Browsing by Subject "philosophy"
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- ItemOpen AccessDo we have a duty to prevent predation in the wild?(2023) Ashwin, Michelle; Benatar, DavidThe animal ethics literature has focused a great deal on the harms that culpable moral agents cause animals, and our duties to prevent this. What is less clear is whether there is a duty to stop nonhuman animals from harming other creatures, considering that they lack moral agency. In this dissertation, I investigate whether we ought to prevent the harm of wild predation. Firstly, I consider two arguments against interfering with the wild. Ecological holists claim that the natural world has ultimate value. They argue against all interventions in predation which threaten to undermine the integrity of nature. Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka argue that we should refrain from interfering with predatory cycles out of respect for wild animal communities' sovereignty and a preference to remain independent from humans. I reject both views, by arguing that their reasons for thinking that we do not have a duty to intervene in predation on a large scale are flawed. Secondly, I argue that animals possess basic moral rights and that it is reasonable for them to have a right to be rescued from predation under some circumstances. If intervening is easy and it will not severely injure or kill the predator, the prey creature has a right to be rescued. Otherwise, an intervention in predation is required if and only if three practical conditions are met: 1) the intervention is possible, 2) the burden of intervening is reasonable and feasible, and 3) the intervention does not create as much or more suffering than it aims to avoid. I argue that largescale interventions cannot meet condition 3 insofar as we lack knowledge about how to interfere with predation cycles without devastating ecological consequences. The question of a moral requirement to intervene once-off will depend on whether the prey-victim had her rights violated and on the extent of our morally relevant relationship with the prey-victim. These factors determine whether the intervention meets condition 2. Therefore, the question of a duty to intervene once-off must be assessed on a case-by-case basis.
- ItemOpen AccessMechanistic and psychological explanations of behaviour: the problem of mental causation(1997) Davies, Ronald Gavin; Taylor, PaulThe problem we are going to investigate is that of mental causation. Human beings often explain to each other why they do what they do by citing their reasons, that is, mental states like beliefs and desires. Explanations of behaviour which invoke mental causes are known as psychological explanations. Mechanistic explanations, on the other hand, make sole reference to the neurophysical going-on in our bodies causally to explain behaviour. This kind of explanation has become entrenched in a naturalistic attitude towards any phenomemon which requires causal explanation. This naturalistic attitude, furthermore, holds explanation by reference to natural causal law in especially high esteem. Our problem is going to be how, given the availability of mechanistic explanation, psychological explanations can still apply. That is, given the availability of explanation of human behaviour, by reference to physical (or neurophysiological) laws, can mental states still constitute causes of behaviour This problem has become very well defined since a series of papers authored by Donald Davidson who showed, very clearly, how the problem arises given the following three principles : (i) the Principle of Causal Interaction which holds that mental states interact causally with physical states. (2) the Principle of the Nomological Character of Causality which states that events related as cause and effect fall under strict laws and (3) the Principle of the Anomalism of the Mental which states that there are no strict laws, known or unknown, on the basis of which the mental can be predicted and explained. A central feature of Davidson s philosophy is (3) and one of the most significant sections of this thesis will concern why Davidson formulates (3) as a principle. We need to understand Davidson s arguments for (3) if we are to gain a proper understanding of how he derives the token-identity thesis from (I), (2) and (3). This is important for our purpose here since the latter part of this essay will be an examination of the token-identity thesis as a proposed solution to the problem of mental causation.
- ItemOpen AccessMedicine and the Arts Week 4 - Cultivating creative thoughts(2015-01-21) Baghai-Wadji, AlirezaIn this video, Alireza Baghai-Wadji, and electrical engineer, explores various questions related to creativity, its origins, and the idea that creativity is an ability that can be acquired. He also he discusses his ideas about the converging worlds of physics, philosophy, and neuroscience in order to get us thinking about the processes that drive our most inventive thinking. This is the second video in Week 4 of the Medicine and the Arts Massive Open Online Course.
