Alan Tapper
Biographic Data
| ID | 2034764 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alan Tapper |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alan |
| FAMILY NAME | Tapper |
| SIGNATURE | TAPPER A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Curtin University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2639-7400 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 21 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Joseph Priestley and the Argument from Design
Although Joseph Priestley was notorious for rejecting much of orthodox Christianity and replacing it with a materialistic Unitarianism, in another respect he was an orthodox theist of his time in that he passionately upheld the Argument from Design. The Argument from Design was the heart of his “rational religion”. He contended that natural order, especially biological order, could only be successfully explained by intentional agency. At the time…
The performance of the Australian welfare system in a time of neoliberal economic reform
“Neoliberalism”, both as a body of theory and as a set of policies and practices, is commonly seen as unsympathetic, even antagonistic, to the welfare state. In the period from the mid‐1980s to the global financial crisis of 2007–08, Australia underwent very considerable “neoliberal” economic policy reform. What happened to the Australian welfare system and to Australia's socioeconomic egalitarianism in this period? To shed light on that question…
Income, wealth and economic inequality in Australia
Economic well‐being and economic inequality are usually quantified using income measurements of various sorts. Such analyses overlook the contribution of wealth – a potentially very significant factor. In this article, we integrate wealth and income data to provide a more comprehensive accounting of economic well‐being and economic inequality in Australia. Using the Australian Bureau of Statistics Household Expenditure Survey microdata for 2009–2…
Economic inequality in Australia: A reassessment
This article reviews and analyses the evidence on the distribution of income and wealth in Australia since the 1960s. A number of scholars – most prominently among them Thomas Piketty – suggest that inequality has been increasing across the advanced capitalist world. Kuznets’ benign picture of an ‘inverted u-curve’ depicting declining inequality in modern industrial society is replaced with an altogether different and potentially quite alarming o…
The treatment of families in the Australian welfare state, 1984 to 2010
This paper uses Australian Bureau of Statistics' fiscal incidence figures to track trends in the treatment of families with children in the Australian welfare state across the period 1984 to 2010. Our four main findings are that: sole parent families gained while couple families made no net gain; there was no growth in ‘middle class welfare‘; couple families are slightly better off than elderly households in terms of their final incomes, but cons…
Philosophy and Ethics in Western Australian Secondary Schools
The introduction of Philosophy and Ethics to the Western Australian Certificate of Education courses in 2008 brought philosophy into the Western Australian secondary school curriculum for the first time. How philosophy came to be included is part of a larger story about the commitment and perseverance of a relatively small number of Australian educators and their belief in the value of introducing philosophical communities of inquiry into school …
Meaning and Morality: Essays on the Philosophy of Julius Kovesi
Julius Kovesi's Moral Notions (1967) was a startlingly original contribution to moral philosophy and theory of meaning. After initial positive reviews Kovesi's book was largely forgotten. Nevertheless, it continued to have an enduring influence on a number of philosophers and theologians some of whom have contributed to this volume. The original essays collected here critique, analyze, deepen and extend the work of Kovesi. The book will be of par…
Meaning and morality: Essays on the philosophy of Julius Kovesi
The Australian Welfare State and the Neoliberalism Thesis
This paper uses Australian Bureau of Statistics fiscal incidence figures to track trends in the Australian welfare state across the period 1984 to 2004. Its general aim is to assess the proposition that recent governments have been ‘grave-diggers’ of the welfare state in Australia. More specifically, it tracks the overall level of social expenditure at the household level and the degree of vertical redistribution between households. Since the per…
Benefits of Collaborative Philosophical Inquiry in Schools
In the past decade well-designed research studies have shown that the practice of collaborative philosophical inquiry in schools can have marked cognitive and social benefits. Student academic performance improves, and so too does the social dimension of schooling. These findings are timely, as many countries in Asia and the Pacific are now contemplating introducing Philosophy into their curricula. This paper gives a brief history of collaborativ…
Reid and Priestley on Method and the Mind
Reid said little in his published writings about his contemporary Joseph Priestley, but his unpublished work is largely devoted to the latter. Much of Priestley's philosophical thought — his materialism, his determinism, his Lockean scientific realism - was as antithetical to Reid's as was Hume's philosophy in a very different way. Neither Reid nor Priestley formulated a full response to the other. Priestley's response to Reid came very early in …
Economic inequality in Australia: A reassessment
This article reviews and analyses the evidence on the distribution of income and wealth in Australia since the 1960s. A number of scholars – most prominently among them Thomas Piketty – suggest that inequality has been increasing across the advanced capitalist world. Kuznets’ benign picture of an ‘inverted u-curve’ depicting declining inequality in modern industrial society is replaced with an altogether different and potentially quite alarming o…
The Australian Welfare State and the Neoliberalism Thesis
This paper uses Australian Bureau of Statistics fiscal incidence figures to track trends in the Australian welfare state across the period 1984 to 2004. Its general aim is to assess the proposition that recent governments have been ‘grave-diggers’ of the welfare state in Australia. More specifically, it tracks the overall level of social expenditure at the household level and the degree of vertical redistribution between households. Since the per…
