http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7231 2013-05-23T02:53:58Z 2013-05-23T02:53:58Z Mathers, Ananda http://hdl.handle.net/2123/9009 2013-05-15T05:53:26Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Empathy for Prinz of the “Dark Side” Authors: Mathers, Ananda Abstract: Jesse Prinz has argued that empathy plays no important role in moral judgement, and further that it has a “dark side” which renders it by and large bad for morality. This paper challenges these conclusions and demonstrates that it is possible to meet Prinz’s objections by adopting a conceptualisation of empathy which combines elements of Martin Hoffman’s process-focussed definition of empathy with Michael Slote’s agent-centred approach to empathy’s functional role within morality. Beyond proving resilient in the face of Prinz’s attacks, such a conceptualisation of empathy also displays a degree of explanatory usefulness both within Prinz’s own brand of moral sentimentalism and the moral psychology literature more generally. Far from being bad for morality, empathy would appear to be a useful ally to a robust moral sentimentalism.

2012-01-01T00:00:00Z Taylor, Alistair http://hdl.handle.net/2123/9008 2013-03-28T15:52:31Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Neo-pragmatist accounts of truth: Rorty's "ethnocentrism" and Putnam's "internal realism" Authors: Taylor, Alistair Abstract: This work will discuss a recent series of public exchanges that took place between the two founding figures of neopragmatism, Richard Rorty and Hilary Putnam, regarding truth and its relation to justification. Like the classical pragmatists Peirce, James, and Dewey, both Rorty and Putnam argue that we should refrain from taking the term “true” to denote a successful correspondence between a proposition and a single, fixed, absolute reality. Given this substantial common ground, their exchanges provide a direct insight into a tension that lies right at the heart of neopragmatism. Both attempt to interpret truth as importantly related to the prospect of justification amongst peers, without simply providing a reductive definition of “true” as synonymous with “whatever happens to be the contemporary consensus.” Rorty and Putnam thus attempt to navigate an approach to the notion of truth that avoids the problems associated with “absolute” theories of truth on one extreme, and utter “relativism” about truth on the other. In this essay I will attempt to clarify the points of compatibility and points of departure between Rorty and Putnam’s views by closely examining the debates that occurred between the two.

2012-01-01T00:00:00Z Lees, Adam http://hdl.handle.net/2123/9004 2013-03-25T15:52:37Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: A Naturalistic Theory of Perceptual Representation Authors: Lees, Adam Abstract: I propose a theory of representation concerning the perceptual events that are posited and studied by the cognitive and neuro-sciences. The theory is intended to help explain relationships between the perceptual and executive systems, and to place metasemantic constraints on future accounts of the semantics of natural languages. I begin by setting out desiderata for the theory. In particular, I intend the theory to be naturalistic at least in accordance with a specified kind of epistemological naturalism, to give priority to explaining the properties of the representing events themselves rather than their contents, to avoid the widespread lack of clarity among similar theories when it comes to identifying contents, to apply to human-like systems with executive functions and language, to be compatible with constraints imposed by natural selection, and to posit narrow contents that are capable of figuring in a certain kind of autonomous causal explanation. The suggested theory for meeting these desiderata is based on a definition of perceptual states by ceteris paribus effects on the motor control system, which contrasts with the orthodox description of tokened perceptual states as carrying information about their external causes. I then propose that the representational content of a perceptual event is specified by the motor control system effects that define the state it tokens, but only when this event affects the executive systems. Intuitively, these representations are constructions out of the behavioural dispositions that are mediated by perceptual events, such that these constructions are used by the executive systems in the trialling of potential behavioural outputs. While this behavioural model theory of perceptual representation satisfies the desiderata, I argue that it warrants scepticism about manifest objects and their properties. I conclude with a brief discussion of the implications of the theory.

2012-01-01T00:00:00Z Hughes, Emily Joy http://hdl.handle.net/2123/9003 2013-03-25T15:52:38Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Thrown Impossibility: The Ontological Structure of Despair Authors: Hughes, Emily Joy Abstract: This thesis is a phenomenological analysis of the ontological structure of despair. It begins with an analysis of Heidegger’s work on ‘Affectedness’ whereby through the critique given by Ratcliffe it is seen that moods are primordial and condition the way the world can matter to the subject. It then expatiates the phenomenology of despair where despair is ‘lived impossibility as such.’ Explicating the phenomenology of despair then involves subjecting Freud’s essay ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ to a Heideggerian hermeneutic analysis as discussed by Kristeva and Foucault in particular and also Radden more generally. This phenomenology of despair is then drawn into comparison with Heideggerian ‘Anxiety’ and it is concluded that despair is comparable to Heideggerian anxiety when it is subject to a negative existential reduction as put forward by Dreyfus. The final section of this paper then maps the phenomenology of despair onto the temporality of Heidegger’s care structure, ultimately explicating the ontological structure of despair. This involves a close analysis of the radical diminishing of Heideggerian ‘Projection’ or ‘Understanding’ as is reflected in the radical disruption to temporality that occurs in despair, particularly the diminishing of the futural self- the most profound consequence of which is the loss of the capacity to project towards one’s ownmost possibility, that of death. It is argues that death becomes impossible which then means that life itself becomes impossible.

