School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses

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A Common Morality Approach for AI Ethics

Dobson, Henry John Lambert ( 2023-12)

Over the past ten years, more than 100 AI ethics documents have been published, each with their own unique framework of ethics principles. Recent research has shown, however, that these principles have been largely ineffective when it comes to providing moral guidance within the design and development of AI technology. What all these documents reveal philosophically is that the prevailing approach in AI ethics is the approach known as principlism. Principlism also happens to be the primary approach in bioethics. I start this thesis, therefore, by tracing the origins and history of principlism, which is found within the history of bioethics. In Chapter 2, I look at four different philosophical problems with principlism as an approach in applied ethics. In Chapter 3, I look specifically at one AI ethics document which has been developed explicitly around the four bioethics principles and therefore in accordance with principlism. I argue that the same four philosophical problems with principlism also pose problems for AI ethics as well. To overcome the problems in bioethics, some bioethicists have adopted the theory of common morality for grounding particular moral rules and principles and for developing a more systematic approach in applied and professional ethics. After examining one prominent version of the common morality in Chapter 4, I take the same approach by adopting the theory of common morality for AI ethics. In Chapter 5, I develop a theoretical framework that is designed specifically for the purposes of AI ethics. I then apply this framework to two different cases in AI ethics. Thus, Chapters 5 and 6 will be where I present a common morality approach to AI ethics. I conclude this thesis in Chapter 7 by critiquing the common morality approach against the four philosophical problems raised in Chapter 2. Ultimately, I argue that AI ethics ought to move beyond the approach of principlism and adopt the theory of common morality instead. By doing so, I believe AI ethics can overcome not only some of the philosophical problems facing principlism but can also be further developed into a more philosophically robust and systematic moral theory that can be used for addressing the ethics of artificial intelligence.
Absolute Poverty and Human Rights: An Examination of Factual and Normative Issues surrounding Absolute World Poverty

Shammary, Ali ( 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.
Beyond the pale of the law : refugees and the myth of human rights

Larking, Emma Jane. (University of Melbourne, 2010)
The Painting is Broken: Understanding issues of authenticity and art attribution in contemporary Indonesia

O'Donnell, Eliza ( 2023-07)

The circulation of counterfeit paintings in the Indonesian art centres is a sensitive issue that threatens the cultural record and intellectual property of artists and their legacy. Since the beginning of Indonesia’s first art market boom in the late 1980s, paintings falsely attributed to prominent modern and contemporary Indonesian artists have slid into the secondary art market, changing hands through auction houses, galleries, art dealers and private transactions. While the unauthorised use of intellectual property that infringes on the copyright of the artist is a pervasive and longstanding issue in Indonesia, as it is globally, the study of painting attribution from a conservation perspective is limited. This thesis employs an interdisciplinary methodology grounded in cross-cultural engagement, technical art history, archival research, and interviews with art world practitioners, to investigate the relationship between the booming art market and the circulation of counterfeit paintings falsely attributed to Indonesian artists. Reviewing current approaches for art attribution in Indonesia, this thesis asks, how is painting authenticity understood in the Indonesian context? This question is examined across six themed chapters focusing on: 1) terminology, 2) the Indonesian copyright framework, 3) the art market, 4) art market processes, 5) art archives and 6) technical art history. An interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approach to this study enabled a nuanced exploration of knowledge representation, verification, and the societal implications of painting forgery in the Javanese arts communities of Yogyakarta, Jakarta and Bandung where this research is located. Key findings drawn from artist interviews, archival sources and technical art history highlight the extent to which contemporary living artists, in addition to the twentieth-century modern masters, have been victims of art fraud, from the early 1990s until today. These findings demonstrate the tangible impact of forgery on the individuals who are affected when counterfeit works are produced and traded. This study seeks to elucidate the strategies that contemporary Indonesian artists have adopted to protect themselves from intellectual property theft in the absence of a robust copyright framework, and examines integrated approaches to building secure artist records and archives for future studies of attribution. Overall, this thesis underscores the pressing need for interdisciplinary collaboration and ongoing discourse to address the particular challenges posed by painting forgery in the Indonesian art market. Inauthentic cultural material is harmful to Indonesian artists, communities, and the cultural record, and finding effective and empowering ways to manage this issue is of great interest to artists, curators, art historians, conservators and others. Painting forgery in Indonesia, and in the global art world, is an active and ongoing issue, and current understanding is continually evolving as new evidence is brought to light. This thesis is a scholarly contribution to advancing existing knowledge on art attribution and authenticity in Indonesia, deepening collective knowledge of the complexities inherent in the Indonesian art world and its broader implications for the global art community.
Dress in Australia: The materiality of a colonial society in the making

