講演者: Dr. Liam Kofi Bright (London School of Economics)
場所: 京都大学文学部第二演習室

タイトル:
The Scientists Qua Scientist Makes No Assertion (by Haixin Dang and Liam Kofi Bright)

アブストラクト:
Assertions are, speaking roughly, descriptive statements which purport to describe some fact about the world. Philosophers have given a lot of attention to the idea that assertions come with special norms governing their behaviour. Frequently, in fact, philosophers claim that for something to count as an assertion it has to be governed by these norms. So what exactly are the norms of assertion? Here there is disagreement. Some philosophers believe assertions are governed by special factive norms, to the effect that an assertion must be true, or known to be true, or known with certainty to be true – or in any case that an assertion is normatively good just in case it meets some condition that entails its truth. Other philosophers place weaker epistemic constraints on good assertion. For instance the claim that an assertion is justified given the assertor’s evidence. We argue that no such norm could apply to a special class of scientific utterances – namely, the conclusions of scientific papers, or more generally the sort of utterances scientists use to communicate the results of their inquiry. Such utterances might look like paradigm instances of descriptive statements purporting to describe some fact, yet the norms of assertion philosophers have surveyed are systematically inapt for science. Scientific conclusions may justly be put forward even though they are neither known, true, justifiably believed, nor even believed at all. Hence, either philosophers are generally wrong about these norms, or strictly speaking scientists should not be considered to be making assertions at all when they report their results. After surveying our argument for this negative claim, we end by suggesting a norm of utterance that would be more appropriate to scientific practice.

日時：7月29日(月) 16:00-18:00
場所：京都大学人社未来形発信ユニットセミナー室

プログラム
16:00-17:00 Prof. Decha Tangseefa (Associate Professor of Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University) “Past, Present, Danger”
17:00-18:00 Prof. Kasem Phenpinant (Dean of the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkom University) “Deflective Democracy: Thailand after Election”

アブストラクト
Prof. Decha Tangseefa “Past, Present, Danger”
Ten years ago, the English version of my research on violence in Thailand’s deep south was published, entitled “Reading ‘Bureaucrat Manuals,’ Writing Cultural Space: The Thai State’s Cultural Discourses & the Thai-Malay In-between Spaces.” The article’s last paragraph invokes Walter Benjamin’s conception of history. Ten years after, picking up on where I left off in that publication, my Thai article – entitled “Past Present Danger” – elaborates on some key strands of Benjamin’s theoretico-philosophical concerns. It aims to present an alternative method for contemplating on violence in political society, especially that which relates to marginal people. Based on this latest article, this talk’s narrative is fourfold. The first three parts will discuss a series of interrelated problematiques by beginning with the intertwining relations of history, time, and the marginal. The second and the third articulate two sets of problematiques in Benjamin’s oeuvre. They are historiography, danger, and “the oppressed,” on the one hand, and cairo-logic, the “now-time,” and the Copernican revolution, on the other. The talk will end with a reflexive remark on what I name “death of the marginal?”

Prof. Kasem Phenpinant “Deflective Democracy: Thailand after Election”
Since the Thai junta leader returned to power as the prime minister after the general election, the current political situation has been entering a new crisis of democracy, along with the junta masquerading as a legitimate regime. Rather than ensuring stability, Thai politics confronts a new struggle over power, involving parliament, coalition government, and even military intervention. It entails a form of deflective democracy, that is, a regime of political power diminishes the functioning of democratic principles and institutions designed to guarantee democratic values. Deflective democracy occurs, when non-elected elites gain power over the elected representatives. It tends to form a parallel between authoritarian government and democratic decay.

共催：京都大学東南アジア地域研究研究所・京都大学人社未来形発信ユニット

講演者: Dr. Yung-Ching Hsu (National Taiwan University)
日時: 2019年7月12日(水) 17:00-18:00
場所: 京都大学文系学部校舎4階人社未来形発信ユニットセミナー室（UKIHSS II）

タイトル:
Freedom of Mencius’ Theory of Human Nature

アブストラクト:
Mencius considers that both human beings and all things on earth originated from heaven and that all things on earth follow certain rules while animals other than human beings follow their instincts for their lives. As human beings possess the freedom of choice, it also causes stress for such behavior. Having the awareness of clear directions for moral demand in the heart (heart of four beginnings: heart of compassion, heart of shame, heart of modesty and yielding and heart of right and wrong), human beings could choose to avoid or accept the heart of four beginnings and do specific good deeds. Human beings consist of body (physical body) and the heart (moral self). While bodies are needed for human beings, the heart is relevantly important. To think is the function of the heart. With thinking comes the self-awareness of four moral demands from the heart as it brings the power for implementation. When it comes to behaviors, human beings have the freedom of choice so that they could decide their words and actions. It also means that due to the freedom, human beings could make mistakes. Only sincerity could make one a real human, or they are just playing a role in the society. That is why Mencius mentioned that without the heart of four beginnings, it is “not human.” Without sincerity to show the heart of four beginnings so as to generate the power to motivate good deeds, the “heart” of four beginnings would be seen as not existing, and the elements for “self” would be lost. The process of struggling as human beings choose to do good deeds or not reveals the tension in between the self and the freedom.

