Weekly Articles of Interest (7 May 2018)

Only one article (outside of the standard journals) came to my attention this week:

Hagop Sarkissian, “Neo-Confucianism, experimental philosophy and the trouble with intuitive methods,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy (2018). Abstract below and here; available for free download here (NOTE: if you have free access to this journal through your institution, please access it that way, saving the 50 free downloads for those without institutional access).

The proper role of intuitions in philosophy has been debated throughout its history, and especially since the turn of the twenty-first century. The context of this recent debate within analytic philosophy has been the heightened interest in (and use of) intuitions as data points that need to be accommodated or explained away by philosophical theories. This, in turn, has given rise to a sceptical movement called experimental philosophy, whose advocates seek to understand the nature and reliability of such intuitions (along with related judgements and behaviour). Yet such scepticism of intuition or introspective methods can be found in earlier periods and across philosophical traditions. Indeed, the Neo-Confucian philosophers of the Song and Ming dynasties (ca. tenth to seventeenth centuries CE) seem to exemplify this very tension, as they can be divided into an intuitionistic school on the one hand and an investigative school on the other. In this paper, I argue that, notwithstanding some obvious differences, there are broad similarities between the dynamics at play across these philosophical traditions. Moreover, by comparing and juxtaposing them, we will come to appreciate the distinctiveness of each, as their attendant aims, weaknesses and strengths become more salient thereby.

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