Tag Archives: Moral Philosophy

“A Kantian Case for Prioritizing the Least Well-Off” by Jade Lim (Apr 7)

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In this talk, I argue that we sometimes have to prioritize the least well-off. In order to do so, I will apply Kant’s Formula of Universal Law that says, “Act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.” I will show that we cannot will maxims that do not prioritize the least well-off as universal law and thus are not morally permitted to act in accordance with them. It then follows that we sometimes have to act against those maxims and prioritize the least well-off.

Graduate Seminar Series.
Date: Tuesday, 31 Mar 2015
Time: 2 pm – 3 pm
Venue: Philosophy Resource Room (AS3 #05-23)
Speaker: Jade Lim
Moderator: Koh Hui Li

About the Speaker:

JadeJade’s main areas of research are in ethics and political philosophy. Her interests also extend to feminism, environmental ethics and race.

“Tragedy of the Commons and Role Ethics” by Koh Hui Li (31 Mar)

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In this talk, I apply Roger Ames’ Role Ethics to see if new light can be shed on the Tragedy of the Commons. I survey the mainline approaches to the problem and its limitations. I then argue that Ames’ reconceptualised self as a web of relation with others provides a better conceptual resource in weakening the logic that leads up to the Tragedy. I consider objections of role conflicts, and argue that role ethics can be better conceived as an epistemic resource in helping one recognize their moral obligations to others.

Graduate Seminar Series.
Date: Tuesday, 31 Mar 2015
Time: 3 pm – 4 pm
Venue: Philosophy Resource Room (AS3 #05-23)
Speaker: Koh Hui Li
Moderator: Jade Lim

About the Speaker:

Hui Li's photoHui Li’s background is in political science. She was drawn to the normative questions surrounding justice and the good, and is now pursuing them in philosophy. She is interested in ethics, political philosophy and the insights that one can gleam on these subjects through the study and comparison of different philosophical traditions.

“The Accrual of Reasons: Some First Thoughts” by Shyam Nair (Mar 12)

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A popular idea in moral philosophy is that facts about what we ought to do are explained by facts about what we have reason to do. The idea is that in standard choice situations there are are often considerations in favor of some act x as well as considerations in favor of an incompatible act y. The act that ought to be done is the act that “wins in the competition among reasons”. In recent years, much progress has been made in moral philosophy, epistemology, and philosophical logic toward understanding the different ways reasons can “win out” and understanding how to precisely and non-metaphorically describe the mechanics of this “winning out” process.

But there are certain simple cases that are still not well understood. For example, sometimes we can have two reasons to do x and one reason to do y. And it can happen that each of the reasons to do x is individually worse than the reason to do y but somehow together the strengths of the individual reasons to do x “add up” to make x the thing that ought to be done. The main aim of this talk is to explain why it is challenging to understand these cases and to present some conjectures about how to meet this challenge. Throughout the talk, we will adopt a general perspective that considers not only the kinds of cases with this structure that arise in moral philosophy but also the kinds of cases with this structure that arise in epistemology.

Philosophy Seminar Series
Date: Thursday, 12 Mar 2015
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Venue: AS3 #05-23
Speaker: Shyam Nair, Lingnan University
Moderator: Dr. Qu Hsueh Ming

About the Speaker:

Picture1Shyam Nair is an assistant professor of philosophy at Lingnan University. His research concerns issues in moral philosophy, epistemology, and philosophical logic. Before coming to Lingnan, he completed his PhD at the University of Southern California.

“Moral obligations of collective beneficence” by Anne Schwenkenbecher (Jan 8)

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The world is an imperfect place. Many of its imperfections have people live worse lives than they could live. And many of those lives could be substantially improved if we collectively worked on solutions to them. But when are we morally required to do that?

This paper examines the idea of moral obligations of collective beneficence – obligations we have to collectively help others in need where we bear no responsibility for their need. Acts of collective beneficence can either provide so-called threshold goods or contribute to incremental goods. For incremental goods, every contribution counts and the more we contribute the better. However, this paper will focus on moral obligations to collectively produce threshold goods, that is, goods the production of which requires a minimum number of contributions. Providing such goods may require all available agents to assist (joint necessity) or only a subgroup of them (overdetermination cases). When moving away from uncontroversial threshold cases towards more complex scenarios, it will become apparent that duties to contribute to collective beneficence are less stringent the greater the number of agents involved. While the case for moral obligations of collective beneficence can be convincingly argued for small-scale threshold scenarios, such duties are more difficult to justify once the problem in need of remedy exceeds a certain scale and complexity.  This may mean that such obligations – in their most stringent form – can only be held by agents in relatively small groups.

Philosophy Seminar Series
Date: Thursday, 8 Jan 2015
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Venue: AS3 #05-23
Speaker: Anne Schwenkenbecher, Murdoch University
Moderator: Dr. Qu Hsueh Ming

About the Speaker:

Picture1Anne Schwenkenbecher is a Lecturer in Philosophy in the School of Arts. Before joining Murdoch University in June 2013, she held appointments at The University of Melbourne, the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE) at Australian National University, and the University of Vienna. Her PhD in Philosophy (2009) is from Humboldt University of Berlin. Anne’s research focuses on a range of topics in normative and applied ethics, as well as political philosophy and action theory. These include the possibility and normative significance of collective agency, the ethics of political violence, and ethical problems arising from climate change. Her book “Terrorism: A philosophical enquiry” was published with Palgrave Macmillan in 2012.