講演者: Dr. Kohei Kishida (Dalhousie University)
日時: 2019年7月10日(水) 16:30-18:00
場所: 京都大学文学部第七講義室

タイトル:
Relevance and Reduction in Aristotle’s Logic

アブストラクト:
Aristotle is often called the founder of logic, for inventing his categorical logic or “syllogistic”. Interpretations diverge as to the logical nature of syllogistic, however. In some accounts, Aristotle gives an axiomatic science of categories that uses propositional or even quantifier logic; he is then a user of logic, but hardly the founder.
My talk, in contrast, reconstructs Aristotle’s syllogistic as a self-sufficient logic on its own. While several commentators propose this line of reconstruction, many of them characterize good syllogisms as valid syllogisms. This characterization, however, strips syllogistic of its power as a “logic of science” that Aristotle uses to organize scientific knowledge. The goal of my talk is to give a reconstruction of Aristotle’s syllogistic that identifies the property that good syllogisms have beyond mere validity, by tracing the theoretical structure of Aristotle’s systematization. It will be shown that the property in question is a specific sense of relevance, and that Aristotle’s notion of “reduction” plays a more substantial role than commentators understand in formally achieving the sense of relevance.

日時
2019年7月6日（土）16:30-18:00

会場
京都大学 吉田キャンパス 本部構内 文学部校舎1階 第2講義室（map5番と8番の建物の間）

講演者
板倉史明（神戸大学大学院国際文化学研究科・准教授）

タイトル：映画学におけるSF映画研究の動向

要旨：近年の映画学におけるSF映画の研究は、従来の社会反映論的、イデオロギー的、特殊撮影の技術論的な観点から分析するだけでなく、「ランドスケープ」としての宇宙描写の考察、「人新世」的視点による自然環境描写の分析、そして「ポスト・ヒューマン」な物語世界や世界観の分析が進められている。本発表では、それらの研究動向の一端を概観しつつ、宇宙をテーマにしたSF映画の変遷と表現形式の特徴を検討してみたい。

お問い合わせ先：白川晋太郎（shintaro.shirakawa@gmail.com）

主催：科研費・挑戦的研究（開拓）「宇宙科学技術の社会的インパクトと社会的課題に関する学際的研究」（研究代表者：呉羽真）
https://sites.google.com/view/ssts2018/%E3%83%9B%E3%83%BC%E3%83%A0

日時: 2019年7月18日(木) 16:00-18:00
場所: 京都大学文系学部校舎4階人社未来形発信ユニットセミナー室（UKIHSS II）

講演者: Prof. San Tun (Dhammaduta Chekinda University)

タイトル:
“No Self” with Consequence and Responsibility

アブストラクト:
The aim of this research is to provide philosophy of self and other based on some Buddhist literatures which are cultural phenomena of Myanmar Theravāda Buddhist tradition. The research question is “Why the concepts of self and other are not ontological realities in Myanmar Theravāda Buddhist culture?” It is because that there are “no self” and “no other” in Abhidhamma literature, Buddhist Philosophy, but only mind and body are ontological realities. For Socrates, the goal of philosophy is to “Know thyself”. Lao Tzu, in his Tao Te Ching, said that knowing others is wisdom and knowing the self is enlightenment. For Nishida Kitaro, the experience of unification of consciousness of subject and object is the experience of pure consciousness. It is pure experience and there are no independent, self-sufficient facts apart from our phenomena of consciousness; as Berkeley said, “Esse est percipi” (to be is to be perceived). Nishida holds that direct reality is not something passive. For him, to be is not only to be perceived but also to act for the development of personality. Hence he says, “To be is to act.”
By the principle of conditional relation, every phenomenon is conditional. Good conduct is a kind of conduct that derives from conditional activity of the phenomena of pure consciousness or pure mind. In the Dhammapada (verse 2), what the Buddha taught is; “Mind is the forerunner of activities. Mind is chief. If one speaks or acts with pure mind (pure cetanā), because of that, happiness follows one, even as one’s shadow that never leaves.” For this reason, it can be said that “Know your cetanā” and “To be is to act with pure cetanā to the others”. Knowing others is wisdom of development of mental cultivation through pure cetanā associated with loving-kindness (mettā), compassion (karunā), empathetic joy (muditā), and equanimity (upekkhā), and knowing pure mind (pure cetanā) is enlightenment. This means to understand why people should act ethically although there is no self and no other and how there can be consequence and responsibility by their cetanā (intention), a mental reality as well as mental force called kamma or action.

