Author Archives: Jonathan Sim

“Consciousness and the Self: Hume and Strawson” by Udo Thiel

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What is David Hume’s notion of consciousness? Perhaps surprisingly, not much has been written on this important question. The problem is that there is no section or chapter on the topic in Hume and indeed no explicit discussion at all of consciousness. That is, although Hume does apply a certain conception of consciousness in his discussion of personal identity and elsewhere, he does this without explaining it in any detail. And yet not only is the notion of consciousness central to Hume’s philosophy of mind, it is also a key concept both for Hume’s contemporaries and for present day philosophers of mind. The continuing interest in Hume’s philosophy of mind is, however, at least partly due to the fact that difficult questions concerning the interpretation and critical evaluation of significant elements of his argument remain. For example, Hume states, that “consciousness is nothing but a reflected thought or perception” and that “consciousness never deceives”. Does this mean that the mind or self is what it is perceived to be, namely a bundle of perceptions, as some scholars have claimed? Does Hume think that there is no more to the self than what consciousness understood as “reflected thought or perception” reveals? Perhaps not. Galen Strawson’s recent very positive evaluation and interpretation of Hume on the self will be examined in this context.

Philosophy Department Seminar.
Date: Wednesday, 12 Dec 2012
Time: 3.15pm – 5.15pm
Venue: Philosophy Resource Room (AS3 #05-23)
Speaker: Professor of History of Philosophy, Head of Alexius Meinong Institute, Deputy Director of the Institute for Philosophy, University of Graz, Institute for Philosophy, Germany
Moderator: A/P Tan Sor Hoon

Udo Thiel studied philosophy at Marburg, Oxford and Bonn, where he obtained his Doctorate in Philosophy in 1982. He held various positions at the University of Sydney from 1985 to 1991.  He was Lecturer/Senior Lecturer/Reader in Philosophy, Australian National University, 1992-2009. In 2009 he was appointed University Professor (Full Professor) and Chair in the History of Philosophy, University of Graz, Austria. His books include The Early Modern Subject: Self Consciousness and Personal Identity from Descartes to Hume (Oxford University Press, 2011).

“The Morality of the Psychopath” by John D. Greenwood (27 Nov)

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In this paper I consider some questions about the morality of the psychopath, based upon recent research in moral psychology. These will include the question of whether psychopaths are criminally responsible for their actions; whether psychopaths are morally responsible for their actions; whether psychopaths are evil; whether psychopaths are persons; and whether psychopaths are insane.

Philosophy Department Seminar.
Date: Tuesday, 27 Nov 2012
Time: 3.15pm – 5.15pm
Venue: Philosophy Resource Room (AS3 #05-23)
Speaker: John D. Greenwood, Deputy Executive Officer, PhD/MA Program in Philosophy, Graduate Center, The City University of New York (CUNY)
Moderator: A/P Tan Sor Hoon

John D. Greenwood was educated at the Universities of Edinburgh and Oxford, and teaches in the departments of philosophy and psychology at City College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. His many books and articles include Explanation and Experiment in Social Psychological Science (Springer-Verlag, 1989), Realism, Identity and Emotion (Sage, 1994) and The Disappearance of the Social in American Social Psychology (Cambridge University Press, 2004).

“A Venn Diagrammatical Analysis of Set Membership and Identity” by Robert Boyles (22 Nov)

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In elementary logic, Venn diagrams are used to represent categorical statements and analyze and evaluate categorical syllogisms. Thus, the four traditional categorical statements, viz., A, E, I, and O, have their respective Venn diagrams. Also, the validity of syllogisms is easily determined by using Venn diagrams. Though the Venn diagram is a powerful analytical tool, it still has limitations. For one, it fails to represent singular statements of the form, “a is F;” in another, it fails to represent identity statements of the form, “a is b.” Since this is so, it follows that it also fails to give an account of the validity of some obviously valid inferences that contains these types of statements as constituents (e.g., All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. So, Socrates is mortal). In this paper, we offer a way of supplementing the rules of the Venn diagram so that it could surpass these limitations. To go about this, we take the standard principles of Venn diagrams at face value. Next, we add some formation rules that would account for membership and identity. Note that these rules are consistent with the rules of first-order logic and set theory. Finally, we shall demonstrate how this reformulated Venn diagram technique is supposed to work.

