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Here Chisholm clearly articulates the widely accepted thought that a person is morally responsible for what he did only if it was, in some important sense, up to the person himself whether he performed the action in question. Moreover, Chisholm says, if it was up to the person whether he performed the action, then the person could have done something else (or perhaps nothing at all) instead. Together these two claims yield the principle that a...

Recent debates in Confucian political theory have been fueled not only by attempts to find compatibility between Confucian values and democracy but also by efforts to identify theories of "Confucian democracy" and "Confucian meritocracy" that can provide cultural and political alternatives to Western-style democracy revolving around liberal values. Aware of the huge potential of Confucian values to contribute to democratic theory, many Confuci...

This dissertation is an enquiry into normative authority-that is, the enquiry into reasons. The project is motivated by a collection of tensions. I accept a variety of naturalism, however, this leads straightforwardly to a problem: I see no place for normative reasons in a naturalistic framework. Certain non-negotiable platitudes of normative authority cannot be satisfied on a naturalistic view of the world. If anything were to satisfy the pla...

The contemporary divisions of knowledge are familiar to most of us: mathematics belongs with the sciences, music with the creative arts, and philosophy with the humanities. These divisions, in general, seem natural and obvious to us and, despite a growing interest in 'interdisciplinary studies', the work done in these various fields generally hews to the lines that divide them. To point out that these boundaries are historically contingent or ...

This thesis could not have been written without support from the inhabitant of a large basement, just outside of Reading. Here, in a space that looks like the offspring of Nasa's mission control room and the New York stock exchange, lives the 'brain' behind the UK's power network. This is National Grid's Electricity Control Centre, a partially-automated system responsible for monitoring millions of sensors across the UK to maintain a constant ...

At the most basic level architecture is building design, an artistic planning or rendering which constitutes some variety of shelter or enclosure. While this perception is not incorrect, it fails to acknowledge the primary facet of architecture: the interaction between us and the physical structure surrounding us, and the ways in which that physical structure is designed to interact with us. While architecture may seem a stiff, un-breathing fo...

This thesis considers how persistent, coherent patterns of imagery explain the fundamental laws and processes of Lucretius' science and philosophy. It will show how these patterns, taken from human experience, serve to guide the reader through the difficult, and at times unpalatable, doctrines of Epicureanism. Frequently they take the form of metaphors explaining scientific realities, but often they are employed literally, which in turn streng...

Formostofmylife, Ididn'tknowwhatanaardvarkis.AsfarasIcouldtell, aardvarks couldhavebeentropicalbirds, or'aardvark'couldhavebeenaNorwegianwordfor nightmare.Ifoundoutabouttheexistenceofthewordbyreadingphilosophicalarticles onconcepts, andlearntthattheaardvarkisakindofAfricanmammal, similartothe anteater, bybrowsingtheInternetforinformationaboutaardvarks.Thisistheshort andunremarkablestoryofhowIlearnttheconceptaardvark.Itisveryclearthat itisn'tth...

Slurs-racist, sexist, and homophobic epithets-are powerful. Their very utterance can offend, appal, enrage, and intimidate. The use of such terms is a problem as it makes life worse for those they target. For philosophers of language, slurs are also often treated as a kind of puzzle. These words seem to straightforwardly refer to certain groups of people, as well as convey something negative about that group. However, there is substantial disa...

Beginning in the mid 1980s, a new organisational form was born in Australian politics: the single-issue advocacy group of the right. Emerging out of the phenomenon of the 'New Right', the H.R. Nicholls Society (which was formed in 1986 and concerned with industrial relations), the Samuel Griffith Society (formed in 1992, concerned with constitutional issues), the Bennelong Society (formed in 2000, concerned with Indigenous affairs), and the La...

Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition, first published in 1958, considers the importance of worldy existence. She states: "with word and deed we insert ourselves into the human world."2 She then warns that, "A life without speech and without action...is literally dead to the world, it has ceased to be a human life because it is no longer lived among men."3 Speaking and acting allow us to appear before others and facilitate our life in a world ma...

The question guiding this paper is: how do we preserve patient dignity in the health care context? I propose and defend a relational and care approach to dignity where the basis of dignity is found in the relationships of care we bear to one another. More specifically, we each have individual equal worth because we have been cared for. Without care we would not reach maturity and thrive to the degree we are each able. It is in forging a relati...

Every new wave of crisis in business and management has, at least partly, been attributed to the absence or failing of morality (Pfeffer and Fong 2002, Mintzberg 2004, Swanson 2005, Giacalone 2007), and has prompted management schools to address such crises by a call for more ethical forms of behaviour (Friedland 2009, Mintzberg 2009, Rubin and Dierdorff 2009, Wong 2009, Lau 2010, Waddock 2005). But what if ethics itself is in a crisis? What i...

In 1961, however, George Steiner publishes The Death of Tragedy, in which he argues that the genre has ceased to be. Steiner contends that so pervasive is post-Enlightenment cultural optimism it leaves little room for the Attic representation of "obscure fatalities and misjudgments" - insurmountable forces, insoluble conflicts, and undeserved losses (6). Steiner is largely correct: both Christianity and secular, eighteenth- and nineteenth-cent...

The standard story of action, also known as 'the causal theory', or 'causalism', is familiar to readers of contemporary philosophy of action. Established in the decades following the publication of Davidson's seminal essays, the standard theory promotes a concept of action as constituted by a bodily event, joined to certain mental conditions by a bond of causation. Because the standard or causal theory's definition of action is in terms of the...

The goal of this chapter is to show that there are various ways to construe liberty. I am particularly interested in the incompatible aspects of different conceptions of liberty, which it is crucial to distinguish and be aware of when attempting to build a theory of liberty for oneself. I discuss the philosophers John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, who both develop influential theories of liberty, in order to show how conceptions of liberty can diff...

In the first seven sections of A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume establishes the foundation of his philosophy. The most basic tenet is that "all the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds" (T 1.1.1.1, SBN 1). The first kind is impressions, namely, "our 1 sensations, passions and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul" (T 1.1.1.1, SBN 1). The second kind is ideas, which are faint images ...

Thermodynamicsisaspecialtheoryindeed.Aprincipletheory, aphenomenological onemoreover, thatoutgrewitsinitialpurposeofadvancingnineteenthcentury engineeringalmostassoonasitwasborn1.Ceasingtobeameretoolforthe optimisationofsteamenginesandthelike, thermodynamicsinsteadbecameatheory about, well, 'almosteverything'.Butthisisnottosaythatthermodynamicscan provideuswiththeanswerstoallscientificquestions, quitethecontrary:traditionally, itfocussesonanar...

The constitutive principles approach to scientific theories is a neo-Kantian response to Quinean holism and philosophical naturalism. The approach attempts to be informed by, and inform, the best historical research in the history and philosophy of science. Proponents of the approach argue that there are some propositions (constitutive principles) in a scientific theory that in some way make possible (or, constitute) other propositions in the ...

Is the problem of skepticism inevitable? Does it arise whenever philosophically reflective people consider epistemological questions? Is skepticism an issue lying deep within the human condition, waiting to be discovered along with other perennial problems of philosophy? In contemporary epistemology some philosophers, such as Barry Stroud, have taken the position that a concern about skepticism is an inevitable part of the human condition, whi...