School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 10 of 80
-
ItemNo Preview AvailablePlato's teaching method in its historic context(University of Melbourne, 1966)
-
ItemNo Preview AvailableAspects of organised amateur music in Melbourne, 1836-1890(University of Melbourne, 1968)
-
ItemThe treatment of the mentally ill in Victoria, 1850-1887 : a study of official policy and institutional practice(University of Melbourne, 1979)
-
Item
-
Item
-
ItemThe concept of responsibility( 1969)All of the questions that are raised in this study about the nature and the conditions. of moral responsibility have been considered before. However, they have not often been considered together. They are considered together here, and an attempt is made to draw out some of the relations between them. This makes possible a treatment of moral responsibility that is to a. degree systematic; and it makes it possible for some of the central issues about moral responsibility to be seen in a somewhat fresh light. I wish to express my gratitude to that Australian Government for providing a Commonwealth Postgraduate Award which enabled me to undertake this enquiry. I also wish to thank the many people, and especially the members of the Department of philosophy at the University of Melbourne, who have been generous with their time and their advice. Above all, my thanks go to. Dr. Mary McCloskey, who has subjected all my work to the most searching scrutiny, and whose comments and criticisms have been invaluable.
-
ItemFree play : a study of one characteristic of our response to beauty through the aesthetics of Kant and Schiller( 1967)Our pleasure in beautiful things is both invigorating and relaxing. It is invigorating because we learn something new, that a certain form exists in nature, or may be imposed upon it by man. This is not learnt as a piece of information - it is an experience which moves us one step further in our search for order In the chaos of our experience. Intellectual pleasure arises from the discovery of order, too, either through dividing our experience into segments, or through putting them back together again. But the discovery of intellectual order may bring us no closer towards realising how physical and mental characteristics are united in the human personality. Now pleasure in beautiful things is neither purely intellectual nor purely physical. Beautiful thoughts are rare, and beautiful touches do not exist. I want to show how an experience of beauty is a model for, and a foretaste of, a more ultimate synthesis between the mind and the physical world. Pleasure in beautiful things is also relaxing, because it allows us to enjoy being ourselves. For the time being, we do not worry about achieving anything, or learning anything. Some experiences of beauty make great demands on our powers of comprehension, but somehow this is relaxing rather than exhausting. There is pleasure in the very exercise of these powers in appreciating beauty, arid, moreover, we cannot be forced into it. It is the pleasure of freedom, through which a fuller self-realisation is possible, because we are not tied to a particular task. This experience is best characterised as one of free play, as opposed to work and other serious occupations. Freedom here is not to be confused with the more solemn freedom of the moral sphere. Nevertheless, because the pleasure of free play, like moral feeling, may be communicated to others and even required of them, a study of free play is illuminating for our understanding of moral freedom. This essay aims at following these ideas through the two books which first gave the currency. They are Kant's Critique of Judgement and Schiller's letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man.
-
ItemThe men called 'Sophists'( 1967)
-
ItemKarl Barth and the concept of analogy( 1967)A philosophical examination of the use of the concept of analogy in the theology of Karl Barth - with particular reference to some of the problems in explaining religious knowledge and language.
-
ItemActs and agency( 1973)The central concern of this thesis is to begin to explicate the concepts of action and agency. I commenced research on this thesis with an interest in the notion of Responsibility but found myself constantly pressed back to more fundamental questions about the nature of action itself. It seemed to me that a lot of the literature concerning itself with these questions was unsatisfying because of an unquestioned assumption that the same approach had proved useful in analysing such physical phenomena as causality could be used to analyse such mental phenomena as action. Accordingly, I commence my inquiry by establishing what I take to be the the approach to problems in the philosophy of mind. I argue moreover that this approach is unique to such problems. I then go on to apply this approach in elucidating the concept of action. I claim no completeness for the analysis I offer. I am conscious of leaving several important questions untouched. I do however, regard what I have done as a useful beginning to the solution of further problems in the philosophy of action. For example, I regard any theory of action inadequate to which cannot incorporate the notion of motivation on the one hand and the phenomenon of weakness of will on the other. Nevertheless, I have not taken opportunity in the present work to show how my theory can fulfil this demand. What I have briefly indicated is how my theory would apply to questions of Ethics. One feature of the theoretical framework within which my work has been done should be mentioned: this is my conviction of the unity of all creation. By this I mean only that I do not take the existence of mental phenomena to signal the existence of a realm of being different in kind from the physical or material realm. There are not two or more kinds of existents; rather the stuff of reality belongs to but one metaphysical category. What precisely this 'Materialism' will mean and what its implications are for the philosophy of mind will vary as between various approaches and problems and I take it that such a basic statement of materialism does not solve by flat any of the questions that current debates about physicalism or central-state materialism encompass. Rather it states the basic direction into which I would like to see those arguments go end the conclusions I would like to see them reach. If they should reach only conclusions incompatible with this basic position and if no error should be found In them, then I should be obliged to abandon my materialist position. I hold this conviction more as an article of faith than as the outcome of formal philosophical thought since I do not believe that a complete philosophical justification can be brought forward in support of it, although the idea has been given currency precisely by attempts at such a justification. Lastly, I wish to acknowledge the assistance that Dr. Graeme Marshall has given me. In the role of supervisor to my thesis work he has constantly shown me new directions for research and enlivened my thinking with ideas which are now inextricably bound up with my own.