Desert
- Authors: Harper, Sean Julian
- Date: 2000
- Subjects: Rawls, John, 1921-2002 , Rawls, John, 1921-2002 Theory of justice , Ethics
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2710 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002840 , Rawls, John, 1921-2002 , Rawls, John, 1921-2002 Theory of justice , Ethics
- Description: This thesis examines the idea of desert as expounded in the work of John Rawls, and some of the implications of this conception of desert for moral and political philosophy. In this work, I analyse a series of arguments against retaining this particular conception of desert.I argue that none of these arguments sufficiently diminishes the force of Rawls’ argument for desert, while many of them do state, and I argue that they are correct in doing so, that this conception of desert is dangerous for political or moral philosophy to maintain. I argue that the moral, political and legal implications of accepting this account of desert severely undermine various institutions of differential treatment, and indeed, moral assessment. I regard it as obvious that societies must, on occasion, treat members of those societies differently, for moral, as well as practical reasons. The Rawlsian account of desert, and the account of responsibility on which it rests, however, will endanger the legitimacy of such procedures. I argue further that the Rawlsian account of desert requires that differences in wealth, and inheritance of wealth, influence and privilege be diminished, if not abolished, if we are to talk of any form of desert meaningfully. I argue that this is a strength of Rawls’ account, and further that any account of desert that is true to the philosophical tradition of the concept will require similar steps to be taken. The primary aim of this thesis is to show that Rawls’ arguments against desert are serious ones, both in terms of strength and scope, and that they must be addressed. I intend to show that these arguments are founded on strong moral intuitions, and that it is plausible that these intuitions may need revision. Finally,I intend to show that desert is an important moral and political concept, and that the disciplines of moral and political philosophy will be impoverished by the absence this concept. This absence, I will argue, is a natural consequence of the acceptance of the Rawlsian arguments.
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- Date Issued: 2000
Making sense of ʺessenceʺ : a critical examination of the adequacy of the modern philosophical conception of ʺessenceʺ
- Authors: Ross, Allison
- Date: 2000
- Subjects: Essentialism (Philosophy)
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2720 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002850 , Essentialism (Philosophy)
- Description: The idea that some sub-set of the properties of an object captures what it is to be that thing i.e. that it has an essence which is there to be discovered and about which we can be mistaken - is a commonsense assumption that we use all the time. However, philosophers of this century have regarded the realism about essence with skepticism, arguing that we impose essences on things by the way we define our concepts as opposed to discovering them. Essences are supposedly characteristics of our concepts rather than of objects in the world. This was the orthodox view until a group of philosophers of language developed the theory of direct reference. They claimed that proper names and certain other words refer non-connotatively which entails that the real properties of objects are crucial to the establishment of the reference of such terms. It can be shown that the properties involved in reference determination must be all and only the necessary properties of those objects. This discovery has been taken to mark the rehabilitation of the notion of essence, with an object’s essence being taken to be that set of properties which it must have in all possible worlds in which it exists. I will argue that the theory of direct reference is correct up to the point at which it assimilates the necessary properties of objects to their essences. I will show that the set of an object’s necessary properties cannot fulfill the role reserved for the concept of essence in metaphysical hypotheses concerning the nature of objects. I will go on to show that a sub-set of a thing’s necessary properties can fulfill this role and I will suggest that we identify the members of this sub-set by testing their ability to furnish the kinds of explanations we expect from essences. I will demonstrate how this can be done using the Aristotelian idea that the notion of essence is required in order to explain how it is that objects can persist through change.
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- Date Issued: 2000