Seminar

Speaker: Prof. Peter Shiu-Hwa Tsu

                    Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, 

                   National Chung Cheng University

Title:  Particularism, Underdetermination of Reason, and Embeddedness

Date: 16:30 – 18:30 pm, Monday, March 28, 2022

Venue: Conference Room 302, Department of Philosophy, ShuiYuan Campus, 

             National Taiwan University (18, SiYuan Street, Taipei)

 

Abstract:

Assuming that rationality consists essentially in responding correctly to reasons, then to be rational, it is of utmost importance to figure out how reasons behave so that we could make the right response. This paper aims to promote what I call ‘the embeddedness thesis’ as a general constraint on how moral reasons behave. Raz’s discussions of underdetermination of reason and Dancy’s particularism would serve as a background for the advocation of the embeddedness thesis. It will be argued against Raz that the underdetermination of reason does not disclose the truth in Dancy’s particularism but rather exposes its weakness in that it shows that the purported truth in Dancy’s particularism is actually predicated on an assumption, which, I will argue, violates the embeddedness thesis.