OpenUCT :: Browsing by Subject "Philosophy"

Browsing by Subject "Philosophy"

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A libertarian theory of property: its justification, critique and implications
(1987) Williams, Graham Andrew; Collins, P H D
The author's major concern in this dissertation is a justification, it's critique and some of its implications, of the libertarian theory of property according to which property, following John Locke, is legitimately acquired through a man's mixing of his labour with unowned resources and held in perpetuity or until the owner voluntarily alienates his just claim. Libertarian theory asserts that property thus acquired is held by natural right. Accordingly, this dissertation commences with an elucidation of how we are to understand the concept of property and the concept and language of natural rights. The dissertation then attempts to show that: .1. The concept of universal natural right, at least in relation to private property, is not non-sensical. 2. The libertarian justification of exclusive private property can be argued for coherently. 3. Universality in the natural right to private property entails (coercive) redistribution. Over 3 the author departs from the 'orthodox' libertarianism of Murray Rothbard, Ayn Rand and John Hospers in favour of a 'welfarist' libertarianism that is more in accord with the positions of Robert Nozick, Milton Friedman, Friedrich v. Hayek and others, and which is closer to the spirit of Locke's Second Treatise. Welfarist libertarianism leads the dissertation through 4. Marx's critique of private property and capitalist political economy. 5. Liberal/non-Marxist arguments advocating equality or greater egalitarianism. 6. Certain implications welfarist libertarianism holds regarding the justification, extent, and operations of the state. The conclusions the author arrives at include: 1. There is a natural right to limited exclusive private property. 2. Property is limited not in its acquisition but in its (perpetual) holding. 3. Redistribution may be coercive, but that coercion is legitimated on grounds of justice. 4. Property rights preserve the liberty of some but necessarily infringe the liberty of others. This too is legitimated on grounds of justice. 5. The Marxist argument that private property and capitalist political economy is exploitative is mistaken, and that it alienates man an argument insufficiently contended for. 6. Egalitarianism and greater egalitarianism as political policies are wrong if welfarist libertarianism is just. Bot? also fail to accord persons a sufficiently central place in moral-political philosophy. Egalitarianism is, furthermore, necessarily self-defeating. 7. The state is not necessary for the protection of our lives, liberty, and property nor for the implementation of redistribution. These functions could be performed through the free market. Should a state justly evolve from the market it cannot ensure its stability due to the pressures morally demanded financial obligations impose upon it.
Open Access
Absurdity in the Early 21 Century
(2010) Jurgens, Francois; Galgut, Elisa; Fried, Gregory
This essay argues against contemporary theorists who claim that the concept of Absurdity that flourished in Western Europe in the 1940s is now of purely historical interest. It is argued instead that while it is important to locate the concept of Absurdity in an appropriate historical context, people living in the early twenty-first century are, in fact, living within an historical period that makes the experience, and thus the concept, of Absurdity relevant again. While Absurdity in the 1940s involved a loss of certainty due to the role the Second World War played in undermining secular and religious beliefs, Absurdity in the twenty-first century involves a loss of certainty due to intense exposure to alternative points of view. This loss of certainty means that when one's typical point of view is brought into relief by an atypical perspective, one struggles to reaffirm one's typical perspective. This robust clash of perspectives strikes at the heart of the way in which we understand the world and ourselves, forming part of the experience that has come to be known as Absurdity. If the analysis of Absurdity that is offered in this essay is correct, then Absurdity is best understood as a personal epistemological condition, rather than a universal metaphysical condition that affects all people simply in virtue of their being human.
Open Access
Analysing Authenticity: Explaining What it is to be True to Yourself and Why this is Good
(2021) Mogomotsi, Olerato Kau; Hull, George
My project is a conceptual analysis of authenticity that seeks to achieve reflective equilibrium with our considered judgments about authenticity. Given that we ordinarily take authenticity to mean “being true to oneself” and to generally be a good thing, I develop a philosophical conception of authenticity that can adequately account for the following questions: “What is it that we are being true to?”, “What does being true to oneself entail?” and “What is good about being authentic?” I take particular interest in Aristotelianism virtue Eudaimonism and how it can help in providing a tenable understanding of what authenticity is. In answering the first question, I seek to develop a modified account of Alasdair's MacIntyre's (1981) narrative unity of the self, which I term the Extrapolated Narrative Unity of Self [ENUS], as a tenable understanding of the self which we are being true to when being authentic. The ENUS, in short, is a configured narrative unity of self that combines an individual's actual past and present with their projected future self where the projected future self is a function of their telos. Thereafter, I will take being true to ones ENUS to be laden in the effort and wholesome commitment required for one to put into configuring, expressing, maintaining and reasserting the self. Finally, I argue that we ordinarily understand authenticity to be good because we generally take it to require and reinforce a virtuous life for the individual who is authentic. In addition, I argue that we generally understand authenticity to be good because of its inextricable link to a characteristically Eudaimonic life.
