https://hdl.handle.net/2123/7231 2026-06-09T06:30:33Z 2026-06-09T06:30:33Z Ritchie, Isabel https://hdl.handle.net/2123/33959 2026-04-22T05:25:42Z 2025-06-02T00:00:00Z

The Essence of Friendship: A Generous Interpretation of Aristotle Ritchie, Isabel This paper revisits Aristotle’s account of friendship in The Nicomachean Ethics. I argue that Aristotle’s broad, detailed framework offers us a cogent characterisation of friendship that contemporary philosophical accounts are often lacking. Aristotle provides a foundational understanding of what friendship is, how it is created, and why it can take different forms. Yet, the theory is often dismissed in light of its seemingly contradictory or confusing elements. By addressing key concerns about Aristotle’s argument, such as the ‘perfect’ nature of essential friendships, and the number of friends one should maintain, I show that a charitable reading of Aristotelian philosophy continues to offer relevant insights that are applicable to modern thought and discourse.

2025-06-02T00:00:00Z Yin, Chenglong https://hdl.handle.net/2123/33707 2026-04-22T05:23:25Z 2025-03-18T00:00:00Z

Technē without Archē: Foucault’s Last Decade Yin, Chenglong In this paper I use the concept of technē to argue that Foucault’s last decade is a unified program of research, offering a new interpretation of freedom in his later work. Whereas much of the existing scholarship treats Foucault’s political philosophy as distinct from his late ethical explorations of Ancient Greek philosophy, I argued that his critiques of modern political institutions and his studies of ancient ethical ‘technologies of the self’ represent a continuous interrogation of, and response to, the Platonic conception of political governance as both soulcraft (technē) and a form of ruling (archē). In contrast to interpretations that dismiss Foucault's late conception of freedom as mere lifestyle choices, I argue that it is best understood as a ‘technē without archē’—a critical practice of shaping one’s subjectivity that resists being constrained by the existing political reality.

2025-03-18T00:00:00Z Anderson, Lachlan https://hdl.handle.net/2123/32169 2026-04-22T05:25:50Z 2024-02-02T00:00:00Z

Disobedient Discourse: Mill, ContraPoints, and the Limits of Free Speech Norms Anderson, Lachlan In this paper, I explore contemporary disagreement regarding protests against speakers deemed regressive or bigoted by progressive activists. I do so by examining the rationale, scope, and operation of free speech norms (i.e. non-legal standards that require people to respond to speech with tolerance). I specifically focus on the free speech norms defended by John Stuart Mill in his essay ‘On Liberty’. I contend that Mill’s free speech norms are well-justified and extend to protect the speech of regressive bigots in almost all circumstances. However, I also draw upon two arguments from Natalie Wynn’s video essay ‘The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling’ to contend that Millian free speech norms present serious problems for marginalised people. I attempt to resolve this tension between Mill’s well-justified norms and their problematic implications for marginalised people by developing a concept of ‘disobedient discourse’ that is modelled after John Rawls’ account of civil disobedience and allows for free speech norms to be violated in circumstances of longstanding injustice.

2024-02-02T00:00:00Z McGuire, Gabriel https://hdl.handle.net/2123/32168 2026-04-22T05:23:23Z 2024-02-01T00:00:00Z

Locked Up & Locked Out: Incarceration & Children's Interests McGuire, Gabriel In this thesis I question the justifiability of the current practice of juvenile incarceration. I argue that children have rights borne out of both extrinsic and intrinsic interests. I suggest that the detained child's interests in development allow us to justify incarceration as a means of moral education. However, I conclude that the current practice of juvenile incarceration--as evidenced in Queensland--violates the detained child's rights to carefreeness, connection, and future autonomy. In doing so, the justifiability and permissibility of the practice is undermined.

