Faculty Member, School of Global Japanese Studies
About
Biodata
DPhil in philosophy and womens studies, University of New South Wales, Sydney.
Currently a research associate professor in the School of Global Japanese Studies, Meiji University, Tokyo.
Research
My latest research has focused on one area of contention in contemporary philosophy: the debate over the reality of the past, and its application to the philosophy of history. My approach to this controversy takes into account both its metaphysical and epistemological aspects. At the metaphysical level, various philosophically realist conceptions of the past are unsatisfactory, since past existents and states of affairs do not satisfy common-sense realist criteria for mind-independent existence. Idealist and pragmatist philosophies of history seem to have the advantage when they respectively comprehend the historical past as an evidence-based construction in the mind of the historian, or as an objective outcome of the process of historical inquiry. However, their idealism or insufficient realism about the evidence from which knowledge of that historical past is constructed leaves them less able to distinguish their positions from relativistic, postmodern conceptions of historical inquiry. There is also danger of a fall into a "double-barrelled" constructivism, in which both the past and the evidence from which our knowledge of it is inferred are both mind- or experience-dependent. I argue that antirealism or presentism about the historical past is a coherent enough position to serve as a methodological postulate for historical inquiry. But it must be balanced with sufficient realism about evidence for knowledge of that past to recognize – under qualified descriptions – the mind-independent existence of evidence. These descriptions take into account the roles response-dependent and realiser properties play in determining how data is taken up as evidence in historical inquiry, and how data constrains judgement at different stages of the inquiry process.
I have also been exploring the consequences of the appropriation of the rhetoric of historical inquiry in patriotic conceptions of the past and in nationalism-influenced controversies over responsibility for war crimes and genocides. The research project I am pursuing now aims to show how a historical scholarship with renewed confidence in 1) the reality of evidence, 2) the epistemic values that constrain analysis of evidence and the inferences that can be made from it, and 3) the support epistemic values give to a non-relativistic conception of historical truth or epistemic warrant, can serve both to differentiate it from patriotic and nationalistic constructions of the past and place it in a constructive, second-order relation of criticism to them.
A final, slightly unrelated branch of research I have been pursuing regards recent justifications by Daniel Bell and others for a Confucian conception of democracy, featuring an unelected upper house of elite scholar-deliberators. Given the hierarchical social relations and rigid division of intellectual labour presupposed by Confucian notions of virtuous governance,this conception cannot adequately integrate the idea of a vigorous civil society which might inform, criticise and enrich elite deliberation.
Contact Information
| Address: | Tokyo, Japan |