Open Access
Aspects of the theory of negation
(1982) Bezuidenhout, Anne Louise
In this thesis I deal with a series of problems which involve the notion of negation. In Chapter 2 I discuss the issues raised by the question whether we should admit negative facts into our ontology or not. In Chapter 3 I discuss the so-called paradox of non-being and the problem of giving an account of both singular and general negative existentials (i.e. negative existentials containing singular and general subjects respectively) that avoids this paradox. In Chapter 4 I deal with three related logical and linguistic problems involving negation. Chapter 1 contains a discussion of some treatments of negation in the history of philosophy. The choice as to which philosophers to include in this chapter was determined by the topics discussed in later chapters. That is to say, I have chosen to discuss the views of philosophers who were concerned in one way or another with the problems discussed in a more methodical manner in Chapters 2 to 4. Bibliography: pages 171-8
Open Access
Blending industry varietals : developmental considerations for the South African wine tourism industry
(2010) Scott, David; Ryan, Tom
There is consensus that wine tourism summarily offers a strong competitive advantage for wine regions, and can generate profitable business for wineries, other wine-related products and for visitor services. And in the four decades since the first manifestation of South African wine tourism was established in the Stellenbosch wine route, there has been general agreement that South African wine tourism has grown significantly in both local and international reputation and recognition. As a result of the widely identified potential of wine tourism, the South African industry has presented a continuing expectation of sustained industrial growth and tangible developmental manifestations and contributions. However, the industry successes since democracy have more recently been shadowed by an increasingly evident developmental frustration and dissatisfaction on the part of stakeholders, academics and observers.There has been considerable discussion and argument over the growing evidence of non-existent or insufficiently developed industry associative networks, the wide spread and overbearing prevalence of a production mind set and the mounting agreement that there are tremendous amounts of further research and investment still required if South African wine tourism is to realize the true value of its assets. This study identifies and clarifies this prevalent practical problem and research concern of slow and disparate development in the South African wine tourism industry in cognizance of the increasingly evident dissatisfaction and unrealized expectation of South African wine tourism industry stakeholders.
Open Access
Competing paradigms for explaining the etiology of human male homosexual orientation: a case study in the application of the methodology of scientific research programs
(2003) Mbûgua, Karori; Ross, Don; Odhiambo, Jack
[pg 41,59-61,71,99,110 ,172,173 missing] This thesis is a case study in the application of the principles of the methodology of scientific research programs to a contemporary scientific debate: the debate concerning the causes and origins of human male homosexual orientation. It begins by identifying two major research programs that seek to explain homosexual phenomenon, namely, the biological and experiential research programs. Using the methodology of research programs as a framework for analysis, the study shows that the two programs have stagnated. Neither of them meets the Lakatosian criterion of 'progressivity'. The study argues that lack of progress in this area may be a consequence of the two groups of researchers, the biologists and the experientialists, rigidly clinging to the hard cores of their respective programs. The study calls for an interactionist approach to the study of homosexual etiology and suggests that such an approach could benefit from recent trends in developmental systems theory and evolutionary psychology. It is also argued that this episode in the history of science undermines the normative generalizability of Lakatos' account of science.
Open Access
The concept of autonomy
(1996) Jennings, Ian Douglas
The question of which of our actions or desires are genuinely attributable to us is the question I examine in this thesis. I use the term "autonomous" to describe those agents whose desires or actions are genuinely their own, and I refer to actions or desires which cannot genuinely be attributed to agents as heteronomous actions or desires. I have chosen to discuss this question under the rubric of the concept of autonomy, although the number of near-synonyms in the philosophical literature means that I could, perhaps, have referred instead in my title to concepts such as freedom, responsibility, independence, authenticity, self-determination, self-identity, freedom of the will and similar concepts. But whatever terminological choice is made, the issue that interests me concerns the nature of those actions or desires which are genuinely the agent's - those desires and actions which, as some have put it, are the agent's rear desires and actions.
