Abstract:

The conceptual confusion between"xing dong" (action) and "xing wei" (behavior) in quite a few philosophical translations and writings in Chinese is one of many conceptual confusions as frequently seen in our academic researches as well as in our everyday life.It is a major task of philosophy to clarify these conceptual confusions, to develop new conceptual distinctions, and to cultivate our sensitivity to conceptual distinctions.This not only means that we should keep translations more fidelity to their Western originals, but also means that we should positively overcome rather than simply deny varied"dichotomies", we should combine conceptual analyses with rich imaginations, and we should replace old-fashioned conceptual distinctions with new-types.Moreover, we should try our best to find out some"middle terms"that can mediate between those aspects that have been separated from each other, and to advance our research through newer and better work of conceptual analyses.All this means that we should, in our philosophical research, aim to have a "reflective equilibrium"between important problems and seemingly trivial distinctions.

Key words: action, behavior, conceptual distinction, dichotomy, reflective equilibrium