Jocic, Laura Elizabeth ( 2023-08)

The study of surviving items of dress offers a vital material source for historians that is commonly ignored. Dress sits at the intersections between necessity and self-representation, the assertion of social standing and cultural, economic and technological aspects of society. Yet writings on dress in the Australian colonial context have largely overlooked the extant items, focusing instead on images and text. “Dress in Australia: the materiality of a colonial society in the making” takes a material culture approach to the history of colonial era dress from the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 to the late-nineteenth century. It pays particular attention to the early years of colonisation and development of colonial society in the years up to the early-1870s. The research methodology, which uses the study of a selection of garments in public and private collections which are known to have been either made or worn in Australia, places surviving items of dress and their materiality to the fore in discussions of European colonisation and Australian settler culture. The close examination of surviving items of dress, coupled with contextual interpretation of objects based on archival research using letters, journals and correspondence, as well as visual material, demonstrates how such an approach enables historical interpretations that would not have been possible from a narrower methodological base. Through the detailed analysis and contextual interpretation of objects, this thesis shows how their materiality prompts new directions and expanded ways of thinking about the significance of dress within a rapidly changing settler society.
Learning History with the Founding Foremothers of the Redfern Black Movement

Muldoon, Elizabeth Margaret ( 2023-06)

This thesis offers a history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women in the Redfern Black Movement from 1968 to 1973. Recognising the central place of women within the Movement, it crafts a platform for their voices to be properly heard within historical scholarship for the first time. The PhD candidate, Elizabeth (Beth) Muldoon worked with eight founding foremothers of the Movement as co-researchers to develop a historical analysis of its origins, philosophy and praxis based on their oral histories. The anti-colonial methodology of the collective research underpinning this thesis enabled joint control of every component, from its guiding questions to its budget. This methodology responds to the longstanding demand of Aboriginal activists and scholars, including Black Movement activists in the 1970s, for Aboriginal communities to be in control of research about them. The historical analysis of this thesis is informed by the theorisation of Aboriginal sovereignty as lived, embodied and inalienable by Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Crystal McKinnon and other Aboriginal scholars who articulate an Aboriginal ontology that co-researchers share. When viewed through this theoretical lens, the Redfern Black Movement can be understood as an assertion of Aboriginal sovereignty that displayed significant continuities with prior assertions. The oral histories of co-researchers reveal that such assertions did not only take the form of organised and spontaneous confrontations with colonial power, but also the daily acts of care, protection, education and cultivation of kinship that have always sustained Aboriginal communities. Attentive to the diverse ways through which Aboriginal sovereignty is asserted, this thesis traces the origins of the Movement through co-researchers’ personal and community histories in rural New South Wales, Townsville, Cairns and Darwin. It then demonstrates that their connection to a long legacy of Aboriginal community defence and nurturing on Gadigal Country (where Redfern is located) was vital to the emergence of the Movement. Additionally, this thesis maps the philosophy and praxis of the Movement, showing how four key strategies – “direct action”, “sharing and caring”, “unity” and “solidarity” – grew from the ancestral knowledge of co-researchers and other the Movement activists in response to new circumstances, relationships and ideas. The oral histories of co-researchers reveal that each of these strategies contributed to the strength of the Movement yet carried significant challenges, which opponents of the Movement have, over the past fifty years, exploited to undermine the Movement’s pursuit of “self-determination”, understood by coresearchers as entailing “land rights” and “community control”. The political objectives of Movement women and the strategies that they developed to attain them were grounded in their theorisation of their unique position of subjugation within settler-colonial society as Black women, yet the indivisibility of their struggle for liberation with that of Black men. By contextualising women’s participation in the Movement within a long tradition of Aboriginal women’s political leadership and Women’s Business in south-eastern Australia, this thesis demonstrates that we cannot understand the Movement without grasping the perspectives of Movement women.
A Critique of Differentiated Citizenship

Raina, Ajay Kumar ( 2023-01)

