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Articles 151 - 180 of 190
Full-Text Articles in Philosophy
Nationalism And Multiculturalism, Chandran Kukathas
Nationalism And Multiculturalism, Chandran Kukathas
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
If any issue dominates contemporary political theory, it is how to deal with cultural diversity and the claims –moral, legal, and political – made in the name of ethnic, religious, linguistic, or national allegiance (Kymlicka,2001: 17). Today, governments are confronted by demands from cultural minorities for recognition, protection,preferential treatment, and political autonomy within the boundaries of the state. Equally, international societyand its political institutions, as well as states themselves, have had to deal with demands from various peoplesfor political recognition as independent nations, and for national self-determination. The turbulent politics ofthe contemporary world may account in part for this development: …
Moore's Paradox And Self-Knowledge, John N. Williams
Moore's Paradox And Self-Knowledge, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
What explanation is there of the source of my justification for my beliefs about my beliefs that respects the fact that I am normally the best authority on them? Moore's paradox demands an explanation of the absurdity of believing or asserting possible truths of the forms p but I don't believe that p or p but I believe that not-p. I argue for Evans principle that whatever justifies me in believing that p also justifies me in believing that I believe that p. This helps explain how I come to know my own beliefs and also shows that it is …
The Case For Open Immigration, Chandran Kukathas
The Case For Open Immigration, Chandran Kukathas
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
People favor or are opposed to immigration for a variety of reasons. It is therefore difficult to tie views about immigration to ideological positions. While it seems obviousthat political conservatives are the most unlikely to defend freedom of movement,and that socialists and liberals (classical and modern) are very likely to favor more openborders, in reality wariness (if not outright hostility) to immigration can be foundamong all groups. Even libertarian anarchists have advanced reasons to restrict themovement of peoples.
Moorean Absurdity, Knowledge And Iterated Belief, John N. Williams
Moorean Absurdity, Knowledge And Iterated Belief, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
No abstract provided.
Moorean Absurdity And Conscious Belief, John N. Williams
Moorean Absurdity And Conscious Belief, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
G. E. Moore observed that to for me to assert, “I went to the pictures last Tuesday but I don’t believe that I did” would be “absurd” (1942: 543). Over half a century later, the explanation of the nature of this absurdity remains problematic. Such assertions are unlike semantically odd Liar-type assertions such as “What I’m now saying is not true” since my Moorean assertion might be true: you may consistently imagine a situation in which I went to the pictures last Tuesday but fail to believe that I did. Moreover, if you contradict my assertion then your words, “If …
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 …
Moorean Absurdities And Iterated Beliefs, John N. Williams
Moorean Absurdities And Iterated Beliefs, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
No abstract provided.
Moorean Absurdity And Expressing Belief, John N. Williams
Moorean Absurdity And Expressing Belief, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
No abstract provided.
Superman, Wittgenstein And The Disappearance Of Moorean Absurdity, John N. Williams
Superman, Wittgenstein And The Disappearance Of Moorean Absurdity, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
'You have known me for years, Lois' explains Superman, as I lay aside my copy of Crimmins’s example (1992). 'But there is something you have not yet discovered. You also know me under a disguise. You have not yet realized that this person is I in disguise. On that way of thinking about me, you have different opinions of me. In fact you think me an idiot.' I've just informed Superman that I accept his testimony on the strength of his intelligence. But I confess I don’t quite know how to acknowledge my acceptance of his final remark.
Orwell And Huxley: Making Dissent Unthinkable, John N. Williams
Orwell And Huxley: Making Dissent Unthinkable, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
In this paper I compare the fictional world depicted by Orwell’s 1984 with that of Huxley’s Brave New World from the point of view of an analytic philosopher. Neither novel should be read as predictions, the accuracy of which can be used to judge them. Rather, both attempt to portray what humanity could conceivably become. The authenticity of this conceivability is a necessary condition of the power of both works to raise central philosophical questions about the human condition. What is ethically wrong with control? How far can Man go in recreating himself? In what sense are these worlds anti-utopian? …
Moorean Absurdities And Higher Order Beliefs, John N. Williams
Moorean Absurdities And Higher Order Beliefs, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
No abstract provided.