Open Access
The concept of the lived world : an introduction to the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty
(1974) Wait, Eldon Christopher
The task we have set ourselves in this thesis is not to interpret or translate Merleau-Ponty's expressions but rather to re-create his philosophy, avoiding as far as possible the actual expressions he used, not because we find any fault with them but because we wish to re-create the conditions under which they can appear in their original urgency and vitality. We must understand Merleau-Ponty by being present at the birth of his philosophy, to experience the philosophy "from the inside" Our approach must be distinguished from a purely historical or a phychological one. We do not wish to introduce the thought of Merleau-Ponty by an examination of pre-phenomenological thought, nor do we wish to concern ourselves with his personal development which led to the writing of "The Phenomenology of Perception". Our approach is phenomenological. We wish to understand Merleau-Ponty's existential phenomenology as itself an intentional movement, as the "coming about" of the structure of intentionality, or as we will refer to it, the coming about of the imperfect unity, or the informal essence. Our discussions of the psychological ego and the transcendental ego are important not only as an historical introduction, but because psychologism and transcendentalism are respectively the noetic and noematic poles of this intentional movement.
Open Access
Eating (Meat) ethically: The convergence of Human Health, ecological sustainability
(2023) Chappe, de Leonval John; Galgut, Elisa
When discussing the ethics of what we eat, the key variables to take into account to form a robust position are human wellbeing, animal wellbeing, and ecological sustainability. I take this to be relatively uncontroversial. My contribution to this discussion is to note the manner in which questions relating to human health and ecology are often not discussed with sufficient precision and detail by vegetarian and vegan philosophers. Drawing on contemporary literature, I note the manner in which en masse vegetarianism/veganism is not a viable solution to the problem of how to eat ethically –– if we are to take seriously human health and survival in moral discussions; another point I take to be relatively uncontroversial. The core issue is that there are compelling reasons for granting that not all humans can survive or be healthy on vegetarianism/veganism. With this conclusion at hand, I then assess the manner in which two prominent existing moral theories on eating animals are radically altered such that they may grant the eating and farming of animals.
Open Access
The electricity poverty tariff in South Africa : possibilities and practicalities
(2000) Mavhungu, Justice; Cowan, Bill
The general objective of this thesis is to investigate what price system will result in a sustainable electrification programme, a viable EDI, fit into the regulation system and address issues of equity and poverty. Specific attention is paid to the proposals around poverty tariffs for low-income domestic users. This research examines the form, level and financial implications of poverty tariffs in South Africa. The following are the specific objective of the thesis: * To evaluate the current system of prices in South Africa * To investigate what poverty tariff structures are possible and * To investigate the financial implications of poverty tariff options and their sustainability.
Open Access
An enquiry into Nicolai Hartmann's appreciation of Nietzsche's axiology
(1962) Small, Adam
In a world and a time when man is confronted with but one ultimate choice: either a return to self-responsibility or the annihilation of life, in which, because of his now proverbial technical ascendancy and its train of spiritual impoverishment, he can indeed neglect to relearn the ability of exercising a wilful choice only at the risk of sacrificing his being as such - in such a world it is a fatal omission to neglect any thinker whose object it is to reconstruct for us our sense of responsibility. In the field of philosophy no contemporary thinker has done more in this respect than Nicolai Hartmann who considers Friedrich Nietzsche to have been his immediate predecessor. Yet Hartmann is not well known in the English-speaking world. The following study represents an attempt to explain Hartmann's position in epistemology, ontology and ethics, stressing the inter-dependence of these disciplines for the philosopher; in the light of Hartmann's appreciation of Nietzsche, to review Nietzsche's critique of "Christo-European morals" or the spiritual decadence of the West; and to show why Hartmann made so much of Nietzsche's supra-moral philosophy of Becoming the philosophy "beyond good and evil".