2024-02-01T00:00:00Z Lewis, Hamish https://hdl.handle.net/2123/32113 2026-04-22T05:23:23Z 2024-01-19T00:00:00Z

Does Sexual Objectification Make Erotic Love Impossible? Lewis, Hamish Theories about the nature of sexual objectification and its relationship to heterosexual erotic love have largely failed to express why objectification is philosophically important, the relationship between gender and objectification and what we can do to get rid of objectification. This is because these theories understand sexual objectification as a morally harmful attitude arising in perception. I use the framework of social ontology to propose that we should also think about objectification as the imposition of the function ‘sexual object’ on social categories like ‘women.’ This is ‘institutional objectification.’ This approach reveals that institutional objectification is philosophically important insofar as it undermines the possibility of ethical erotic love between men and women. It also reveals that we have a moral duty to reform social categories that are subject to institutional objectification. This duty is especially pressing on proponents of heterosexual erotic love. Unfortunately, many feminist strategies fall short of meeting this duty, partially because they involve no direct intervention in the content of our social categories. Thus, I argue that we need to meet the moral duty to social category reformation by allowing for the elaboration of sexual difference. This approach represents the beginnings of a sufficient strategy to make ethical heterosexual erotic love possible.

2024-01-19T00:00:00Z Alafaci, Christian https://hdl.handle.net/2123/24675 2026-04-22T05:25:49Z 2021-03-18T00:00:00Z

Vagueness, Identity, and Quantum Objects Alafaci, Christian While classical accounts of identity (‘classical’ here pertaining to both logics and physics) are generally well understood, the advent of quantum theory, specifically quantum statistics, has cast shadow over these conceptions. Dealing with the consequently surfacing problems is a philosophically rich and interesting enterprise. I begin this thesis by providing an exegesis of the roles played by, and features of, identity in logics, classical physics, and quantum physics. Therein I consider how under a quantal description of reality, classical notions of identity and individuality break down. In the second chapter, I address how this problem has launched an arc of thought in analytic metaphysics and formal philosophy motivating the development of non-standard formal frameworks with which philosophical sense can be made of quantal objects. Among these, I explore and critically evaluate quaset theory, quasi-set theory, and non-reflexive Schr¨odinger logics, identifying some significant problems with quaset theory that arise in defining cardinality and later, pointing out a problem with Schr¨odinger logics in their modelling of the continuity between quantal and classical treatments of the world. The queer character of identity in the quantal regime motivates a turn to vagueness which I introduce in the third chapter, providing a brief outline of vagueness and the sorites paradox. Further, I reflect on the fundamental nature of vagueness, outlining and evaluating the semantic and ontic conceptions thereof. In the final chapter, I proceed to explicate and assess notions that identity and quantal objects can be vague. I shall discuss accounts according to which the vagueness of identity and quantum objects is posited as a feature of nature emerging in quantum systems — the ontic vagueness of identity — finding that these ideas are flawed and/or rely on misinterpretations of vagueness. Finally, I present an argument which suggests how the vagueness of identity can arise as an artifact of the differing treatments of identity in the quantal and classical regimes in which the vagueness involved can be semantic rather than ontic.

2021-03-18T00:00:00Z Tighe, Alexander https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19006 2026-04-22T05:25:43Z 2018-01-01T00:00:00Z

The Philosophy of Human Rights: Its Role in Global Justice. What can we learn from a clash between a philosopher and an historian? Tighe, Alexander What is the role of philosophy in the human rights project?4 And what is the role of human rights in creating a better world? These are the questions at the core of a dispute between the philosopher John Tasioulas and the historian Samuel Moyn, although it takes considerable work to see past the cross-talk and arrive at this core. In this paper I will show that disentangling the arguments of Moyn and Tasioulas is a fruitful task that lights a path towards advancing both human rights and global justice. Specifically, I will show that while human rights play a crucial role in bettering the world, it is in the interests of global justice for that role to be strictly delimited. Philosophers of human rights are necessary for this process of delimitation. The irony is that Moyn, instead of discrediting philosophers of human rights, actually helps us to better understand the urgency of their work.

