School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemThe evolution of Wittgenstein's views of meaning( 1999)The problems of meaning and language play a crucial role in Wittgenstein's philosophy. Wittgenstein believes that philosophical problems are rooted in language, and that they can be understood and resolved when questions about linguistic meaning and the way language relates to reality are properly addressed. During his philosophical development Wittgenstein held different approaches to the problem of meaning and language. A clear view about his view about meaning is necessary in order for us to be in position to understand assess his philosophy. The aim of my thesis is to explore different accounts of meaning in different periods of the development of Wittgenstein's thought. In his first account of meaning, known as the Picture Theory of Meaning in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein developed a highly sophisticated and complex picture-theory which is the basis of his contention that language is a mirror of reality. At this early stage Wittgenstein had been influenced by the thoughts of Frege and Russell. In the Picture Theory of Meaning the notion of logical form plays a crucial role. Just as each proposition must share its logical form with the state of affairs it depicts, so language, the totality of propositions, must share logical form with what it depicts the. The harmony between language and reality which makes representation is - possible is logical-pictorial isomorphism, the structural identity between what represents and what is represented. Just as the elements in a picture correspond to a possible arrangement of objects in reality, so sentences contain names, which correspond to objects in the world; and the arrangement of names in the sentence corresponds to a possible arrangement of objects in the world. Meaning is possible because language mirrors reality in this way: from the structure of language we can read off the structure of reality. In other words we can learn about the structure of reality from sentences of language. In his early view, Wittgenstein believed that fact-stating discourse is really all the meaningful discourse there is. But in the later works it turns out that fact-stating discourse is just one type of discourse among many other types, just one type of language game along with a countless number of other types of language-game. So in his later works, Wittgenstein abandoned the picture theory of meaning in favour of a use account of meaning. He urges us to think of words as tools, think of sentences as instruments. To get a correct account of language and meaning we need simply to look at how it functions in real life; we need to look at what people do with words. Whereas the Tractatus envisioned a logical structure as the essential form and link of language and world, in the later works there are flexible constraints connected with human activities, with language-games and forms of life as the basis and structure of language. A shift has occurred from a pictorial structural approach to use-activity approach. Language is not just words and rules but words and rules in the practice of use. Meaning is understood as a social phenomenon. The meaning of words should be found in the practical context of everyday life, in the stream of thought and activity, in which a given use of words is embedded.
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ItemAesthetics, subjectivity and the sublime( 1999)Three main issues will be addressed in this thesis. The first is the status of aesthetics; what is the relevance and scope of a contemporary philosophical aesthetics?; Can philosophy be distinguished from philosophy of art?; Is philosophy of art different from aesthetics?; Can philosophy be distinguished from art or aesthetics?; If so can any of these be distinguished from other philosophy such as epistemology or metaphysics. The second issue is the question whether any particular aesthetic concept such as beauty or the sublime can have any contemporary philosophical relevance. Thirdly, the sublime will be considered as a possible aesthetic concept that might preserve Kant's original concern to provide a transcendental aesthetic theory which demonstrates the obdurately essential element of aesthetic judgement in any experience. Notwithstanding Kant's prioritising of the aesthetic, and "feeling" in the Critique of Judgement, it is argued that Kant's theory remains pertinent because it maintains a critical, qua transcendental, position, and its insights should not be ignored by metaphysical, analytic, phenomenological or hermeneutic philosophy. Kant's sublime is explored, as are other aesthetic issues, by examining Kant 's theory of judgement. The Critique of Judgement will be presented as a theory of judgement which prefigures much contemporary philosophy and provides both support and interesting edification of the advanced views of Quine, Derrida and Wittgenstein. The concept of the sublime is presented as particularly prophetic of the contemporary complexities regarding self-consciousness, subjectivity and meaning.