Untimely Punishment And Dubious Desert, John N. Williams
Untimely Punishment And Dubious Desert, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Discussions of punishment have always assumed (e.g.[4, pp. 80-5]) that there are no circumstances in which someone can be justifiably punished for a crime that he will commit. This assumption has been directly challenged by Christopher New’s apparent example of morally justified ‘prepunishment’ [7]. In a recent paper, Fred Feldman rejects the ‘received wisdom’1 that desert cannot precede its basis by giving apparent examples of ‘predeserved’ charity, reward and apology [3, pp. 71-75]. If there can be cases of predeserved punishment as well, then anyone who holds that it is morally justifiable to punish an offender if and only if …
Is Public Space Suited To Co-Operative Inquiry?, Sor-Hoon Tan
Is Public Space Suited To Co-Operative Inquiry?, Sor-Hoon Tan
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This article questions the nature of the philosophical commitment to the problem of 'the public' in modernity. To what extent does the natural form of the public determine the use and value of the instruments of pragmatism in the public-private divide. In this interpretation, John Dewey's ideas about 'the public' are presented in terms of how to solve a specific problem through what he sees as 'co-operative inquiry'. The article also examines the role of public space in the process of democratization through the potential of co-operative inquiry. More often than not, it appears that the politics of public space …
Externalism And Knowledge Of Comparative Content, Yoo Guan Tan
Externalism And Knowledge Of Comparative Content, Yoo Guan Tan
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Concepts are the constituents of thoughts, which in turn, are the contents of propositional attitudes. They are also what the predicates of our language express. According to a tradition going back to Plato, questions about comparative content – questions of the form Is concept F the same as concept G? – are purely about relations of ideas, and so are answerable a priori. This does not mean that no experience at all is necessary to answer such questions, for experience may be needed to grasp their content. Call a piece of information about Fs extraneous if it is not required …
Ethical Pluralism From A Classical Liberal Perspective, Chandran Kukathas
Ethical Pluralism From A Classical Liberal Perspective, Chandran Kukathas
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Is the ideal society one that embodies or aims for ethical uniformity, orone that emphasizes instead the accommodation of ethical pluralism?From a classical liberal perspective the answer can only be that ethicalpluralism should be accommodated.
Mentors Or Friends: Confucius And Aristotle On Equality And Ethical Development In Friendship, Sor-Hoon Tan
Mentors Or Friends: Confucius And Aristotle On Equality And Ethical Development In Friendship, Sor-Hoon Tan
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
In Thinking from the Han, David Hall and Roger Ames compare Plato's - and Confucius's views of friendship in relation to the question of transcendence and arrive at the sad conclusion that Socrates and Confucius could not be friends. "Socratic irony would not allow the inequality Confucius requires as a means of self-betterment. Confucius would not permit he and Socrates to hold all things in common." Along the way, they articulate an understanding of Confucius’ view of friendship as "a one-directional relationship in which one extends oneself by association with one who has attained a higher level of realization." Hall …
The Ethics Of Placebo-Controlled Trials In Developing Countries To Prevent Mother-To-Child Transmission Of Hiv, John N. Williams
The Ethics Of Placebo-Controlled Trials In Developing Countries To Prevent Mother-To-Child Transmission Of Hiv, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Placebo-trials on HIV-infected pregnant women in developing countries like Thailand and Uganda have provoked recent controversy. Such experiments aim to find a treatment that will cut the rate of vertical transmission more efficiently than existing treatments like zidovudine. This scenario is first stated as generally as possible, before three ethical principles found in the Belmont Report, itself a sharpening of the Helsinki Declaration, are stated. These three principles are the Principle of Utility, the Principle of Autonomy and the Principle of Justice. These are taken as voices of moral imperative. But although each has intuitive appeal, it can be shown …
Experience As Art, Sor-Hoon Tan
Experience As Art, Sor-Hoon Tan
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Chinese philosophy views experience as intrinsically aesthetic. This world view could be elucidated through a consideration of John Dewey's aesthetics and features of Chinese art. Dewey's philosophy of art starts with an understanding of experience as 'live processes' of living creatures interacting with their environment. Such processes are autopoietic in being self-sustaining, ever-changing, capable of increasing complexity, capable of generating novelty, direction and progress on its own. Its autopoietic character is a precondition of the aesthetic in the process of experience. An aesthetic experience is rhythmic, focused, consummatory, and reaches beyond the transitory boundaries of concrete existence. The aesthetic is …
Tolerating The Intolerable, Chandran Kukathas
Tolerating The Intolerable, Chandran Kukathas
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Presenting a lecture[1] on the virtue of toleration anywhere, let alone in the chambers of the Australian Senate department, should strike most people as a peculiarly pointless kind of exercise. Would anyone not in favour of toleration bother to turn up? (And what is the point of preaching to the converted? Would anyone against it bother to listen? And could such a person be converted?) In truth, it might not be easy to find anyone who openly professed intolerance. Almost everyone is in favour of tolerance; though of course, each will hasten to add, this does not mean that ‘anything …
Negotiating Cultural Boundaries: Confucianism And Trans/National Identity In Korea, William A. Callahan
Negotiating Cultural Boundaries: Confucianism And Trans/National Identity In Korea, William A. Callahan
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This essay looks to the complex intercultural relations of China and Korea to highlight two important issues in political theory and international relations: the transnational nature of world politics and the limits of analytical binaries such as East‐West and tradition‐modernity. Discussions of international politics in East Asia characteristically address issues of security and development studies. More recently, Confucianism has been mobilized as part of the clash of civilizations of Asia with the West. This essay will consider how cultural boundaries are negotiated within the region via an analysis of the workings of the transnational discourse of Confucianism in the construction …
Paternalism: A Deweyan Perspective, Sor-Hoon Tan
Paternalism: A Deweyan Perspective, Sor-Hoon Tan
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
“No, dear, you must not eat the soap; it’s not good for you.” Well-intentioned interference frustrates our desires even in the happiest childhood. Less happy is the perpetual state of adolescent rebellion against apparently arbitrary and unreasonable curtailments of one’s freedom, too frequently justified by the familiar refrain “It’s for your own good” adding insult to injury. Such interference does not necessarily cease with the eagerly awaited entry into adulthood. Not only parents are guilty of it; the state also engages in such interference. Can paternalism where one person deliberately interferes with another for the latter’s own good be morally …
Wittgensteinian Accounts Of Moorean Absurdity, John N. Williams
Wittgensteinian Accounts Of Moorean Absurdity, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
No abstract provided.
