J-Smart biography, J-Smart discography
He works in the fields of metaphysics, philosophy of science , philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, and political philosophy.Career
Born in Cambridge, England but of Scottish parents, Smart began his education locally, attending The Leys School, a boarding school in the area.Smart was President of the Royal Astronomical Society.He then worked as a Junior Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Oxford for two years.He arrived in Australia in August 1950 to take up the Chair of Philosophy at the University of Adelaide, which he occupied from 1950 until 1972.Metaphysics
Smart's main contribution to metaphysics is in the area of philosophy of time.Theory of time, and of perdurantism.His most important original arguments in this area concern the passage of time, which he claims is an illusion.This is called the rate of passage argument.Since the puzzles facing physicalism are strictly analogous to the scientific identity theses, it would also be absurd to reject physicalism on the grounds that it gives rise to these puzzles.Ethics
In ethics, Smart is a defender of utilitarianism.Specifically, he defends "extreme", or act utilitarianism, as opposed to "restricted", or rule utilitarianism.The distinction between these two types of ethical theory is explained in his essay Extreme and Restricted Utilitarianism.Smart gives two arguments against rule utilitarianism.According to the first, rule utilitarianism collapses into act utilitarianism because there is no adequate criterion on what can count as a "rule".According to the second, even if there were such a criterion, the rule utilitarian would be committed to the untenable position of preferring to follow a rule, even if it would be better if the rule were broken, which Smart calls "superstitious rule worship".Smart's arguments against rule utilitarianism have been very influential, contributing to a steady decline in its popularity among ethicists during the late 20th century.Worldwide, his defence of act utilitarianism and preference theory has been less prominent but has influenced philosophers who have worked or been educated in Australia, such as Frank Jackson, Philip Pettit, and Peter Singer.One of Smart's two entries in the Philosophical Lexicon refers to his approach to the consequences of act utilitarianism: to "outsmart" an opponent is "to embrace the conclusion of one's opponent's reductio ad absurdum argument."This move is more commonly called "biting the bullet".Philosophy and Scientific Realism, 1963.Ethics, Persuasion and Truth, 1984.Essays Metaphysical and Moral, 1987.Metaphysics and Morality: Essays in Honour of J.Smart's homepage at Monash University.All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.Registered in Scotland Company No.The business was started in 1951 to carry out a wide range of building and civil engineering works.The Group's activities include the manufacture and supply of precast concrete components and
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