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Articles 151 - 180 of 237
Full-Text Articles in Philosophy
Beyond Elitism: Community Ideal For A Modern East Asia, Sor-Hoon Tan
Beyond Elitism: Community Ideal For A Modern East Asia, Sor-Hoon Tan
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
It is often remarked that East Asian polities have been hierarchical and the "elite" category continues to figure prominently in works on Chinese society and politics. Many scholars believe that hierarchy and elitism are deeply rooted in Confucianism, which served as the state orthodoxy in imperial China and provided the "psycho-cultural construct" of the way of life in other East Asian cultural communities as well. It is therefore not surprising that some should believe that if modern Confucian societies are to be democratic at all, elitism must be reconciled with democracy. In contrast, elitism is commonly a pejorative term in …
Mencius: Contexts And Interpretations, Alan Kam Leung Chan
Mencius: Contexts And Interpretations, Alan Kam Leung Chan
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
Mencius: Contexts and Interpretations. Edited by Alan K. L. Chan. (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002. 328 pp.) This is a collection of new essays by various authors. It includes a brief but good introduction to Mencius, the Mencius, and the essays in this collection. There is a general index and an index locorum.
Opening Philosophy To The World: Derrida And Education In Philosophy, Steven Burik
Opening Philosophy To The World: Derrida And Education In Philosophy, Steven Burik
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
In this essay, Steven Burik discusses Jacques Derrida's position with regard to the place of education in philosophy within the university system, and then relates these thoughts to comparative philosophy. Philosophers find themselves constantly having to defend philosophy and the importance of teaching philosophy against pressure from the powers that be. Burik contends that the argument Derrida set forth to "protect" philosophy entails a double bind: Derrida emphasized the value and importance of philosophical thinking while at the same time criticizing the limits of philosophy, both self-mandated and externally imposed. Derrida's defense of philosophy was anything but a protection of …
Justifying Circumstances And Moore-Paradoxical Beliefs: A Response To Brueckner, John N. Williams
Justifying Circumstances And Moore-Paradoxical Beliefs: A Response To Brueckner, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
In 2004, I explained the absurdity of Moore-paradoxical belief via the syllogism (Williams 2004): (1) All circumstances that justify me in believing that p are circumstances that tend to make me believe that p. (2) All circumstances that tend to make me believe that p are circumstances that justify me in believing that I believe that p. (3) All circumstances that justify me in believing that p are circumstances that justify me in believing that I believe that p.
Moore’S Paradox, Defective Interpretation, Justified Belief And Conscious Belief: A Reply To Vahid, John N. Williams
Moore’S Paradox, Defective Interpretation, Justified Belief And Conscious Belief: A Reply To Vahid, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
No abstract provided.
The Completeness Of The Pragmatic Solution To Moore’ Paradox: A Reply To Chan, John N. Williams
The Completeness Of The Pragmatic Solution To Moore’ Paradox: A Reply To Chan, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
No abstract provided.
Traditions Of Philanthropic Order, Christine Dunn Henderson
Traditions Of Philanthropic Order, Christine Dunn Henderson
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Individuals act more or less simultaneously as economic agents, citizens, and participants in civil society. Their interactions and their ways of fulfilling these roles take many forms. Not all of them can be said to be self-organizing, yet in several instances patterns of organization emerge spontaneously without being deliberately designed. Of course, the market economy—or “catallaxy,” as F. A. Hayek called it—remains the best example of such “spontaneous orders.” But there are others. Gus diZerega (2000), for example, has identified science and democracy as being similarly constituted by self-referential, self-organizing (some authors prefer the term autopoietic) processes. In this paper …
Cosmopolitanism, Freedom And Indifference: A Levinasian View, Eduard Jordaan
Cosmopolitanism, Freedom And Indifference: A Levinasian View, Eduard Jordaan
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Despite cosmopolitanism's concern for the world's poor and its concomitant heavy moral demands, cosmopolitans establish a limit to the self's responsibility for the global poor. This contrasts with Emmanuel Levinas's view that the self has an infinite responsibility for the other, a responsibility that derives from the self's questioning of the impact of his freedom on others. From a Levinasian perspective, cosmopolitanism's restriction of the self's responsibility for others creates a sphere of rightful indifference to the needs of the other; lends legitimacy to a disregard of the other; forestalls an ethical awakening to the other; constrains the achievement of …
