Professor Zhong Lei from the Department of Philosophy was conferred the title RGC Research Fellow for his distinguished research achievement. Among the ten awardees across all UGC-funded universities in 2021/22, Professor Zhong is the only scholar from the field of Humanities.
As a leading Chinese scholar in the tradition of analytic philosophy, Professor Zhong’s research project “An Emergentist Theory of Mind” is funded with a fellowship grant of around HK$5 million over a period of 60 months to conduct the research project. This project aims to develop a novel physicalist version of emergentism and to solve the long-standing problem of mental causation. It will make significant progress on the understanding of human agency and reshape the perpetual debate between reductive and non-reductive physicalism.
The Research Grants Council (RGC) Research Fellow Scheme (RFS) aims to provide sustained support and relief from teaching and administrative duties to exceptionally outstanding researchers at UGC-funded universities in Hong Kong, with a view to facilitating their full dedication to research and development and helping universities attract and retain research talent.