“Thought Experiments in Ethics” by Peter Kung (Oct 9)

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Many compelling thought experiments have played a prominent role in the ethics literature: the transplant case, deciding on the best policies from the original position, being kidnapped and attached to a famous violinist. A wide range of thought experiments in ethics have a distinctive feature: they feature forced choices with fixed outcomes. In a typical ethics thought experiment, an agent A is faced with choice C1 and C2. If A picks C1, then O1¬ will occur. If A picks C2, then O2 will occur. The thought experiment forces the choice between C1 and C2: they are the only relevant options. To suggest another option, C3, is to violate the rules of the game. Likewise, O1¬ and O2 are the only possible outcomes. It is not merely probably that one will occur; it is definite. Suggesting that something other than O1 and O2 will occur is, again, not to play the game.

Starting with the plausible assumption that good thought experiments must be metaphysically possible, I explore whether thought experiments with forced choices and fixed outcomes are metaphysically possible. In my view, attending closely to features of imagination suggests that pessimism is warranted. I contend that the best account of our knowledge of metaphysical possibility is via imagistic imagination. I develop a key distinction between types of content in imagistic imagination, and use this distinction to analyze the metaphysical possibility of forced choices and fixed outcomes. I reach a pessimistic conclusion: we have no reason to think that forced choices and fixed outcomes are metaphysically possible.

I conclude that that any ethical view that counts outcomes as ethically relevant will have to take seriously moral risk, a result I thinks accords with common sense. In everyday ethical reasoning, choices are not forced and outcomes are not fixed. We take into account the chancy nature of our decisions: choosing C1 will likely lead to O1, but there is a chance it will lead to O1.1 or O1.2 or…. On my view, the methodology of thought experiments itself requires that we consider moral risk. This has the implication that some putatively devastating counterexamples in ethics prove to be less devastating than widely thought.

Philosophy Seminar Series
Date: Thursday, 9 Oct 2014
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Venue: AS3 #05-23
Speaker: Peter Kung, Pomona College
Moderator: Dr. Tang Weng Hong

About the Speaker:

PeterKungPeter Kung (Pennsylvania, B.S. in Computer Science & Engineering, Stanford, M.A. In Philosophy, NYU, Ph.D. In Philosophy) is Associate Professor of Philosophy and former Department Chair at Pomona College. He has held visiting or teaching appointments at New York University, Stanford University, Claremont Graduate University and now the National University of Singapore. Professor Kung’s research centers on two areas: the philosophy of mind, in particular the thought experiments, where is coediting a collection for Oxford University Press titled Knowledge Through Imagination; and epistemology, where he focuses on the limits of skeptical challenges and the proper treatment of probabilistic reasons. He is grateful to have the chance to explore Singapore with his wife, who is also visiting at NUS, and two young children.

“Valuable Asymmetrical Friendship” by Thomas Brian Mooney and John Williams (24 Apr)

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Aristotle distinguishes three sorts of friendship. There are friendships of pleasure or of utility, in which the friend takes the other—even as an object of care—as a person qua bearer of characteristics conducive to pleasure or utility. Then there are much more valuable character friendships in which the friend cares for the other qua person for the other’s own sake. These are held by Aristotle and a variety of contemporary thinkers who broadly follow his account of friendship to involve various fairly strict equalities, or as we prefer to put it, symmetries between the friends. Roughly, such friends are fairly strictly symmetrically autonomous in relation to each other, fairly strictly symmetrical in their separateness of identity from each other, fairly strictly symmetrical in the degree to which they identify with each other, and are fairly strictly symmetrical in the degree to which they are virtuous. There is a fourth important sort of friendship that has been overlooked in the philosophical literature. We call this asymmetrical friendship. This is not friendship of pleasure or of utility, being much more valuable. Like character friendships but unlike friendships of pleasure or utility (that may also be largely asymmetrical) these involve each friend caring for the other for the others’ own sake. Unlike character friendships, they may be largely asymmetrical. So they are unlike Aristotle’s fairly strictly symmetrical and certainly valuable character friendships which seldom appear at all in our imperfect lives, lived as they are in an imperfect world.

Philosophy Seminar Series.
Date: Thursday, 24 Apr 2014
Time: 2 pm – 4 pm
Venue: Philosophy Resource Room (AS3 #05-23)
Speakers: T. Brian Mooney, John Williams, Singapore Management University
Moderator: Dr. Ben Blumson

About the Speakers:

BRIANMOONEYT. Brian Mooney is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at Singapore Management University and has just been appointed as Professor of Philosophy and Head of School of Humanities and Creative Arts at Charles Darwin University.  Brian’s research interests are in Ancient and Mediaeval Philosophy, Moral Philosophy and the Theory and Practice of Education.  Brian is the author, co-author and co-editor of 9 books and over 50 articles in philosophy.

