Terrorism’s Apologia and the Relevance of Philosophical Analysis ........................................... 133 Tsotsil Epistemology: An Intangible Inheritance .... 36 I’ve Been Bad ......................................................... 135 Luis Villoro: Universal Mexican Philosopher ........... 39 Philosophy and the Black Experience .......... 137 In Search of the Philosophical Impulse: Zea and the Greeks ...................................................................... 44 From the Editors .................................................... 137 Contributor bios ....................................................... 48 Submission Guidelines and Information ............... 138 Indigenous Philosophy ................................... 51 On Afro-Caribbean Philosophy: Metaphilosophical Inquiry and Black Existence ................................... 138 From the Editor ........................................................ 51 The Long Revolution, Cornel West’s Black Prophetic Starting Differently ................................................... 51 Tradition, and Temporal Perspective ..................... 143 Submission Guidelines ............................................ 52 Walking the Scalpel’s Edge: Identity, Duality, and (Problematic) Black Manhood in “The Knick” ....... 148 On Listening to Ourselves ....................................... 53 Black Lives Matter’s Normativity and the Canon’s The Philosophical Significance of Listening to Inability to Connect with the Movement ............... 153 Ourselves ................................................................. 54 Table of Contents, continued Beyond Tradition: A Short Rumination on Africana Philosophy and Nihilism in 21st Century America .................................................................. 158 White Privilege and Black Rights: The Injustice of U.S. Police Racial Profiling and Homicide ............. 159 Contributors ........................................................... 162 Philosophy in Two-Year Colleges .................. 165 From the Editor ...................................................... 165 The Value of Studying Philosophy for Community College Students ................................................... 165 Lower Division Pedagogy ...................................... 172 A Tale of Two Professors: A Case Study in Justice at the Community College ..................................... 175 Call for Papers ........................................................ 181 Teaching Philosophy ..................................... 183 How Teaching Should Matter ................................ 185 How Teachers Succeed .......................................... 186 Didactical Ordering and Emotional Moral Persuasion .............................................................. 188 Teaching “Introduction to Women’s Studies” as a Critical Thinking Course ......................................... 190 The Stone Reader: Modern Philosophy in 133 Arguments.............................................................. 195 APA NEWSLETTER ON Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and Philosophies PRASANTA S. BANDYOPADHYAY, EDITOR VOLUME 16 | NUMBER 2 | SPRING 2017 to contribute significantly both to the teaching of Chinese FROM THE EDITOR philosophy to students and to the philosophy profession at large, as the work of specialists and non-specialists might Prasanta S. Bandyopadhyay be mutually informative. MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY Philip Williams looks at contemporary China from the I have edited three issues of the newsletter so far pivoting perspective of its political and social development during around “Indian philosophy and culture.”1 The rationale for and after the Mao Zedong Era (1949–1976). He investigates it is that I have more familiarity with India and its cultural the relevance of Corliss Lamont’s comments on some dynamics than the rest of Asia. However, the purpose of our nagging problems that political doctrines could beget. newsletters is to be more inclusive in terms of integrating Lamont, who is a well-known American social/political topics and issues that do not always fall under the rubric of philosopher with a strong leaning toward left-wing and civil typical philosophical scholarship, in addition to not being liberties, writes that the worst feature of authoritarianism limited to one specific part of Asia. So it is time to expand arises when a political doctrine saps into the vitality of an our horizons, as philosophical issues developed in both individual in the name of “Utopian promises.” Borrowing a classical and modern China are similarly important for our cue from Lamont, Williams has weaved a narrative of how readers. This issue of the newsletter contains two papers on fundamentalism and orthodoxy have prevailed in modern China and one on India where the names of those countries China. To familiarize the reader with the debilitating are used broadly. One of the papers on China deals with influence of Maoist’s ideology, he distinguishes among issues regarding the teaching of Chinese philosophy by a five features of fundamentalist thought. They are (i) non-specialist, and the second one concerns philosophical exclusivity of doctrines, (ii) incontestability of doctrine, and political problems stemming from the hegemony of (iii) salvationist rhetoric, (iv) demands for confession, and, the Communist Party in China. The third and final paper is finally, (v) oppositional character. Under the first category, dedicated to a well-known Advaita Vedānta philosopher in he points out that although there exists some religious seventh century Bengal. freedom in China in terms of what citizens could practice, he aptly argues that they are required to show allegiance to The paper by Julianne Chung discusses several potential the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which totally controls advantages associated with non-specialist teaching of the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Chinese philosophy. Here, she responds to an earlier paper as there exists nothing over and above the authority of the by Erin Cline, published in the spring 2016 edition of the CCP. Although both the Dalai Lama and Falun Gong leader newsletter (for reference, please see Chung’s paper). Li Hongzhi were long trying to co-exist with the Party-state, Cline contends that a recent trend toward having non- the power and influence of these two religious leaders experts teach Chinese philosophy has generated two- have posed threats for the Beijing powerhouse. In the end, fold problems: (i) It prevents departments from hiring Williams explores