Updated on 2024/03/29

写真a

 
CHUNG, Hun
 
Affiliation
Faculty of Political Science and Economics, School of Political Science and Economics
Job title
Associate Professor
Degree
M.A./Ph.D. in Political Science ( University of Rochester )
M.A./Ph.D. in Philosophy ( Cornell University )
B.A. in Philosophy (Summa Cum Laude) ( Seoul National University )
Mail Address
メールアドレス
Homepage URL

Research Experience

  • 2020.09
    -
    Now

    Waseda University   Faculty of Political Science and Economics   Associate Professor (with Tenure)

  • 2018.09
    -
    2020.08

    Waseda University   Faculty of Political Science and Economics   Associate Professor (tenure-track)

  • 2018.01
    -
    2018.08

    Korea Military Academy   Department of Philosophy   Assistant Professor (with tenure)

  • 2015.08
    -
    2016.05

    University of Arizona   Center for Philosophy of Freedom   Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy, Politics, & Economics

  • 2014.08
    -
    2015.05

    Rochester Institute of Technology   Department of Philosophy   Visiting Assistant Professor

  • 2011.08
    -
    2012.05

    Cornell University   Sage School of Philosophy   Instructor/Postdoctoral Visiting Scholar

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Education Background

  • 2012.06
    -
    2017.12

    University of Rochester   Department of Political Science   MA/Ph.D. in Political Science  

  • 2007.08
    -
    2012.01

    Cornell University   Sage School of Philosophy   MA/Ph.D. in Philsoophy  

  • 2000.03
    -
    2006.08

    Seoul National University   Department of Philosophy   BA in Philosophy (Summa Cum Laude)  

Research Areas

  • Economic theory / Philosophy and ethics

Research Interests

  • PPE (Philosophy, Politics, & Economics)

  • Formal Theory (Game/Social Choice Theory)

  • Political Philosophy

Awards

  • 2020 Waseda University Research Award (for High-Impact Publications)

    2021   Waseda Universiety  

    Winner: CHUNG, Hun

  • The Annual Department of Political Science Prize for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student

    2017   University of Rochester  

    Winner: CHUNG, Hun

  • The 1st Mo-Ha Prize for Best Paper Written in Analytic Philosophy by a Korean Philosopher (for “Prospect Utilitarianism: A Better Alternative to Sufficientarianism” published in Philosophical Studies 174 (8), 1911-1933)

    2017   The Korean Society for Analytic Philosophy  

    Winner: CHUNG, Hun

  • The Myungkyung Prize (Best BA Thesis in the Department of Philosophy, Seoul National University)

    2006   Seoul National University  

    Winner: CHUNG, Hun

  • KFAS Overseas Doctoral Fellowship Award

    2006   The Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies  

    Winner: CHUNG, Hun

 

Papers

  • (The Impossibility of) Deliberation-Consistent Social Choice

    Tsuyoshi ADACHI, Hun CHUNG, Takashi KURIHARA

    American Journal of Political Science    2023.05  [Refereed]

    Authorship:Lead author, Corresponding author

    DOI

    Scopus

  • Prospect Utilitarianism and the Original Position

    Hun CHUNG

    Journal of the American Philosophical Association    2022.11  [Refereed]

    Authorship:Lead author, Corresponding author

    DOI

  • Chain Connection, Close-Knitness, and the Difference Principle

    Hun Chung

    The Journal of Politics   84 ( 4 ) 2305 - 2311  2022.10  [Refereed]

    Authorship:Lead author, Corresponding author

    DOI

    Scopus

  • When utilitarianism dominates justice as fairness: an economic defence of utilitarianism from the original position

    Hun Chung

    Economics and Philosophy     1 - 26  2022.08  [Refereed]

    Authorship:Lead author, Corresponding author

     View Summary

    Abstract

    The original position together with the veil of ignorance have served as one of the main methodological devices to justify principles of distributive justice. Most approaches to this topic have primarily focused on the single person decision-theoretic aspect of the original position. This paper, in contrast, will directly model the basic structure and the economic agents therein to project the economic consequences and social outcomes generated either by utilitarianism or Rawls’s two principles of justice. It will be shown that when the differences in people’s productive abilities are sufficiently great, utilitarianism dominates Rawls’s two principles of justice by providing a higher level of overall well-being to every member of society. Whenever this is the case, the parties can rely on the Principle of Dominance (which is a direct implication of instrumental rationality) to choose utilitarianism over Rawls’s two principles of justice. Furthermore, when this is so, utilitarianism is free from one of its most fundamental criticisms that it ‘does not take seriously the distinction between persons’ (Rawls 1971 [1999]: 24).