This thesis is a critique of ‘liberal’ theories of culturally differentiated citizenship, with primary focus on Will Kymlicka’s philosophy. The main proposition of differentiated citizenship is that, for reasons of (distributive) justice, liberal states ought to give special rights to cultural minorities in addition to the universal, culture-blind, rights that all citizens have. The special cultural rights are essential for the members of ethnonational minority cultures to be able to exercise autonomy, for those communities to viably flourish, and for polyethnic, immigrant minorities to smoothly integrate into the liberal-democratic social contract. The classic liberal system of culture-blind universal rights and citizenship denies them these possibilities because the basic institutional structure of such a liberal society is, in reality, culturally majoritarian and minority exclusive; it cannot address substantive interests and needs of cultural minorities. In this thesis, these claims of autonomy, wellbeing and integration are each posited as hypothesis and empirically tested—for the first time against large-N, longitudinal data—in the real liberal world where such special rights have been granted. The evidence suggests that none of these claims can be undisputedly upheld. Deeper analysis points to faulty assumptions in the theories being the likely cause of the empirical failures. For example, while the argument for the autonomy rests on the assumption that ‘societal culture’ is the source of all the meaningful ‘options’ of the good life, it overlooks the role that ‘preferences,’ the agent’s dispositions to options, play in the actual making of choice and the culture’s role, if any, in the shaping of those dispositions. Similarly, the wellbeing of the Native ethnocultural minorities is assumed to automatically follow from the ‘external protections’—from ‘outbid’ (on resources) and ‘outvote’ (on policies) disadvantages which the classically liberal economic and political institutions supposedly cause them—that the special cultural right to self-government provide them, with little thought given to the structure and diversity of institutions which, economic theory tells us, are factors more critical to the achievement of robust wellbeing than bare ownership of resources and policy. Similarly, the assumption that multicultural rights, simplicter, enable shared civic identity of ‘mutual concern, accommodation, or sacrifice’ is problematic because it conflates independent dimensions of political life. Rights establish/adjudicate the moral status of members in a moral community, while ‘mutual concern, accommodation, or sacrifice’ represent actions subject to moral responsibility adjudication by, or within, the moral community; neither dimension, straightforwardly, entails the other. On the positive side, this thesis proposes and defends a principle, the baseline principle (BP), of effective distributive justice: a liberal state ought to ensure equal probability of securing the acceptable baseline of wellbeing for all citizens. The baseline principle can be (prescriptively) fleshed out as the equal capabilities principle (ECC): all citizens should have equal sum of basic capabilities needed to satisfy the BP in a market economy. (The ECC should also, hopefully, reduce the autonomy deficit in the culture group). The ECC does require some state paternalism, but, arguably, only of a degree that would be acceptable to all rational and reasonable persons. And, shared civic identity in the multicultural context, this thesis argues, has better chance of emerging, inductively, from ‘identity of political experience’ rather than deductively from dissimilarity of political rights.
Genesis and Development of the Concept of Rights in Iran before the Constitutional Revolution (1815-1906)

Zerehdaran, Behzad ( 2023-04)

In this dissertation, I have studied the history of subjective rights in Iran during the Qajar era. I have shown that the concept of subjective right (right as to have a right) emerged during this period as opposed to objective right (right as to be right). The genesis and development of subjective rights can be observed in the political and legal literature of Iran since the reign of Fath Ali Shah. I have presented a meta-theory for analyzing the concept of rights by providing a concise history of its semantical development and explaining the transition from objective to subjective rights. I have also examined theories on the foundations and justifications of rights and used the Hohfeldian framework to analyze various conceptions of rights in travel literature, enlightenment literature, and dream literature of the Qajar era. To explore the manifestations of the concept of rights in travel literature, I have examined the travelogues of Abu al-Hasan Khan Ilchi, Mirza Salih Shirazi, Rizza Quli Mirza, Mirza Fattah Garmarudi, Haj Sayyah Mahallati, and Mirza Muhammad Husayn Farahani. These travelogues were written by Iranian statesmen, students, and tourists who visited the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, and Europe during the early and mid-Qajar era. I have used the meta-theoretical framework of rights to analyze the representations of the concept of rights in their travel accounts. To study the contributions of the Qajar intellectuals in the development of the concept of rights, I have consulted the complete oeuvre of Mirza Malkum Khan, Mirza Yusuf Khan Mustashar al-Duwlih, Mirza Fath Ali Akhundzadih, Mirza Aqa Khan Kirmani, Abbas Afandi, Abdulrahim Talibuf, and Ziyn al-Abidin Maraghih-i. Lastly, I have considered the question of rights in dream narratives of the Qajar era by examining The Book from Invisible (1860), One Word (1874), Sleep and Awakening (1884), The Travel Diary of Ebrahim Beg Vol. 1 (1897), The Paths of Virtuous (1905), The Celestial Consultative Assembly (1906), and The Travel Diary of Ebrahim Beg Vol. 3 (1909).
Economic growth, liberalism, and the good: A contemporary eudaimonistic evaluation

