“The Diamond Sutra as Sublime Object: Negation, Narration, and Happy Endings” by Alan Cole (21 Nov)

This paper close reads an early Mahayana text, the so-called “Diamond Sutra” (Vajracchedika Prajnaparamita), to argue that the meaning of the work is best found on the level of narrative.  That is, on closer examination, the text doesn’t appear to be a random set of philosophic claims about reality, value, language, and meaning; instead, it can be shown that the text is structured – particularly in the first half — to provide a fairly well-controlled reading-experience in which the reader is led through various claims about Buddhist truths and values, claims that, while strikingly contradictory in places, can actually be seen working together to further the narrative’s larger goal of seducing the reader into worshipping the text itself as a buddha-like entity that supposedly holds the essence of the Buddhist tradition.  Thus amidst wild-sounding negations that declare that there is no truth or teachings in Buddhism, we find several passages where the Buddha-in-the-text speaks about the text he is currently giving, explaining that it provides the most exalted teachings and unlimited value, while also claiming that its sheer presence should be taken as a stand-in for the Buddha and his relics.  In short, the text first generates an image of a live Buddha appearing to go about his business on an ordinary day, and yet once this Buddha-in-the-text is established, he turns to give a teaching that, via negation, redefinition and wild value-claims, presents the reader with the stunning claim that he is holding the best thing in the universe.

Puzzling through these various paradoxes and working to understand how the author managed such a happy-ending in the context of all these radical-sounding negations is the point of the paper.

Philosophy Seminar Series.
Date: Thursday, 21 Nov 2013
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Venue: Philosophy Resource Room (AS3 #05-23)
Speaker: Alan Cole, Lewis and Clark College
Moderator: Dr. Ben Blumson

About the Speaker:

Alan Cole took his Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies at the University of Michigan, in 1994.  Since then he has taught at a number of American colleges and universities, with most of those twenty years spent at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon.  His recently published books – Text as Father: Paternal Seductions in Early Mahayana Buddhist Literature (UCal Press, 2005) and Fathering Your Father: The Zen of Fabrication in Tang Buddhism (2009, UCal Press) — are concerned with understanding how narratives function within important Buddhist texts in India and China.  As these titles suggest, he has been working to develop a theory about how Buddhist authors knowingly constructed their works and naturally this involves worrying about how intersubjectivity functions in these artful literary gambits.  More recently, he has tried to extend these theoretical perspectives in a comparative work titled, “Fetishizing Tradition: Desire and Reinvention in Buddhist and Christian Narratives.”  (The book is currently under review at SUNY Press.)  He is currently working on another book, Patriarchs on Paper: A Critical History of Chan (Zen) Literature from 600-1200, (currently under review at UCal Press).

“On the Selection of Good Leaders in a Political Meritocracy” by Daniel Bell (24 Oct)

In this talk, I will assume that (1) it is good for a political community to be governed by high-quality rulers; (2) China’s one party political system is not about to collapse; (3) the meritocratic aspect of the system is partly good; and (4) it can be improved. On the basis of these assumptions, I will put forward suggestions about which qualities matter most for political leaders in the context of large, peaceful, and modernizing (non-democratic) meritocratic states, followed by suggestions about mechanisms that increase the likelihood of selecting leaders with such qualities. I will use the philosophical theory about the best possible political meritocracy in the context of a large, peaceful, and modernizing state as a standard for evaluating China’s actually-existing meritocratic system. I will argue that China can and should improve its meritocratic system: it needs exams that more effectively test for politically relevant intellectual abilities, more women in leadership positions to increase the likelihood that leaders have the social skills required of effective policy-making, and more systematic use of a peer review system to promote political officials motivated by the desire to serve the public.

Philosophy Seminar Series.
Date: Thursday, 24 Oct 2013
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Venue: Philosophy Resource Room (AS3 #05-23)
Speaker: Daniel A. Bell, Center for International and Comparative Political Theory, Tsinghua University
Moderator: Dr. Ben Blumson

About the Speaker:

Daniel A. Bell is Visiting Professor, Depts of Philosophy and Political Science, NUS. He is Professor of Ethics and Political Theory, and Director of the Center for International and Comparative Political Theory, Tsinghua University (Beijing). He taught at NUS from 1991-94. He has authored and edited 15 books, of which the latest (coedited with Li Chenyang) is The East Asian Challenge for Democracy: Political Meritocracy in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2013). He is currently writing a book on political meritocracy. He is a regular contributor to leading media outlets in China and the West and his works have been translated into 23 languages.

