Are we conscious of more than what's in the “spotlight” of attention, or is consciousness limited to the content of attention? Recently several authors (DeBrigard & Prinz 2011; Prinz 2010; Dennett & Cohen 2012) have defended the view that attention to some object is necessary for conscious perception of that object. For each of these authors, attention acts like more than just a “spotlight on a stage.” But none of them provides a robust account of this new way of attending. My project offers a new theory of diffuse attention that explains the apparent richness of experience. Accepting that there is a diffuse way of attending requires us to abandon the notion of attention as a spotlight. On the view that I offer, attention has degrees. For example, when looking at a landscape, your attention is spread over a broad spatial area and details are more difficult to remember or describe than when you focus attention in greater depth on some object within that landscape. A broad and shallow diffusion of attention nonetheless makes its object available for guiding thought and action, and so should be considered a way of attending rather than merely being conscious. After defending a theory of diffuse attention, I offer a new argument for the view that attention is necessary for conscious perception. My argument is motivated by the phenomenological observation that ordinary perceptual experience has a structure: some objects are in the foreground of experience, while others are in the background. I motivate the claim that this foreground/background structure is necessary for perceptual experience, and argue that focal and diffuse attention provide the foreground/background structure. I conclude that attention is necessary for perceptual experience, since it provides a necessary structure of experience. In making this argument, I draw on phenomenological insight into the structure of consciousness from James (1890), Gurwitsch (1964; 1966) and C.O. Evans (1970). For each of these authors, attention structures the foreground – but not the background – of consciousness. My novel contribution is to provide an account of how attention structures the conscious background. By enriching the concept of attention to include diffuse attention, my account is poised to explain the structure of conscious experience from foreground to background.

Are we conscious of more than what's in the “spotlight” of attention, or is consciousness limited to the content of attention? Recently several authors (DeBrigard & Prinz 2011; Prinz 2010; Dennett & Cohen 2012) have defended the view that attention to some object is necessary for conscious perception of that object. For each of these authors, attention acts like more than just a “spotlight on a stage.” But none of them provides a robust account of this new way of attending. My project offers a new theory of diffuse attention that explains the apparent richness of experience. Accepting that there is a diffuse way of attending requires us to abandon the notion of attention as a spotlight. On the view that I offer, attention has degrees. For example, when looking at a landscape, your attention is spread over a broad spatial area and details are more difficult to remember or describe than when you focus attention in greater depth on some object within that landscape. A broad and shallow diffusion of attention nonetheless makes its object available for guiding thought and action, and so should be considered a way of attending rather than merely being conscious. After defending a theory of diffuse attention, I offer a new argument for the view that attention is necessary for conscious perception. My argument is motivated by the phenomenological observation that ordinary perceptual experience has a structure: some objects are in the foreground of experience, while others are in the background. I motivate the claim that this foreground/background structure is necessary for perceptual experience, and argue that focal and diffuse attention provide the foreground/background structure. I conclude that attention is necessary for perceptual experience, since it provides a necessary structure of experience. In making this argument, I draw on phenomenological insight into the structure of consciousness from James (1890), Gurwitsch (1964; 1966) and C.O. Evans (1970). For each of these authors, attention structures the foreground – but not the background – of consciousness. My novel contribution is to provide an account of how attention structures the conscious background. By enriching the concept of attention to include diffuse attention, my account is poised to explain the structure of conscious experience from foreground to background.

This thesis develops and defends a new version of an old view known as literary cognitivism, which holds that the merit of a literary work as such sometimes depends on its cognitive merit. The newness of my view lies in the way it recommends we think about the cognitive merits of a literary work as they relate to its literary merits. Whereas some cognitivists identify the cognitive merit of a literary work with the truth of its themes and others with its capacity to provide certain non-propositional forms of knowledge, I propose that the cognitive dimension most relevant to literary value is the extent to which it provides certain forms of justification for its themes. In particular, I emphasize two ways in which a literary work can justify its themes: one, by providing evidence that its themes are the products of an intellectually virtuous mind and, two, by expressing its themes within a richly coherent framework of beliefs. I argue that the literary-evaluative significance of these two forms of justification is implicit, in the first case, in literary critical judgments that refer to a work’s didacticism, and, in the second case, in judgments that refer to a work’s thematic coherence. Insofar as it bears on these sources of justification, I contend, the truth or falsity of some non-thematic propositions can be relevant to literary value, though truth is generally not relevant at the thematic level.

