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Articles 61 - 90 of 190
Full-Text Articles in Philosophy
Logos And Dao Revisited: A Non-Metaphysical Interpretation, Steven Burik
Logos And Dao Revisited: A Non-Metaphysical Interpretation, Steven Burik
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Why another article on logos and dao ? Is it not the case that enough scholars have looked into the similarities between the term logos and the notion of dao? Although it may seem so, I will argue that when another perspective is employed, logos and dao might fruitfully be compared on a different level from the one used by most of these comparisons. In this essay I will argue first that in many instances the approach of some of the scholars who have compared logos and dao has been one-sided and has mostly consisted in a comparison of these …
Comment On ‘Comparative Philosophy: In Response To Rorty And Macintyre’ By Zhu Rui, Steven Burik
Comment On ‘Comparative Philosophy: In Response To Rorty And Macintyre’ By Zhu Rui, Steven Burik
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
The brief response by Rui Zhu provides an interesting take on the (by now) perennial problem of what comparative philosophy is or should be. While Zhu makes some interesting observations about and suggestions for comparative philosophy, he chooses contributions to the thinking about the possibilities and methodologies of [End Page 266] comparative philosophy that are rather old, though, and my first wonder is: why these two papers, and not more recent contributions to the development of the methodology of comparative philosophy, as can be found in numerous recently published work? Such more recent publications tend to take a more nuanced …
Is Agent-Neutral Deontology Possible?, Matthew Hammerton
Is Agent-Neutral Deontology Possible?, Matthew Hammerton
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
It is commonly held that all deontological moral theories are agent-relative in the sense that they give each agent a special concern that she does not perform acts of a certain type rather than a general concern with the actions of all agents. Recently, Tom Dougherty has challenged this orthodoxy by arguing that agent-neutral deontology is possible. In this article I counter Dougherty's arguments and show that agent-neutral deontology is not possible.
Still Stuck On The Backward Clock: A Rejoinder To Clarke, Adams And Barker, John Nicholas Williams
Still Stuck On The Backward Clock: A Rejoinder To Clarke, Adams And Barker, John Nicholas Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
NeilSinhababu and I presented Backward Clock,an original counterexample to Robert Nozick’s truth-tracking analysis ofpropositional knowledge In theirlatest defence of the truth-tracking theories, “Methods Matter: Beating the BackwardClock,” Fred Adams, John A. Barker and Murray Clarke try again defend Nozick’s and FredDretske’s early analysis of propositional knowledge against Backward Clock. They allege failure oftruth-adherence, mistakes on my part about methods and appeal to charity,‘equivocation’, reliable methods and unfair internalism. I argue that theseobjections all fail. They are still stuck with the fact that thetracking theories fall to Backward Clock,an even more useful test case for other analyses of knowledge than might …
Whose Traditions? Which Practices?, Sor-Hoon Tan
Whose Traditions? Which Practices?, Sor-Hoon Tan
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
My response to Tully’s article, “Deparochializing Political Theory and Beyond,” suggests that before introducing students in Asia to comparative political thought, including texts from Asian traditions in Political Theory or Philosophy courses, their education needs to first engage in the critical practice of questioning their own “background horizon of disclosure.” The background horizon of disclosure that needs questioning certainly is not simply constituted by Asian traditions; despite westernized education, it is also not entirely western, insofar as the society they live in continues to be Asian in various ways, and the adopted western institutions and modes of thought have been …
The Dumb Prof Considers Intersectionality In The Age Of Trump, Justin Kh Tse
The Dumb Prof Considers Intersectionality In The Age Of Trump, Justin Kh Tse
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Among decent, intelligent, and respectable human beings in the United States and around the world, the occupation of Donald Trump of the American presidency is the shock that never ends. Much of this has to do with how vulgar the man is. The activist-academic terms intersectionality and identity politics have in turn entered into our popular vocabulary as words that might describe how all of these aggrieved groups might resist the Trump Administration. This resistance, it is claimed, is necessary because these various groups have not only been insulted by Trump’s rhetoric, but have also been oppressed by draconian policies …
Talk About Toy Models, Joshua Luczak
Talk About Toy Models, Joshua Luczak
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Scientific models are frequently discussed in philosophy of science. A great deal of the discussion is centred on approximation, idealisation, and on how these models achieve their representational function. Despite the importance, distinct nature, and high presence of toy models, they have received little attention from philosophers. This paper hopes to remedy this situation. It aims to elevate the status of toy models: by distinguishing them from approximations and idealisations, by highlighting and elaborating on several ways the Kac ring, a simple statistical mechanical model, is used as a toy model, and by explaining why toy models can be used …
