School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemFictions, Knowledge, and Justice( 2023-10)Fictions are a cornerstone of human cultures: they are created, shared, discussed, modified, and valued. Yet, philosophical accounts which privilege the ‘classical knower’ struggle to explain how fictions can affect us so deeply. Further, the fact that fictions seem to impact broader society and whole populations is largely overlooked, despite being observed in other disciplines. In this talk, I will draw on theories from philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, aesthetics, and epistemology to argue that fictions offer us epistemic resources of a unique kind, and that these resources lead to knowledge practices which can eventuate in harm."
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ItemThe feeling of metaphor( 2019)There is a tendency in analytic philosophy of language to separate a metaphor’s affective powers, often identified with its ability to make us ‘see’ things in new ways, from a conception of its meaning. This is the case in the non-cognitivist denial that there is such a thing as a metaphorical meaning—metaphors are only prompts to view things in certain ways—and also in the pragmatist construal of metaphorical meaning as being no different in kind from other utterances by which a speaker manages to communicate something other than their literal sentence meaning. It is also the case in David Hills’ more recent work on metaphor as a form of “make-believe”, despite his recognition of a fundamental interplay between their “aesthetic” and “semantic” dimensions. Something common to these approaches is that they all make a distinction between what the metaphor appears to say, and what it ‘really’ says. Theorists who think that metaphors do have a semantically or cognitively special power—that they say something that literal language cannot—are more likely to acknowledge a fundamental role for feeling in our experience of metaphor. By suggesting metaphors can be indispensable expressions that let us access something, they challenge the deeply-engrained idea that language is meaningful when it represents things, through literal correspondence, reference, and the like. The view of language that challenges this, and that lets us understand metaphors themselves saying something meaningful, is one that acknowledges a constitutive function of language. Through a consideration of constitutive metaphors and the fundamental integration of meaning and feeling therein, I suggest that the above-mentioned analytic theories—by separating meaning from feeling, and taking word meanings to be static—necessarily misunderstand them. To elucidate the working of constitutive metaphors and flesh out the perspective that can properly understand them, I draw on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s view of language as an embodied behaviour. I propose that metaphors can be understood as creative linguistic “gestures”, a conception which enables us to understand why feeling is fundamentally related to a metaphor’s semantic import. This Merleau-Pontyan view lets us understand why we sometimes speak in ways that appear unusual, why such speech can be nonetheless meaningful and truthful, and the fundamental role of feeling in such expressions.
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ItemThe orphic liar: the quarrel between poetry and philosophy( 2017)Though Plato claimed the quarrel between poetry and philosophy was already ancient, his exile of poets in from the republic marks an important foundational gesture for philosophy. This thesis suggests the quarrel is foundational in at least some of philosophy's prevailing modes of practice; and seeks to characterise the nature of the quarrel, and to consider what is at stake in philosophical practice where the exclusionary gesture is maintained. Chapters on Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Poetics and Kant's Critique of Judgement consider three sites in the history of philosophy where its relationship with poetry has been constitutive. The later chapters, on the work of Cora Diamond and Raimond Gaita, consider some implications of philosophy’s exile of poetry for its current modes of practice and suggest possibilities for reflective spaces philosophy might inhabit that are not dictated to it by the terms of the quarrel.
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ItemPhilosophical reflections on the pedagogy of the art museum: toward an experiential practice( 2017)This thesis investigates discourse and practice that has informed the pedagogy of the public art museum. The broad context for the thesis is recent museological research and institutional strategies that emphasise the subjective and collective agency of audience. Contemporary scholarly reflection on museums gives attention to the active agency of audiences in the process of knowledge production, thus reflecting concern for a social relationship between things and people. Focussing on education programming for adult audiences this thesis brings into question the efficacy of traditional pedagogical practice in the contemporary art museum. It argues that programming underpinned by ideas of expert art historical knowledge no longer hold authority over how contemporary museum audiences view or interpret works of art. Examination of the epistemological foundation of museum pedagogy is critical to redistribute knowledge and practice in order to augment the potentialities of the art museum’s educational impact and import. Education can no longer be thought of on the model of a straightforward transfer of information from one who knows to many who do not, but conceived in a more emancipatory and transformative way. The confluence of art and education in the museum cannot be about art alone. Beyond knowledge about art lies the possibility of knowing oneself, in solitude, and in community with others, through art. Museum pedagogy requires a broader disciplinary base in order to trace the relations between viewing works of art in the museum and the life-world of visitors. The thesis is premised on an understanding of art as a unique form of knowledge that exceeds its historical framing. Art asks or wants something of us as beholders, it insists in the performative and sensual dynamics involved in making and engaging with the world. It therefore implicates the agency of the viewer; potentially prompting prolonged engagement and speculation. Combining historical analysis with philosophical investigation the thesis establishes germane theoretical ground for an emergent pedagogic praxis that recognises human agency in learning and the importance of aesthetics. It is not within the scope of the thesis to present a method or pedagogic model; a single model does not serve the cause of museum education. The thesis is an interdisciplinary study weighted toward philosophical reflections that orient toward an experientially nuanced pedagogy. The research method draws on the philosophical thinking of Hans-Georg Gadamer, John Dewey, Jacques Rancière and Immanuel Kant whose work in different, but significant ways provide orienting ideals and principles toward the articulation of an emancipatory hermeneutic pedagogy.