    DOI

  • Locke’s State of Nature and Its Epistemic Deficit: A Game-Theoretic Analysis

    Hun Chung

    SYNTHESE    2022.04  [Refereed]

    Authorship:Lead author, Last author, Corresponding author

    DOI

    Scopus

  • Book Reviews: Modern Social Contract Theory (by Albert Weale)

    Hun Chung

    Journal of Economic Literature   59 ( 1 ) 285 - 287  2021.03  [Invited]

    Authorship:Lead author, Corresponding author

    DOI

  • On Choosing the Difference Principle Behind the Veil of Ignorance

    Hun Chung

    The Journal of Philosophy   118 ( 8 ) 450 - 463  2021  [Refereed]

    Authorship:Lead author

     View Summary

    In a recently published paper entitled, “The Difference Principle Would Not Be Chosen behind the Veil of Ignorance”, Johan E. Gustafsson attempts to demonstrate that the parties in Rawls’s original position would not choose the difference principle. Gustafsson’s main strategy was to show that Rawls’s difference principle in both of its ex post and ex ante versions imply counterintuitive distributional prescriptions in a few contrived examples. The purpose of this paper is to precisely demonstrate exactly how Gustafsson’s arguments have failed to show that the difference principle would not be chosen behind the veil of ignorance.

    DOI

    Scopus

    2
    Citation
    (Scopus)
  • Rawls's Self-Defeat: A Formal Analysis

    Hun Chung

    Erkenntnis   85 ( 5 ) 1169 - 1197  2020.10  [Refereed]

    Authorship:Lead author, Last author, Corresponding author

  • Diversity and rights: a social choice-theoretic analysis of the possibility of public reason

    Hun Chung, Brian Kogelmann

    Synthese   197 ( 2 ) 839 - 865  2020.02  [Refereed]

    Authorship:Lead author, Corresponding author

    DOI

    Scopus

    3
    Citation
    (Scopus)
  • A Formal Theory of Democratic Deliberation

    Hun Chung

    American Political Science Review   114 ( 1 ) 14 - 35  2020.02  [Refereed]

    Authorship:Lead author

  • The Well-Ordered Society Under Crisis: A Formal Analysis of Public Reason vs. Convergence Discourse

    Hun Chung

    American Journal of Political Science   64 ( 1 ) 82 - 101  2020.01  [Refereed]

    Authorship:Lead author

  • THE INSTABILITY OF JOHN RAWLS'S “STABILITY FOR THE RIGHT REASONS”

    Hun Chung

    Episteme   16 ( 1 ) 1 - 17  2019.03

    Authorship:Lead author, Last author, Corresponding author

     View Summary

    <title>ABSTRACT</title>John Rawls's most mature notion of political order is “stability for the right reasons.” Stability for the right reasons is the kind of political order that Rawls hoped a well-ordered society could ideally achieve. In this paper, I demonstrate through the tools of modern game theory, the<italic>instability</italic>of “stability for the right reasons.” Specifically, I will show that a well-ordered society can completely destabilize by the introduction of an arbitrarily small number of non-compliers whenever individuals fail to achieve full common knowledge ever so slightly.

    DOI

    Scopus

    7
    Citation
    (Scopus)
  • THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF LIBERAL RIGHTS IN A DIVERSE WORLD

    Hun Chung

    Economics and Philosophy   35 ( 1 ) 1 - 27  2019.03

     View Summary

    <title>Abstract:</title>A defining characteristic of a liberal democratic society is the assignment of basic rights and liberties that protect each person's private sphere. Hence, social choice made in a liberal democratic society must at the very least be consistent with the exercise of each person's basic rights. However, even when everybody agrees to this basic principle, there could still remain irreconcilable social conflict and disagreement when it comes to the specific assignment of basic rights. This is especially so in a pluralistic society where there is a clash among radically different and incompatible world views. Philosophers have now started to focus on this issue, which now goes by the name 'perspectival diversity'. This paper extends the basic social choice theoretic framework of liberal rights by enlarging the domain to include<italic>individual perspectives</italic>alongside individual preferences. In this new framework, different individuals are able to<italic>see</italic>or<italic>perceive</italic>the same social alternative differently based on their own unique perspectives. The formal results of the paper imply that generating a viable social choice that is consistent with the assignment of basic rights can quickly break down once we start to increase the level of perspectival diversity in society.