2018-01-01T00:00:00Z McKenna Travis https://hdl.handle.net/2123/18837 2026-04-22T05:25:50Z 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z

HILARY PUTNAM AND CONCEPTUAL RELATIVITY McKenna Travis First lines of the Introduction (as abstract not provided): In The Many Faces of Realism, Hilary Putnam suggests that although the phenomenon of conceptual relativity has become pervasive in contemporary scientific practice, “contemporary logicians and meaning theorists generally philosophize as if it did not exist.”2 Putnam suggests that since the end of the nineteenth century, modern scientists have begun to take note of a variety of ‘non-classical’ phenomena, in particular the idea that “there are ways of describing what are (in some way) the ‘same facts’ which are (in some way) ‘equivalent’ but also (in some way) ‘incompatible’.”3 Rather than concluding that we are presented in such situations with a factual contradiction between two competing descriptions that must be decided one way or the other, Putnam urges us instead to recognise the way in which the employment of different concepts at a fundamental level can generate incompatible descriptions of the same phenomena that are, in some sense, equivalent.

2017-01-01T00:00:00Z GIDNEY, PADRAIC XAVIER https://hdl.handle.net/2123/18835 2026-04-22T05:25:49Z 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z

The Moral Status of Whole Brain Emulations GIDNEY, PADRAIC XAVIER First lines of the Introduction (as abstract not provided): Artificial Intelligence is going to radically change our world; the only real question is by how much. A number of prominent figures believe that current AI research might initiate a so-called technological singularity - a period where intelligent machines design even more intelligent machines, setting off an exponentially accelerating cascade of advancement whose end result, a superintelligence, would be “the last invention that man need ever make” (Good 1965). However, even for those who dismiss such singularity talk as hyperbolic sci-fi nonsense, the fact that we’re on the cusp of an AI revolution - and that society is going to look very different once it’s over - seems undeniable. Already AI systems are changing how we eat , how 1 we transport people and goods2, how we diagnose and treat illnesses3, and how we wage war4. They are replacing and outperforming humans in a plethora of tasks, many of which were once thought to require a uniquely human “instinct”5, and their scope of application only looks to be increasing.

2017-01-01T00:00:00Z Sternhell, Robert https://hdl.handle.net/2123/18836 2026-04-22T05:25:49Z 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z

Can we Build a Superintelligence Without Being Superintelligent? Sternhell, Robert If we create an entity of greater intelligence to us, a superintelligence, it has the possibility to explode in intelligence, creating more and more intelligent entities. If the intelligence explosion argument holds, then the most important step to developing a powerful superintelligence is the development of the first superintelligence. This paper presents objections to the possibility of humans developing this first superintelligence. I argue that this is because we lack required knowledge about them, due to our epistemic position of not being superintelligent. I engage primarily with arguments from David Chalmers and Nick Bostrom about what superintelligences are and the nature of the intelligence explosion. I add my own detail to these areas and explore how to increase intelligence. I argue that my objections stem from flawed expectations of superintelligence such that we ought to change them. I then present my own alternative expectations for superintelligence.

2017-01-01T00:00:00Z Karavolas, Kryssa https://hdl.handle.net/2123/18834 2026-04-22T05:25:47Z 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z

Adaptive Preference Formation & Autonomy: Moving towards Respect Karavolas, Kryssa First lines of the Introduction (as abstract not provided): This thesis seeks to primarily answer the following question: are adapted preferences autonomous? In pursuing the answer of this question, I am unsurprisingly faced with two importantly related queries: firstly, what actually is adaptive preference formation? And secondly, what kind of theory of autonomy is correct and why? In the spirit of question answering, the first chapter of this thesis seeks to provide a more robust account of adaptive preference formation (herein APF), a theory which states that the preferences held by an agent can be subconsciously causally produced by the restriction of options. Through an examination of Jon Elster’s original account of the concept, and a consideration of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum’s contemporary interpretations of Elster’s account, I intend to flesh out the mechanics of APF, considering the necessary and sufficient conditions for APF. This section aims to solidify the descriptive literature of APF, with a focus on differentiating the process from other similar concepts such as character planning and internalised oppression (herein IO). Ultimately, I conclude with a variation of Elster’s account and produce my own examples of agents who hold adapted preferences (herein AP).