Philosophy Seminar Series.
Date: Thursday, 22 Nov 2012
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Venue: Philosophy Resource Room (AS3 #05-23)
Speaker: Sidney Diamante, Lecturer in Philosophy, De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines
Moderator: Dr. Neil Sinhababu

About the Speaker: 

Robert James Boyles is a lecturer in philosophy at De La Salle University-Manila. He earned his Master in Philosophical Research from the same school.

“Wittgenstein on Miracles” by Hent de Vries (19 Nov)

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In his “Lecture on Ethics,” presented to the Heretics Society in Cambridge and then again to members of the Vienna Circle between September 1929 and December 1930, Wittgenstein addresses the question of miracles and miracle belief in the context of “Ethics.” There are other, more episodic and enigmatic, references to the miracle and religious belief elsewhere in his writings and we will review some of them where relevant. But the lecture stands out for many reasons. We will seek to reconstruct its overall argument, discuss several remarkable parallels with other contemporary thinkers, Martin Heidegger to begin with, and assess its undiminished actuality for us, here and now.

Philosophy Department Seminar.
Date: Monday, 19 Nov 2012
Time: 3.15pm – 5.15pm
Venue: Philosophy Resource Room (AS3 #05-23)
Speaker: Hent de Vries, Russ Family Professor in the Humanities and Philosophy; Director (Chair), The Humanities Center, Johns Hopkins University
Moderator: A/P Tan Sor Hoon

Hent de Vries is Director of the Humanities Center. Since January 2003, he has held a joint appointment as Professor in the Humanities Center and the Department of Philosophy at the Johns Hopkins University. Since October 2007, he holds the Russ Family Chair in the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.

“Into the Mind of the Octopus” by Sidney Diamante (15 Nov)

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The octopus is one of the animals whose nervous system has recently been declared by neuroscientists (in the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness) to be capable of generating subjective conscious experience. This declaration is significant because the octopus is, at first glance, unlikely to be considered a candidate for consciousness: primarily because its nervous system is radically different from that expected of a conscious animal, and because it is non-linguistic. On the other hand, the octopus is capable of a wide range of behavioral flexibility, which indicates that it is a highly intelligent animal. However, it is possible that such behavior is not accompanied by qualitative experiences but is the outcome of non-conscious automatic responses to external stimuli. Neuroscience now believes that this is not the case, and thus there is indeed something it is like to be an octopus. What, now, can the octopus tell us about the nature of consciousness?

The criteria used to attribute consciousness to the octopus is comprised of (1) possession of the neural subrates regarded as correlates of conscious experience and (2) the capacity for highly versatile behavior. While promising, these criteria are not without their share of problems. For instance, how have these substrates been established as correlates of consciousness? Without a non-circular account of such correlation, an airtight case that the behavior accompanying certain brain activity is indeed the result of conscious mental states is difficult to make. Due to difficulties such as these, other approaches to consciousness attribution to animals must be explored. One such approach is cognitive ethology, or analyzing an animal’s behavior in order to gain insights into its mental life.

In this investigation, I adopt the methods of cognitive ethology and present certain natural octopus behaviors that could be used as evidence that it is phenomenally conscious. Analyses—albeit tentative—of these behaviors will be offered, with the goal of using the octopus to shed new light on issues in the philosophy of mind.

Philosophy Seminar Series.
Date: Thursday, 15 Nov 2012
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Venue: Philosophy Resource Room (AS3 #05-23)
Speaker: Sidney Diamante, Lecturer in Philosophy, De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines
Moderator: Dr. Neil Sinhababu

About the Speaker: 

Sidney Diamante is a lecturer in Philosophy at De La Salle University, Manila. She obtained a Bachelor of Music degree, cum laude, in 2008. In 2010, she completed her MA in Philosophy at De La Salle University, where she is also pursuing a PhD in Philosophy. At present, her research is focused on animal minds, although her other research interests include problems in metaphysics and philosophy of mind.

