School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses

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    Fictions, Knowledge, and Justice
    Komic, Ruby Isabella ( 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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    Be a body: from experiential self-awareness to a truly bodily self
    Bourov, Artem ( 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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    Internal crusading in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries : case studies of the Albigensian Crusade and the Italian Crusades of Pope John XXII
    Chenu, Christian. (University of Melbourne, 2007)
    This thesis examines the significance of papal participation in several crusades in western Europe in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Paying particular attention to the Albigensian Crusade and the Italian Crusades of John XXII, it argues that, from the thirteenth century, emerging claims of papal sovereignty coupled with a large collection of hierocratic treatises contributed to a juridical redefinition of the crusade that emphasised papal authority as the essential element of a crusade. This thesis argues that this juridical redefinition in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was attributable to the Holy War origins of the crusade. Specifically, Christian Holy War, as conceived by St Augustine of Hippo, was orientated around the need to eradicate spiritual �fifth columns� amongst the faithful. This internal orientation left Christendom unprepared and lacking the necessary conceptual tools to formulate a coherent theory of Holy War against external pagan aggression. Consequently, at its inception late in the eleventh century, the crusade was a legal and ideological aberration, which remained a topic of debate for more than a century after the First Crusade. This thesis also suggests that in terms of both practical and legal considerations, the crusade received greater form and definition when it was employed in matters more reminiscent of Augustine�s preoccupation with heretics and schismatics. During the Albigensian war, the theory of the crusade was refined to emphasise its role as a function of papal authority. As the nature of this authority was re-examined and augmented in the years following the Albigensian Crusade, so too was the crusade itself redefined. The thesis concludes by demonstrating that, with the Church conditioned to associate heresy with physical and political attacks upon ecclesiastics by the Hohenstaufen and Italian Ghibellines, the Pope�s fullness of power gradually ceased to be the means of crusading practices, and became instead the crusade s ultimate end. As the crusade moved closer to Rome, so its motives came closer to the papal cause.
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    The mirrored lens : the government as enemy in Hollywood film : 1989-2001
    Thoraval, Yannick. (University of Melbourne, 2006)
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    The Australian girl in an Americanised world : Australian femininity during the 1980s
    Michael, Da�elle Jae. (University of Melbourne, 2006)
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    The Australian girl in an Americanised world : Australian femininity during the 1980s
    Michael, Da�elle Jae. (University of Melbourne, 2006)
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    The mirrored lens : the government as enemy in Hollywood film : 1989-2001
    Thoraval, Yannick. (University of Melbourne, 2006)
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