- ItemOpen AccessNatural Philosophy into Science: from the fall of the Roman Empire to the 17th Century(2014-09-29) Wolfe, DavidThe distinction between natural philosophy and modern science is a subject of much debate amongst scholars. One of the most significant elements concerns the important place that theology and the belief in God played in natural philosophy for many centuries. The tendency of historians to label periods with terms such as ‘the Dark Ages’, ‘the Middle Ages’, ‘the Renaissance’ and ‘the Enlightenment’ has had the effect of leading us to think that nothing worthwhile could have happened in a ‘Dark Age’, while an era of ‘Enlightenment’ must surely be a positive thing. That this is not true is confirmed regularly, for instance by recent discoveries of lovely art work from the Dark Ages and by clear threads leading from the eighteenth century Enlightenment to various rigid dictatorial regimes. But one cannot understand modern science or modern philosophy without looking at their roots from 400 ADE. This course will explore key periods which created the questions, the search for answers, the theology and the technology that allowed modern science to flower. LECTURE TITLES 1. From the fall of the Roman Empire to the Arab conquest of Spain 2. Philosophy from the neo Platonism of Plotinus to Abelard 3. The rediscovery of Aristotle and the birth of scholasticism 4. Late Middle Ages, Buridan, Oresme, Duns Scotus, Swineshead 5. The Renaissance and the growth of humanism Recommended reading Collins, R. 1999. Early Medieval Europe 300–1000. 2nd ed. New York: St Martin’s Press. Hannam, J. 2009. God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science. London: Icon Books. Russell, B. 2004. The History of Western Philosophy. London: Routledge This lecture series was part of the 2014 UCT Summer School programme http://www.summerschool.uct.ac.za/ Image details: "Portrait of Aristoteles" (2005) by Eric Gaba on Wikimedia Commons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aristoteles_Louvre.jpg
- ItemOpen AccessOn naturalistic saltation genealogies of content: an exploration of continuity & discontinuity in nonreductive diachronic explanations of content by Adam H. Schroeder supervised by University of Cape Town(2024) Schroeder, Adam; Weiss, Bernhard; Nefdt, RyanExplanations involving the relationship between naturalism, normativity and intentional content are often plagued with difficulty. Incorporating any two in an explanation usually leads to challenges with integrating the third. My thesis aims to explore this tension, by considering an ambitious version of naturalistic explanation for the emergence of normative intentional content. I wish to cast doubt on this explanation by showing how it fails to alleviate the aforementioned tension. In fact, I will argue that this explanation is inconsistent owing to the inimical relationship between naturalism, normativity and intentional content. The explanation I will be considering is one amongst a variety of naturalistic explanations for solving the placement problem, i.e., how to locate intentional content, or items involving intentional content, “in a world exhaustively characterized in terms of the … collective posits of the … sciences.” 1 Traditionally, the answer to this location problem has been pursued by trying to naturalise content. In general, this involves providing some reductive relation between content and accepted natural facts in the hope of demonstrating that content can be understood in completely naturalistic non-contentful terms. This strategy has faced several difficulties in relation to normativity such as the disjunction problem and gerrymandering objection inter alia. As a prophylactic measure to deal with these difficulties, a strategy has recently come into vogue which forgoes attempts to provide purely reductive explanations of content; rather, it aims to explain how it is possible for content to nonreductively emerge in the natural world. In other words, it aims to explain the natural origins of content, rather than naturalise content. I name accounts fitting this strategy Naturalistic Saltation Genealogies of Content. Despite the benefits this strategy affords in avoiding the perennial objections naturalisation projects face in relation to normativity, my aim is to show that it is susceptible to its own set of difficulties due to the tension between naturalism, normativity and intentional content. More specifically, my aim is to show that the central assumptions of this strategy are inconsistent, and as a result, entail that they are discontinuous explanations of content. Alternatively put, these genealogical explanations cannot succeed in answering the placement problem. A consequence of this aim will be that if one is committed to the continuity of a naturalistic saltation genealogy of content, then this can be shown to implicitly entail the reduction of the normative to the nonnormative or the use of some non-naturalistic resources in explanation. The aim and consequence of my argumentation can by captured by the following slogan: (S) Naturalistic saltation genealogies of content are either discontinuous explanations or implicitly entail the reduction of the normative to the nonnormative or the rejection of naturalism. This is the same as saying that: (S*) Naturalistic saltation genealogies of content are either discontinuous explanations or self-defeating. Whereby ‘self-defeating' I mean that proponents of these genealogies unwittingly revert to other strategies for solving the placement problem – strategies that naturalistic saltation genealogies of content were precisely aimed at avoiding. This slogan will be demonstrated to be a product of the structural objection named the Continuity-Discontinuity Regress Argument. I.e., for every continuous naturalistic saltation genealogy, there is a Discontinuity Argument against it; and for every Discontinuity Argument there must be a sub-continuous naturalistic saltation genealogy constructed in response. This sets off a regress which results in an infinite regress of location problems.
