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Full-Text Articles in Philosophy

Reconciling Modernity And Tradition In A Liberal Society, Chandran Kukathas Dec 2010

Reconciling Modernity And Tradition In A Liberal Society, Chandran Kukathas

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Many modern liberals have been eager to tout the virtues of diversity, but many have equally found it difficult to tolerate customs or traditions that do not conform to liberalism’s deepest commitments to equality and individual liberty. The distinction between traditional and modern is not a very useful one for understanding the problems confronting liberal society, or for working out how to address them because the contrast does not pick out a tension or conflict about which we can usefully generalise. Chandran Kukatahs suggests that as the tension in question is not one that is capable of resolution, the best …


Our Country Right Or Wrong: A Pragmatic Response To Anti-Democratic Cultural Nationalism In China, Sor-Hoon Tan Dec 2010

Our Country Right Or Wrong: A Pragmatic Response To Anti-Democratic Cultural Nationalism In China, Sor-Hoon Tan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Since Deng Xiaoping came into power, China has been described as pragmatic in its approach to politics and development, and in the nineties there has been a revival of interest in Chinese cultural tradition. What is the relation between these two phenomena? Do they coexist, separately in mutual indifference, or in tension? Has there been constructive engagement, or at the very least does the potential for such engagement exist? More specifically, what roles, if any, do they play in China's quest for democracy? Does Dewey's pragmatism have any relevance to China in the twenty-first century? The issue of cultural tradition …


Thinking On The Edge: Heidegger, Derrida, And The Daoist Gateway (Men), Steven Burik Oct 2010

Thinking On The Edge: Heidegger, Derrida, And The Daoist Gateway (Men), Steven Burik

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Steven Bunk Many philosophical interpretations of the Daoist classics have proceeded, or continue to proceed, to read into these works the quest for a transcendental, foundational principle, a permanent moment of rest beyond the turmoil of everchanging things. The metaphysics that may be understood to be at work in such interpretations is what Heidegger and Derrida have called philosophy as ontotheology. It is argued here that Heidegger, Derrida, and the classical Daoists are better understood not so much as metaphysical and essentialist thinkers but as advocates of a profoundly inner-worldly way of thinking. In arguing for such a different approach, …


Moore’S Paradox, Truth And Accuracy, Mitchell S. Green, John N. Williams Oct 2010

Moore’S Paradox, Truth And Accuracy, Mitchell S. Green, John N. Williams

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

G. E. Moore famously observed that to assert ‘I went to the pictures last Tuesday but I do not believe that I did’ would be ‘absurd’. Moore calls it a ‘paradox’ that this absurdity persists despite the fact that what I say about myself might be true. Krista Lawlor and John Perry have proposed an explanation of the absurdity that confines itself to semantic notions while eschewing pragmatic ones. We argue that this explanation faces four objections. We give a better explanation of the absurdity both in assertion and in belief that avoids our four objections.


Moore's Paradox, Defective Interpretation, Justified Belief And Conscious Belief, John N. Williams Sep 2010

Moore's Paradox, Defective Interpretation, Justified Belief And Conscious Belief, John N. Williams

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In this journal, Hamid Vahid argues against three families of explanation of Moore-paradoxicality. The first is the Wittgensteinian approach; I assert that p just in case I assert that I believe that p. So making a Moore-paradoxical assertion involves contradictory assertions. The second is the epistemic approach, one committed to: if I am justified in believing that p then I am justified in believing that I believe that p. So it is impossible to have a justified omissive Moore-paradoxical belief. The third is the conscious belief approach, being committed to: if I consciously believe that p then I believe that …


Self And Other: Continental And Classical Chinese Thought, Steven Burik Sep 2010

Self And Other: Continental And Classical Chinese Thought, Steven Burik

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Traditionally, metaphysical notions of self and other presuppose a dualism that underlies much of Western philosophy. This dualism is opposed by accounts of self and other in recent continental philosophy and classical Chinese philosophy, which I compare. I argue that the self is seen in continental and Chinese thought as embedded in (ethical) relations and language, and not as transcendent or prior in the metaphysical sense to them. I argue for this by focussing on three themes: self and language, self as relational and embedded in the world or contextual environment, and self and the particular other. These three themes …


Cold War Origins Of The International Federation For Information Processing, Ksenia Tatarchenko Apr 2010

Cold War Origins Of The International Federation For Information Processing, Ksenia Tatarchenko

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

The International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) was born as a nongovernmental federation with the main goal of bringing together computer professionals from countries in the East and West. This article examines the Cold War context of the IFIP's origins and the mechanisms its founders used to reconcile computing and politics and to construct computing as an international discipline.


Understanding Hayek, Chandran Kukathas Jan 2010

Understanding Hayek, Chandran Kukathas

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Although some of this will be familiar to a number of you all,I will talk a bit about Friedrich A. Hayek since I am goingfirst. I’ll say a little bit about his life, how he came to theideas that he became so famous for espousing, and then a little bitabout his liberalism and the contribution he has made to liberaltheory and to intellectual life.


Logic, Doxastic, John Nicholas Williams Jan 2010

Logic, Doxastic, John Nicholas Williams

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Doxastic logic, beginning with Hintikka’s Knowledge and Belief. An Introduction to the Logic of the Two Notions (1962. Cornell University Press), studies relations between propositions about what we believe. Using ‘a’ as a proper name like ‘Ann’, ‘→’ for ‘if’ as opposed to material implication, propositional variables such as ‘p’, ‘q’ and ‘B’ to represent the two-place relation, ‘ . . . believes that . . . ’.