Xinli Wang's Research
My scholarly interests cover a broad range of subjects in the philosophy of science (methodology), the philosophy of language, 20th century analytic philosophy, epistemology, philosophical logic, and Chinese philosophy. In the past a few years, my writings and publications focus primarily on the issues of incommensurability, scientific rationality, semantic presuppositions, conceptual schemes, cross-language understanding and communication, facts and possible facts, David Hume on induction, and Thomas Kuhn's philosophy of science.
Selected Recent Publications
- Forthcoming in 2008, “Recent Development in Epistemology,” The Frontier of Western Humanities and Social Sciences Development Book Series, Philosophy Volume, Renmin University Press, Beijing, China.
- Forthcoming in 2007, “Conceptual Schemes and Presuppositional Languages,” in The Proceedings of the 21st World Congress of Philosophy, Istanbul, 2003, Volume 6 (Epistemology), editors, Stephen Voss and Dermot Moran. [The Proceedings contain the best papers presented at this Congress, which are selected by the editor of each volume, published in thirteen thematically organized hardbound volumes.]
- 2007, Incommensurability and Cross-Language Communication (a philosophy monograph), Ashgate Publishing Ltd, England, included in Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Philosophy Series, pp.380; see the publisher's webpage for more information (the table of content; chapter 1; index)
- 2004, "Where Are Facts? - A Case For Internal Factual Realism," Dialogos 82: 7-30
- 2003, "Presuppositional Languages and the Failure of Cross-Language Understanding," Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review, Vol. 42 (1): 53-77
- 2002, "Taxonomy, Truth-Value Gaps and Incommensurability: A Reconstruction of T. Kuhn's Taxonomic Interpretation of Incommensurability," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 33 (3): 465-485, Read the article.
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2002, “A Defense of the Notion of Semantic Presupposition,” in Contemporary Inquiries Into the Foundational Issues of Philosophy, the Commercial Press, Beijing, China, pp. 190-224.
- 2001, "Hume Is Not A Skeptic about Induction," Dialogos 78: 41-54
- 2000, "Hume on Epistemic Justification of Induction," Prima Philosophia 13 (4): 369-379
- 1999, "Is the Notion of Semantic Presupposition Empty?" Dialogos 73: 61-91
- 1998, "A Critique of the Translational Approach to Incommensurability," Prima Philosophia 11 (3): 293-306
Works in Progress
- I am currently working on a book (in Chinese) under contract for publication: Thomas Kuhn: His Life and Works.
- "Linguistic Understanding versus Communication"
- "A Presuppositional Approach to Conceptual Schemes"
- "On Davidson's Refutation of the Very Idea of Conceptual Schemes"