School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemProstitution and the state in Victoria, 1890-1914( 1986)The later decades of the nineteenth and the early decades of the twentieth centuries were marked by considerable change in Victorian society. Rapid urban expansion and industrialization were among the most profound of these developments. They resulted in increasing problems of urban over-crowding, poverty, sanitation and, despite the youth of the cities, decay. Those in power began to see these urban problems as being partly related to the nature of working-class life, so sought to control aspects of working-class culture to an unprecedented degree. During this period, legislation relating to liquor, tobacco, drugs, and gambling, for example, were brought into effect for the first time or became more intrusive. Street life was becoming increasingly regulated. In 1891, for example, amendments to the Victorian Police Offences Act made important changes to the social construction of anti-social behaviour and placed increased power in the hands of the police and legal institutions to control the behaviour of individuals in public places. As part of this development, soliciting prostitution was made an offence for the first time. Women, too, had become subversive. Feminists demanded the vote, increased educational opportunities and threatened the established power differential between the sexes. At the same time, legislation was being passed and medical practices were emerging which increasingly impinged upon women's bodies and upon the areas of women's traditional power - life itself and child life. Kerreen Reiger has traced the increasing attempts to professionalize and rationalize family life, resulting in greater intrusion into the lives of women in relation to childbirth and motherhood.' Increasing attempts to control prostitution in Australia date from this same period, and can be seen as part of these processes. It was from the 1860s that an edifice of laws was constructed. Firstly, legislators were concerned with how women were forced into prostitution (procuring), the relationships between women working in prostitution and their children, and the spread of venereal disease. Later, from the 1890s, there was a new spate of legislation related to soliciting, the ownership and management of brothels, procuring, and living on the earnings of prostitution. During the same period a centralized, bureaucratized police force, which was crucially involved in the increasing control of prostitution, was established in Victoria. The prison system, too, became more organized and intrusive. By the later part of this period the move toward greater state intrusion into the area of prostitution was clear; the years 1890 to 1914 have been chosen for detailed study. This period was marked at the beginning by important new amendments to the Police Offences and Crimes Acts in 1891 and at the end by the advent of the First World War, which created new contexts and problems. (From Introduction)
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ItemAkrasia : a review( 1986)
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ItemThe trespass of the sign : deconstruction and theology( 1986)There are two common ways of construing Jacques Derrida's theory of deconstruction: as a refinement of the Nietzschean doctrine that God is dead; and as a displaced negative theology. Upon my reading, neither view is correct; for deconstruction offers a decisive critique of metaphysics, not theology as such. A difficulty arises immediately, though, concerning the scope of metaphysics. On the one hand, Derrida contends that metaphysics has a far greater extension than has ever been acknowledged, such that it marks any discourse oriented by an appeal to presence. And on the other hand, Derrida develops a transcendental argument that any discourse will contain the means to call its metaphysical claims into question. What Derrida offers us, in short, is a means of tracing and circumscribing the metaphysics within theology. So deconstruction is not an attack against theology but rather an answer to the theological demand for a 'non-metaphysical theology'. This answer is far from final, however. For Derrida argues that any attempt to pass beyond metaphysics is immediately repossessed by what it tries to foreclose. This means that non-metaphysical theology may mark the closure of metaphysics yet never entirely escape its determinations. It comes as no surprise, then, to discover that most attempts to develop a non-metaphysical theology are destined to fail before they begin. The strongest candidate is mysticism., especially the negative theology of Pseudo-Dionysius. Contrary to the Thomist tradition, I argue that negative theology does not merely correct positive theology but rather supplements it at its very origin. Deconstruction may not be a negative theology, but negative theology performs the deconstruction of positive theology. Upon my account, deconstruction provides us with the means to describe not only negative theology but also its complex relations with positive theology with far more precision than has yet been available. From Descartes to Russell, mysticism has often been represented as philosophy's 'other', as that which must at all costs be excluded from philosophical discourse. Deconstruction enables us to trace the effects within a discourse of precisely this kind of exclusion; and to do so gives us a greater understanding of the history of both 'philosophy' and 'mysticism'. But this situation also has consequences for deconstruction; and in my concluding chapters I explore the troubled connections between deconstruction and mysticism in the work of two philosophers whose work has greatly influenced Derrida: Immanuel Kant and Martin Heidegger.