Two Constructions Of Libertarianism, Chandran Kukathas
Two Constructions Of Libertarianism, Chandran Kukathas
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
The libertarian first principle—a belief in individual freedom—can lead to two different and not necessarily acceptable societies from the standpoint of liberty. One is the “Union of Liberty,” in which communities, associations, and intermediate bodies are held to rigorous standards of voluntariness (and thus face sharp limits on their internal associational freedom because of the knowledge that children will be born into them). In the other, the “Federation of Liberty,” they are not (thereby allowing children to be born into locally unfree environments).While in any free society individuals may voluntarily join together and waive some of their rights (in institutions …
Propositional Knowledge And Know-How, John N. Williams
Propositional Knowledge And Know-How, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This paper is roughly in two parts. The first deals with whether know-how is constituted by propositional knowledge, as discussed primarily by Gilbert Ryle (1949) The concept of mind. London: Hutchinson, Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson (2001). Knowing how. Journal of Philosophy, 98, pp. 411-444 as well as Stephen Hetherington (2006). How to know that knowledge-that is knowledge-how. In S. Hetherington (Ed.) Epistemology futures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. The conclusion of this first part is that know-how sometimes does and sometimes does not consist in propositional knowledge. The second part defends an analysis of know-how inspired by Katherine Hawley' (2003). …
Using The Economic Concept Of A 'Merit Good' To Justify The Teaching Of Ethics Across The University Curriculum, Mark Nowacki, Wilfried Ver Eecke
Using The Economic Concept Of A 'Merit Good' To Justify The Teaching Of Ethics Across The University Curriculum, Mark Nowacki, Wilfried Ver Eecke
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
What follows is an argument that can be used to justify the introduction of philosophical, and specifically ethical, discourse into a wide range of university courses. The argument advanced is, we hope, both sufficiently formal to convince administrators, and sufficiently broad to convince students, of the practical importance that at least one area of philosophy has for the successful pursuit of even the most praxis-oriented career.
Do Sages Have Emotions?, Alan Kam Leung Chan
Do Sages Have Emotions?, Alan Kam Leung Chan
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
Contemporary discussions of Confucian philosophy may tend to privilege certain key ethical concepts such as “benevolence“ (ren 仁) and “filial piety” (xiao 孝), but in traditional China much of the Confucian hermeneutical and philosophical enterprise revolved around the figure of the ideal “sage” (shengren 聖 人 ). Virtues are neither abstract nor self-existing; they are seen to cohere and find profound expression in the being of the sage. In this context, “sagehood“ thus emerges as a critical concern in Confucian self-understanding. Can sagehood be attained? Can the “average person” (zhongren 中人), indeed, become like Confucius, the sage par excellence, who …
Zhong Hui (Chung Hui, 225–264 C.E.) In Internet Encyclopedia Of Philosophy, Alan Kam Leung Chan
Zhong Hui (Chung Hui, 225–264 C.E.) In Internet Encyclopedia Of Philosophy, Alan Kam Leung Chan
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
Zhong Hui (Chung Hui) was a major philosophical figure during China’s early medieval period (220-589 CE). An accomplished interpreter of the Laozi and the Yijing, Zhong Hui contributed significantly to the early development of xuanxue—literally “learning” (xue) of the “dark” or “mysterious” (xuan) Dao (“Way”), but sometimes translated as “Neo-Daoism“. He also was a major political figure whose ambition eventually led to his untimely demise. Virtually all of Zhong Hui’s writings have been lost, which perhaps explains why he has been given scant attention by students of Chinese philosophy. Had he not failed in his attempt to overthrow the regime …
Moore's Paradoxes And Iterated Belief, John N. Williams
Moore's Paradoxes And Iterated Belief, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
I give an account of the absurdity of Moorean beliefs of the omissive form (om) p and I don’t believe that p, and the commissive form (com) p and I believe that not-p, from which I extract a definition of Moorean absurdity. I then argue for an account of the absurdity of Moorean assertion. After neutralizing two objections to my whole account, I show that Roy Sorensen’s own account of the absurdity of his ‘iterated cases’ (om1) p and I don’t believe that I believe that p, and (com1) p and I believe that I believe that not-p, is unsatisfactory. …