 

 

“Knowing-how and knowing-that in the Zhuangzi: discipline, habits, and spontaneity” by Karyn Lai (8 Nov)

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A number of scholars have characterised the Zhuangzi’s epistemology as anti-rationalist, anti-intellectual, or sceptical of conceptual knowledge (knowledge-that). I suggest that this characterisation of its epistemology is unhelpful and wrongheaded for two primary reasons. First, it glosses over a key similarity between the Zhuangzi’s approach to the acquisition of skills, and that of Confucian self-cultivation. Both traditions share the view that discipline, which may include knowledge-that, is crucial to cultivation. Secondly, to characterise the Zhuangzi’s epistemology as ‘intuitive know-how’ is a reductionist move that overlooks the multi-faceted nature of the cultivation of skills in the text.

Philosophy Seminar Series.
Date: Thursday, 8 Nov 2012
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Venue: Philosophy Resource Room (AS3 #05-23)
Speaker: Karyn Lai, Associate Professor of Philosophy,
 University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, Australia
Moderator: Dr. Neil Sinhababu

About the Speaker: 

Karyn Lai is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the School of Humanities at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), in Sydney, Australia. She is the Chair of the Bachelor of Arts (BA) Program in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at UNSW. Her primary research area is in early (pre-Qin) Confucian and Daoist philosophies. She is the author of Introduction to Chinese Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2008) and Learning from Chinese Philosophies (Ashgate Publishing, 2006); and of numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals. She is the Editor of the scholarly journal Philosophy Compass (Chinese Comparative Philosophy Section) and Assistant Editor of Sophia: International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Metaphysical Theology and Ethics. She is currently the President of the Australasian Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy and the Regional Advisor (Australasia) of the International Society for Chinese Philosophy.

Her current research focuses on epistemology in Chinese philosophy. The research begins by asking what it is to know in some of the pre-Qin texts. For a start, these texts are not fundamentally concerned with propositional knowledge, or what epistemologists call knowing-that. They are interested in ways of knowing that are action-guiding or that have practical outcomes. Here, epistemological concerns and their associated approaches to learning reflect the belief that contextual details are irreducible in our understanding of action, a person’s character, and his or her ultimate commitments. Lai proposes that the primary concern in pre-Qin Chinese philosophy is not primarily with knowledge-that, nor even with knowing-how (for instance, how to conduct oneself at a funeral), but with knowing-to, a capacity to act in the moment (e.g. to be tactful in a particular situation while blunt in another). The aim is to articulate an account of knowing that highlights epistemology in light of the agent in action that has to date not been explored either in western analytic epistemology or Chinese philosophy.

The Confucius Foundation Book Prizes for Chinese Philosophy

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The NUS Department of Philosophy wishes to congratulate the following students for their academic excellence in Chinese Philosophy:

  • Sim Yeow Huat, Jonathan
  • Wang Fang, Kate
  • Yeo Siew Hua, Chris

The Confucius Foundation sponsors three Book Prizes every year, which are awarded to students who excel in Chinese Philosophy. Winners will receive the Confucius Foundation Book Prizes at the annual celebration of Confucius’ Birthday held by the Nanyang Confucian Association on Friday, 12 Oct 2012.

“Intuition and the threat of skepticism” by Jennifer Nado (9 Oct)

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Current literature surrounding the use of intuition in philosophy has a tendency to focus on extremes. Philosophers in the anti-intuition camps have frequently taken evidence for intuition’s fallibility to license dramatic, wide-ranging doubts about the epistemic legitimacy of appeals to intuition. Meanwhile, friends of traditional methodology have responded with counter-arguments which tend to target positions that reject intuition entirely. This has led to a sort of common conception, occurring implicitly and sometimes explicitly throughout the intuition literature, according to which critics of intuition are in fact nothing more than purveyors of a certain brand of skepticism – in other words, critics of intuition tend to be viewed as ‘intuition skeptics’. This paper develops a new interpretation of what I call the ‘variation’ argument against intuition. This interpretation avoids skepticism by claiming that intuitions really are a source of knowledge in most cases – while still simultaneously denying that intuitions are at all suitable for their current prominent role in philosophical theorizing.