講演者: Prof. Chien-hsing Ho (Academia Sinica)

タイトル:
Can the World Be Indeterminate in All Respects?

アブストラクト:
A number of analytical philosophers have recently endorsed the view that the world itself is indeterminate in some respect. The issue then arises as to whether it can be the case that the world itself is indeterminate in all respects. Using as a basis Chinese Madhyamaka Buddhist thought, I develop an underlying conceptual framework for my conception of worldly indeterminacy and offer three reasons in support of the thesis that all things are indeterminate with respect to the ways they are. My aim is to show that this thesis makes sense, and that there is a genuine possibility of the world’s being indeterminate in all respects.

日時: 2019年6月24日(月) 16:00-18:00
場所: 京都大学文系学部校舎4階人社未来形発信ユニットセミナー室（UKIHSS II）

講演者: Prof. Arata Hamawaki (Auburn University)

タイトル:
World, My World, Our World: On Undoing the Psychologization of the Psychological

講演者: Prof. Russell B. Goodman (The University of New Mexico)

タイトル:
James and Emerson: On the Pragmatic Use of Terms

アブストラクト:
When William James uses one of his schemes, such as tough- and tender-minded (in Pragmatism) or the once- and twice-born (in Varieties of Religious Experience), he is more interested in what these terms can do in confronting certain problems or conceptualizing a subject than in how they all fit together. This chapter considers James’s pragmatic and pluralistic use of language from some perspectives offered by the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who used different schemes in different essays, and whose thought is part of James’s intellectual formation. I pay particular attention to anticipations of James’s scheme of the tough- and tender-minded in Emerson’s “Nominalist and Realist” and “Montaigne, or the Skeptic.” The last section of the chapter considers ways in which James’s scheme of the tough- and tender-minded is designed to make room for religion in his pragmatist pictures.

講演者: Prof. Michiko Yusa (Western Washington University)
日時: 2019年6月21日(金) 18:00-19:30
場所: 京都大学文学部校舎一階会議室

タイトル:
“Docta Ignorantia” and “Hishiryō”: The Inexpressible in Cusanus, Dōgen, and Nishida

アブストラクト:
Outline of my talk:
1. What is beyond readily knowable—something hidden—has always exercised a fascination over the human psyche. Our desire to know extends beyond what is patent—indicating that at depth we have the inkling of what is beyond the merely obvious.
2. Cusanus’s “docta ignorantia” (“learned ignorance”) and Dōgen’s “hishiryō” (“beyond knowing”) are two ways of talking about what is “beyond knowable,” and in this respect, their thinking moves in a similar orbit.
3. My interest in Cusanus was first awoken by my mentor Raimon Panikkar while I was pursuing my graduate work at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB); it was Panikkar who also encouraged me to take up Nishida for my dissertation research.
4. In this particular essay, I tried to go beyond a “sedentary” understanding of the insight into the universe, by adopting more of an active perspective; I also try to lift Cusanus up from the mistaken identity that his “docta ignorantia” is part of negative theology of the medieval Christian mystics.
5. Following a close reading of Cusanus’s De docta ignorantia (On the Learned Ignorance, 1440) and Dialogus de Deo abscondito (A Dialogue on Hidden God, 1444-45), I will read Dōgen’s “Zazenshin” (The Zen Pointer, 1242), which contains the reference to the notions of “shiryō,” “fushiryō,” and “hishiryō.” I will present three different interpretations of these terms, which represent different approaches to the “unknowable” or the “ineffable.”
6. I will conclude this presentation by turning to Nishida Kitarō, whose philosophical vision starts out with the bold recognition of the dark realm of consciousness that is beyond cognition.
7. It is the beauty of intercultural inquiry to discover an idea that resonates beyond a particular historical and cultural conditioning. We may find in Cusanus’s thought some insights may pass as Buddhist. Likewise in Dōgen we may find kindred spirituality that resonates with Christian. In this juxtaposition of Cusanus and Dōgen, we discover similar but different approaches to the “ineffable.” Does it indicate then that there is something universal in the intellect (in the Scholastic sense of this word) or in human spirituality (reisei)?

