Friends of Wright-entitlement cannot appeal to direct epistemic consequentialism (believe or accept what maximizes expected epistemic value) in order to account for the epistemic rationality of accepting Wright-entitled propositions. The tenability of direct consequentialism is undermined by the “Truth Fairy”: a powerful being who offers you great epistemic reward (in terms of true beliefs) if you accept a proposition p for which you have evidence neither for nor against. However, this chapter argues that a form of indirect epistemic consequentialism seems (...) promising as a way to deal with the Truth Fairy problem. The relevant form of indirect consequentialism accommodates evidentialism but allows for exceptions in the case of anti-sceptical hypotheses. Since these are the kind of propositions to which Wright-entitlement is supposed to apply—i.e. cornerstone propositions—indirect consequentialism is entitlement-friendly. (shrink)

Many philosophers of the last century thought all moral judgments can be expressed using a few basic concepts — what are today called ‘thin’ moral concepts such as ‘good,’ ‘bad,’ ‘right,’ and ‘wrong.’ This was the view, fi rst, of the non-naturalists whose work dominated the early part of the century, including Henry Sidgwick, G.E. Moore, W.D. Ross, and C.D. Broad. Some of them recognized only one basic concept, usually either ‘ought’ or ‘good’; others thought there were two. But they (...) all assumed that other moral concepts, including such ‘thick’ ones as the virtue-concepts ‘courageous’ and ‘kindly,’ can be reductively analyzed using one or more thin concepts and some more or less determinate.. (shrink)

Jorn Sonderholm (2005) has argued that Simon Blackburn's commitment semantics for evaluative discourse is unable to explain the validity of simple inferences involving disjunction. This is true insofar as the basic rules which Blackburn suggests are not strong enough, but it is relatively simple to augment those rules so as to meet Sonderholm's challenge, whilst respecting the spirit of commitment semantics. One way of doing this is to add a reduction rule such that if accepting p commits one to inconsistent (...) commitments, one is committed to accepting ¬p. Thus Sonderholm has not provided any reason to doubt the adequacy of commitment semantics to explain validity in evaluative discourse. (shrink)

R.M. Hare had an ambitious scheme of providing a unified account of meta-ethics and normative ethics by combining expressivism with Kantianism and utilitarianism. The project of this thesis is to defend Hare’s theory in its most ambitious form. This means not just showing how the expressivist, Kantian and utilitarian elements are consistent, or that the three are each correct, but also that they are interdependent. The only defensible form of expressivism is Kantian; the only defensible Kantian theory is both expressivist (...) and utilitarian; the only defensible utilitarianism is Kantian. The thesis is divided into four chapters. Chapter 1 aims to show how expressivism can provide a coherent account of moral judgement and discourse. The argument for expressivism draws on Hare’s thought that the main error of moral realism is to think of moral objectivity as requiring objects, moral properties which are really there in the world. It is shown, using an argument based on the Euthyphro and the Open Question Argument that realism is untenable because it makes this mistake, and this clears the path to expressivism. Chapter 2 is a full account of the issues surrounding the Frege-Geach problem (often pressed against Hare), showing how it can be solved and how exactly the expressivist’s embrace of minimalism about truth interacts with the solution to the Frege-Geach Problem. I include an explanation of how the expressivist is able to solve the most threatening version of the problem: Schroeder’s discussion of negation. Chapter 3 argues for the connection between expressivism and Kantianism. The argument (roughly following Korsgaard) is that Humean versions of expressivism run into a sceptical challenge of normative regress. Kant employed a transcendental argument to resolve this regress, deriving his Formula of Universal Law from the Categorical Imperative. This argument defended with expressivism playing a crucial role. This chapter thus explains how Hare is entitled to universalizability in a way that avoids the shmoralising objection: it is not justified merely by being derived from our moral concepts but rather from our inescapable nature as agents. Chapter 4 illuminates the other connection, between Kantianism and utilitarianism. The largest part of the chapter is spent defending Hare’s argument from universalizability to utilitarianism. Doing so shows how Hare’s utilitarianism depends on his Kantianism, and so also how it indirectly depends on his utilitarianism. I then go on to defend Hare’s distinctive two-level version of utilitarianism, especially against the objections of Bernard Williams. It is also argued that various difficulties for utilitarianism – utility monsters, interpersonal comparison, Korsgaard’s objections – can be met by a form of utilitarianism like Hare’s, which is Kantian, and thus that such a form of utilitarianism is indeed the most defensible. (shrink)

