School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemNo Preview AvailableAbsolute Poverty and Human Rights: An Examination of Factual and Normative Issues surrounding Absolute World Poverty( 2023-11)In this thesis, I aim to explore factual and normative questions surrounding the problem of world poverty. In chapter 1, I ask the following questions: What is absolute poverty? What is the extent of absolute poverty? And what are the kinds of causes responsible for generating and sustaining poverty in the world? I define absolute poverty as material deprivation such that the individual lacks adequate access to the means of survival. These include lack of adequate drinking water, food, clothing, access to essential medical assistance, and shelter (adequate housing, in modern societies). I will now give an overview of each chapter in the thesis. In recent times, it has been popular among scholars to claim (1) that there is a negative duty not to benefit from injustice and that (2) this can be the basis of claiming that since the people and governments in western countries are harming the poor in some way, that therefore they must stop doing what is causing such harm and remedy the situation. The claim then consists of a theoretical question, that is, whether or not there is such a general duty of the kind that is claimed to exist; and the empirical claim that in fact the people and governments in western countries are implicated in harms that the world’s poor suffer from. Therefore, in chapters 2-3 I ask whether or not there is a general moral duty not to benefit from an injustice done by others. I argue that there is no such duty. But there is a duty not to harm others, which can give rise to a demand not to benefit from injustice on particular occasions, should other conditions also be met, which conditions I highlight in chapter 2. Chapter 3 is related to the negative thesis (denial of the claim presented that such a duty exists) of chapter 2, but also points out that claims of compensation for historical wrongs committed against peoples who may be appropriately linked to current victims is unlikely to be supported by sufficient evidence. Chapter 4 takes a look at relative poverty, or poverty relative to national standards, and draws on Rawlsian theory of primary social goods to argue that due to the nature of the work that many poor people are compelled (by lack of options) to do, they are greatly disadvantaged from gaining adequate amounts of essential goods such as self-respect, at least from their work, which is an important source of self-esteem in many people’s lives. In relation to the overall thesis, I point out that due to the role money plays in many societies in the world, that the link between possessing wealth and income of a certain degree has great impact on people’s self-esteem and also on their social status. In chapter 5, I present a case for the existence of a positive human right to be free from absolute poverty, which entails secure access to minimal material provisions. There I contrast different conceptions of human rights (Pogge’s institutionalist conception, Joseph Raz’s functionalist account, and James Griffin’s personhood account) and argue that using Rawls’s idea of reflective equilibrium we can reach a more or less coherent set of human rights one of which includes the right to be free from poverty of the kind that afflicts about half the world’s population. In chapter 5, I explore the institutionalist account by Pogge and point out some ways that institutions can be said to play an important role in realising human rights for all. Chapter 6 considers the impact of some global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF, for short) on exacerbating the condition of the poor. I also argue that understanding the story of how poverty has decreased over time requires our taking into account non-global developments such as China’s efforts in the 20th century to urbanise and reduce poverty in their country, but also reduction of poverty in parts of south-east Asia which were accelerated by their joining the World Trade Organisation (WTO) but which also had non-global components and preceded the creation of the WTO. I examine a thesis advanced by Thomas Pogge called the Feasible Alternative Thesis (FAT for short) and argue that for our global institutions to be just, we must ensure that the only human rights deficits that exist are those which fall outside the control of our institutions and which thus cannot be either reasonably avoided or foreseen (or both). This implies that our global institutions, such as the World Bank, and World Trade Organisation are unjust and harmful to the poor if they allow human rights deficits (e.g. lack of adequate material goods for people on whom this global order is imposed) to occur which these institutions could foresee and reasonably prevent. Let us begin with settling some factual questions concerning the nature of poverty and the kinds of causes which generate it (chapter 1) before taking a look at some related normative questions in chapter 2.