Open Access
Establishing an immanent counterhumanism for the un-foreclosure of the future: Deleuze, Mbembe, Hartman and the anarchic Open World
(2021) Berti, Daniel Jonathan; Hull, George; Gray van Heerden, Chantelle
This dissertation addresses the political form of the human, its multiply-stratified nature, and the world it makes up - by focusing first on a tension between two broad kinds of approaches in philosophy of race that intend to unmake that stratification. One, called counterhumanism and exemplified by the work of Sylvia Wynter, is deeply prevalent in antiracist struggles, and argues that a false image of the human is at the core of oppression, that a new, all-inclusive image must be fostered to replace it. The other, nonhumanism, emerges from some Deleuzo-Guattarian scholarship as a contingent critique of transcendence – value frameworks imposed from outside – and argues that no model is adequate to the complexity of reality - that State thought, the kind of thinking involved in such modelling, is inherently conservative rather than liberatory, maintaining a more fundamental oppressive element. The second part of the dissertation teases out some core developments in Achille Mbembe's conceptual and historical cartography of race and the human in Critique of Black Reason (2017), ones that avoid the issue of transcendence in counterhumanism. On his account, contemporary race begins with the European creation of an enclosure that claims humanness for itself, excluding those from the World-outside. Through negative resentment critique and positive critiques based in calculated creation (e.g. religious and artistic), Mbembe resolves the tension in creating an immanent counterhuman as dis-enclosed world, through immanent and transversal thinking. The political form of the human as understood here is fundamentally tied to all aspects of human relations, and as such when changed will come with a corresponding fundamental change in our political arrangements. This final part of the dissertation expands Mbembe's human as the Open world, to outline the various social and political arrangements compossible with it. This part answers how we may organise ourselves politically to seek humanness in the present, less-than-human, enclosed world. What we will find, through an engagement with a range of anarchist and anarchistic theory, is that Mbembe's Open World has deep resonances with the world sought by anarchists; it is an anarchic world rooted in a prefigurative practice that un-forecloses the future.
Open Access
ETD: A comparison of two treatment protocols in the management of exercise-associated postural hypotension (EAPH) : a randomised clinical trial
(2007) Anley, Cameron
Mircea Eliade has made meaningful contributions to the academic debate in the field of religion and comparative religious studies. As much as he had scholastic opinion that would find synthesis with, support and defend his thought patterns and argument, so too he had, of almost equal proportions, those who would criticize his scholarship, accusing it of being, amongst others, biased and "revealing uncritical unverifiable generalizations". The scope of this essay is to enter that debate, with the intention to specifically focus on and unpack some of the most important concepts that underlie Eliade's thinking and deliberations, rather than focusing on the holistic theory of religion as purported by him. These concepts will be measured against the African Religious experience, to see if it finds resonance or stands in conflict with it. In the process, this study attempts to reveal some aspects of Eliade's theory of religion that could be saved to fit an African religious perspective. It also attempts to identify some aspects or conceptions of Eliade's theory that are lacking if read through an African lens. The focus in this study will specifically be on conceptions such as the hierophany, the sacred, symbolism, and myth, and how these interact and show themselves within the African context.
Open Access
Ethics and human nature : a reconsideration of ethical naturalism in contemporary thomist writings
(1994) Giddy, J P; Shutte, M F N
It is argued in this thesis that much modem and contemporary moral philosophy has been subjectivist, and that this is largely due to the theory of knowledge that has accompanied the increasing dominance of modem science in the determination of our thought-patterns. The expansion of standards of rational enquiry beyond the confines of empiricism, in the way that B.Lonergan has done, is a necessary part of any adequate contemporary restatement of ethical naturalism. Two different approaches to the Aristotelian tradition in ethics are discussed: in the one judgments of value are based on a particular human psychology; in the other they are related to the standards of excellence associated with social roles. Two contemporary writers - P. Simpson and A. Macintyre respectively - are taken as representative of these approaches. Neither account, it is argued, is fully successful: the metaphysical psychology of Simpson fails to take into account variations in social and cultural contexts; while the communitarianism of Macintyre remains to some extent unjustified. The basis for a more adequate defence of ethical naturalism is given in Lonergan's account of the normative structure of human self-determination. Two further writers are used to develop this argument. H.Meynell argues that morality is largely a matter of promoting the happiness not just of oneself and one's group, but of people in general, and that this can be objectively specified. R. Johann contends that there is a further necessary condition for moral goodness, viz. the commitment to the realisation of personal community. This is justified, I argue by way of conclusion, because human persons are radically dependent on a certain kind of influence of other persons for the development of their capacity for self- determination.