Bourgeois Dignity: Making The Self-Made Man, Christine Dunn Henderson
Bourgeois Dignity: Making The Self-Made Man, Christine Dunn Henderson
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Somewhere near the beginning of the eighteenth century a new concept of “dignity” was emerging alongside the rise of a new socioeconomic class, the bourgeoisie. This chapter explores the development of this distinctive new concept of dignity, investigating first the key elements of the so-called bourgeois virtues that provided content to this new ethos of dignity. Next, it probes the economic, political, and social conditions that facilitated the emergence and diffusion of bourgeois dignity during the eighteenth century. Finally, it discusses how this new understanding of dignity was diffused throughout society by one of the most influential literary endeavors of …
A People Of The Law: Review Of Kevin Butterfield’S "The Making Of Tocqueville’S Democracy In America: Law And Association In The Early United States", Christine Dunn Henderson
A People Of The Law: Review Of Kevin Butterfield’S "The Making Of Tocqueville’S Democracy In America: Law And Association In The Early United States", Christine Dunn Henderson
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
In The Making of Tocqueville’s Democracy: Law and Association in the Early United States, Kevin Butterfield, assistant professor of classics and letters at the University of Oklahoma, focuses on the proliferation of associations in the formative years of the American republic. Butterfield’s concern, however, is slightly different from Tocqueville’s, in that Butterfield is less intrigued by the question of why associations proliferated and how they preserve freedom in a democratic age, and more focused upon how these associations were constituted and functioned in the early American context.
Patient-Relativity In Morality, Matthew Hammerton
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.
Wisdom: Understanding And The Good Life, Shane Ryan
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 …
There’S Nothing To Beat A Backward Clock: A Rejoinder To Adams, Barker And Clarke, John N. Williams
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.
On How To Approach The Approach To Equilibrium, Joshua Luczak
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
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.
Does Xunzi’S Ethics Of Ritual Need A Metaphysics?, Sor-Hoon Tan
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 …
Still A New Problem For Defeasibility: A Rejoinder To Borges, John Nicholas Williams
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 …
Comparative Resources: Continental Philosophy And Daoism, Steven Burik
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 …
Skilful Reflection As An Epistemic Virtue, Chienkuo Mi, Shane Ryan
Skilful Reflection As An Epistemic Virtue, Chienkuo Mi, Shane Ryan
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This paper advances the claim that skilful reflection is a master virtue in that skilful reflection shapes and corrects the other epistemic and intellectual virtues. We make the case that skilful reflection does this with both competence-based epistemic virtues and character-based intellectual virtues. In making the case that skilful reflection is a master virtue, we identify the roots of ideas central to our thesis in Confucian philosophy. In particular, we discuss the Confucian conception of reflection, as well as different levels of epistemic virtue. Next we set out the Dual Process Hypothesis of Reflection, which provides an explanation of the …
Sinologism: An Alternative To Orientalism And Postcolonialism, Steven Burik
Sinologism: An Alternative To Orientalism And Postcolonialism, Steven Burik
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
At the end of the book, Gu defines Sinologism as an undeclared but tacitly administered institutionalization of the ways of observing China from the perspective of Western epistemology that refuses, or is reluctant, to view China on its own terms, and of doing scholarship on Chinese materials and producing knowledge on Chinese civilization in terms of Western methodology that tends to disregard the real conditions of China and reduce the complexity of Chinese civilization into simplistic patterns of development modelled on those of the West. While comparative philosophers can sympathize with the idea that in the humanities and to a …
The Backward Clock, Truth-Tracking, And Safety, John N. Williams, Neil Sinhababu
The Backward Clock, Truth-Tracking, And Safety, John N. Williams, Neil Sinhababu
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
We present Backward Clock, an original counterexample to Robert Nozick’s truth-tracking analysis of propositional knowledge, which works differently from other putative counterexamples and avoids objections to which they are vulnerable. We then argue that four ways of analyzing knowledge in terms of safety, including Duncan Pritchard’s, cannot withstand Backward Clock either.
Who’S The ‘We’ In ‘Our Whole Society', Justin Kh Tse
Who’S The ‘We’ In ‘Our Whole Society', Justin Kh Tse
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
No abstract provided.
Not Knowing You Know: A New Objection To The Defeasibility Theory Of Knowledge, John N. Williams
Not Knowing You Know: A New Objection To The Defeasibility Theory Of Knowledge, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Foley (2012: 93–98) and Turri (2012: 215–19) have recently given objections to the defeasibility theory of propositional knowledge. Here, I give an objection of a quite different stripe by looking at what the theory must say about knowing that you know. I end with some remarks on how this objection relates to rival theories and how this might be a worry for some of these.