“Why We Are Probably Not Living in a Computer Simulation” by Preston Greene (17 Oct)

Nick Bostrom’s simulation argument shows that if we believe that civilizations like ours tend to eventually run many simulations of their past history, then we should be nearly certain that we are currently living in such a simulation. Bostrom discusses two reasons why civilizations like ours might not tend to run simulations—neither of which is fully compelling—i) that they tend to become extinct before acquiring the required technology, and ii) that they tend to decide against simulation because they find it morally reprehensible or uninteresting. In this paper, I develop a more compelling reason to think that advanced civilizations tend not to run simulations: viz., that deciding to create simulations of the sort required by the simulation argument is irrational (on the basis of self-interest), and the inhabitants of advanced civilizations are likely to be rational. Thus, reflection on rational decision making shows us that we are probably not living in a computer simulation. Even so, I end by warning that newly-designed experimental research aimed at determining whether our universe is a simulation is more dangerous than has been realized, and the scientific community should consider discontinuing it.

Philosophy Seminar Series.
Date: Thursday, 17 Oct 2013
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Venue: Philosophy Resource Room (AS3 #05-23)
Speaker: Preston Greene, Nanyang Technological University
Moderator: Dr. Ben Blumson

About the Speaker:

Preston Greene is an assistant professor in the philosophy group at Nanyang Technological University. He completed his PhD at Rutgers University before coming to NTU in August. Before graduate school he was an actor, game show host, educational software developer, and intercollegiate soccer player at the University of California at Santa Cruz. His research concerns ethics, epistemology, and philosophy of science.

“What Is Choice Sensitivity? A Dilemma for Luck Egalitarianism” by Micha Glaeser (10 Oct)

Luck egalitarians hold that inequalities between individuals are unjust when they are the result of differences in unchosen circumstances but not when they reflect differences in the choices made by those individuals. A just distribution is one that is both luck insensitive and choice sensitive. In this paper I argue that the idea of choice sensitivity is ambiguous between two different interpretations, both of which are problematic. The first interpretation renders luck egalitarianism intuitively implausible. The second interpretation threatens to undercut the fundamental moral significance of choice on which the luck-egalitarian project turns. I then suggest a reinterpretation of the significance of choice, one that both renders luck egalitarianism intuitively attractive and preserves choice as a fundamental justificatory consideration.

Philosophy Seminar Series.
Date: Thursday, 10 Oct 2013
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Venue: Philosophy Resource Room (AS3 #05-23)
Speaker: Micha Glaeser, Harvard University
Moderator: Dr. Ben Blumson

About the Speaker:

Micha Glaeser is a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at Harvard University. As an undergraduate he studied at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, and the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests are in moral, political, and legal philosophy. In his dissertation he defends an account of the relation between law and morality that transcends the positivist-natural law dichotomy. He currently resides in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for reasons of love.

Philosophy Workshop on Justice and the Ethics of Dialogue and Debate (26 Mar)

The Department of Philosophy will be holding a philosophy workshop on Justice and the Ethics of Dialogue and Debate.

Date: Tuesday, 26 March 2013
Time: 10am – 3.30pm
Venue: Conference Room UT-25-03-06, Stephen Riady Centre (EduSports Center), U-Town, NUS (Click here to view map)

The papers presented in this workshop investigate the topic of justice by combining both epistemic and ethico-political perspectives. While all papers draw on the writings of various philosophers (from Abhinavagupta and Dharmakirti to Peter Strawson, from Wittgenstein to Hanfeizi) and various philosophical traditions (e.g. the Marxist, Aristotelian and Confucian traditions), each paper does not simply end up with stating the Chinese vs. the Indian or vs. the Western view of justice, but each presents an argument about some or another aspect of justice that can philosophically stand on its own. Justice and the ethics of dialogue and debate will thus be related to aspects such as the problem of epistemic access to a second person’s inner, especially, emotional states, the question of social change with regard to what each member of the group owes the group and vice versa, and the complicated relation of epistemic and political authority.

