Department of Philosophy

While there are widespread debates about whether perceptual experiences are conceptual or nonconceptual, most philosophers simply assume that thoughts are conceptual. Beck's dissertation challenges this assumption, drawing on empirical findings from the cognitive sciences to argue that some thoughts are nonconceptual. Beck focuses on analog magnitude thoughts, which exploit an internal mental magnitude to represent worldly magnitudes such as number, time, distance and rate. Analog magnitude thoughts are nonconceptual, Beck argues, because they fail to exhibit essential structural properties of conceptual thought, such as being composed of word-like elements, or concepts, that can recombine freely. Beck's view that some thoughts are nonconceptual has important implications for several issues in the philosophy of mind, including the possibility of animal thought, the nature of human rationality, and the potential for conceptual mental states to enter into rational relations with nonconceptual mental states.

Edwards' dissertation aims to clarify the normative ideal to which Rousseau ultimately appeals in grounding ideal moral and political relations. In the recent secondary literature, a view has developed that places Rousseau in the tradition of deontological moral theory, taking him to be worried most about one-sided social relations, and regarding independence of the will as the central value in his ethics. Against this view, Edwards argues that, for Rousseau, virtuous and just relations are grounded in a normative ideal having to with the realization of non-relational aspects of one's own good, rather than one's autonomy of will. They do so, moreover, within the specific context of social interdependence, which, although ubiquitous, Rousseau sees as contingent from a purely rational point of view. This is not to say that in the social condition moral relations with others are merely a means to one's good; rather, they are relations which in part constitute it. The dissertation is largely devoted to understanding precisely the content of these 'aspects of inner good' and how they are thought to justify relations of moral equality.

Gray develops a distinctive account of cognitive phenomenology and its causal and epistemic contributions to our beliefs.  He argues for a long-standing assumption in cognitive psychology: that there is a kind of phenomenology which determines whether or not a thought is experienced as one’s own.  Ignored by philosophers of mind, this feature of mental life not only provides the best possibility for a defense of non-imagistic cognitive phenomenology, but also acts as an explanation for an extraordinary feature of schizophrenic experience.

Marshall's dissertation concerns the contributions made by mathematical theories in their applications -- contributions such as describing, explaining, and providing search spaces for solutions to problems. It also takes on certain puzzles regarding our basic entitlement to apply mathematical theories. Attention is paid throughout to applications both inside and outside mathematics.

O'Neill's dissertation is concerned with the relationship between, on the one hand, concepts of choice, voluntariness and responsibility and, on the other hand, substantive normative questions of fairness and distributive justice. It is organized around the task of answering the following set of questions: When can we justifiably hold an agent responsible for her actions, for the consequences of her actions, and for the costs that those actions generate? More foundationally, what is it to hold an agent responsible in each of these three senses, and what sort of reasons might we have, or lack, for letting considerations of individual responsibility, of these different sorts, guide our actions towards others? How is the idea of responsibility related to norms of fairness? And, finally, what role could or should responsibility play in our elaboration of the demands of distributive justice?

In the first part of his dissertation, O'Neill addresses questions of the nature of agency, the conditions of moral appraisal, freedom, and moral responsibility. He defends a 'Hybrid View', which combines elements from a number of more standard positions, and takes issue with the views of, among others, Strawson, Frankfurt, Williams and Scanlon. In the dissertation's second part, O'Neill looks at the theory of distributive justice, at the nature of equality, and at how these are related to norms of responsibility. He develops a critique of recent 'luck egalitarian' theories, which has its roots in close attention to the nature of human agency. O'Neill then argues for a purer, and more uncompromisingly forgiving egalitarianism than has recently been in favour.

Roche is interested in the relationship between the Transcendental Deduction and the Principles sections of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. While there are various interpretations of these important parts of the Critique, they usually consider these parts in isolation from each other. Commentators tend to have little to say about how they are connected. In his dissertation, Roche contends that an analysis of the Principles turns up substantive objections; revisiting the Transcendental Deduction, however, one can appreciate that Kant anticipates these objections there. This analysis should shed light on the fundamental strategy that Kant pursues to establish a metaphysics limited to possible experience. In the course of his project, Roche defends a reading of transcendental idealism that attempts to bring together what is right about both “two-world” and “two-aspect” interpretations; and he argues that the faculty of the imagination has a more important and more autonomous role in Kant's system than is often acknowledged.

I defend the view that some skillful actions are a more basic form of cognition than thinking. I first argue that such actions are cognitive because they are constitutively related to consciousness. I then argue against the claim that all actions are in some sense guided by, and so presuppose, thinking. I distinguish two versions of this claim, causalism and conceptualism, and argue that causalism fails to capture how actions have aims, and that conceptualism over-intellectualizes skillful actions. An implication of my view is that it makes possible a naturalistic explanation of thinking in terms of skillful actions.