School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemClarifying the distinctions between ethical theories : with special attention to consequentialism and deontologism( 2005)My overall project is to clarify the distinctions among ethical theories. In doing this I am improving our ability to assess which moral considerations are legitimate. I firstly give an account of the traditional distinctions among ethical theories. I explain how specific ethical theories have been grouped together, which makes evident the significance given to the distinction between Consequentialist and Deontologist theories. I then argue that the Consequentialist/Deontologist distinction is problematised by considerations in action theory. The specific consideration in action theory (which I argue is true) is that there is no principled way to determine where an act ends and a consequence begins. Thus, since the distinction between acts and consequences can be vague, so too is the distinction between the ethical theories of Consequentialism and Deontologism, which relies on this distinction. In the following chapter 1 elucidate the usefulness of the concepts 'Consequentialism' and 'Deontologism' by analysing the relationship between the concepts they are constructed upon: goodness and rightness. I argue that to hold a state-of-affairs good to exist entails that one also holds that one ought to (it is right to) bring this state-of-affairs about. Hence, goodness entails rightness. However, this claim is heavily qualified. Moreover, I affirm that it is perfectly intelligible and coherent that an act can be considered right independently of the value of a state-of-affairs. Finally, I catalogue a number of intelligible and coherent characteristics of ethical theories, and demonstrate how the existence of such moral considerations will greatly complicate moral theorising. My intention here is to appreciate the complexity of our moral experience, rather than impose a false order. Giving too much significance to the Consequentialism/Deontologism distinction is an imposition of false order. Hence, I argue that the Consequentialism/Deontologism distinction is not the fundamental distinction between ethical theories, rather it is one distinction among many.
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ItemTerra nullius : Lacanian ethics and Australian fictions of origin( 2005)The fiction of terra nullius, that Australia was 'no-one's land' at the time of British colonisation, was confirmed in law in 1971. At precisely this moment it had begun to fail as the ballast of white Australian identity and the fulcrum of race relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous. Where white Australia had historically produced a gap, an empty centre from which the white Australian subject could emerge, fully formed, there was now a presence. The emergence of the Aboriginal subject into this empty space inaugurated the anxiety of white Australia that has characterised the period from the 1970s to the present. During these decades of anxiety, the story of this nation's origin-the story of 'settlement'-has retained its pivotal part in the inscription and reinscription of national meanings. Each of the three novels analysed in the thesis is a fictional account of the story of 'settlement published during the closing decades of the twentieth century. Of all the contemporary Australian fiction written about 'settlement' and the race relations conducted in its midst, these texts have been chosen because each is emblematic of a particular national fantasy, and, as is argued in this thesis, a particular orientation, to the tale it tells. The structure of each fantasy-of the frontier, of captivity, of the explorer and of the Great Australian Emptiness- offers particular opportunities for the refantasisation of that national story. The thesis asks how each novel is oriented towards the national aim of not failing to reproduce a satisfactory repetition of the story of national origin and the inevitable failure of that project. All of these questions are framed by an overarching one: what is an ethics of interpretation? The thesis offers a Lacanian response. Interpretation, for Lacan, is apophantic; it points to something, or lets it be seen. It points beyond meaning to structure; it alms to show an orientation not to a 'topic' but to a place. Lacanian psychoanalytic theory offers an ethics of interpretation that includes and accounts for that which exceeds or escapes meaning, and it does this without rendering that excess irrelevant. That something remains constitutive yet enigmatic, making interpretation, in turn, not merely the recovery and rendering of meaning but also a process which seeks to understand the function of this enigmatic structural term. Through its theory of repetition and the pleasures that repetition holds, Lacanian theory offers an approach to analysing the pleasures for the non-Indigenous Australian reader in hearing again the fictions of the nation's founding. It now seems possible for a white Australian encountering any such retelling to ask how our pleasure is taken, and to see the intransigence of our national story, its incapacity to respond to its many challengers, as a particular mode of enjoyment that is too pleasurable to renounce. A Lacanian ethics of interpretation opens up the question: what are the possibilities of re-orientating ourselves in our relation to our founding story such that we did not simply repeat what gives us pleasure?
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ItemEvolving autonomy : the mutual selection of social values( 2005)As essential preconditions for intelligent social action, the evolution of human reason and autonomy has considerable significance for the efficacy of moral and political systems. The synergistic co-evolution of these two faculties are shown to enhance the power of human agency in a manner consistent with organic selection processes, such as those proposed and elaborated by Baldwin and Piaget. The superior adaptability of human agents is manifested in the capacity to conceive and judge actions for their pragmatic value as means and ends that can be designed to alter the course of social evolution through co-operative institutions. Moral and political ideas based on the extension of natural co-operation are thereby construed as adaptive strategies that progressively reduce the influence of natural selection in determining human nature, while still requiring the continual growth of reason and autonomy as the indispensable conditions for maintaining and enhancing well-being. As an evolutionary stable strategy, reciprocal altruism is founded upon inherited categories and constraints in the pragmatism of human reasoning which restrict the feasibility of alternative moral and political systems. However, by acknowledging the evolutionary constraints and conditions which maintain and enhance human agency, those systems can be progressively and adaptively reconstructed in accordance with principles and norms of rational coherence and moral reasonability as modelled by the concept of an organic social contract. The hypothetical contract effectively models the dialectical process of social and moral adjustment suggested in Dewey's evolutionary account of reflective thought. By examining the essential conditions of agency in their ecological and dynamic dimensions, Gewirth's argument for establishing categorical rights to those conditions are modified to reflect the organic nature of the conditions which govern the development of adaptive moral agency. Finally, those adaptive concerns are found to be most accurately addressed by Sen's approach in attempting to rectify the inherited inequalities in agents' functional capabilities.