Whatever Comes To Be Has A Cause Of Its Coming To Be: A Thomist Defense Of The Principle Of Sufficient Reason, Mark Nowacki
Whatever Comes To Be Has A Cause Of Its Coming To Be: A Thomist Defense Of The Principle Of Sufficient Reason, Mark Nowacki
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
No abstract provided.
Moorean Absurdities And The Nature Of Assertion, John N. Williams
Moorean Absurdities And The Nature Of Assertion, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
I argue that Moore's propositions, for example, 'I went to the pictures last Tuesday but I don't believe that I did' cannot be rationally believed. Their assertors either cannot be rationally believed or cannot be believed to be rational. This analysis is extended to Moorean propositions such as God knows that I am an atheist and I believe that this proposition is false. I then defend the following definition of assertion: anyone asserts that p iff that person expresses a belief that p with the intention of causing relevant epistemic change in the cognition of an actual or potential audience.
Moorean Absurdity And The Intentional 'Structure' Of Assertion, John N. Williams
Moorean Absurdity And The Intentional 'Structure' Of Assertion, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
No abstract provided.
Resisting The Norm: Ironic Images Of Marx And Confucius, William A. Callahan
Resisting The Norm: Ironic Images Of Marx And Confucius, William A. Callahan
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
The analysis of Chinese politics seems to be ruled by binary oppositions. The question most often asked about social movements is "is it Communist or is it anti-Communist?"
Liberty, Chandran Kukathas
Liberty, Chandran Kukathas
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Such is the rhetorical appeal of the idea of liberty that a variety of political philosophiesclaim to honour it. Republicans and Marxists, no less than libertarians and liberals,maintain that they and they alone are the true defenders of freedom. The literature ofcontemporary political theory is thus replete with rival analyses of the meaning ofliberty, and disputes about its measurement, distribution and institutional requirements. Our aim here is to gain some understanding of the meaning and the conditionsof liberty by working through the thicket of contemporary argument, though we mayhave to rest content with a better knowledge of the terrain.
Belief-In And Belief In God, John N. Williams
Belief-In And Belief In God, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Of all the examples of ‘belief-in’, belief in God is both the most mysterious and the most challenging. Indeed whether and how an apologist can make a case for the intellectual respectability of theistic belief, depends upon the nature of this ‘belief-in’. I shall attempt to elucidate this matter by an analysis of the relation of ‘belief-in’ to ‘belief-that’ and by treating belief in God as a special case of ‘belief-in’.
Ontological Disproof Of God's Existence, John N. Williams
Ontological Disproof Of God's Existence, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
An initial reading of Hume's Principle is that no necessary truth can be denied without contradiction, whereas all existential propositions can. Therefore it is self-contradictory to say,that any existential claim is necessarily true, since it follows that this claim both can and cannot be denied without self-contradiction. Thus any claim of the form 'X necessarily exists' is a self-contradiction, even if X is God.
Foreword, Chandran Kukathas
Foreword, Chandran Kukathas
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
What is the conservative committed to? According to some, the answer is quite simply nothing. Certainly, the argument goes, they are not committed to individual freedom: they defend only order, morality, religion and virtue - all 'traditionally' conceived. So it seemed to many classical liberals, libertarians and 'Old Whigs' in the early 1960s when they denounced traditionalists in the name of individual liberty, private property and reason. And so it also seems to many classical liberals and libertarians today.