• Seminar Title: Knowledge, Action, and Social Epistemology
• Speaker: Dr. Michael Clark, Faculty of College of Arts and Sciences, VinUniversity
• Time: Wednesday, February 22, 2023 | 4:00 – 5:00 PM
• Venue: C204, VinUniversity

 Introduction
Confucian philosophy is well-known for being deeply concerned with the perfection of moral character. Perhaps less well known is that Confucian moral philosophy is enmeshed in a matrix of metaphysical and epistemological ideas, some of which are quite alien to contemporary Anglophone philosophy. This paper discusses Confucian epistemology. In particular, it seeks to unpack Wang Yang Ming’s elusive claim that knowledge is action, and bring this claim into contact with contemporary debates in social epistemology – debates about such crucial topics as disagreement, learning from others, and ‘fake news’.

Speaker’s Bio

Dr. Clark earned his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Manchester, where he also earned his MRes and BA (Hons) degrees in Philosophy. Before joining Vin University, Dr. Clark was the director of the Graduate Programs in Philosophy and Religion at Assumption University in Bangkok (2017-2021), Postdoctoral Research Associate in Philosophy at the University of Hamburg (2014-2017), and Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Cambridge (2013-2014).

Dr. Clark has research interests in a range of topics in metaphysics, especially those relating to grounding, fundamentality, and modality. His recent research has centred on applications of these concepts to debates in the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of mathematics, and the philosophy of time. In addition to working in metaphysics, Dr. Clark has growing interests in social epistemology and Asian philosophy, and he has a new research project that focuses on Asian philosophical perspectives on the phenomenon of fake news. His research has been published in philosophical journals including Analysis, Erkenntnis, Synthese, The Philosophical Quarterly, and Thought.