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Patient-Relativity In Morality, Matthew Hammerton Oct 2016

Patient-Relativity In Morality, Matthew Hammerton

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

It is common to distinguish moral rules, reasons, or values that are agent-relative from those that are agent-neutral. One can also distinguish moral rules, reasons, or values that are moment-relative from those that are moment-neutral. In this article, I introduce a third distinction that stands alongside these two distinctions—the distinction between moral rules, reasons, or values that are patient-relative and those that are patient-neutral. I then show how patient-relativity plays an important role in several moral theories, gives us a better understanding of agent-relativity and moment-relativity, and provides a novel objection to Derek Parfit’s “appeal to full relativity” argument.


There’S Nothing To Beat A Backward Clock: A Rejoinder To Adams, Barker And Clarke, John N. Williams Sep 2016

There’S Nothing To Beat A Backward Clock: A Rejoinder To Adams, Barker And Clarke, John N. Williams

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Neil Sinhababu and I presented Backward Clock, anoriginal counterexample to Robert Nozick’s truth-tracking analysis ofpropositional knowledge. Fred Adams, John Barker and Murray Clarke argue that Backward Clock is no such counterexample. Theirargument fails to nullify Backward Clock whichalso shows that other tracking analyses, such as Dretske’s and one that Adams et al may well have in mind, are inadequate.


Wisdom: Understanding And The Good Life, Shane Ryan Sep 2016

Wisdom: Understanding And The Good Life, Shane Ryan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

I argue that a necessary condition for being wise is: understanding how to live well. The condition, by requiring understanding rather than a wide variety of justified beliefs or knowledge, as Ryan and Whitcomb respectively require, yields the desirable result that being wise is compatible with having some false beliefs but not just any false beliefs about how to live well-regardless of whether those beliefs are justified or not. In arguing for understanding how to live well as a necessary condition for wisdom, I reject the view, proposed by both Ryan and Whitcomb, that subjects such as chemistry lies within …


On How To Approach The Approach To Equilibrium, Joshua Luczak Jul 2016

On How To Approach The Approach To Equilibrium, Joshua Luczak

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article highlights the limitations of typicality accounts of thermodynamic behavior so as to promote an alternative line of research: understanding and accounting for the success of the techniques and equations physicists use to model the behavior of systems that begin away from equilibrium. This article also takes steps in this promising direction. It examines a technique commonly used to model the behavior of an important kind of system: a Brownian particle that has been introduced to an isolated fluid at equilibrium. It also accounts for the success of the model, by identifying and grounding the technique's key assumptions.


Why Equality? Which Inequalities?, Sor-Hoon Tan Apr 2016

Why Equality? Which Inequalities?, Sor-Hoon Tan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article challenges the conventional view that Confucianism has no place for the value of equality by shifting the focus from direct justification of equality (Why equality?) to concerns about actual social and political problems (Which inequalities are objectionable?). From this perspective, early Confucian texts endorse some inequalities, in particular those based on virtue, while objecting to others, especially socioeconomic inequalities. Confucians do not consider equality or inequality as inherently valuable, but evaluate them in relation to issues of good government.


Still A New Problem For Defeasibility: A Rejoinder To Borges, John Nicholas Williams Mar 2016

Still A New Problem For Defeasibility: A Rejoinder To Borges, John Nicholas Williams

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

I gave a new objection to the defeasibility theory of knowledge, namely that prohibits you from knowing that you know that p if your knowledge that p is a posteriori. Rodrigo Borges claims that Peter Klein has already satisfactorily replied to a version of my objection. He attempts to defend this reply and argues that my objection fails because a principle on which it is based is false. I show that my objection is not a version of the old one that Klein attempts (unsatisfactorily) to address, that Borges’s defence of Klein’s reply fails and that his argument against my …


Does Xunzi’S Ethics Of Ritual Need A Metaphysics?, Sor-Hoon Tan Mar 2016

Does Xunzi’S Ethics Of Ritual Need A Metaphysics?, Sor-Hoon Tan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Contemporary philosophers working on Chinese Philosophy, Confucianism in particular, disagree about the status of metaphysics in early Confucianism. Some maintain that metaphysics are absent by pointing to the overwhelming emphasis on practical concerns – ethical and political – in the early Confucian texts. Others insist that even if there were no explicit metaphysical discussion or theorizing, metaphysical assumptions are inevitable. However do these assumptions point to one definite metaphysical system, or are they so vague and ambiguous that different mutually incompatible metaphysics could be constructed from them and attributed arbitrarily to the early Confucians? The latter situation would weaken the …


Comparative Resources: Continental Philosophy And Daoism, Steven Burik Feb 2016

Comparative Resources: Continental Philosophy And Daoism, Steven Burik

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

I argue that continental philosophical resources are more appropriate for comparative philosophy regarding classical Daoism since they in various ways challenge the dominant metaphysical orientation of Western thought and give us a better and more appropriate vocabulary to make sense of important Daoist ideas within the confines of Western languages. Since classical Daoism is largely non-metaphysical or at least not metaphysical in the same way as the Western history of philosophy is, it makes sense that those within the Western tradition who have sought to displace the dominant metaphysical tradition would be more in tune with such non-metaphysical considerations. I …