The Surprise Exam Paradox: Disentangling Two Reductios, John N. Williams
The Surprise Exam Paradox: Disentangling Two Reductios, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
One tradition of solving the surprise exam paradox, started by Robert Binkley and continued by Doris Olin, Roy Sorensen and Jelle Gerbrandy, construes surprise epistemically and relies upon the oddity of propositions akin to G. E. Moore's paradoxical 'p and I don't believe that p.' Here I argue for an analysis that evolves from Olin's. My analysis is different from hers or indeed any of those in the tradition because it explicitly recognizes that there are two distinct reductios at work in the student's paradoxical argument against the teacher. The weak reductio is easy to fault. Its invalidity determines the …
Merleau-Ponty On Human Motility And Libet's Paradox, T. Brian Mooney, Damien Norris
Merleau-Ponty On Human Motility And Libet's Paradox, T. Brian Mooney, Damien Norris
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
In 1979, neuroscientists Libet, Wright, Feinstein and Pearl introduced the delay-and-antedating hypothesis/paradox based on the results of an on-going series of experiments dating back to 1964 that measured the neural adequacy [brain wave activity] of conscious sensory experience. What is fascinating about the results of this experiment is the implication, especially when considered in the light of Merleau-Ponty’s notions of intentionality and the pre-reflective life of human motility, that the body, and hence not solely the mind, is a thinking thing. The experiments and conclusions of Libet et al. have attracted considerable academic attention and have been used in the …
Richard Rorty And Moral Progress In Global Relations, Eduard Jordaan
Richard Rorty And Moral Progress In Global Relations, Eduard Jordaan
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Richard Rorty's navigation of the pitfalls of the cosmopolitan-communitarian debate, concern with human suffering, recognition of the contingency of communal identities and relationships, and his endorsement of liberal societies, by definition inclusive and always in search of a greater justice, make it appear as though his thought can guide us towards greater concern for the world's poor. However, this article questions the progressive potential of Rorty's thought. Obstacles to such (global) moral progress include Rorty's unquestioned statism and his focus on internal outsiders who are suffering and/or oppressed, instead of external outsiders beyond national borders; his insistence on a public-private …
In Defence Of An Argument For Evans's Principle: A Rejoinder To Vahid, John N. Williams
In Defence Of An Argument For Evans's Principle: A Rejoinder To Vahid, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
No abstract provided.
Is It All A Question Of Openness?, Seow Hon Tan
Is It All A Question Of Openness?, Seow Hon Tan
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
No abstract provided.
Affinities In The Socio-Political Thought Of Rorty And Levinas, Eduard Jordaan
Affinities In The Socio-Political Thought Of Rorty And Levinas, Eduard Jordaan
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This article considers the affinities in the socio-political thought of Emmanuel Levinas and Richard Rorty. The writings of both display considerable concern for the suffering of others. Both authors note the importance of a self-critical subject becoming more aware of its own injustice as very important for recognizing our responsibilities to others. Furthermore, both stress the importance of recognizing the other outside of the usual, objectifying categories, since it is the uniqueness of the other that reminds us of our responsibility for the other. Both writers view the liberal state as the best political forum in which to realize a …
Wittgenstein, Moorean Absurdity And Its Disappearance From Speech, John N. Williams
Wittgenstein, Moorean Absurdity And Its Disappearance From Speech, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
G. E. Moore famously observed that to say, I went to the pictures last Tuesday but I don't believe that I did would be absurd. Why should it be absurd of me to say something about myself that might be true of me? Moore suggested an answer to this, but as I will show, one that fails. Wittgenstein was greatly impressed by Moore's discovery of a class of absurd but possibly true assertions because he saw that it illuminates the logic of assertion. Wittgenstein suggests a promising relation of assertion to belief in terms of the idea that one expresses …
Is It All A Question Of Openness?, Seow Hon Tan
Is It All A Question Of Openness?, Seow Hon Tan
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
No abstract provided.