JOHNWILLIAMSJohn N. Williams (PhD Hull) works primarily in epistemology and paradoxes, especially epistemic paradoxes. He also works in philosophy of language and applied ethics. He has published in Acta Analytica, American Philosophical Quarterly, Analysis, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Journal of Philosophical Research, Philosophy East and West, Mind, Philosophia, Philosophical Studies, Religious Studies, Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective, Synthese and Theoria. He is co-editor of Moore’s Paradox: New Essays on Belief, Rationality and the First Person, Oxford University Press together with Mitchell Green. He researches and teaches in the School of Social Sciences, Singapore Management University.

 

“Self-Reflection and the Verdictive Organization of Desire” by Derek Baker (20 Mar)

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Deliberation often begins with the question “What do I want to do?” rather than a question about what one ought to do. This paper takes that question at face value, as a question about which of one’s desires is strongest, which sometimes guides action.  The paper aims to explain which properties of a desire make that desire strong, in the sense of strength relevant to this deliberative question.

Both motivational force and phenomenological intensity seem relevant to a desire’s strength; however, accounting for the strength of a desire in terms of these opens up significant indeterminacy about what we want.  The paper argues that this indeterminacy is often resolved simply by posing the question “What do I want to do?” to oneself: there is reason to believe that one’s answer will play a verdictive role, partially determining what the agent most wants.

Philosophy Seminar Series.
Date: Thursday, 20 Mar 2014
Time: 2 pm – 4 pm
Venue: Philosophy Resource Room (AS3 #05-23)
Speaker: Derek Baker, Lingnan University
Moderator: Dr. Ben Blumson

About the Speaker:

Photo on 3-3-14 at 11.34 AM #2Derek Baker is an Assistant Professor at Lingnan University, Hong Kong.  He completed his PhD at Princeton University in 2009.  He works on the nature of autonomy, practical rationality, desire, the relation between self-knowledge and freedom, and problems in expressivism.  His papers have been published in Philosophical Studies and Australasian Journal of Philosophy.  He has also served as Associate Editor for AJP since 2012.  He is currently working on a book.  Its most recent working title (which he probably won’t change again) is An Almost Unified Theory of the Self.  He used to have hobbies, but no longer has time for them.

“Aristotle on the ease of Philosophy” by Matthew Walker (5 Dec)

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Aristotle’s Protrepticus, which currently exists only in fragments, was a popular work that sought to exhort its audience to pursue a philosophical life. As part of its task, the Protrepticus attempts to respond to the worry that philosophical contemplation is somehow too demanding or difficult to be pursued or enjoyed with profit. On the contrary, Aristotle argues, philosophy is actually easy. I aim (i) to understand what these arguments are saying and (ii) to evaluate these arguments in the light of objections that they naturally elicit. I contend that these arguments offer reasonable responses to worries about philosophy’s demandingness.

Philosophy Seminar Series.
Date: Thursday, 5 Dec 2013
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Venue: Philosophy Resource Room (AS3 #05-23)
Speaker: Matthew Walker, Yale-NUS College
Moderator: Dr. Ben Blumson

About the Speaker:

Matthew D. Walker (Ph.D. Yale) is Assistant Professor of Humanities (Philosophy) at Yale-NUS College. Before starting at Yale-NUS, he was an ACLS New Faculty Fellow at Rutgers University. His papers have been published, or are forthcoming, in Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Journal of Moral Philosophy, Apeiron, Ancient Philosophy, and other venues.

“The Varieties of Envy” by Sara Protasi (28 Nov)

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Psychologists define envy as an aversive reaction to a perceived inferiority, which we feel toward those who are similar to us, with respect to a good or goal pertaining to a domain that is relevant to our sense of identity. This definition, however, applies to at least two different emotions, with opposite moral valences: malicious envy and benign envy. Scholars have provided different accounts of the distinction. Psychologists believe the crucial factor is whether the envier feels capable to overcome her disadvantage. Philosophers suggest that what differs is the subject’s focus of attention, that is, on whether one is focused on lacking the good or on the fact that someone else, the envied, has it. In my paper I show that both variables are at play, and that they do not co-vary but are independent. Consequently, we can experience not just two but four kinds of envy, with varying degree of maliciousness: emulative envy, inert envy, aggressive envy, and spiteful envy. Developing a more precise and adequate knowledge of envy’s anatomy allows the moralist to come up with the right diagnosis and remedies for what has been considered the worst of the deadly sins.

Philosophy Seminar Series.
Date: Thursday, 28 Nov 2013
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Venue: Philosophy Resource Room (AS3 #05-23)
Speaker: Sara Protasi, Yale University
Moderator: Dr. Ben Blumson

About the Speaker:

Sara Protasi is a PhD candidate in philosophy at Yale University. She is working on the philosophical psychology, moral dimensions, and ancient and modern accounts of envy. Her previous work is on the normative dimensions of romantic love. She is also interested in feminist philosophy, bioethics, and philosophy of dance.

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

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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.