2017-01-01T00:00:00Z Schuessler, Katherine A. https://hdl.handle.net/2123/18833 2026-04-22T05:25:46Z 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z

“Truth is Subjectivity” in Johannes Climacus’ Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments: Developing an Understanding of Kierkegaard on Truth Schuessler, Katherine A. This thesis investigates what the statement “truth is subjectivity” means within the context of Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, the last work written under the Søren Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, Johannes Climacus. Such a statement looks prima facie like a declarative claim that all truth is relative to individual interpretation. However, read in context and under the layers of indirect communication, “truth is subjectivity” instead means to remind the individual that 1) truth is only understood through the mind of a finite person, 2) truth matters because of what subjects do with it, and 3) truth is best understood as being grounded in faith. “Truth is subjectivity” as a statement also summarizes in three words Climacus’ perspective on how an individual is to successfully pursue ethical and religious truth.

2017-01-01T00:00:00Z Brammall, Joseph https://hdl.handle.net/2123/18832 2026-04-22T05:25:47Z 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z

Retribution and the Evolution of Human Punishment Brammall, Joseph First lines of the Introduction (as abstract not provided): Social scientists have long considered punishment to be one of the most promising candidates for a ‘human universal’—a pan-cultural behaviour common across all human societies: from tribes of hunter-gatherers, to flourishing industrial civilisations.2 Due its ubiquity, punishment has, in the last decade or so, become a major topic of interest for evolutionary theorists looking to explain the origins of modern human behaviour in terms of natural selection.3 For centuries prior to this, however, philosophers have been questioning the rationale behind punishment. The main philosophical question about punishment is justificatory. Is it morally permissible to punish? And if so, why? There are two main kinds of philosophical answers to this question.4 Consequentialists maintain that punishment is justified because it brings about good consequences.5 And retributivists maintain that punishment is justified because wrongdoers inherently deserve to be punished.6 Recent psychological evidence suggests that people endorse both retributivism and consequentialism in principle. But in practice, experiments have shown people are motivated to punish solely for retributive concerns, and by strong emotional reactions to wrongdoing.7

2017-01-01T00:00:00Z Reid, Diana https://hdl.handle.net/2123/18825 2026-04-22T05:23:23Z 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z

Iris Murdoch on the role of Art in Moral Perception Reid, Diana First lines of the Introduction (as abstract not provided): Throughout her work, Iris Murdoch often touches on the intersection between ethics and aesthetics, in particular focussing on art’s role in moral perception. As a novelist and philosopher, Murdoch asks, “What is a good man like? How can we make ourselves morally better?”1 While she looks to aesthetics to address each of these questions, the literature to date has overwhelmingly focussed on the latter. Murdoch does not limit herself to the question of whether art can make us “morally better”. She also asks how art can help us understand what it is to be moral. The literature on Murdoch concerned exclusively with the intersection of aesthetics and ethics is limited. Moreover, within this literature, there is little debate about the role that art plays in moral perception. The dominant reading is that art is a vehicle through which we can achieve moral perception. On this view, critics including Anil Gomes and Elizabeth Burns argue that art, under certain conditions, can serve a practical purpose by allowing us to perceive of its subject matter morally. Therefore, looking at art can in some circumstances allow us to actually experience moral perception. Discussions here have in particular tended towards Murdoch’s role in “philosophy’s turn to literature”.2 While I do not dispute that this is a legitimate reading of Murdoch’s aesthetics, my concern is that it is not exhaustive. Rather, Murdoch’s account of the role of art in moral perception is more complex. Murdoch also argues that art plays a useful explanatory role insofar as aesthetic and moral perceptions are analogous. That is, in identifying the similarities between aesthetic and moral perception, we can come to a better understanding of what moral perception is.

