荀學理論建基於道德之外在客觀性，與孔子之言心及孟子進一步發展之心性論所言之主體性、價值自覺相去甚遠，因此長久以來就因其性惡之說而備受非議，勞思光更稱之為「儒學之歧途」。然而，得指出荀學自其出發點發展開去，已成一套一致自足之理論，而其理論本身之內在價值，更是值得我們重視的。

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The connection between language and thought is profound. The majority of our everyday life involves the use of language. We tell our ideas to others with language, we “read” their responses and understand their meanings with language, and very often, we “speak” internally to ourselves when we process this information and make logical conclusions. It seems that rational thinking unavoidably involves certain degree of the use of language. This connection seems so tight that, some linguists like Sapir and Whorf had to propose that thought is indeed utterly determined by language.

On the other hand, some linguists hold that language and thought are two separate and independent entities. The differences in the syntactic structure and the lexicons available in different languages, for example, cannot possibly determine the way these people think. Thus we have thought in the very first place, and then language came in as a tool for expressing our thought.

Still some others, not feeling contented with either version, proposed a third possibility, that language and thought are interdependent. “Language is a regular part of the process of thinking… It is not a question of one notion taking precedence over the other, but of both notions being essential.”

While the conclusion on this issue is not a simple this-or-that answer and cannot be easily drawn, this paper will nevertheless try to provide adequate evidences in linguistic and psycholinguistic studies and seek for a reasonable conclusion.

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Reductionism has been one great triumph of the human understanding to the objective universe in the last few centuries. Its belief that essentially everything can be explained in terms of certain fundamental physical events has been greatly encouraged by the vigorous development in various fields of natural sciences, The modern quantum physics, for example, is extraordinarily successful in explaining many microscopic phenomena, giving extraordinarily accurate predictions of microscopic systems, and hence enhancing the development of numerous applications such as computer and nanotechnology. However, arguments against reductionism have never been stopped being raised here and there, and especially in the philosophy of mind, where consciousness and subjectivity comes into the play and creates major difficulties in the doctrine of reductionism. Here we shall give an account for the history of reductionism and the mind-body problem, and try to address a few problems caused by the reduction of consciousness, finally we will see how reductionism can possibly respond.

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