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ItemSomething to do with vagueness( 1986)This thesis is in two parts. In the first part I discuss various conceptions of vagueness and outline some of the problems to do with the conception of vagueness as a linguistic phenomenon. The most interesting of these is the Sorites paradox, which occurs where natural languages exhibit a particular variety of borderline case vagueness. I discuss some sources of vagueness of the borderline case variety, and views of the relation between linguistic behaviour and languages which are vague in this sense. I argue that the problems are not to be easily avoided by statistical averaging techniques or attempts to provide a mathematical model of consensus in linguistic usage. I also argue against two currently popular approaches to vagueness; the supervaluation accounts which attempt to provide precise semantic models for vague languages based on the notion of specification spaces, and the attempts to replace laws of classical logic with systems of fuzzy logic. The second part consists of a detailed examination of the Sorites paradox and the development of a novel solution to it. In Chapter Four I concentrate on an argument expounded by Michael Dummett and Crispin Wright which seems to show that languages vague in the strong borderline case sense defined in Chapter One are incoherent. Since vagueness of this kind is, according to their arguments, an essential feature of languages used by creatures with our perceptual limitations, as well as an inevitable source of incoherence, there appears to be no way out of the problem. I look at some recent attempts to resolve this dilemma in Chapter Five, and then argue in Chapter Six for a way out of the paradox which is sensitive to the considerations Dummett and Wright discuss and makes it possible to justify the linguistic behaviour of language users as based on coherent principles. In Chapter Seven I discuss a number if' problems for this approach and in Chapter Eight discuss some further related difficulties to do with visual perception. In the final chapter I relate this solution to Dummett's and Wright's arguments. I also argue there that an adequate approach to vagueness should respect the context-dependence of observational predicates and sketch a development of the framework Lewis provides in Convention for accommodating this feature of natural languages. This thesis contains less than 100,000 words.
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ItemZeno's paradoxes and the small-scale structure of space and time( 1986)Zeno's paradoxes can be resolved either on the assumption that spatial and temporal intervals are infinitely divisible - the approach of present day science - or on the assumption that they are ultimately only finitely divisible - the sort of approach advocated by William James, A.N. Whitehead, Paul Weiss, and others. However, both of these general approaches to the paradoxes do require certain sacrifices in terms of intuitive plausibility. Whether- we resolve Zeno's paradoxes on the assumption that intervals of space and time are infinitely divisible, or on the assumption that they are only finitely divisible, our intuitive, pre-theoretical ideas about what is possible will be offended. This is the sign of a true paradox. The modern mathematical resolution of Zeno's paradoxes is based on the assumption that spatial and temporal intervals are both infinitely divisible and continuous in the mathematical sense. In chapters I to VIII a detailed examination of the modern mathematical resolution of the paradoxes is undertaken. Particular attention is given to Russell and Grunbaum's defences of this approach to the paradoxes because they are the most detailed and sophisticated. The counterintuitive implications of the mathematical resolution of Zeno's paradoxes are drawn out, and an attempt is.made to show that these implications are indeed only counterintuitive, and not paradoxical. In Chapter II Russell and Grunbaum's respective psychological explanations of why we find Zeno's paradoxes persuasive are examined, and are shown to involve certain difficulties. The present day concern with Zeno's paradoxes has given rise to an extensive literature on infinity machines and super-tasks. In Chapter V attention is given to the sort of restrictions which need to be placed on these machines in order to make them kinematically feasible. Chapter IX involves consideration of the finitary approach to resolving the paradoxes - the sort of approach advocated by James, Whitehead, and Weiss. Again, the counterintuitive implications of the idea that intervals of space and time might be only finitely divisible are drawn out, and an attempt is made to show that these implications are only counterintuitive, and do not warrant the rejection of this approach to resolving the paradoxes. Among other things, important problems associated with the nature of geometry in a discrete spacetime are examined in this chapter. If Zeno's paradoxes can be resolved successfully either on the assumption that intervals of space and time are infinitely divisible or on the assumption that they are only finitely divisible, and if both of these approaches lead to counterintuitive conclusions, how is one of these approaches to be singled out as superior or preferable to the other? In Chapter X an attempt is made to answer this question. The modern mathematical resolution of the paradoxes is ultimately favoured, but only after considerable argument. An attempt is made to show why, to what extent, and in exactly what sense there are reasons for preferring the contemporary mathematical resolution of Zeno's paradoxes to its finitary alternatives.