McFetridge (in Logical necessity and other essays . London: Blackwell, 1990 ) suggests that to treat a proposition as logically necessary—to believe a proposition logically necessary, and to manifest that belief—is a matter of preparedness to deploy that proposition as a premise in reasoning from any supposition. We consider whether a suggestion in that spirit can be generalized to cover all cases of absolute necessity, both logical and non-logical, and we conclude that it can. In Sect. 2, we explain the (...) significance that such an account of manifestation of belief in absolute necessity has for the prospects of a non-realist theory of modality. In Sect. 3, we offer a sympathetic articulation of the detail that underlies the McFetridge conception of belief in logical necessity. In Sects. 4 and 5, we show that the conception so articulated will not generalize to encompass all cases of belief in absolute necessity and proceed to offer a remedy. Our proposal is based upon a distinction between two kinds of suppositional act: A-supposing and C-supposing (Sect. 6). In Sect. 7, we then explain and defend our central thesis: (roughly) that (manifestation of) belief in absolute necessity is a matter of preparedness to deploy as a premise in reasoning under any C-supposition. Finally, we indicate that there is some promise in the parallel thesis that manifestation of the treatment of a proposition as a priori is a matter of preparedness to deploy as a premise in reasoning under any A-supposition (Sect. 8). (shrink)

In a recent article, Mark Colyvan has criticized Jerrold Katz's attempt to show that Quinean holism is self-refuting. Katz argued that a Quinean epistemology incorporating a principle of the universal revisability of beliefs would have to hold that that and other principles of the system were both revisable and unrevisable. Colyvan rejects Katz's argument for failing to take into account the logic of belief revision. But granting the terms of debate laid down by Colyvan, the universal revisability principle still commits (...) Quineans to holding that one belief is both revisable and unrevisable: the belief that some beliefs are revisable. (shrink)

It is common to hear talk of the aim of belief and to find philosophers appealing to that aim for numerous explanatory purposes. What belief 's aim explains depends, of course, on what that aim is. Many hold that it is somehow related to truth, but there are various ways in which one might specify belief 's aim using the notion of truth. In this article, by considering whether they can account for belief 's standard of correctness and the epistemic (...) norms governing belief, I argue against certain prominent specifications of belief 's aim given in terms of truth, and advance a neglected alternative. (shrink)

The _Physics_ is a foundational work of western philosophy, and the crucial one for understanding Aristotle's views on matter, form, essence, causation, movement, space, and time. This richly annotated, scrupulously accurate, and consistent translation makes it available to a contemporary English reader as no other does—in part because it fits together seamlessly with other closely associated works in the New Hackett Aristotle series, such as the _Metaphysics_, _De Anima_, and forthcoming _De Caelo_ and _On Coming to Be and Passing Away_. (...) Eventually the series will include all of Aristotle's works. Sequentially numbered endnotes provide the information most needed at each juncture, while a detailed Index of Terms indicates places where focused discussion of key notions occurs. An illuminating general Introduction describes the book that lies ahead, explaining what sort of work it is and what sorts of evidence it relies on. (shrink)

In the international bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of (...) cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions. -/- Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow is destined to be a classic. (shrink)

Sometimes, learning about the origins of a belief can make it irrational to continue to hold that belief—a phenomenon we call ‘genealogical defeat’. According to explanationist accounts, genealogical defeat occurs when one learns that there is no appropriate explanatory connection between one’s belief and the truth. Flatfooted versions of explanationism have been widely and rightly rejected on the grounds that they would disallow beliefs about the future and other inductively-formed beliefs. After motivating the need for some explanationist account, we raise (...) some problems for recent versions of explanationism. Learning from their failures, we then produce and defend a more resilient explanationism. (shrink)

Examines the lived experience of social encounters drawing on phenomenological insights.