Open Access
Event characteristics of intra-seasonal climate circulations
(2002) Tennant, Warren James; Hewitson, Bruce
An analysis of rainfall characteristics over the summer rainfall areas of South Africa is done in order to find links between rainfall variability and the general circulation. Seasonal rainfall totals are clearly linked to significant rain days, indicating the importance of evaluating synoptic-scale event characteristics. Rank ordered rainfall characteristics reveal that normal rainfall may be considered as the middle three quintiles, with the outer quintiles representing wet and dry conditions. The general circulation in tenns of atmospheric state (humidity and temperature), moisture and heat transport, and energy exchange - with attention to tropical-extratropical cloud-bands, are central to wet seasons in South Africa. These are generally associated with deep convection that is driven by vertical instability. Transport of moisture into South Africa generally takes place from the east with the Indian Ocean being a major source of water vapour. Although important, fluctuations in moisture transport are not clearly associated with rainfall. This is because moisture is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for rainfall. Atmospheric dynamics producing rainfall are a combination of disturbances of mid-latitude and tropical origin. These disturbances often initiate the tropical-temperate cloud-band where eddy available potential energy, generated through surface heating over land, is converted to eddy kinetic energy. It is generally mid-latitude disturbances with stronger vertical shear that are associated with rainfall events. Increased baroclinic activity in the Southern Ocean south of South Africa, as such, is generally associated with dry seasons. During these seasons there is usually a greater amount of available potential energy which strengthens the southern branch of the Hadley Cell. The effect of this is to increase the strength of the subtropical jet through enhanced poleward flux of angular momentum. The resulting increase in baroclinicity in the South Atlantic Ocean then disrupts rainfall over South Africa through the advection of dry air from the west by the vertical-mean wind component. General circulation models are shown to capture inter-annual variability such that forecasts of regional rainfall, of useful skill at a seasonal scale, may be made. However, the skill level with regard to daily circulation, restricts their use to the large-scale circulation. Nonetheless, the analysis of rainfall and the links to large-scale circulation, discussed in the thesis, provide information to produce more skilful seasonal forecasts without having to model small-scale features directly. Such forecasts may also include additional information on rainfall characteristics, such as number of rain-days and length of dry spells.
Open Access
The Fertility of Theories
(2009) Segall, Robert; Weiss, Bernhard
In addition to empirical adequacy and compatibility with other current theories, scientific theories are commonly judged on three criteria ' simplicity, elegance, and fertility. Fertility has received comparatively little attention in the philosophical literature. A definition of a certain sort of fertility, called P-fertility, proposed by Ernan McMullin, is that it consists in the capacity of a theory to be successfully modified over time to explain new experimental data or theoretical insights. McMullin made the major claim that he has a novel and perhaps the sole argument for Scientific Realism. His argument involves two strands (i) theories must be considered diachronically and it is an historical fact that long standing successful scientific theories are P-fertile, and (ii) the correct explanation of this fact is that these theories reflect the realities of a mind-independent world. A rebuttal of McMullin's position given in the literature is considered and rejected. His argument therefore requires further consideration. The plausible first strand of McMullin's argument is accepted for the purposes of discussion, and thus the observation requires explanation, either along McMullin's own lines or otherwise. The concept of diachronicity and the implications of accepting a diachronic view of scientific theories are considered. The identity of theory across time can be understood both from a Realist and an Anti-realist perspective via the concept of significant claims in the successive versions of the long standing successful theories. This defuses a possible objection to McMullin's argument, namely that by assuming diachronicity he begs the question against the Anti-realist. Explanations of the conjunction of success and P-fertility are examined from the perspective of Scientific Realism and the major current Anti-realist stances ' Entity Realism, Structural Realism, Instrumentalism, and Internal Realism. 