Being a workshop, the event seeks to practice what it theorizes, and is open for everyone to participate in active dialogue and debate. Presented papers:

Authority: Of German Rhinos and Chinese Tigers

Ralph Weber, URPP Asia and Europe, University of Zurich (10am – 11am)

This paper inquires into authority, both in its epistemic and deontic forms. I particularly seek to expand on the Polish Dominican logician and philosopher J.M. Bocheński’s The Logic of Authority by raising objections against his way of linking it to freedom and autonomy as well as by including in my discussion additional, unheeded aspects of authority (the authority of office, the authority of number), some of which have been discussed earlier in Alexandre Kojève’s La Notion de l’Autorité. In the course of my argument, I shall discuss the famous Russell-Wittgenstein episode about the possibility of knowing whether or not there is a rhinoceros in the room and draw on Wittgenstein more generally for disentangling the relation between authority and autonomy. An episode in the Han Feizi 韓非子 on believing whether or not there is a tiger in the market leads me to the topic of moral and political authority and its dependence on epistemic authority (which often involves different persons or institutions, but, for example, in the Guanzi 管子is invested in one and the same person, that of the sage-ruler). My goal is to explore those instances of authority in which both epistemology and politics can be said to interrelate, merge, or clash.

Justice and Social Change

Sor-hoon TanDepartment of Philosophy, National University of Singapore (11am – 12pm)

What might we gain from a comparative study of Confucianism and some Western philosophy on the topic of Justice? Some scholars have questioned whether there is any concept of justice in early Confucianism. One response is to either identify the equivalent concept, or find elements in Confucian philosophy that could be reconstructed into a Confucian theory (or at least perspective) on justice. However, going beyond the assumption that justice problems are universal, and exploring the possibility that problems arising from “circumstances of justice” might be understood differently by Confucians in their social criticisms, allows us to tap into deeper differences in social ideals, conceptions of human beings and social relations, that will provide more radically critical perspectives with which to interrogate contemporary experience.

Lunch Break

(12pm – 1.30pm)

Our Knowledge of Other People’s Feelings

Arindam ChakrabartiDepartment of Philosophy, University of Hawai’i at Manoa (1.30pm – 2.30pm)

Understanding the feelings of other people is not only a condition for caring social practice, and Buddhist altruistic compassion, it is the pre-condition for any successful dialogue, even philosophical dialogue, especially across cultural and linguistic barriers. Yet philosophers still do not know how we manage to do it. Neither perception nor inference seems capable of yielding knowledge of what another self—the second person—is currently experiencing, wanting, feeling, thinking. And whether at all another body is enlivened by a self, though not myself, remains hard to “prove”. In this paper, the intricate argumentation by Dharmakirti – the Sautrantika-Yogacara Buddhist philosopher – to prove by an inference that streams of consciousness other than one’s own exist will be examined, side by side with J.S. Mill’s version of the Argument from Analogy and its decisive refutation by P.F. Strawson. After a brief discussion of Max Scheler and Edith Stein’s views on sympathy and empathy, we turn to Kashmir Shaivist epistemology of imagining what it is like to be another self. Inspired by a detailed examination of Abhinavagupta’s insights on how we know, identify with and empathically feel other people’s feelings, the paper will propose assigning the work of knowledge of other selves to imagination, a means or faculty of knowing at least as powerful and indispensable as perception, inference and testimony.

Other Minds, 1946: Interpersonal and Interpretative Justice Among Philosophers

Chuanfei Chin, Department of Philosophy, National University of Singapore (2.30pm – 3.30pm)

A 1946 symposium on ‘Other Minds’ between John Wisdom, J.L. Austin and A.J. Ayer marked a shift in the analytic debate about our knowledge of other minds – from a sceptical orientation to a naturalist one. I focus on two aspects of their dialogue.  First, both Wisdom and Austin argue that the traditional concern with other minds fails to account for the depth and difficulty of our interpersonal relations, particularly our access to others’ emotional states. This is partly because our epistemology is normally dependent on an ethics of trust and vulnerability. Second, Ayer’s response is remarkably rude. He misconstrues their arguments, then uses their conclusions. I use this interpretative injustice to clarify the very norms of interpersonal justice which Wisdom and Austin highlight. Then I assess how far naturalist assumptions are responsible for these insights and conflicts. I take the symposium to illustrate the challenge of philosophical dialogue – in this case, between a Wittgensteinian philosopher influenced by psychoanalysis, an ordinary language philosopher, and a post-positivist philosopher intent on solving the problem.