This book examines democracy in recent Chinese-language philosophical work. It focuses on Confucian-inspired political thought in the Chinese intellectual world from after the communist revolution in China until today. The volume analyzes six significant contemporary Confucian philosophers in China and Taiwan, describing their political thought and how they connect their thought to Confucian tradition, and critiques their political proposals and views. It illustrates how Confucianism has transformed in modern times, the divergent understandings of Confucianism today, and how contemporary Chinese philosophers (...) understand democracy, as well as their criticisms of Western political thought. (shrink)

A central issue in Chinese philosophy today is the relationship between Confucianism and democracy. While some political figures have argued that Confucian values justify non-democratic forms of government, many scholars have argued that Confucianism can provide justification for democracy, though this Confucian democracy will differ substantially from liberal democracy. These scholars believe it is important for Chinese culture to develop its own conception of democracy using Confucian values, drawn mainly from Kongzi (Confucius) and Mengzi (Mencius), as the basis. This essay (...) describes some obstacles to this form of Confucian democracy. It argues that considering the political philosophies of Kongzi and Mengzi in the context of their views on personal cultivation reveals that they oppose some of the central assumptions of democracy. They do not trust the public to make good decisions, and advocate government for the people, but not by the people. These philosophies alone cannot generate democracy. (shrink)

Infallibilism is the view that a belief cannot be at once warranted and false. In this essay we assess three nonpartisan arguments for infallibilism, arguments that do not depend on a prior commitment to some substantive theory of warrant. Three premises, one from each argument, are most significant: if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then the Gettier Problem cannot be solved; if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then its warrant can be transferred (...) to an accidentally true belief; if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then it can be warranted and accidentally true. We argue that each of these is either false or no more plausible than its denial. Along the way, we offer a solution to the Gettier Problem that is compatible with fallibilism. (shrink)

Supererogatory acts—good deeds “beyond the call of duty”—are a part of moral common sense, but conceptually puzzling. I propose a unified solution to three of the most infamous puzzles: the classic Paradox of Supererogation (if it’s so good, why isn’t it just obligatory?), Horton’s All or Nothing Problem, and Kamm’s Intransitivity Paradox. I conclude that supererogation makes sense if, and only if, the grounds of rightness are multi-dimensional and comparative.

The paper offers a critique of ontological individualism as a framework for social ontology. The phrase gives unjustified priority to facts about individuals over facts about higher-level social features. The paper reviews several important contributions to more nuanced views, including Giddens, Archer, Granovetter, Mahoney, and Thelen. It is argued that our guiding “map” of the social world needs to reflect the unavoidable reciprocal dependency over time between individual actors and social entities. The ideas of methodological localism (Little) and the diachronic (...) character of the actor-social nexus explore the inherent interdependency between actor and structure. (shrink)

In this article we argue that governmental practices of secrecy threaten the epistemic dimension of rights. We defend the view that possessing a right entitles its holder to the largest extent of available knowledge of the circumstances that may impede the enjoyment of that right. We call this the ‘epistemic entitlement’ of rights. Such an entitlement holds in ideal conditions once full transparency is assumed. However, under non-ideal conditions secrecy is a fact that should be accounted for. We argue that, (...) under such conditions, interference due to secrecy is legitimate when the circumstances under which it occurs are open to assessment by the right-holder. We call this the ‘right of assessment’. It ensures the ex-post fulfillment of the epistemic entitlement under non-ideal conditions of partial compliance where full transparency is unattainable due to the fact of secrecy. The right of assessment shields against arbitrary interference by imposing an obligation on the government to provide justification for any interference in the sphere of fundamental rights. (shrink)

In Lukács: Praxis and the Absolute, Daniel Andrés López reassembles Lukács’s philosophy of praxis on a Hegelian basis, as a conceptual-historical totality, both defending him and proposing an unprecedented, immanent critique that raises problems for Marxian philosophy as a whole.