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ItemLaws of nature( 1994)
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ItemThe self and political theory( 1999)This thesis is an attempt to analyse some of the connections of political ontology to normative political thought. Part one consists of an interpretation and defence of three pieces of political ontology generated by the later work of Michel Foucault: power, agency and autonomy. Chapter one clarifies Foucault's account of power and argues that the most interesting feature of this account for political philosophy is his account of power as influence. Chapter two discusses the first of two major objections to Foucault's work - his lack of an adequate conception of agency - and argues that Foucault's account of the subject is able to deal with this objection. In chapter three I develop a conception of autonomy from Foucault's later work that is able to answer the second major objection to Foucault's work, that it is 'normatively confused'. In part two I apply Foucault's conception of power and autonomy to three central areas of political, thought: communitarianism, Rawlsian political liberalism and equality of condition. In chapter four I analyse and reject the communitarian account of embeddedness in favour of a Foucaultian account. Chapter five discusses Rawls' autonomy based political liberalism and argues that his idea of public reason is too narrow to address the types of constraint to autonomy outlined in part one. On the basis of these conclusions I argue for the first of two theses of justice - the principle of political autonomy, which expands the scope of public reason. Chapter six is a discussion of competing metrics of equality of condition. I argue that the account of equality that is compatible with the principle of political autonomy and with the ontology of part one, is 'capability equality', which focuses on the capabilities that a person is able to attain. I conclude with a discussion of what a theory of justice that incorporated these ontological and normative insights might be like.
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ItemA defence of formalism( 1998)
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ItemThe self and communicative theory : a transcendental perspective( 1996)This thesis aims to contribute to the development of communicative theory by advancing a theory of the self sufficient to support intersubjectivity and meet the conditions required for communicative rationality, communicative ethics and communicative reason. The conclusion, which follows a transformed transcendental approach, supports the theories of intersubjectivity advanced by Jurgen Habermas, Karl-Otto Apel and Ludwig Wittgenstein evaluated against the background of a detailed analysis of the theories of Immanuel Kant. The exposition commences with a discussion of the origins of communicative theory in the writings of Kant and Charles Sanders Peirce and an outline of the development of the theory by Apel and Habermas. In this discussion the central issue of the thesis is identified as the failure of communicative theory to produce an adequate theory of the self as the subject of communicative transactions. Then follows a discussion of the development of the self in the transcendental theory of Kant, first by outlining the modern sense- of the self from the "synthetic unity of apperception" from the Critique of Pure Reason, and then from - the assertion of transcendental freedom from the Critique of Practical Reason. Apel is then discussed as a major proponent of communicative theory, with special attention paid to his linguistic transformation of transcendental philosophy. It is argued that Ape's moves are successful in providing the basis for a linguistically structured intersubjectivity, but that his failure to free himself from a residual transcendental idealism means that his project is ultimately unsuccessful. In order to advance the discussion towards a successful communicative theory incorporating intersubjectivity Apel and Habermas are discussed in relation to George Herbert lead. It is argued that both Mead's view, and his interpretation by Habermas, fail to fully establish intersubjectivity as they retain elements of a Cartesian introspective subjectivity. An alternative approach developed by Charles Taylor is then discussed. Taylor proposes an expressivist view of the self based on inwardness and an orientation to the good. Such a view fails to overcome the incoherence of Cartesian subjectivity, but does establish the importance of the expressive dimension as a key element. of the self. The concluding chapters propose a non-Cartesian self based on a discussion of the late works of Kant, including the Critique of Judgement and the little known Opus Postumum, and the late works of Wittgenstein. The essential elements identified here are communicability - as a transcendental condition for cognition, and the relationship between language and inner experience. -Finally, it is argued that freedom and - imagination, understood in the context of Kant and the late Wittgenstein, are the key elements to a self capable of supporting the intersubjectivity required by communicative theory.