3 To justify the second strand of McMullin's argument, a notion of the approximate truth or of the verisimilitude of theories is required. Inter alia it is argued that a distinction must be made between the approximate truth of a scientific theory and that of a simple assertion or a simple narrative. The concepts of the approximate truth of scientific theories and their verisimilitude are explored and some serious difficulties are identified. First, it is difficult to accommodate differences in respect as well as in degree in delineating the nature of an approximately true theory. Second, it is difficult to give a satisfactory account of the metric used to assess the verisimilitude of theories. It is argued that in any case no version of these concepts can adequately support the second strand of McMullin's thesis. This is because, at best, approximate truth and verisimilitude can only support a pragmatic claim ' the improved empirical adequacy of successive versions of the long standing theory. In contrast, McMullin's thesis requires that successor versions generally are better theories. Third, there is an intractable theory dependent weighting problem posed by the open ended nature of scientific theories in contrast with the closed narratives describing idealized models. The role of the approximate truth of scientific theories is explored, within the frameworks of Realism and Anti-realism, with regard to the possible responses to the existence of two highly successful, well corroborated, but incompatible theories ' general relativity and quantum mechanics. It is suggested that Scientific Realism itself, not only McMullin's argument for Scientific Realism, requires the notion of approximate truth or verisimilitude of theories. Putnam's Internal Realism is considered, and, if as I suggest, no adequate account of the concepts of the approximate truth or verisimilitude of scientific theories can be given, Internal Realism (which need not draw on these concepts because of its denial that there is a unique correct description of the world) is more plausible than the full blooded Scientific Realism advocated by McMullin, despite granting the claim of the historical observation of the conjunction between long standing successful theories and their P-fertility.
Open Access
Financialization of housing, social policy and inequality
(2023) Fuchs, Pascal; Paremoer, Lauren
The paper analyses the evidence and impact of housing financialization in South Africa. It gradually develops a mapping of the various interlinked characteristics of financialization and housing in the country. This mapping supports a structured discussion regarding the impact of housing financialization on income and wealth inequality trajectories. The identification of relevant characteristics of financialization follows a Marxist perspective on financialization, outlined by Fine (2013). Within this framework, the role of housing is understood in its capacity to absorb capital from a primary productive circuit of circulation into a secondary circuit for continued accumulation. Financialization, therefore, represents the increasing role of interest-bearing capital (IBC) and its prevalence in more fictitious forms. On this basis, the paper looks for evidence of financialization processes in the South African housing market and its implications for mortgage and housing access in low-income segments of society along with the role of public homeownership promotion policies. The analysis shows how the evidence of financialization processes, such as an increasingly relevant financial sector, short-term foreign investment inflows and increasing debt levels as well as the changing investment pattern of domestic companies impact the local housing market. In the presence of such financialization processes inequality aspects of housing are implicated through the highly exclusive mortgage access, growth of informal settlements, and repeating patterns of racially based spatial segregation. It also shows the limits of housing financialization in the country which include the lower levels of securitization of mortgage and the role of REITs in the residential property market. The various public housing policies of the past decades, which aimed at promoting homeownership for restorative justice and incentivizing private actor involvement in low-income mortgage markets, have not been able to cope with these negative trends. Increasing unemployment levels for low-skilled workers due to de-industrialization, shifting profits towards the financial sector, a volatile housing market and the dependence on generational wealth for housing access and asset-based welfare are outcomes of financialization which constitute a divergent impacts on income groups and exacerbate existing inequalities. These developments further challenge the effectiveness of the chosen public policies in the low-income housing market. Furthermore, the vigorous promotion of private actor involvement, such as banks and housing developers, by national and local governments and the broad privatization of public housing provided a basis for the further commodification and financialization of housing in South Africa. The replication and expansion of inequalities in South Africa in the past decades after its democratic transition can be seen as a social reproduction of uneven social class relations under financialized capitalism.