Benefits of Collaborative Philosophical Inquiry in Schools
In the past decade well-designed research studies have shown that the practice of collaborative philosophical inquiry in schools can have marked cognitive and social benefits. Student academic performance improves, and so too does the social dimension of schooling. These findings are timely, as many countries in Asia and the Pacific are now contemplating introducing Philosophy into their curricula. This paper gives a brief history of collaborativ…
The treatment of families in the Australian welfare state, 1984 to 2010
This paper uses Australian Bureau of Statistics' fiscal incidence figures to track trends in the treatment of families with children in the Australian welfare state across the period 1984 to 2010. Our four main findings are that: sole parent families gained while couple families made no net gain; there was no growth in ‘middle class welfare‘; couple families are slightly better off than elderly households in terms of their final incomes, but cons…
Reid and Priestley on Method and the Mind
Reid said little in his published writings about his contemporary Joseph Priestley, but his unpublished work is largely devoted to the latter. Much of Priestley's philosophical thought — his materialism, his determinism, his Lockean scientific realism - was as antithetical to Reid's as was Hume's philosophy in a very different way. Neither Reid nor Priestley formulated a full response to the other. Priestley's response to Reid came very early in …
Benefits of Collaborative Philosophical Inquiry in Schools
In the past decade well-designed research studies have shown that the practice of collaborative philosophical inquiry in schools can have marked cognitive and social benefits. Student academic performance improves, and so too does the social dimension of schooling. These findings are timely, as many countries in Asia and the Pacific are now contemplating introducing Philosophy into their curricula. This paper gives a brief history of collaborativ…
Meaning and Morality: Essays on the Philosophy of Julius Kovesi
Julius Kovesi's Moral Notions (1967) was a startlingly original contribution to moral philosophy and theory of meaning. After initial positive reviews Kovesi's book was largely forgotten. Nevertheless, it continued to have an enduring influence on a number of philosophers and theologians some of whom have contributed to this volume. The original essays collected here critique, analyze, deepen and extend the work of Kovesi. The book will be of par…
Meaning and morality: Essays on the philosophy of Julius Kovesi
The Australian Welfare State and the Neoliberalism Thesis
This paper uses Australian Bureau of Statistics fiscal incidence figures to track trends in the Australian welfare state across the period 1984 to 2004. Its general aim is to assess the proposition that recent governments have been ‘grave-diggers’ of the welfare state in Australia. More specifically, it tracks the overall level of social expenditure at the household level and the degree of vertical redistribution between households. Since the per…
Philosophy and Ethics in Western Australian Secondary Schools
The introduction of Philosophy and Ethics to the Western Australian Certificate of Education courses in 2008 brought philosophy into the Western Australian secondary school curriculum for the first time. How philosophy came to be included is part of a larger story about the commitment and perseverance of a relatively small number of Australian educators and their belief in the value of introducing philosophical communities of inquiry into school …
The treatment of families in the Australian welfare state, 1984 to 2010
This paper uses Australian Bureau of Statistics' fiscal incidence figures to track trends in the treatment of families with children in the Australian welfare state across the period 1984 to 2010. Our four main findings are that: sole parent families gained while couple families made no net gain; there was no growth in ‘middle class welfare‘; couple families are slightly better off than elderly households in terms of their final incomes, but cons…
Economic inequality in Australia: A reassessment
This article reviews and analyses the evidence on the distribution of income and wealth in Australia since the 1960s. A number of scholars – most prominently among them Thomas Piketty – suggest that inequality has been increasing across the advanced capitalist world. Kuznets’ benign picture of an ‘inverted u-curve’ depicting declining inequality in modern industrial society is replaced with an altogether different and potentially quite alarming o…
Income, wealth and economic inequality in Australia
Economic well‐being and economic inequality are usually quantified using income measurements of various sorts. Such analyses overlook the contribution of wealth – a potentially very significant factor. In this article, we integrate wealth and income data to provide a more comprehensive accounting of economic well‐being and economic inequality in Australia. Using the Australian Bureau of Statistics Household Expenditure Survey microdata for 2009–2…
Joseph Priestley and the Argument from Design
Although Joseph Priestley was notorious for rejecting much of orthodox Christianity and replacing it with a materialistic Unitarianism, in another respect he was an orthodox theist of his time in that he passionately upheld the Argument from Design. The Argument from Design was the heart of his “rational religion”. He contended that natural order, especially biological order, could only be successfully explained by intentional agency. At the time…
The performance of the Australian welfare system in a time of neoliberal economic reform
“Neoliberalism”, both as a body of theory and as a set of policies and practices, is commonly seen as unsympathetic, even antagonistic, to the welfare state. In the period from the mid‐1980s to the global financial crisis of 2007–08, Australia underwent very considerable “neoliberal” economic policy reform. What happened to the Australian welfare system and to Australia's socioeconomic egalitarianism in this period? To shed light on that question…
Political science (7 works) · Economics (5 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Law (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Sociology (4 works) · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism (3 works) · Inequality (3 works)