    DOI

  • Directional Equilibria

    CHUNG, Hun, John DUGGAN

    Journal of Theoretical Politics   30 ( 3 ) 272 - 305  2018.07  [Refereed]

  • Prospect utilitarianism: A better alternative to sufficientarianism

    Hun Chung

    PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES   174 ( 8 ) 1911 - 1933  2017.08  [Refereed]

     View Summary

    Ever since the publication of Harry Frankfurt's "Equality as a Moral Ideal" (Ethics 98(1):21-43, 1987), the doctrine of sufficiency has attracted great attention among both ethical theorists and political philosophers. The doctrine of sufficiency (or sufficientarianism) consists of two main theses: the positive thesis states that it is morally important for people to have enough; and the negative thesis states that once everybody has enough, relative inequality has absolutely no moral importance. Many political philosophers have presented different versions of sufficientarianism that retain the general spirit of what Frankfurt had proposed in his seminal work. However, all of these different versions of sufficientarianism suffer from two critical problems: (a) they fail to give right answers to lifeboat situations, and (b) they fail to provide continuous ethical judgments. In this paper, I show a version of utilitarianism that solves these problems while retaining the major attractions of sufficientarianism. I call it "prospect utilitarianism." In addition, I show that prospect utilitarianism can avoid standard objections to utilitarianism and has aspects that can appeal to both prioritarians and egalitarians as well.

    DOI

    Scopus

    6
    Citation
    (Scopus)
  • A Game-Theoretic Solution to the Inconsistency between Thrasymachus and Glaucon in Plato's Republic

    Hun Chung

    Ethical Perspectives   23 ( 3 ) 383 - 410  2016.09  [Refereed]

     View Summary

    In Book I of Plato's Republic, Thrasymachus contends two major claims: (i) justice is the advantage of the stronger, and (ii) justice is the good of the other, while injustice is to one's own profit and advantage. In the beginning of Book II, Glaucon self-proclaims that he will be representing Thrasymachus' claims in a better way, and provides a story of how justice has originated from a state-of-nature situation. However, Glaucon's story of the origin of justice has an implication that justice is the advantage of the weak rather than the stronger. This is inconsistent with Thrasymachus' first claim, which states that justice is the advantage of the stronger. This is a problem for Glaucon since he is supposed to be representing Thrasymachus' original claims in a better way. In the present article, I provide two solutions to this puzzle with the help of elementary game theory.

    DOI

    Scopus

    1
    Citation
    (Scopus)
  • PSYCHOLOGICAL EGOISM AND HOBBES

    Hun Chung

    FILOZOFIA   71 ( 3 ) 197 - 208  2016.03  [Refereed]

     View Summary

    Many commentators think that Hobbes was committed to psychological egoism. Psychological egoism is a theory of human psychology claiming that all human actions are ultimately motivated solely by one's own self-interest. In this paper, I argue that there are reasons to think that Hobbes was not committed to psychological egoism in any of its plausible formulations.

  • Is Harry Frankfurt's "Doctrine of Sufficiency" Sufficient?

    Hun Chung

    ORGANON F   23 ( 1 ) 50 - 71  2016  [Refereed]

     View Summary

    In his article, "Equality as a Moral Ideal", Harry Frankfurt argues against economic egalitarianism and presents what he calls the "doctrine of sufficiency." According to the doctrine of sufficiency, what is morally important is not relative economic equality, but rather, whether somebody has enough, where "having enough" is a non-comparative standard of reasonable contentment that may differ from person to person given his/her aims and circumstances. The purpose of this paper is to show that Frankfurt's original arguments in support for his doctrine of sufficiency have critical problems that Frankfurt himself does not properly recognize. In the end, I will argue that in order to solve these problems the doctrine of sufficiency cannot help but to incorporate certain prioritarian commitments commitments which many would view as implying economic egalitarianism. This is embarrassing for a doctrine whose raison detre was mainly to defeat economic egalitarianism.