Open Access
Finding ourselves : thought-experiments and personal identity
(1994) Beck, Simon
The central concern of this thesis is with the role thought-experiments play in the debate about personal identity, especially with the question of what role they should play. The thesis is divided into two parts. The first part is a defence of the use of thought-experiments against a number of influential and potentially damaging indictments of it. Some of the arguments discussed are directed at specific experiments or a specific kind of experiment, but all have implications which extend to the method in general. The thrust of my response to these arguments is that even if some objections to thought-experiments are strong enough to make us more cautious about how we use them, none of them is strong enough to require the general abandonment of the method of thought-experiment in the context of the personal identity debate. The aim of the second part is to find an answer to the question of what it is that thought-experiments can do, given that there is no prior case ruling them out altogether. The strategy is to reach an answer by a close examination of some prominent examples of thought-experiments in the literature. In the nature of my topic, there are two issues here. One is methodological, about what one can expect from a thought-experiment; the other is the substantive one as to what thought-experiments can really establish about the nature of personal identity. With regard to the methodological issue, two basic kinds of potentially informative thought-experiment emerge. There are those which serve to support or undermine a theory by revealing the relative importance of the various principles of classification which are implicit in our use of the concepts of person and personal identity. There are also those which function to show that a theory suffers from internal inconsistencies or that it has unacceptable consequences. In the process of investigating how thought-experiments can work, I argue that one view of personal identity receives stronger support from them than any of its rivals. This is a non-reductionist view which holds that while personal identity can be analysed in terms of psychological continuity, it cannot be reduced in the standardly accepted sense of that term.
Open Access
Finding the balance : the Ukrainian experience on the road to freedom and development
(2002) Stüber, Christiane
The theme of this study is freedom and development. One of the crucial points is the relation of freedom and development to different degrees of regulation and to the provision of substantive rights in a given society. The importance of formal and informal institutions as constraints on individual freedom but also as a necessary condition for individual freedom and co-operation is illustrated. The theoretical framework I am building on combines two distinct but reconcilable approaches to this topic: Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom and F.A. Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty. It is supplemented by Hernando DeSoto's The Mystery of Capital and some ideas of the New Institutional Economists. By applying this framework to developments within a transition · economy - the Ukraine, and in particular to the agricultural sector of the country - I try to show both the basic challenges that transition economies face and how far theoretical approaches to freedom and development are actually applicable to practical issues. The problems the Ukraine is facing on its way to a free market economy, especially in the area of privatisation and liberalisation, are largely the result of arbitrary regulation and coercive state interference. Rent-seeking and corruption are a consequence of creeping administrative discretion and have impeded the development of the country tremendously. These problems are enforced by the neglect of substantial rights such as political freedoms, social opportunities and protective security. Thus both the regulatory environment - the rule of law - and the actual freedoms that people enjoy need to be improved. A stable institutional framework that avoids both over-regulation and under- regulation needs to be created. Within such a framework people will be able to act freely and lead a life they have reason to value. The German Advisory Group on Economic Reform and members of the Department for Agricultural Economics of the University of Gottingen have largely provided the information about developments and policies in the Ukraine. Although I did not engage in proper empirical work myself - and as a philosopher I probably should not have done so - my visits to the Ukraine have helped me to process the variety of empirical data.
Open Access
How bad, if at all, is death for nonhuman animals?
(2022) Fuller, Jamie; Benatar, David
The overwhelming majority of deaths that occur on Earth are nonhuman animal deaths. This dissertation addresses the underexplored question of whether death is bad for nonhuman animals, and if so, then how bad it is. I start by asking whether death can be bad for nonhuman animals given what we commonly think makes death bad for humans. According to the Deprivation Account, death is bad if it deprives its victim of future goods. Since nonhuman animals can be deprived by death of future goods, this standard account of death's badness applies to them. Next, I ask how bad death is for nonhuman animals. I present the Life Comparative Account and the Time-Relative Interest Account as two extensions of the Deprivation Account. It follows from both accounts, that while death is usually worse for humans, some nonhuman animals are harmed more by their death. Finally, I address objections from philosophers who dispute that death can be bad for nonhuman animals at all. According to Christopher Belshaw and David Velleman something in addition to deprivation is necessary for death to be bad, and nonhuman animals lack the capacity to satisfy this additional condition. Christopher Belshaw claims that the additional condition is a categorical desire at the time of death and David Velleman argues that it is an autobiographical sense of self. I reject both philosopher's arguments. In so doing, I defend the common view that death is bad if it deprives its victim of future goods, combined with the Time Relative Interest Account, which measures this deprivation from the perspective of the victim at death. I conclude by highlighting the normative implications of my findings that death can be (very) bad for nonhuman animals, as well as by pointing out how my question can be taken further.

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