Philosophy Commons^™

How To Avoid Solipsism While Remaining An Idealist: Lessons From Berkeley And Dharmakirti, Jeremy E. Henkel

Comparative Philosophy

This essay examines the strategies that Berkeley and Dharmakirti utilize to deny that idealism entails solipsism. Beginning from similar arguments for the non-existence of matter, the two philosophers employ markedly different strategies for establishing the existence of other minds. This difference stems from their responses to the problem of intersubjective agreement. While Berkeley's reliance on his Cartesian inheritance does allow him to account for intersubjective agreement without descending into solipsism, it nevertheless prevents him from establishing the existence of other finite minds. I argue that Dharmakirti, in accounting for intersubjective agreement causally, is able to avoid Berkeley's shortcoming. I conclude …

Benevolent Government Now, Howard J. Curzer

Comparative Philosophy

Mencian benevolent government intervenes dramatically in many ways in the marketplace in order to secure the material well-being of the population, especially the poor and disadvantaged. Mencius considers this sort of intervention to be appropriate not just occasionally when dealing with natural disasters, but regularly. Furthermore, Mencius recommends shifting from regressive to progressive taxes. He favors reduction of inequality so as to reduce corruption of government by the wealthy, and opposes punishment for people driven to crime by destitution. Mencius thinks government should try to improve the character of the population by preventing or relieving poverty, by setting a good …

Editor's Words, Bo Mou

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Whole Set Of Volume 3 No 1 (2012), Comparative Philosophy

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Dharmakirti, Davidson, And Knowing Reality, Lajos Brons

Comparative Philosophy

If we distinguish phenomenal effects from their noumenal causes, the former being our conceptual(ized) experiences, the latter their grounds or causes in reality "as it is" independent of our experience, then two contradictory positions with regards to the relationship between these two can be distinguished: either phenomena are identical with their noumenal causes, or they are not. Davidson is among the most influential modern defenders of the former position, metaphysical non-dualism. Dharmakirti' strict distinction between ultimate and conventional reality, on the other hand, may be one of the most rigorously elaborated theories of the opposite position, metaphysical dualism. Despite this …

Review Of Gary E. Varner's Personhood, Ethics, And Animal Cognition: Situating Animals In Hare’S Two-Level Utilitarianism, Tal Scriven

Between the Species

No abstract provided.

Virtue Ethics And Animal Law, Taimie Bryant

Between the Species

This essay explores virtue ethical concepts in the context of animal law theory and practice. For reasons discussed in the essay, virtue ethics may not, on its own, serve as an adequate foundation for general anticruelty statutes, but it may have application in those contexts in which sufficient sharing of values enables participants in legal reform to work through differences in moral commitments to generate at least temporarily acceptable laws. The article considers a detailed example of that type of application, based on the actual and realistic situation of legislator-requested feral cat colony caretakers’ participation in the development of ordinances …

When Bird And Fish Fall In Love, Matthew C. Mackey

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

A work of poetry that offers a new method of poetics. By examining translation as a means of understanding relationships, this work offers a nuanced manner for the writing and experience of poetry. When Bird and Fish Fall in Love is a close examination of language, relationships, translation, and the intimacy of conflation.

Vol 4 No 1 Information Page, Comparative Philosophy

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Vol 4 No 1 Cover Page, Comparative Philosophy

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Vol 4 No 1 Content Page, Comparative Philosophy

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Vol 4 No 1 Editor's Words, Bo Mou

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Contemporary Confucian And Islamic Approaches To Democracy And Human Rights, Stephen Angle

Comparative Philosophy

Both Confucian and Islamic traditions stand in fraught and internally contested relationships with democracy and human rights. It can easily appear that the two traditions are in analogous positions with respect to the values associated with modernity, but a central contention of this essay is that Islam and Confucianism are not analogous in this way. Positions taken by advocates of the traditions are often similar, but the reasoning used to justify these positions differs in crucial ways. Whether one approaches these questions from an intra-traditional, cross-traditional, or multi-traditional perspective, the essay shows that there is great value in getting clear …