Bastien, Pascale ( 2023-06)

The majority of states worldwide pursue economic growth as a policy objective, and this tends to be justified in liberal and welfarist terms. However, the legitimacy of this pursuit is rarely debated and appears to be largely taken for granted. This thesis thus seeks to evaluate the legitimacy of the pursuit of economic growth as a policy objective in affluent countries, with a particular focus on well-being. Part 1 establishes the grounds for a normative evaluation of the pursuit of economic growth in affluent countries. Chapter 1 focuses on methodology. It argues that the economy is a proper target for a normative evaluation, and that the methodologies of social critique and political economy are appropriate to this evaluation. Chapter 2 explores the historical roots and the ideological features of the commitment to economic growth. This understanding of the commitment to economic growth in ideological terms contributes an explanation for the fact that it is rarely questioned. Chapter 3 investigates the relationship between economic growth and consumerism, and shows that individuals in consumerist societies are structurally constrained to engage in the consumerist lifestyle of working and spending, which challenges the association between economic growth and freedom, and raises questions regarding welfare. Part 2 elaborates and defends a contemporary theory of welfare eudaimonism which will form the basis for an evaluation of the pursuit of economic growth. Chapter 4 draws on a psychological theory called self-determination theory, and sketches a theory of welfare eudaimonism called self-determination eudaimonism. Central to this theory is the idea that human beings flourish when they engage in activities which fulfil their basic psychological needs. Chapter 5 defends the plausibility of a deflationary teleological explanation of prudential well-being in terms of self-fulfilment. Chapter 6 elaborates on self-determination eudaimonism and shows how it can be understood in terms of normative motivation. Chapter 7 discusses the development of normative motivation and its relationship with practical rationality. Finally, Part 3 evaluates the pursuit of economic growth as a policy objective in affluent countries in light of the framework developed in Part 2. Chapter 8 argues that the consumerist lifestyle entailed by the pursuit of economic growth undermines well-being, such that the pursuit of economic growth is illegitimate as a welfarist policy. In addition, since individuals in consumerist societies are structurally constrained to engage in this lifestyle, the underlying structure can be deemed unjust. Lastly, the pursuit of economic growth as a policy objective seriously limits the freedom to live as one sees fit and amounts to the imposition of a particular conception of the good, which is inconsistent with liberal principles. Part 3 ends with a brief discussion of what the good life may look like in the post-growth society.
The Language of Archaeological Investigations

Carnovale, Martin ( 2022-08)

The thesis explores whether methods based upon analogical reasoning can be used to interpret culture if there are difficulties of translating other culture’s beliefs. The kind of cultural interpretation that I will discuss is that which pertains to social, artistic and religious activities. The thesis also explores the differences between quantitative and qualitative forms of reasoning, as well as inductive an deductive approaches, and how these are used in certain forms of archaeological interpretation. It is shown that scientific analyses of culture can make errors of translation, and it is also shown that humanistic and qualitative analyses of culture make many errors of reasoning that may be usually put forth against scientistic analyses of culture. How much biology and culture influence statistical trends is also discussed, and it is argued that trends may give support to certain forms of analogical reasoning that an archaeologist might use for the interpretation of culture. I also critique the idea of biological universals as being meaningful for cultural analysis. It is also argued that cognitive and biological factors exist below the level of cultural and religious activities; hence, a biological basis for statistical trends might not give much content to certain forms of comparative cross-cultural analysis. Thus, one might defend a qualitative approach to interpretation, but I argue that qualitative approaches make errors that can be paradoxically regarded as scientistic. The relevance of philosophical and linguistic theories by Kant, Kripke and Carnap is defended for archaeological research to explore interpretative errors in both quantitative and qualitative reasoning. The thesis argues against the dualism between the qualitative and quantitative, and attempts to argue for a pluralist methodology where positivism and relativism may be unified.

School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses

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