Philosophy Seminar Series.
Date: Tuesday, 9 Oct 2012
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Venue: Philosophy Resource Room (AS3 #05-23)
Speaker: Jennifer Nado, Assistant Professor, Lingan University, Hong Kong
Moderator: Dr. Neil Sinhababu

About the Speaker: Jennifer Nado is an Assistant Professor at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. She received her PhD at Rutgers University in 2011 with a dissertation entitled “Intuition and Inquiry”, under the direction of Stephen Stich. Her primary interests are in metaphilosophy, the epistemology of intuition, experimental philosophy, cognitive science, and moral psychology.

“Metasemantic of Complex Expressions” by Michael Johnson (8 Oct)

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I argue that the most natural reading of the claim that the language of thought is compositional is a metasemantic reading: complex expressions mean what they do in virtue of their syntax and the meanings of their parts.

I then argue that there is a better metasemantic theory for complex expressions, one I call the Direct Theory. According to the Direct Theory, both simple and complex expressions get their meanings in the same way, via the causal or informational connections they have with objects, properties, and relations in the world.

Philosophy Seminar Series.
Date: Monday, 8 Oct 2012
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Venue: Philosophy Resource Room (AS3 #05-23)
Speaker: Michael Johnson, Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Hong Kong
Moderator: Dr. Neil Sinhababu

About the Speaker: Michael Johnson is Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong. He received his PhD. from Rutgers University in 2011. He considers himself a cognitive scientist whose work centers around issues in the epistemology and metaphysics of mental and linguistic content, and he approaches those issues with an empirically oriented attitude.

Honours Thesis Presentation

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You are invited to attend the HT presentations. Each presentation will be about 30 minutes, followed by about 15 minutes of question time.

Date: Friday, 7 Sep 2012
Time: 2-4pm
Venue: Philosophy Resource Room, AS3-05-23.

Embodiment as the highest standard of Knowledge in Later Chinese Thought: Adventures in Alternative Epistemologies
by Mr. Yeo Siew Hua

Abstract:

Inherited models of Western epistemology has aligned itself closely to the way we do sciences in the modern world, emphasizing on objective truths and repeatability. But in the last few decades, there have been proposals of alternative systems of epistemology to which my work positions itself with. I wish to explore the possibilities of embodiment as a form of knowledge, taking cue from Neo-Confucian metaphysics, particularly, the conceptual strategy of Body (体) and its Uses (用), and its fundamental grounding in social interaction. Finally, to reclaim claims like “i know how it is to be in your shoes” as possible forms of knowledge.

A Will-to-Power Reading of ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’
by Mr. Doan Tuan Duc

Abstract:

My thesis aims to interpret the crucial point in Nietzsche’s ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’ where Zarathustra feels nausea at the thought of the eternal recurrence. Starting out as a prophet of the future Superman – the ideal for human greatness in part I, Zarathustra in part III envisions his failure to complete such project when thinking about the eternal recurrence of the small man. Such nausea is later overcome when Zarathustra embraces the eternal recurrence with joy.

Applying recent findings on Nietzsche’s doctrine of will to power as the activity of overcoming resistances, I argue that Zarathustra maximizes the power of his will when he overcomes his nausea and embraces the eternal recurrence. Zarathustra’s will goes through two steps: (1) the confrontation with resistance as the will realizes its entanglement in the eternal recurrence’s deterministic complex of causes and (2) the overcoming of resistance as the will admits its inefficacy and dissolves into the ‘Ring of Eternity’, an act which paradoxically increases the will’s power and brings Zarathustra immense joy in the concluding part IV.