 

“Motivation for Human Excellence: Is Infinite Utility the Trigger?” by Mitradutta Mohapatra (5 Mar)

The very notion of ‘Infinite Utility’ has always been eclipsed with dubious philosophical credentials. The term ‘Infinite’ is extremely loaded and therefore, one is generally advised to use the word with enough care and caution. In this paper, I shall try to examine the driving force behind the motivation for exemplary human excellence. Human and philosophical history has shown us time and again that the force that drives an agent on the path of extra-ordinary excellence carries a sort of resolve that is beyond human comprehension. What is the motivation that makes Jesus seek divine pardon for his adversaries at the time of his crucification? How can an Ibn Arabi at the face of the hard-coded canon laws of Islam, spread the message of supreme love, consistently throughout his life, unafraid of the likely violent repercussions? What motivates Buddha to be uniquely consistent throughout his life with his exemplary practice and message of supreme human conduct? What is driving this motivation? Is there a case to examine whether at the core of such motivation does lie the concept of ‘Infinite Utility’? Using the analytic techniques of decision theory, I would argue that there possibly remains a case prima facie.

Graduate Seminar Series.
Date: Tuesday, 5 Mar 2013
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Venue: Philosophy Resource Room (AS3 #05-23)
Speaker: Mitradutta Mohapatra, PhD Student

Mitradutta Mohapatra holds an MA from University of Mumbai and he is exposed to both Indian and Western philosophical traditions. He is keen to look at various aspects of moral philosophy and more particularly, his interest lies in ‘applied ethics’. His current research interest at NUS is to have a closer look at the evolution of compliance governance in the contemporary business world and examine its compatibility with the ethical theories and the traditional tenets of human morality.

“Hutcheson and the Experience of Pure Benevolence” by Christina Chuang (14 Feb)

Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746) is often associated with moral sentimentalism, which argues that our moral distinctions are determined by sense perceptions, rather than reason. Some contemporary ethicists have claimed to find the origin of non-cognitivism in moral sentimentalism and thus have claimed Hutcheson’s work as one of the first non-cognitivist theories in the history of ethics. But it is debatable whether being a sentimentalist necessarily entails being a non-cognitivist.

In this talk I do not specifically engage the issue of cognitivism but I make a connection between Hutcheson and classical Indian thought as an alternative way of addressing the debate. I argue that Hutcheson’s moral knowledge can be accessed through non-discursive meditation. This is because meditation captures the decisive elements of the experience of benevolence in Hutcheson’s theory: pre-reflective, non-propositional and immediate. Hutcheson’s pure benevolence is analogous to Purusha in Samkhya Philosophy. It is a pre-reflective awareness where things are directly experienced without the attachment of the “I.” There is a deeper connection between ethics and spiritual practice in Hutcheson that scholars have not noticed previously – Hutcheson’s writing style has a meditative element as he employs inductive argument and thought examples to invoke his readers to contemplate their mental states. Meditation cannot inform us of what the “good” is but the “good” has a meditative access.

Philosophy Seminar Series.
Date: Thursday, 14 Feb 2013
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Venue: Philosophy Resource Room (AS3 #05-23)
Speaker: Christina Chuang, Assistant Professor, Philosophy Group, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Moderator: Dr. Ben Blumson

About the Speaker: 

Christina received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of California, Irvine, in June 2012 and moved to Singapore in August 2012.  Her main research interests are the history of ethics, moral psychology and classical Indian Philosophy.  She is currently working on developing a more holistic account of the nature of moral judgment that incorporates philosophy, psychology and neuroscience.  She is also a certified yoga teacher and an avid rock climber, and hopes that her passion for yoga and philosophy will merge in the near future.