" Qualia " is an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us. As is so often the case with philosophical jargon, it is easier to give examples than to give a definition of the term. Look at a glass of milk at sunset; the way it looks to you--the particular, personal, subjective visual quality of the glass of milk is the quale of your visual experience at the (...) moment. The way the milk tastes to you then is another, gustatory quale, and how it sounds to you as you swallow is an auditory quale; These various "properties of conscious experience" are prime examples of qualia. Nothing, it seems, could you know more intimately than your own qualia ; let the entire universe be some vast illusion, some mere figment of Descartes' evil demon, and yet what the figment is made of will be the qualia of your hallucinatory experiences. Descartes claimed to doubt everything that could be doubted, but he never doubted that his conscious experiences had qualia, the properties by which he knew or apprehended them. (shrink)

The social sciences playa variety of multifaceted roles in the policymaking process. So varied are these roles, indeed, that it is futile to talk in the singular about the use of social science in policymaking, as if there were one constant relationship between two fixed and stable entities. Instead, to address this issue sensibly one must talk in the plural about uses of dif ferent modes of social scientific inquiry for different kinds of policies under various circumstances. In some cases, (...) the influence of social scientific research is direct and tangible, and the connection between the find ings and the policy is easy to see. In other cases, perhaps most, its influence is indirect-one small piece in a larger mosaic of politics, bargaining, and compromise. Occasionally the findings of social scientific studies are explicitly drawn upon by policymakers in the formation, implementation, or evaluation of particular policies. More often, the categories and theoretical models of social science provide a general background orientation within which policymakers concep tualize problems and frame policy options. At times, the in fluence of social scientific work is cognitive and informational in nature; in other instances, policymakers use social science primarily for symbolic and political purposes in order to le gitimate preestablished goals and strategies. Nonetheless, amid this diversity and variety, troubling general questions persistently arise. (shrink)

Supererogatory acts are those that lie “beyond the call of duty.” There are two standard ways to define this idea more precisely. Although the definitions are often seen as equivalent, I argue that they can diverge when options are infinite, or when there are cycles of better options; moreover, each definition is acceptable in only one case. I consider two ways out of this dilemma.

The potential to collect brain data more directly, with higher resolution, and in greater amounts has heightened worries about mental and brain privacy. In order to manage the risks to individuals posed by these privacy challenges, some have suggested codifying new privacy rights, including a right to “mental privacy.” In this paper, we consider these arguments and conclude that while neurotechnologies do raise significant privacy concerns, such concerns are—at least for now—no different from those raised by other well-understood data collection (...) technologies, such as gene sequencing tools and online surveillance. To better understand the privacy stakes of brain data, we suggest the use of a conceptual framework from information ethics, Helen Nissenbaum’s “contextual integrity” theory. To illustrate the importance of context, we examine neurotechnologies and the information flows they produce in three familiar contexts—healthcare and medical research, criminal justice, and consumer marketing. We argue that by emphasizing what is distinct about brain privacy issues, rather than what they share with other data privacy concerns, risks weakening broader efforts to enact more robust privacy law and policy. (shrink)

1. Happiness, then and now -- Happiness, eudaimonia, and practical reasoning -- Happiness as eudaimonia -- Happiness and virtuous activity -- New directions from old debates -- 2. Happiness then: the sufficiency debate -- Aristotle's case against the sufficiency thesis -- 3. Happiness now: rethinking the self -- Socrates' case for the sufficiency thesis -- Epictetus and the stoic self -- The Stoics' case for the sufficiency thesis -- The embodied conception of the self -- The embodied conception and psychological (...) well-being -- The Stoics' case against the embodied conception. (shrink)

Professor Little presents an introduction to the philosophy of social science with an emphasis on the central forms of explanation in social science: rational-intentional, causal, functional, structural, materialist, statistical and interpretive. The book is very strong on recent developments, particularly in its treatment of rational choice theory, microfoundations for social explanation, the idea of supervenience, functionalism, and current discussions of relativism.Of special interest is Professor Little’s insight that, like the philosophy of natural science, the philosophy of social science can profit (...) from examining actual scientific examples. Throughout the book, philosophical theory is integrated with recent empirical work on both agrarian and industrial society drawn from political science, sociology, geography, anthropology, and economics.Clearly written and well structured, this text provides the logical and conceptual tools necessary for dealing with the debates at the cutting edge of contemporary philosophy of social science. It will prove indispensible for philosophers, social scientists and their students. (shrink)