日時：6月19日(水) 15:00-18:00
場所：京都大学人社未来形発信ユニットセミナー室

プログラム
15:00-16:00 Prof. Mark Siderits (Seoul National University) “Subjectivity without a Subject? Buddhist Self- vs. Other-Illumination Perspectives”
16:00-17:00 Prof. Yumiko Inukai (University of Massachusetts) “Cognitive and Affective Accounts of the Self in Hume”
17:00-18:00 Prof. Mickaella Perina (University of Massachusetts)“Self and Others, Self and World: Difference, Relationality and Opacity”

アブストラクト
Prof. Mark Siderits “Subjectivity without a Subject? Buddhist Self- vs. Other-Illumination Perspectives”
Those who deny the existence of a self must answer the following question: if it only appears as though there is a self, to what does it so appear? Some Buddhist non-self theorists tried to answer this question by claiming that every cognition has two aspects—an object-aspect and a subject-aspect. To the objection that the subject-aspect sounds suspiciously like a self (as the subject of experience), these Buddhists replied that the two aspects of a cognition are strictly speaking one. The result was a theory of cognition according to which the content of a conscious mental state is self-illuminating. Other Buddhists criticized this account on various grounds. In my talk I want to explore the prospects of the alternative other-illumination theory, according to which a mental state is conscious only insofar as its content is available for processing by other mental states. Would this make us all zombies? And are Buddhas really Robo-Buddhas?

Prof. Yumiko Inukai “Cognitive and Affective Accounts of the Self in Hume”
Most discussions of Hume’s views of the self focus on 1.4.6, “Of personal identity.” This section is the only section in A Treatise of Human Nature in which Hume offers an extensive discussion of the self. In that section, interestingly, Hume makes a distinction between two ways of dealing with the problem of personal identity: “as it regards our thought or imagination, and as it regards our passions or the concern we take in ourselves” (T 1.4.6.5). He discusses the former in Book 1, and the latter in Book 2. Hume clearly thinks that personal identity can be explained from two different perspectives. However, some might argue that there is inconsistency, or at least a gap, between his skeptical conclusion about the self reached in Book One and his appeal to the awareness of the self in his accounts of passions in Book Two. In this talk, I argue that the two views of the self in Book 1 and Book 2 are not inconsistent at all. The former is a minimal form of the self, the persisting self, and the latter, with the existence of the persisting self in place, arises with particular characters, sentiments, and narratives. I call Hume’s account of the self in Book 2 a “flesh and blood” account, because the self that emerges in Book 2 is not just a being with continuous existence (Book 1) but a particular, concrete individual that performs certain actions and has particular sentiments and characters.

Prof. Mickaella Perina “Self and Others, Self and World: Difference, Relationality and Opacity”
The concept of relation is central to conceptions of the self in Caribbean thought in general, and in Francophone/French Caribbean thought in particular. In this tradition identity is often conceived of as articulated to the other’s difference and the intricacies of subjective identification are understood in light of the Caribbean experience of colonization and creolization. This presentation addresses several debates regarding the existence of the self with an emphasis on relational conceptions of the self, the unity of the self (and threat to it), and opacity to others and to oneself.

講演者: Dr. Ramona Fotiade
日時: 2019年6月28日(金) 16:30-18:00
場所: 京都大学文学部校舎地下小会議室

タイトル:
Learning to Live: the Death of the Subject and the Ethics of Survival

アブストラクト:
Starting from Plato’s definition of philosophy as ‘meditation on death’, and Derrida’s paraphrase of the Platonic injunction which turns the emphasis on living in the French philosopher’s last published interview (Learning to Live Finally, 2005), this paper examines the tensions between normative and performative ethics in the existential and deconstructive accounts of subjectivity and the question of the other. The argument contrasts Kierkegaard’s description of the ‘leap of faith’ as part of his conception of existence to Camus’s condemnation of this position as ‘philosophical suicide’, while considering three alternative responses to the polemic between religious and atheist standpoints on the meaning of life and the possibility of ethical justification. Lev Shestov, Maurice Blanchot and Jacques Derrida have each provided different answers to the paradoxes of nihilist, post-humanist and post-structuralist confrontations with death, survival and the other. The key notions which are explored as part of the analysis are those of the ‘transformation of convictions’, ‘outside’ and ‘spectrality’ with reference to the philosophical exegesis of fictional narratives (including Tolstoy’s ‘Master and Man’, Kafka’s ‘Before the Law’, alongside Greek myths and Biblical stories).