Eliminativism, Dialetheism And Moore's Paradox, John N. Williams
Eliminativism, Dialetheism And Moore's Paradox, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
John Turri gives an example that he thinks refutes what he takes to be “G. E. Moore's view” that omissive assertions such as “It is raining but I do not believe that it is raining” are “inherently ‘absurd'”. This is that of Ellie, an eliminativist who makes such assertions. Turri thinks that these are perfectly reasonable and not even absurd. Nor does she seem irrational if the sincerity of her assertion requires her to believe its content. A commissive counterpart of Ellie is Di, a dialetheist who asserts or believes that: Since any adequate explanation of Moore's paradox must handle …
Moore's Paradox In Speech: A Critical Survey, John N. Williams
Moore's Paradox In Speech: A Critical Survey, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
It is raining but you don't believe that it is raining. Imagine accepting this claim. Then you are committed to saying ‘It is raining but I don't believe that it is raining’. This would be an ‘absurd’ thing to claim or assert, yet what you say might be true. It might be raining, while at the same time, you are completely ignorant of the state of the weather. But how can it be absurd of you to assert something about yourself that might be true of you? This is Moore's paradox as it occurs in speech. What is the source …
Invaluable Justice: Heidegger, Derrida, And Daoism On Thinking Of Values And Justice, Steven Burik
Invaluable Justice: Heidegger, Derrida, And Daoism On Thinking Of Values And Justice, Steven Burik
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
What can comparative philosophy contribute to thinking about values, economics, and justice? Can we apply philosophy in general, and comparative philosophy in particular, to these problems directly? Martin Heidegger, one of the protagonists of this article, has on occasion made it clear that philosophy is literally “useless” and so let me start with one of my favourite Heidegger quotes, to give the reader an indication of what this paper tries to think: “philosophy … cannot be directly applied, or judged by its usefulness in the manner of economic or other professional knowledge. But what is useless can still be a …
Moore's Paradox In Thought: A Critical Survey, John N. Williams
Moore's Paradox In Thought: A Critical Survey, John N. Williams
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
It is raining but you don't believe that it is raining. Imagine silently accepting this claim. Then you believe both that it is raining and that you don't believe that it is raining. This would be an ‘absurd’ thing to believe, yet what you believe might be true. It might be raining, while at the same time, you are completely ignorant of the state of the weather. But how can it be absurd of you to believe something about yourself that might be true of you? This is Moore's paradox as it occurs in thought. Solving the paradox consists in …
Heidegger And East Asian Thought, Steven Burik
Heidegger And East Asian Thought, Steven Burik
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
No abstract provided.
Poverty And Politics In Tocqueville’S Memoir On Pauperism, Christine Rodman Henderson
Poverty And Politics In Tocqueville’S Memoir On Pauperism, Christine Rodman Henderson
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) is best remembered in the United States for Democracy in America, his penetrating study of life in the early nineteenth-century. Tocqueville was, of course, an analyst of his own France, and his The Old Regime and the Revolution remains a classic analysis of pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary France. Less well-known, however, is that Tocqueville was also keenly interested in England, traveling to England several times and following with great interest the political and social developments there during his lifetime. One outgrowth of his interest in England’s politics was his Memoir on Pauperism, a short piece written following …
A Humean Account Of Testimonial Justification, Shane Ryan
A Humean Account Of Testimonial Justification, Shane Ryan
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
I argue that a Humean account can make sense of the phenomenology associated with testimonial justification; the phenomenology being that in standard cases hearers regularly simply accept a testifier’s assertions as true – hearers don't engage in monitoring. The upshot is that a Humean account is in a better position dialectically than is usually supposed. I provide some background to the debate before setting out two challenges facing accounts of testimonial justification. The first challenge is to provide an account that accords with the phenomenology of testimonial reception; the second challenge is to provide an account that can make sense …
Derrida And Comparative Philosophy, Steven Burik
Derrida And Comparative Philosophy, Steven Burik
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This article argues that Derrida’s thinking is relevant to comparative philosophy. To illustrate this, at various stages classical Daoism is compared with Derrida’s thought, to highlight Derrida’s “applicability” and to see how using Derrida can contribute to new interpretations of Daoism. The article first looks into Derrida’s engagement (or lack thereof) with non-Western thought, and then proceeds to his extensive work regarding language and translation, comparing this with views on classical Chinese language and translation of key Daoist characters. It then explores Derrida’s efforts at opening up philosophy to its outside, and argues that he was very much concerned with …