  • Hobbes’s State of Nature: A Modern Bayesian Game-Theoretic Analysis

    CHUNG, Hun

    Journal of the American Philosophical Association   1 ( 3 ) 485 - 508  2015.09  [Refereed]

  • Philippa Foot’s Ethical Naturalism: A Defense

    CHUNG, Hun

    Journal of Ethics   101   101 - 135  2015.05  [Refereed]

  • Game Theory, Rational Choice Theory, and the Prisoner’s Dilemma: Some Clarifications

    CHUNG, Hun

    The Korean Journal for Philosophy of Science   17 ( 3 ) 23 - 51  2014.11  [Refereed]

  • Social Power and Systematic Luck: A Critical Analysis of Brian Barry and Keith Dowding’s Debate on Power

    CHUNG, Hun

    Korean Journal of Ethics   3 ( 2 )  2014.10  [Refereed]

  • R. M. Hare’s Reconstruction of G. E. Moore’s Open Question Argument

    CHUNG, Hun

    Korean Journal of Ethics   3 ( 1 )  2014.05  [Refereed]

  • Are Decent Non-Liberal Societies Really Non-Liberal? – A Critical Response to John Rawls’s The Law of Peoples

    CHUNG, Hun

    Journal of Philosophical Ideas   52   201 - 231  2014.05  [Refereed]

  • A Critical Analysis of Michael Smith’s Ethical Internalism”

    CHUNG, Hun

    Journal of Ethics   95   85 - 105  2014.05  [Refereed]

  • UNDERSTANDING RATIONALITY IN HOBBES AND HUME

    Hun Chung

    FILOZOFIA   69 ( 8 ) 687 - 696  2014  [Refereed]

     View Summary

    Many commentators think that Hobbes was committed to an instrumental view of rationality which foreshadows that of David Hume. The Humean conception of instrumental rationality is a conjunction of the following two claims: (a) no preferences or desires can properly be said to be irrational in themselves, and (b) the role of reason or rationality can only be confined to informing the agent with true beliefs about the world, and revealing the most effective means that could satisfy the agent's current ends whatever they happen to be. In this paper, I argue that, unlike what many people think, a careful reading of Hobbes shows that he was committed to neither of these claims.

  • Firth’s Ideal Observer Theory and Its Problems

    CHUNG, Hun

    Journal of Philosophical Ideas   48   175 - 204  2013.05  [Refereed]

  • Reconsidering the Principle of Fair-Play and a Reply to Richard Arneson

    CHUNG, Hun

    CHEOLHAK: Korean Journal of Philosophy   110   231 - 279  2012.02  [Refereed]

  • Overlapping Consensus and Utilitarianism – A Reply to Samuel Scheffler

    CHUNG, Hun

    CHEOLHAK: Korean Journal of Philosophy   103   275 - 311  2010.05  [Refereed]

  • Sandel’s Republicanism-its meaning and possible problems

    CHUNG, Hun

    Philosophical Forum   34  2006  [Refereed]

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Books and Other Publications

  • How Economics Can Help Ethical Theorists

    CHUNG, Hun( Part: Contributor, Reading Ethics for the First Time)

    SNU Institute of Philosophical Research  2014

 

Syllabus

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Sub-affiliation

  • Faculty of Political Science and Economics   Graduate School of Political Science

Internal Special Research Projects

  • Chain Connection,Close-Knitness,and Rawls's Difference Principle

    2019  

     View Summary

    During the research period, I have written the paper entitled "Chain-Connection, Close-Knitness, and the Difference Principle" (same as the research project title), and this paper is now published in Journal of Politics 84 (4): 2305-2311.&nbsp;(https://doi.org/10.1086/716968) (Journal of Politics is one of the Top 3 journals in the field of Political Science.)

  • A Formal Theory of Democratic Deliberation

    2018   John Duggan

     View Summary

    [Abstract of Research Paper] Inspired by impossibility theorems of social choice theory, many democratic theorists have argued that aggregative forms of democracy cannot lend full democratic justification for the collective decisions reached. Hence, democratic theorists have turned their attention to deliberative democracy, according to which “outcomes are democratically legitimate if and only if they could be the object of a free and reasoned agreement among equals.” (Cohen 1997a: 73) However, relatively little work has been done to offer a formal theory of democratic deliberation. This paper helps fill that gap by offering a formal theory of three different modes of democratic deliberation: myopic discussion, constructive discussion, and debate. In either form of discussion, positions are considered according to an exogenous protocol and arguments applied to them, whereas in a debate, two participants who have diametrically opposed preferences take turns and propose positions with supporting reasons/arguments. We show that myopic discussion suffers from indeterminacy of long run outcomes, while constructive discussion and debate are conclusive, i.e., both forms of deliberation converge to a position that is maximally justified according to at least one reason/argument. Finally, unlike the other two modes of deliberation, debate is path independent and converges to a unique compromise position, irrespective of the initial status quo.