Evolution by natural selection began as a biological concept, but since Darwin it has been recognized to have broader application than biology. Applying evolutionary ideas beyond biology requires that the principles of evolution by natural selection be abstracted and generalized from the biological case. The received view of evolution by natural selection in biology is itself seriously flawed, which understandably renders the project of abstracting it and applying it elsewhere challenging. This thesis develops a generalized account of models of evolution by natural selection which is used to resolve various outstanding issues in the philosophy of biology. This also clarifies the methods and prospects of applying evolution by natural selection to non-biological domains. It does so by analyzing models of evolution both within biology and outside it, relying in particular on the contrast provided by models of firm competition in evolutionary economics. This analysis highlights those aspects of the classical view which must be abandoned or revised, and leads to the development of a neo-dynamical model of evolution, which is developed, explained, defended, and applied to problems in evolutionary biology and multi-level selection theory.

This thesis develops and defends a new version of an old view known as literary cognitivism, which holds that the merit of a literary work as such sometimes depends on its cognitive merit. The newness of my view lies in the way it recommends we think about the cognitive merits of a literary work as they relate to its literary merits. Whereas some cognitivists identify the cognitive merit of a literary work with the truth of its themes and others with its capacity to provide certain non-propositional forms of knowledge, I propose that the cognitive dimension most relevant to literary value is the extent to which it provides certain forms of justification for its themes. In particular, I emphasize two ways in which a literary work can justify its themes: one, by providing evidence that its themes are the products of an intellectually virtuous mind and, two, by expressing its themes within a richly coherent framework of beliefs. I argue that the literary-evaluative significance of these two forms of justification is implicit, in the first case, in literary critical judgments that refer to a work’s didacticism, and, in the second case, in judgments that refer to a work’s thematic coherence. Insofar as it bears on these sources of justification, I contend, the truth or falsity of some non-thematic propositions can be relevant to literary value, though truth is generally not relevant at the thematic level.

This dissertation is a study of the relation between Aristotle’s ethics and the crafts (or technai). My thesis is that Aristotle’s argument is at key points shaped by models proper to the crafts, this shaping being deeper than is generally acknowledged, and philosophically more problematic. Despite this, I conclude that the arguments I examine can, if revised, be upheld. The plan of the dissertation is as follows – Preface: The relation of my study to the extant secondary literature; Introduction: The pre-Platonic concept of technē, as evidenced in Greek philosophical and literary sources, in particular the early Hippocratic corpus; Chapter one: The Platonic concept of technē, followed by an investigation of whether Plato affirms a virtue-technē in the Protagoras and Republic; Chapter two: Aristotle’s concept of technē, followed by scrutiny of his arguments in NE VI.5 against a virtue-technē, and of his analyses of slavery and deliberation; Chapter three: An exposition of Aristotle’s function argument, followed by a dominantist interpretation of it, and an explanation of dominantism as in part a technē-influenced doctrine; Chapter four: An examination of Aristotle’s ethical mean and its problems, with a diagnosis of these in terms of influence by the Philebus, and by paradigms derived from the crafts; Chapter five: Argument that Aristotle’s theory of habituation suffers from two significant opacities, these being a function of influence both by the Republic, and by models of craft-learning; Conclusion: Response to key objection; Aristotle’s ethics revised, defended.

The dissertation begins by discussing recent critical treatments of Nietzsche in the work of Alasdair MacIntyre and Jürgen Habermas, then gives a brief discussion of the broader scholarly reception of Nietzsche’s political thought. The body of the dissertation proceeds through the text of the Second Essay of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals, trying to explicate his account of the origin of political society. The dissertation attempts in the first place to show that the historical narrative Nietzsche offers in the Second Essay is coherent, then to illuminate the details of his account of the rise of political society, and thus of civilized morality (what Nietzsche calls “the bad conscience”), and finally to detail the different stages in the development of the bad conscience. The dissertation lays particular emphasis on determining the relation between what Nietzsche calls ressentiment and the bad conscience. The dissertation also attempts to shed light on Nietzsche’s view of the relation between nature and political society and morality, as he expresses it both in his analysis of the bad conscience and in the somewhat more thematic discussion of this question at the beginning of the Essay.