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ItemA science of cognition? : an investigation of consciousness, belief, and embodiment from the perspectives of cognitive science and Buddhism( 1994)This thesis is primarily concerned with three enduring topics that demand attention from contemporary Cognitive Science-namely: consciousness, belief, and embodiment. Of these three topics, it is embodiment which has received the least amount of attention until only very recently in the work of Lakoff, Johnson, and Varela et al. Belief, on the other hand, has-and is-the subject of much analysis although most of this privileges its propositional characterisation. It is argued here that once beliefs are conceived of in deeper and broader structural and functional terms then representationalism is not a sufficient foundation for a genuine science of cognition. Consciousness, a contentious concept if ever there were one, continues to be avoided by most of mainstream cognitive science because it is seen as a topic useful only to philosophers. Despite its lack of relevance to information processing engineering (what could be called Cognitive Technology) consciousness will continue to be a "problem" until it is scrutinised thoroughly by science. In order to do this the very methods of science itself will require renewed reassessment. Following Varela et al, it is argued that resources for this reassessment can be found within certain elements of Buddhist discourse and tradition. At the same time, given that there is a wide context of philosophical interpretation of Buddhist thought, this argument in no way suggests an abandonment of one "system" for another. If the common claim to conceive of cognitive science as inter-disciplinary is accurate then dialogue across all relevant disciplines will be what drives it.
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ItemWish-fulfilment( 1991)This is an essay in the philosophy of psychoanalysis. It examines the concept of wish-fulfilment, a concept which, according to Freud, threads its way through such otherwise diverse phenomena as dreams, phantasy, hallucinations, delusions, neurotic and psychotic symptoms, art, jokes and religion. The psychoanalytic conception of wish-fulfilment - WFT - is a singular notion quite distinct from what is ordinarily understood by the satisfaction of wish or desire. WFT is distinguished from the ordinary conception and its characteristics are examined. It is necessary to effective WFT that the wish which actuated it be extinguished, that the person wishing comes to believe that the wished for state of affairs obtains, and that that person is, in one of a number of ways, responsible for the generation of the evidence on which the wish-fulfilling beliefs are based. A key contention is that in WFT an agent manufactures evidence in phantasy or symptom or acting out and so on which is then taken to base the wish-fulfilling beliefs. In certain classes of WFT this evidence is manufactured with the intention of gratifying or consoling and, perhaps even of deceiving, oneself. This fact has very significant implications for the structure of mind; it implies, in particular, a splitting or dissociation of mind in which knowledge of one's own agency and beliefs incompatible with the wish-fulfilling beliefs are kept isolated. It is shown that this splitting is closely linked to identification and the impersonation of introjects and that this wish-fulfilling or self-gratifying tendency 0f mind is related to the internalization of maternal, caretaking attitudes. The conditions necessary to effective WFT - including engrossment in, and preoccupation with, the unconscious internal world, primitive belief and the role of intention - are examined in some detail. It is demonstrated that the will cuts very deep indeed and that the maximally intentional cases are the most important and interesting cases of WFT. Several alternative accounts are criticized and WFT is contrasted with self-deception and wishful thinking. WFT is a very important technique for coping with ineluctable desire, but in so far as it constitutes an evasion of life through illusion its consequences are generally baleful.
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ItemSome theories of verisimilitude( 1991)In this thesis it was decided to concentrate on the work of Sir Karl Popper and, in particular, his concept of verisimilitude. In this connection, a result in Harris' 1974 paper was considered in error. In chapter 1 Tich?'s demonstration that Popper's probabilistic definitions of verisimilitude are inadequate is discussed. The same is discussed with respect to Popper's logical definitions of verisimilitude in chapter 2. Such criticisms of Tich? cast doubt on the idea of verisimilitude or at least as it had been formulated by Popper. Chapter 3 considers the relationship between verisimilitude and language. Chapter 4 considers, in particular, the role weak theories can play, and the promise offered by a distance-from-the-truth function of Tich?. The results are summarised in the conclusion (chapter 5).