2012-01-01T00:00:00Z Hariharan, Jeevan http://hdl.handle.net/2123/9002 2013-03-25T15:52:37Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: FREE WILL HUNTING: A RECONCEPTUALISATION OF VOLUNTARINESS, DURESS AND NECESSITY USING ARISTOTLE’S ETHICS Authors: Hariharan, Jeevan Abstract: Jurisprudential philosophers concerned with the question of legal responsibility will be familiar with the problematic category of cases where conduct which would otherwise attract liability is committed as a result of threats or dire circumstances. When these situations arise in the context of criminal law, the traditional approach has been to invoke the defences of duress and necessity. As it stands, however, the operation of these concepts seems to be fraught with an underlying difficulty; namely, that the core theoretical basis for duress and necessity overlaps with the principle of voluntariness by relying on common tests such as whether one’s free will is overborne. In chapter one, I outline this problem and its implications, arguing that attempts to circumvent the issue are unsuccessful because they are based on an arbitrary distinction between physical and moral involuntariness. The rest of the thesis is devoted to the claim that a tenable basis for reconceptualisation can be found in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Eudemian Ethics. In chapter three, I examine Aristotle’s writings on these issues, overcoming difficulties with the texts to develop an Aristotelian theory of voluntary action. In chapter four, I apply these considerations to the current law, demonstrating how an Aristotelian approach better conforms with the underlying rationale for the voluntariness principle and leads to increased clarity for the law relating to duress and necessity.

2012-01-01T00:00:00Z Chua, David http://hdl.handle.net/2123/9001 2013-03-25T15:52:36Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Metaphysical accounts of modality: A comparative evaluation of Lewisian and neo-Aristotelian modal metaphysics Authors: Chua, David Abstract: In this essay I comparatively evaluate two realist metaphysical accounts of modality: David Lewis’ (1986) genuine modal realism (GMR), and neo-Aristotelian modal realism (AMR) as put forth by Alexander Pruss (2011). GMR offers a reductive analysis of modal claims of possibility and necessity in terms of claims quantifying over concrete worlds and counterparts, and is in this way committed the existence of a plurality of concrete worlds other than the actual world; AMR, on the other hand, offers an analysis of modal claims in terms of claims about the causal powers of existing objects in the actual world, and identifies these powers and powerful properties as the truthmakers for modal truths of possibility and necessity. I consider two objections to GMR; firstly, that it leads to ethical paradoxes, and secondly, that the counterparts it offers as truthmakers for modal claims are fundamentally irrelevant to the de re modal properties of objects. I argue that AMR bears a prima facie advantage over GMR by reason of its avoidance of those two objections, before evaluating two objections faced by AMR itself, namely, that its analysis is not genuinely explanatory, and secondly, that the ontology of powers fails to account for the full range of metaphysical possibility. I argue that AMR has the resources to avoid these objections, that AMR on balance is more attractive, and that therefore AMR is worthy of serious consideration by advocates of GMR. References LEWIS, DAVID K. (1986). On the plurality of worlds. New York, NY, USA: B. Blackwell. PRUSS, ALEXANDER R. (2011). Actuality, Possibility, and Worlds. London: Continuum.

2012-01-01T00:00:00Z Norton, James Peter http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7968 2013-02-24T21:30:57Z 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Moral Discourse: Error-Ridden or Relatively Defensible? Authors: Norton, James Peter

2011-01-01T00:00:00Z Mendelsohn, Joshua Aidan http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7967 2011-12-08T16:00:43Z 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Objects, objectivity and idealism: Robert Brandom's analytic Hegelianism Authors: Mendelsohn, Joshua Aidan

2011-01-01T00:00:00Z Kennedy, Roderick George Jacob http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7966 2011-12-08T16:00:44Z 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Commonwealth, Conversion and Consensus: An Examination of the Medieval Icelandic Free State and Political Liberalism Authors: Kennedy, Roderick George Jacob

2011-01-01T00:00:00Z