The work of one of Islam’s most celebrated philosophers, Mulla Sadra Shirazi(d. 1045/1635 or 1050/1640), is characterized by a unique synthesis of the main strands of Islamic thought. Yet Sadra’s role as a philosopher was not simply to synthesize. His penetrating intellect and ability to cast new light on some of the fundamental problems of Islamic thought ensured that all of his books would be landmarks of intellectual achievement in their own right. Amongst his most significant but seriously neglected writings are his compositions on the Qur’an and its sciences. Broadly speaking, the present study investigates the manner in which scriptural exegesis, philosophy, and mysticism came together in Sadra’s writings on the Qur’an. More specifically, this study aims to examine the sophistication of the discussions to be found in Sadra’s Qur’anic works by focusing on his last complete and most mature tafsir, the Tafsir Surat al-fatiha. After surveying the history, reception, and content of Sadra’s writings on the Qur’an and presenting a coherent picture of the theoretical dimensions of his scriptural hermeneutics, we will go on to examine the Tafsir Surat al-fatiha’s structure and sources. This will set the stage for a careful analysis of the problems in cosmology, metaphysics, anthropology, theology, and soteriology addressed by Sadra in the work. Not only will our study demonstrate the manner in which Sadra reads scripture, but it will also afford us a window into the development of his religious thought, since the Fatiha provides him with the opportunity to recast many of his philosophical concerns within the Qur’an’s universe of discourse.

This dissertation investigates the relationship between personal identity theory and normative ethics. There are a surprising number of contradictory arguments about the relevance of personal identity criteria for ethics and political philosophy. For example, writers like David Gauthier, Thomas Nagel and John Rawls argue that utilitarianism disregards the separateness, or non-identity, of persons. Derek Parfit claims the opposite. According to him, utilitarians respect the separateness of persons while also respecting the disintegration within lives. Also, Henry Sidgwick was under the impression that the separateness of persons supports egoism and disregard for the other-regarding demands of morality. David Brink claims the opposite. According to him, the resulting form of egoism would be nearly indistinguishable from altruism and therefore not at odds with the other-regarding demands of morality. Finally, both Rawls and Nozick argue that the separateness of persons speaks in favour of their own deontological view—despite the fact that their views are fundamentally opposed. Rawls hopes to gain support for his contractually derived principles of justice, while Nozick believes he can generate support for his deontological side constraints. This situation is rather surprising and in need of an explanation. Finally, there have also been skeptical arguments about the force of such appeals, such as Rawls’s claims that personal identity theory and ethics are independent, and his claim that personal identity criteria are inherently normative. This dissertation looks at these controversies in detail and comes to the conclusion that the force of appeals to personal identity is considerably more fine-grained and more complex than has been presumed.

I argue that virginity is a distinct phenomenon with essential structures that can be apprehended and described using a phenomenological method, and thus offer the first robust phenomenology of virginity. A more complex passage than the physical transaction of first sexual intercourse, virginity manifests the event of a coming to love through the conduit of the sexual-erotic body. Calling on Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenology of givenness, I argue that virginity qualifies as a saturated phenomenon, exceeding or overflowing intuition and signification in its paradoxical phenomenality. As a study in saturated phenomena my work pushes the limits of phenomenology by endorsing the exigency of a phenomenology of the evanescent and enigmatic to engage denigrated domains of human experience such as sex and love. Our access to virginity is possible because of our ontological constitution as sexuate beings, but also because of our essential potential to cultivate our sexuate existence through the lens of a primordial erotic attunement. Conscious development of our erotic potential is a form of ascesis that can elevate the sexual-erotic encounter to the ethical height of love. Still, virginity can never be forced, taken, or lost, since the phenomenon is ultimately only gifted through an act of erotic generosity and the intervention of grace. Virginity is not a one-time threshold crossing. It has the essential possibility of being perpetually renewed with each singular sexual-erotic encounter. I seek to sever sex from its legacy as mere animal instinct and from its functional and reproductive teleology in order to open a new way of thinking about our sexual-erotic being that focuses on its ethical potential and its usefulness as a model for being with others outside of the sexual-erotic relation. I take seriously the Irigarayan possibility that we can craft an ethics of Eros. My work draws broadly from twentieth-century literature on phenomenology, poststructuralism, and psychoanalysis, including that of Marion, Beauvoir, Irigaray, Derrida, Heidegger, Foucault, and Butler.