Mohist Approach To The Rule-Following Problem, Chung-I Lin

Comparative Philosophy

The Mohist conceives the dao-following issue as "how we can put dao in words and speeches into practice." The dao-following issue is the Mohist counterpart of Wittgenstein's rule-following problem. This paper aims to shed light on the rule-following issue in terms of the Mohist answer to the dao-following problem. The early Mohist takes fa(法, standard)and the later Mohist takes lei(類, analogy)as the key to the dao-following issue. I argue that the way of fa is not viable. Fa comes in various forms, but all of them are regarded as being cut off from everyday life and therefore subject to various …

Reading Han Fei As "Social Scientist": A Case-Study In "Historical Correspondence", Henrique Schneider

Comparative Philosophy

Han Fei was one of the main proponents of Legalism in Qin-era China. Although his works are mostly read from a historic perspective, the aim of this paper is to advance an interpretation of Han Fei as a “social scientist”. The social sciences are the fields of academic scholarship that study society and its institutions as a consequence of human behavior. Methodologically, social sciences combine abstract approaches in model-building with empiric investigations, seeking to prove the functioning of the models. In a third step, social sciences also aim at providing policy advice. Han Fei can be read as operating similarly. …

A Daoist Model For A Kantian Church, Stephen R. Palmquist

Comparative Philosophy

Although significant differences undoubtedly exist between Daoism and Kant’s philosophy, the two systems also have some noteworthy similarities. After calling attention to a few such parallels and sketching the outlines of Kant’s philosophy of religion, this article focuses on an often-neglected feature of the latter: the four guiding principles of what Kant calls an “invisible church” (universality, purity, freedom, and unchangeableness). Numerous passages from Lao Zi’s classic text, Dao-De-Jing, seem to uphold these same principles, thus suggesting that they can also be interpreted as core features of a Daoist philosophy of life. A crucial difference, however, is that members of …

Mencius' Jun-Zi, Aristotle's Megalopsuchos, & Moral Demands To Help The Global Poor, Sean Walsh

Comparative Philosophy

It is commonly believed that impartial utilitarian moral theories have significant demands that we help the global poor, and that the partial virtue ethics of Mencius and Aristotle do not. This ethical partiality found in these virtue ethicists has been criticized, and some have suggested that the partialistic virtue ethics of Mencius and Aristotle are parochial (i.e., overly narrow in their scope of concern). I believe, however, that the ethics of Mencius and Aristotle are both more cosmopolitan than many presume and also are very demanding. In this paper, I argue that the ethical requirements to help the poor and …

Introduction, Sor-Hoon Tan

Comparative Philosophy

This is the introduction to the content of the jounrnal's special issue (vol. 4 no. 1 / January 2013) celebrating the tenth anniversary of the International Society for Comparative Studies of Chinese and Western Philosophy (ISCWP), which includes five peer-reviewed articles by ISCWP members.

Hannah Arendt And Feminist Agency, Katherine N. Fulfer

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

My goal in this dissertation is to articulate an Arendtian conception of feminist agency, that is, agency that aims at resistance from within oppressive situations. There is a tendency in feminist literature to depict women in the global south as if they are passive victims of their oppression, with no opportunities to resist. This tendency is replicated in feminist responses to transnational contract pregnancy, the practice in which people travel across national borders to hire a woman to gestate an embryo.

I argue that the feminist literature on contract pregnancy is polarized and unable to resolve the problematic trend of …

Gaming The System: Bio-Economics, Game Theory, & Fisheries Management, Richard A. Grisel

Richard A Grisel

This paper argues that game theory provides powerful, effective new tools to analyze externalities that occur in the context of strategic, multi-party, interactive decision-making. I will attempt to treat this as a non-technical paper and avoid the complex mathematics better left to economists and mathematicians. Instead, a more achievable goal is to illustrate how high-seas open-access fishing is virtually identical to a game situation, treat the fundamentals of game theory, and demonstrate that game theoretic analyses are well-suited and fruitful for designing effective policy responses to fisheries management, particularly with respect to the straddling stocks problem. Indeed, one seminal fisheries …