You are invited to attend the HT presentations. Each presentation will be about 20 minutes, followed by about 15 minutes of question time.
Date: Friday, 14 Nov 2012
Time: 2-4pm
Venue: Philosophy Resource Room, AS3-05-23.
Presenter : Mr. Lim Xue Li Zack
Time : 2pm to 2:35pm
Title : Kant’s flawed derivation of duties
Abstract :
In Kant’s Groundwork, he established four duties that each moral agent is to have. Focusing only on his use of the Formula of Universal Law, I examine how each derivation is flawed in some way.
Presenter : Mr. Sim Yeow Huat Jonathan
Time : 2:35pm to 3:10pm
Title : Notions of Harmony in Classical Chinese Thought
Abstract :
Harmony is a concept that is central to Chinese thought, yet very little study has been done on this concept. One key area lacking in present scholarship is the absence of a detailed study in attempting to explain what precisely is involved in harmony and what it entails. At the same time, the concept of harmony is often closely associated with Confucianism. Chinese thinkers, whom we traditionally regard as Confucians, such as Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi, are unfortunately grouped together as if they form a single train of thought on what harmony is. This, however, is a big problem as it assumes that the conception of harmony is homogeneous amongst these thinkers. Furthermore, very little is said about harmony in the other philosophical schools apart from Confucianism. And this has led to a misconception that the concept of harmony in China has been a single homogeneous concept across time, cultures, and and thinkers. In this paper, I will explore the various notions of harmony in classical Chinese thought. I will trace the historical development of the philosophical concept of harmony, showing how the concept is derived from two sources – cooking and music – and show how this has developed into a common notion shared amongst the thinkers from Confucius onwards. I will then proceed to carry out a close textual study of the texts of the various classical thinkers and show the minute differences in how they have conceived of harmony and their prescriptions on how to achieve it.
Presenter : Miss Saw Cheng Ee Elizabeth
Time : 3:10pm to 3:45pm
Title : The Philosophy of Music – The Relation between Music and Emotion.
Abstract :
It is widely agreed that music is closely related to the emotions. This is evident in the way people – both lay people and music professionals – describe or characterize music or think about their musical experiences. However, it is not clear what exactly this relation amounts to.
Through a discussion of various theories proposed by different philosophers and comparisons to analogous cases in language, other perceptions and perhaps other forms of art, I will find out what the implications of subscribing to each theory are. I hope to reach a conclusion on which theory, if any, is the best (e.g it must be able to accommodate or account for the phenomenology of musical experience, must consistently apply across cases, etc), or if the most sensible conclusion would be a form of ‘pluralism’, in which there is no one way by which music is related to the emotions; but rather, music relates to the emotions in different ways in different specific contexts/cases.