2017-01-01T00:00:00Z Merrick, Casey https://hdl.handle.net/2123/18823 2026-04-22T05:23:24Z 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z

The Point of Our Words Merrick, Casey First lines of the Introduction (as abstract not provided): On the Origin of Species(1) marked a shift in the appreciation not only of species' origins, but also of species themselves. So it often is that when the source of an object or phenomenon is examined, we gain valuable insights into the thing itself. It is this kind of motivation that lies behind the philosophical interest in language acquisition. The thought is that if we can understand how children come to learn language, we will inevitably become clearer about the nature of language itself. The problem, however, arises from the fact that this relationship can go both ways, and a pre-developed theory of language can often inform our theory of language acquisition. If one goes into the project of examining language acquisition with pre-conceived notions about the nature of language itself, they are likely to ask their questions in ways which presuppose those notions. So it is, at least, with most ostensive models of language acquisition. Ostension is (roughly) the view that children come to understand language by watching adults point (or more generally gesture) towards an object, while the adult also utters the word which is associated (in some way) with that object - thereby teaching the child to associate the word with the object. It should be noted that 'object' does not refer to strictly physical 'objects' (nouns, items in the world), but rather to anything which can take the place of 'x' in a sentence like "x is the object of my attention". As such, our 'objects' can be things like tables and chairs, but also thoughts, concepts, actions, etc.

2017-01-01T00:00:00Z Welsh, Clyde https://hdl.handle.net/2123/18824 2026-04-22T05:25:46Z 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z

On Moral Hedging, the Problem of Intertheoretic Value Comparisons, and Vagueness Welsh, Clyde First lines of the Introduction (as abstract not provided): When we are confronted with decisions of moral significance, the ideal course of action, at least according to most moral philosophers, is to look to the moral theory to which we subscribe for guidance, and act in accordance with that guidance as best we can. This process functions well for those who are quite certain that their preferred moral theory is correct, or at least believe that it is sufficient to guide their actions without doubt. There are, however, those of us who are genuinely uncertain as to which moral theory is correct and most accurately tracks morality. Different moral theories make different judgments about the value of each action, the value of each outcome, whether a certain act is permissible or impermissible, or whether a certain act is merely permissible or supererogatory. Depending on which moral theory we subscribe to, the actions we are morally obliged to take may differ substantially, putting agents who are genuinely uncertain as to which moral theory is correct in a difficult situation whenever they are called to make a decision about which the moral theories to which they lend at least some credence disagree. Call this type of uncertainty normative uncertainty.

2017-01-01T00:00:00Z Hush Egerton, Anna https://hdl.handle.net/2123/18822 2026-04-22T05:25:41Z 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z

Across the borderlines - Coalitional feminist politics beyond identity and difference Hush Egerton, Anna First lines of the Introduction (as abstract not provided): Class and identity politics have long had a vexed relationship. Proponents of purist class politics have dismissed movements based on gender, race, and sexuality as needlessly divisive, or as anathema to class solidarity. For their part, feminists, critical race theorists and queer theorists have critiqued this form of class politics as unable to give voice to the multidimensional forms of oppression experienced by various social groups. While this debate has been raging for decades in both political groups and theoretical spaces, a resolution or compromise between these two extreme positions has not been established. However, to my mind, the problem is more pressing now than ever, as we reach a global point of unprecedented economic, environmental and humanitarian crises that demand of us novel and coordinated political responses. As Eleanor Robertson writes in the Spring 2017 issue of Australian literary journal Meanjin: Neoliberalism is running into its historical limits, exhausting its ability to stabilise capitalism and pacify those to whom it has doled out poverty and misery. An identity politics that is detached from material and historical questions cannot help us now; neither can faithfully repeating the left tactics of the twentieth century. The process of reconstituting something new, something that addresses the unique situation in which we find ourselves, has begun (Robertson 2017, 69). Robertson identifies the need for a new way of mediating between the polarities of class and identity. This can also be understood in a philosophical sense as a question about subjectivity - what is the relationship between politics and individual subjects' locations or experiences? What aspects of subjectivity should politics take into account? Where identity politics focuses on membership to social groups and the dynamics of power and oppression arising from such group memberships, Marxist politics provides a more material approach to thinking about the subject and her location vis-a'-vis the means of production. There is, ostensibly, a particular tension between the dominant feminist conception of identity - that espoused in theories of intersectional feminism - and a material approach to the subject of class politics. This subject resists assimilation into an intersectional framework, which treats class as only one element of oppression amongst many, and similarly into postmodern frameworks, which tend to prioritise the discursive or normative aspects of power over the material.