“Group Agency in the Real World” by John Matthewson (31 Jan)

Group agents are agents composed of parts that are themselves agents. In the book Group Agency, Christian List and Philip Pettit argue that such group agents ought to be included in the ontology of the social sciences. For example, they claim we can talk about the beliefs, preferences and even blameworthiness of a corporation (as opposed to just the members of that corporation), where this talk is at least sometimes literally true. List and Pettit extend these ideas, outlining ways in which group agents should be structured in order to meet particular norms of agency.

However, there is some tension between the book’s methodology and its purported findings. Many of the arguments presented in Group Agency involve formal treatments of highly idealised and abstract scenarios, the results of which are intended to secure claims regarding actual group agents. The use of such abstract scenarios is a well-established and effective research method in both philosophy and science, but complexities arise when we attempt to deploy this type of research in the real world. I will examine the extent to which these complexities might cause trouble for List and Pettit’s claims, emphasising the importance of how their formal models generalise across actual and possible cases.

Philosophy Seminar Series.
Date: Thursday, 31 Jan 2013
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Venue: Philosophy Resource Room (AS3 #05-23)
Speaker: John Matthewson, Lecturer in Philosophy, School of Humanities, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand
Moderator: Dr. Ben Blumson

About the Speaker: 

John completed his PhD at the Australian National University in 2012 and is now a lecturer at Massey University in Auckland, New Zealand. His thesis was regarding the use of scientific models, with a focus on the negative interactions that hold between certain desirable properties of these models. John works in philosophy of science, particularly scientific explanation and representation, as well as philosophy of biology and some applied ethics. He has a background in clinical medicine, and beginning in 2013 will be lucky enough to combine all of these interests working on a collaborative project in the philosophy of evolutionary medicine. He plans to eat a lot of food while in Singapore.

“Confucian Role Ethics: A Challenge to the Ideology of Individualism” by Roger T. Ames (17 Jan)

In the introduction of Chinese philosophy and culture into the Western academy, we have tended to theorize and conceptualize this antique tradition by appeal to familiar categories. Confucian role ethics is an attempt to articulate a sui generis moral philosophy that allows this tradition to have its own voice. This holistic philosophy is grounded in the primacy of relationality, and is a challenge to a foundational liberal individualism that has defined persons as discrete, autonomous, rational, free, and often self-interested agents. Confucian role ethics begins from a relationally constituted conception of person, takes family roles and relations as the entry point for developing moral competence, invokes moral imagination and the growth in relations that it can inspire as the substance of human morality, and entails a human-centered, a-theistic religiousness that stands in sharp contrast to the Abrahamic religions.

Philosophy Seminar Series.
Date: Thursday, 17 Jan 2013
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Venue: Philosophy Resource Room (AS3 #05-23)
Speaker: Roger T. Ames, Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa
Moderator: Dr. Ben Blumson

About the Speaker: 

Roger T. Ames is Professor of Philosophy and editor of Philosophy East & West. His recent publications include translations of Chinese classics: Sun-tzu: The Art of Warfare (1993); Sun Pin: The Art of Warfare (1996) and Tracing Dao to its Source (1997) (both with D.C. Lau); the Confucian Analects (1998) and the Classic of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation of the Xiaojing (2009) (both with H. Rosemont), Focusing the Familiar: A Translation and Philosophical Interpretation of the Zhongyong, and A Philosophical Translation of the Daodejing: Making This Life Significant (with D.L. Hall) (2001). He has also authored many interpretative studies of Chinese philosophy and culture: Thinking Through Confucius (1987), Anticipating China: Thinking Through the Narratives of Chinese and Western Culture (1995), and Thinking From the Han: Self, Truth, and Transcendence in Chinese and Western Culture (1997) (all with D.L. Hall).  Recently he has undertaken several projects that entail the intersection of contemporary issues and cultural understanding.  His Democracy of the Dead: Dewey, Confucius, and the Hope for Democracy in China (with D.L. Hall) (1999) is a product of this effort. Almost all of his publications are now available in Chinese translation, including his philosophical translations of Chinese canonical texts. Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary (2011), his most recent monograph that evolved from the endowed Ch’ien Mu lectures at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, is an argument that this tradition has a sui generis vision of the moral life. He has most recently been engaged in compiling the new Blackwell Sourcebook of Chinese Philosophy, and in writing articles promoting a conversation between American pragmatism and Confucianism.

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

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).