Moore's Paradoxes And Conscious Belief, John N. Williams
Moore's Paradoxes And Conscious Belief, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
For Moore, it is a paradox that although I would be absurd in asserting that (it is raining but I don’t believe it is) or that (it is raining but I believe it isn’t), such assertions might be true. But I would be also absurd in judging that the contents of such assertions are true. I argue for the strategy of explaining the absurdity of Moorean assertion in terms of conscious Moorean belief. Only in this way may the pathology of Moorean absurdity be adequately explained in terms of self-contradiction. David Rosenthal disagrees with this strategy. Ironically, his higher-order thought …
Punishment: The Supposed Justifications Revisited, John N. Williams
Punishment: The Supposed Justifications Revisited, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Review of Punishment: The Supposed Justifications Revisited by Ted Honderich, Pluto Press, 2006, ISBN: 9780745321318
Hayek And Liberalism, Chandran Kukathas
Hayek And Liberalism, Chandran Kukathas
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
F. A. Hayek occupies a peculiar place in the history of twentiethcentury liberalism. His influence has, in many respects, been enormous. The Road to Serfdom, his first political work, not onlyattracted popular attention in the west but also circulated widely(in samizdat form) in the intellectual underground of Eastern Europeduring the years between the end of the war and the revolutions of1989. His critique of central planning has been thoroughly vindicated, if not by the demise of communist economic systems, thenat least by the recognition by socialists of many stripes of theimportance of market processes.1 Books and articles on his thoughtcontinue …
Review Of Scott Cook, Ed., Hiding The World In The World: Uneven Discourses On The Zhuangzi, Alan Kam Leung Chan
Review Of Scott Cook, Ed., Hiding The World In The World: Uneven Discourses On The Zhuangzi, Alan Kam Leung Chan
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
The ten essays collected in this volume offer different perspectives on key issues in the Zhuangzi and should be warmly welcomed as a helpful addition to the field. The authors disagree on many things about the Zhuangzi; but there is certainly nothing "uneven" about the quality of their "discourses," which is uniformly high.
Guo Xiang, Alan Kam Leung Chan
Guo Xiang, Alan Kam Leung Chan
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
A champion of the Learning of the Mysterious (Xuanxue) or neo-Daoism that gained prominence in third-century China, Guo Xiang (c. 252–312 CE) is best known for his commentary to the Zhuangzi, which offers to reconcile orthodox teachings (mingjiao) with Daoist naturalness (ziran).
Wang Bi, Alan Kam Leung Chan
Wang Bi, Alan Kam Leung Chan
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
Third-century Chinese philosopher Wang Bi (226–249CE) achieved fame as an interpreter of the Laozi and the Yijing (Classic of changes), whose radical reformulation of the concept of Dao as nonbeing (wu) helped spark a new current of thought called Xuanxue (Learning of the mysterious), sometimes translated as “neo-Daoism.” To Wang, Confucius, Laozi, and the other sages of old had discerned the true meaning of Dao as the root of all beings. This was misunderstood, which necessitated a reinterpretation of the classical heritage.
Cultural Crossings Against Ethnocentric Currents: Toward A Confucian Ethics Of Communicative Virtues, Sor-Hoon Tan
Cultural Crossings Against Ethnocentric Currents: Toward A Confucian Ethics Of Communicative Virtues, Sor-Hoon Tan
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Despite contemporary Confucianism's aspirations to be a world philosophy, there is an ethnocentric strand within the Confucian tradition, most glaringly exemplified in Han Yu's attacks on Buddhism. This paper re-assesses Confucian ethnocentrism in the context of contrary practices that indicate a more pragmatic attitude among Confucians toward cross-cultural interactions. It argues that while the ethnocentric tendency serves as constant reminder of the need for vigilance, and recognition of the difficulties of crossing cultural boundaries, there are nevertheless resources within Confucianism for constructing an ethics of communication that is urgently needed to deal with the moral problems of cultural pluralism. The …
Review Of Roger Ames And David Hall, Daodejing: Making This Life Significant: A Philosophical Translation, Alan Kam Leung Chan
Review Of Roger Ames And David Hall, Daodejing: Making This Life Significant: A Philosophical Translation, Alan Kam Leung Chan
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
Is there a need for another translation of the Laozi Daodejing? Although there are already over 100 translations in English alone, this present effort by Ames and Hall marks a welcome addition, in that it offers an engaging philosophical account of the Daodejing as chiefly concerned with “making this life significant.”