2017-01-01T00:00:00Z Chalmers, Adam https://hdl.handle.net/2123/16131 2026-04-22T05:23:24Z 2017-01-10T00:00:00Z

An offer you can't (rationally) refuse: systematically exploiting utility-maximisers with malicious gambles. Chalmers, Adam Decision theory aims to provide mathematical analysis of which choice one should rationally make in a given situation. Our current decision theory norms have been very successful, however, several problems (such as Pascal’s Wager, the St. Petersburg Paradox, and Pascal’s Mugging) have proven vexing for standard decision theory. In this paper, I show that these problems all share a similar structure and identify a class of problems which decision theory overvalues. I demonstrate that agents who follow current standard decision theory can be exploited and have their preferences reordered if offered decision problems of this class. I show that preference reordering is a serious problem, which motivates my search for a decision theory which is immune to exploitation. I find Dr. Nick Smith’s theory of Rationally Negligible Probabilities cannot be exploited in this way and discuss why agents should adopt it.

2017-01-10T00:00:00Z Gordon, Elena Katherine https://hdl.handle.net/2123/14599 2026-04-22T05:23:23Z 2015-01-01T00:00:00Z

Revisiting Hume’s Sceptical Crisis: an Essay on the Imagination, Ideas and Belief in Hume’s Treatise Gordon, Elena Katherine Hume began his Treatise with the bold intention to turn philosophy into a ‘science of man’. In the conclusion to Book One, however, Hume’s confidence is replaced with intense despair over the unreliability of this human science. Rather quickly, however, Hume rejects this despair, accepting that such scepticism is unwarranted and can be cured by reference to our natural associative tendencies. Many have suggested that Hume emerged from this crisis because he changed his feelings about the matter, with little justification. In this thesis, by contrast, I argue that Hume’s jump from pessimism to optimism relies upon his arguments about the ‘empire of imagination’ in the creation of our ideas and beliefs about the experienced world. The key, as I will show, is how one interprets the creative imagination, which Hume refers to as the fancy. My central hypothesis is that there are two distinct roles played by the fancy: the critical and the fictitious. The critical fancy mixes with natural causation to create ideas that represent the world as we experience it. The fictitious fancy creates ideas that do not represent the world as we experience it. In essence, my argument is that the dialectic between the two types of fancy allowed Hume to emerge from his sceptical crisis because our fundamental beliefs about the world have a basis in a particular natural function of the imagination that renders their formation possible. More specifically, the critical fancy serves to justify our beliefs about the world as we experience it.

2015-01-01T00:00:00Z Dimech, Dominic https://hdl.handle.net/2123/10245 2026-04-22T05:23:24Z 2013-01-01T00:00:00Z

A New Approach to the Coherence Theory of Truth Dimech, Dominic This paper does not argue that the coherence theory should be the accepted theory about what truth is. It aims, rather, to present the coherence theory of truth in a new light, in a way that sheds understanding on why the theory has had such prominence in the history of the philosophy of truth. Thus, although this paper is not a defence of the theory per se, it offers a charitable interpretation of it. The coherence theory has a paradoxical status in the literature, since it is considered the chief competitor with the correspondence theory and yet critiques of it are often extremely scathing. This paper is designed to reveal a better grasp and understanding of what the coherence theory’s status should be. The first important result is that coherence is a perfectly acceptable extensional description of truth, as it simply predicates something about all the true things. The second even more interesting result is that if coherentists want their theory to achieve an analysis of the meaning of truth then they must be committed to an ontological position, specifically, some form of idealism. The conclusions of this paper therefore are informative about the theoretical space that coherentists have to move in today and also hopefully illuminative of why the coherence theory has been attached to the philosophical doctrines and positions that it has been associated with historically.