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ItemThe Sun Rising to the West: The Racialisation of Japan in the US during the Early 20th Century( 2023)'The Sun Rising to the West' traces how the United States understood Japan's rise from an insular nation into a powerful empire before the Second World War and the surprise attack on Pearl Harbour which galvanised American understandings of the Japanese. This thesis specifically focuses on how Americans framed the Japanese as a race. Starting at the turn of the 20th century, this thesis shows how Japan's development into an industrialised and militarised nation forced both politicians and American anthropologists to reconsider the position of the Japanese with American conceptions of a racial hierarchy. Next, 'The Sun Rising to the West' explores a direct confrontation between American citizens and Japanese immigrants in California during the 'California Crisis', analysing how xenophobic attacks against the Japanese race were influenced by the growing power of Japan as a state. Finally, the thesis explores how African Americans reacted to Japan's proposal for a racial equality clause at the Paris Peace Conference, and how Black press understood Japan as a non-white power before the onset of the war. In doing so, 'The Sun Rising to the West' traces how significant race was to Americans in understanding the nation that would become their enemy.
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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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ItemBe a body: from experiential self-awareness to a truly bodily self( 2023-08)Dan Zahavi has defended a systematic and influential account of our most basic form of experiential self-consciousness, pre-reflective self-awareness (PRSA). For Zahavi, PRSA explicates the subtle way in which we are always immediately aware of the experiences we are having, are aware of them as being our experiences, and, in being so aware, are minimally self-aware. Zahavi’s model of PRSA (hereafter Z-PRSA) has proven influential in contemporary debates on the nature of self-consciousness and selfhood across analytic, Buddhist and continental philosophical traditions. However, one aspect of Zahavi’s model that is underdeveloped is its relation to the body. In his first major work, Self-Awareness and Alterity ([1999] 2020), Zahavi argued that Z-PRSA is intrinsically bodily by drawing on the analyses of bodily self-experience developed by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. Yet, in more recent works, Zahavi has either remained silent on the topic of the body or indicated newfound neutrality on the question of embodiment, without adequately accounting for this change. By contrast, over this period, body awareness has become the focal point of philosophical and empirical investigations into self-consciousness and minimal phenomenal selfhood. Various forms of body awareness have been proposed to play a foundational role in grounding self-consciousness: the sense of body ownership, proprioceptive self-awareness, interoceptive self-awareness, spatial self-awareness, and the implicit self-awareness we have in perceiving the world as ripe for bodily action. An important question arises of how these modalities of bodily self-consciousness relate to Z-PRSA. Should we identify Z-PRSA with one of these forms of bodily self-consciousness, in a deflationary move? Alternatively, does bodily self-consciousness constitute a phenomenological condition of possibility for Z-PRSA? To find an answer, in this thesis I examine a series of descriptive and transcendental phenomenological arguments to determine whether, as Zahavi originally claimed, Z-PRSA is intrinsically bodily. I show first that Z-PRSA should not be identified with any of the above forms of bodily self-consciousness. Except for spatial self-awareness, they do not share with Z-PRSA its key phenomenological characteristics as a mode of awareness. While spatial self-awareness does, Zahavi’s strident opposition to any identity between it and Z-PRSA motivates me to consider an alternative connection between them: transcendental dependence. In evaluating Zahavi’s Husserlian enactivist argument from Self-Awareness and Alterity, I consider objections to its claim that object perception depends on spatial self-awareness, bodily movement, and kinaesthetic self-awareness. I show that Zahavi’s original argument for embodying Z-PRSA must be adapted to overcome an empirical challenge from cases of locked-in syndrome. While identifying a path for future research to more definitively determine the character of bodily experience in long-term locked-in syndrome, I provisionally conclude that the adapted argument succeeds in proving that Z-PRSA is only possible for a bodily subject of experience. Through my investigations, I aim to bring together a diversity of philosophical and empirical perspectives towards a perspicuous understanding of pre-reflective self-awareness and bodily self-experience.
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ItemMy shtetl Shepparton : the Shepparton Jewish community 1913-1939(University of Melbourne, 1985)
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ItemThe Victorian charity network in the 1890's(University of Melbourne, 1976)
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ItemThe Mother's anxious future : Australian Christian Women's Organisations meet the modern world, 1890s-1930s(University of Melbourne, 2000)
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ItemBeyond the pale of the law : refugees and the myth of human rights(University of Melbourne, 2010)
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ItemExplaining PICTA, PACER and Cotonou : trade policy in the Pacific 1996-2006(University of Melbourne, 2009)