Public discussions of political and social issues are often characterized by deep and persistent polarization. In social psychology, it’s standard to treat belief polarization as the product of epistemic irrationality. In contrast, we argue that the persistent disagreement that grounds political and social polarization can be produced by epistemically rational agents, when those agents have limited cognitive resources. Using an agent-based model of group deliberation, we show that groups of deliberating agents using coherence-based strategies for managing their limited resources tend (...) to polarize into different subgroups. We argue that using that strategy is epistemically rational for limited agents. So even though group polarization looks like it must be the product of human irrationality, polarization can be the result of fully rational deliberation with natural human limitations. (shrink)

From an early age, humans know a surprising amount about basic physical principles, such as gravity, force, mass, and shape. We can see this in the way that young children play, and manipulate objects around them. The same behaviour has long been observed in primates - chimpanzees have been shown to possess a remarkable ability to make and use simple tools. But what does this tell us about their inner mental state - do they therefore share the same understanding to (...) that of a young child? Do they understand the simple, underlying physical principles involved? Though some people would say that they do, this book reports groundbreaking research that questions whether this really is the case. -/- Folk Physics for Apes challenges the assumptions so often made about apes. It offers us a rare glimpse into the workings of another mind, examining how apes perceive and understand the physical world - an understanding that appears to be both similar to, and yet profoundly different from our own. The book will have broad appeal to evolutionary psychologists, developmental psychologists, and those interested in the sub-disciplines of cognitive science (philosophy, anthropology). The book additionally offers for developmental psychologists some valuable new non-verbal techniques for assessing causal understanding in young children. (shrink)

This article takes issue with the stereotype of "Confucianism" as authoritarian, a view common in discussions of modern China as well as in scholarship on early China. By studying the roles of master and students and the relationship between them in the Analects , it attempts to show that according to this text the master did not occupy a position of complete dominance over the student. Masters are not generally considered to be like fathers, and students have more room to (...) dispute with their master than previously recognized. In contrast to later depictions of Kongzi, he is not presented as infallible in the Analects , and his students do not always accept his opinions. Questioning the master is often a good quality in a disciple. The master-student relationship, while undoubtedly hierarchical, did not involve complete submission by the student. It is argued here that there is little basis for concluding that the Analects is fundamentally authoritarian in its depiction of teaching. It further suggests a need for a distinct understanding of teaching authority that is not modeled on political authority. (shrink)

This edited volume presents a comprehensive examination of contemporary Confucian philosophy from its roots in the late 19th century to the present day. It provides a thorough introduction to the major philosophers and topics in contemporary Confucian philosophy. The individual chapters study the central figures in 20th century Confucian philosophy in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, as well as the important influences on recent Confucian philosophy. In addition, topical chapters focus on contemporary Confucian theory of knowledge, ethics, politics, aesthetics, and (...) views of human nature. The volume brings together scholars from around the world to provide a sound overview of the philosophy of the period and illustrate the important current debates. Confucian philosophy has been undergoing a revival in China for more than three decades, and this book presents the most significant work of the past century and more. By giving a detailed account of the philosophical positions involved, explaining the terminology of contemporary Confucian philosophy, and situating the views in their historical context, this volume enables the reader to understand what is at stake and evaluate the arguments. (shrink)

Sometimes it takes years of debate for philosophers to discover what it is they really disagree about. Sometimes they talk past each other in long series of books and articles, never guessing at the root disagreement that divides them. But occasionally a day comes when something happens to coax the cat out of the bag. "Aha!" one philosopher exclaims to another, "so that's why you've been disagreeing with me, misunderstanding me, resisting my conclusions, puzzling me all these years!".