2013-01-01T00:00:00Z Dempsey, Patrick https://hdl.handle.net/2123/10247 2026-04-22T05:25:49Z 2013-01-01T00:00:00Z

On the Compatibility of Presentism and our most fundamental Physics. Dempsey, Patrick It has been alleged that Presentism is incompatible with our most fundamental physics. More specifically, it is argued that this follows from the fact that Presentism and The Special Theory of Relativity are incompatible. The aim of this thesis is to assess whether the Presentist can refute this argument. I shall argue that whilst it is problematic for the Presentist to dispute the claim that their theory is incompatible with The Special Theory of Relativity, they can successfully refute the argument that their theory is therefore incompatible with our most fundamental theories of physics. My conclusion will be that, as it stands, there is no sound argument to suggest Presentism is incompatible with our most fundamental physics. This thesis provides a case study of the interplay between metaphysical and physical theories.

2013-01-01T00:00:00Z Coffman, Nicholas https://hdl.handle.net/2123/10248 2026-04-22T05:25:40Z 2013-01-01T00:00:00Z

A Free Choice to Trust: An Essay on the Necessary Requirement for Freedom of Choice in Interpersonal Trust Coffman, Nicholas In everyday life we are constantly confronted with situations that we think require us to trust. Getting on the bus, depositing a check, or simply buying food from a local street vendor all seem to call upon us to trust to some degree. The suggestion that we regularly trust in these instances is fairly noncontroversial among writers on trust. Some philosophers such as Onora O’Neill have suggested that in such routine circumstances we may often find we have no choice but to trust. Others, such as Philip Pettit, have suggested we “may have no option but to make [trust] manifest.” But is it right to characterise this as trust? The central purpose of this paper will be to answer this question of whether the nature of trust allows for trusting because we have no other option.

2013-01-01T00:00:00Z Taylor, Alistair https://hdl.handle.net/2123/9008 2026-04-22T05:25:48Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

Neo-pragmatist accounts of truth: Rorty's "ethnocentrism" and Putnam's "internal realism" Taylor, Alistair 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 Mathers, Ananda https://hdl.handle.net/2123/9009 2026-04-22T05:25:46Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

Empathy for Prinz of the “Dark Side” Mathers, Ananda 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 Hariharan, Jeevan https://hdl.handle.net/2123/9002 2026-04-22T05:25:44Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

FREE WILL HUNTING: A RECONCEPTUALISATION OF VOLUNTARINESS, DURESS AND NECESSITY USING ARISTOTLE’S ETHICS Hariharan, Jeevan 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 https://hdl.handle.net/2123/9001 2026-04-22T05:25:50Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

Metaphysical accounts of modality: A comparative evaluation of Lewisian and neo-Aristotelian modal metaphysics Chua, David 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 Lees, Adam https://hdl.handle.net/2123/9004 2026-04-22T05:23:25Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

A Naturalistic Theory of Perceptual Representation Lees, Adam 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 https://hdl.handle.net/2123/9003 2026-04-22T05:25:48Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

Thrown Impossibility: The Ontological Structure of Despair Hughes, Emily Joy 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 Mendelsohn, Joshua Aidan https://hdl.handle.net/2123/7967 2026-04-22T05:25:49Z 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z

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

2011-01-01T00:00:00Z Kennedy, Roderick George Jacob https://hdl.handle.net/2123/7966 2026-04-22T05:25:40Z 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z

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

2011-01-01T00:00:00Z Norton, James Peter https://hdl.handle.net/2123/7968 2026-04-22T05:25:43Z 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z

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

2011-01-01T00:00:00Z