- ItemOpen AccessThe role of concentrating solar power in a South African large scale renewable energy scenario(2014) May, Haydn Liam; Stone, A; Gauché PThis thesis investigates a hypothetical large scale renewable energy system for South Africa over the long term future using 2050 as a nominal year of analysis. Simulation modeling was used to assess the integration of three renewable energy technologies, which are currently being installed at utility scales in South Africa, at much higher penetrations. These technologies, namely wind, photovoltaic and concentrating solar power, are studied here within future scenarios (2050) over a period of one year at hourly intervals using real weather and solar irradiance data from 2010-11. The electricity demand profile for these scenario years was projected by scaling up the 2011 South African demand profile to the total annual energy demand projected for 2050 by the Draft South African Integrated Energy Plan reference case. The dispatch of electrical energy from CSP plants with thermal energy storage has the potential to support other more intermittent renewable energy technologies. To evaluate this potential role, CSP production and available storage is assessed over one year relative to the production from wind and photovoltaics. Electrical energy is dispatched from thermal energy storage in a controlled fashion, thereby complementing the use and integration of more intermittent technologies. The effects of using thermal storage are monitored with regard to system cost and impact on overall system reliability. The results of the modelling exercise identified potential benefits gained when using thermal energy storage to backup intermittent renewables. These results were consistent with those reported in the literature. CSP plants which are equipped with thermal energy storage facilities are termed ‘dispatchable' due to the amount of electricity that can be dispatched when needed with reasonably good reliability. The additional costs incurred to build CSP plants, relative to wind and photovoltaic plants, can be offset by better system reliability. A more expensive dispatchable system using thermal energy storage displays better reliability. When utilising the more expensive fully dispatchable renewable energy system which is defined here by the use of thermal energy storage primarily being used to back-up other renewables, the fractional increase in cost can be argued on the grounds of increased fulfilment and decreased curtailment achieved by the renewable energy technologies installed on the grid. This allows for improvements to the economics of clean energy and lowers total carbon emissions produced by the supply of electricity. Scenarios of high penetration of the three renewables in different ratios, with unfulfilled energy being met by a single representative fossil fuel alternative (natural gas fired combined cycle gas turbine), were compared to each other using a range of indicators with cost of generation being determined with the Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE) method. The cost of renewable energy technologies has declined in recent years and is envisioned to continue to become more costcompetitive with conventional generation technologies. To account for this expected reduction in renewable energy costs, technology learning has been applied to the LCOE calculation. Additionally, a sensitivity analysis of one of these scenarios assesses the LCOE of a system with increasing RE penetration, spanning from low RE with 95% of energy supplied by gas-fired CCGT to high RE with 26% of energy supplied by gas-fired CCGT. Technology learning rates, as estimated by the Integrated Resource Plan for 2030, are used in the interests of being conservative on estimating actual costs in 2050. When technology learning rates are assumed for 2030 and a fuel cost of R860.38 per MWh electricity generated for gas is used, the three RE technologies within the modeled system can iv contribute 85% to total energy requirement over the year (TWh) and attain an LCOE of R0.75/kWh. In the event that the same system is moved towards a heavier CCGT reliance of 95%, the LCOE is raised to R0.96/kWh due to the impact of expensive variable operating and maintenance costs for CCGT. Capital costs for the different RE technologies assessed here are expected to be lowered by continued learning from 2030 to 2050.
- ItemOpen AccessWhat is a Mind Week 2 - Testing for subjectivity(2015-08-15) Solms, MarkIn this video, Professor Mark Solms describes the need for an objective criterion for determining whether something else other than ourselves has a mind or not. He examines one proposed criterion, the Turing test and explores an important philosophical question posed by French philosopher René Descartes. This is video 2 in Week 2 of the What is a Mind MOOC.