A remarkable number of Nietzsche's substantive moral psychological views have been borne out by evidence from the empirical sciences. Moral judgments are products of affects on Nietzsche's view, but the latter are in turn causally dependent upon more fundamental features of the individual. Nietzsche accepts a doctrine of types. The path is short from the acceptance of the Doctrine of Types to the acceptance of epiphenomenalism, as Leiter, and more recently, Riccardi argue. This chapter explains Nietzsche's phenomenological account of willing, (...) which serves as independent motivation for the view that Nietzsche denies the causal efficacy of conscious acts of willing. It also explores that in spite of an absence of volitional freedom, self‐control can be usefully understood on a strength‐model of motivational resources. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of how Nietzsche, without employing the contemporary methods of empirical psychology, could nonetheless be such a prescient moral psychologist. (shrink)

Philosophers have found postulating possible worlds to be very useful in a number of areas, including philosophy of language and mind, logic, and metaphysics. Impossible worlds are a natural extension to this use of possible worlds, and can help resolve a number of difficulties thrown up by possible‐worlds frameworks.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Some Questions on Confucian Relationality:Reading Human BecomingsDavid Elstein (bio)Human Becomings: Theorizing Persons for Confucian Role Ethics. By Roger T. Ames. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2021.This recent book by Roger Ames continues his (and Henry Rosemont's) project of articulating and defending the interpretation of Confucian thought using the category "role ethics." This project perhaps originated with Rosemont's 1991 article "Rights-Bearing Individuals and Role-Bearing Persons" and more (...) recently continued with Ames' Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary (2011) and their jointly authored Confucian Role Ethics: A Moral Vision for the 21st Century? (2016). In Human Becomings, Ames expands on what he calls "a focus-field, narrative, and relationally constituted conception of persons" (p. xii). That is, the view of personhood that constitutes the foundation for role ethics. In a sense, this description is too modest, as Ames extends this ontology far beyond persons to all events, continuing to develop a process cosmology that describes the world in general.Over many years, Ames has forged an innovative and influential theoretical interpretation of Confucian philosophy. As an occasional critic of Ames, I appreciate this book tremendously for the way he articulates his vision of how to approach Chinese philosophy, his careful construction of his interpretation, and how he answers questions and objections concerning Confucian role ethics. It is a very rich book that merits careful study, and even in an expanded review such as this I will have to be selective in the points that I address.Ames has developed role ethics and the associated view of relationally constituted persons in part because he believes it is the best way to understand Confucian philosophy on its own terms instead of uncomfortably shoehorning it into existing Western philosophical categories (most commonly, virtue ethics in other Anglophone scholarship). One of his motives is to take Chinese philosophy on its own terms free from the distortions introduced by relying on familiar categories (pp. 20–21). The most important such distortion is that the individual is the starting point for philosophizing. One of Ames' main points in the book is that it is very hard to escape the assumption of the discrete, independent, and autonomous individual when [End Page 172] thinking in familiar Western categories, whether of virtue ethics, utilitarianism, or deontology (p. 46). We must rather appreciate how different Confucianism is.However, he has another goal beyond proffering a superior interpretation of Confucian philosophy. Foundational individualism is also the ultimate cause for what Ames calls the "perfect storm" we find ourselves in: the combination of environmental, economic, social, and political problems that are rooted in misplaced individualism, and that cannot be resolved without deep reconsideration of our values and indeed ourselves (pp. 12–14). Hence, it is not merely that the Confucian relational person is different, but in making relations the basic category the Confucian conception is superior and presumably we would do well do adopt it. One gets a sense of the scope of Ames' argument here.There is much in this book I want to respond to and question, and so I will forego much summary. Instead, I will raise a series of questions about parts of the argument and, in the course of discussing these, touch on some of the main points of the book. I will be questioning a series of related claims that I believe are the heart of what Ames wants to demonstrate: a relationality or process cosmology (not substance ontology) is fundamental to Confucian thought; this relational view naturally implies or entails role ethics, not virtue ethics or deontology; relational persons and role ethics together are a better account of our moral life and will go a considerable way toward resolving the problems caused by foundational individualism. In response, I want to raise the following questions:1. Is relationality truly a part of original Confucian thought?2. Does relationality rule out any notion of essential human nature, and does it necessarily imply or entail role ethics?3. Is relationality true or merely a useful way of thinking (if these can be distinguished)? Do we know that it is useful?4. Is there anything in Confucian role ethics that a... (shrink)

As Confucian political thought is adapted to modern circumstances, the question of free expression merits more attention. Most contemporary Confucian political theorists accept a right to political...