Irony has for long been on the boundary between philosophy and arts owing to its both verbal/logical character and its aesthetic appeal. Recently, Rorty proposed irony as the main discursive attitude in a liberal society. In this study, I investigate liberal irony from a philosophical perspective. More specifically, I demonstrate that irony is representative of a certain view of subjectivity and an ethical stance, a critical tool that is of special importance in a coherence view of truth and a rhetorical form that appeals both to the rational and irrational.

What is an event? What sort of object are they? How is a given event distinguished from other events and other objects? This thesis on science oriented metaphysics will take Davidson's account of events as its starting point to answer the above questions. It will develop this conception of events into one that is consistent with the special theory of relativity by updating its notions of change, cause and property. The new concept of a proper property, a generalization of the notion of an invariant, is introduced to solve some of these metascientific problems. Other features of the work include an analysis of the Lorentz force equation as it applies to one family of cases of causation, showing that a use of cause and effect to help individuate events cannot be complete until relativistic features are built into it. I propose that the conception of a proper property will also solve this worry over the nature of causation as it affects the issues of events above. In particular, it will attempt to solve a charge of circularity which has been leveled at Davidson's account. This property analysis also has the feature that it makes the account of events which started with Davidsonian inspiration (i.e. causes and effects are intimately connected to events) more like Kim's. Kim's account of events is modified on the grounds it does not do justice to our intuitions about changes and events.

One of the most interesting developments in recent psychological theorising has been a growing appreciation of the need for a viable theory of mental causation. Hitherto, the prospects for reconciling what seems to be the uniquely rational character of human thought and action with the non-rational mechanistic workings of the natural world have appeared to be limited or even illusory, and the pursuit of reconciliation of this sort has therefore formerly been dismissed as being either impossible of completion or inappropriate for contemplation. Much of the scepticism concerning the role of causal processes in human thought and action was dispelled, however, by the philosopher Donald Davidson, who argues that not only is human action capable of being caused by the actor�s thoughts and desires, but that only when such action is so caused, can it be rational. Davidson�s proposal for the reconciliation of human rationality with causal necessitation is articulated in his theory of Anomalous Monism. According to this theory, there exists what may be termed an ontological-conceptual distinction between events themselves and the characters or properties that are attributed to events by human observers, and it is through recognition of this distinction that one discovers how mental events, that is, events that are amenable to description in the psychological vocabulary, are causally efficacious yet free from the constraints typically associated with the necessity and sufficiency of causal laws. Anomalous Monism, if it were workable, would therefore resolve the paradox according to which human mentality is at once integrated in, and yet unconstrained by, the mechanistic natural world, by demonstrating the compatibility of the facts of causation with the intuitions of folk psychology. However, close examination of Anomalous Monism reveals it to rely on logically flawed anti-realist principles concerning the characters of events, properties and causation. It follows from this that the theory itself must be rejected, but the task that it was devised to undertake, the formulation of a viable theory of mental causation, need not be similarly discarded. Rather, what remains is the challenge of delineating an alternative theory, one that withstands logical scrutiny whilst addressing what is characteristic of human mental processes, and thereby what is characteristic of mental causation. The theory of Direct Realism that is derived from the broader philosophical realism of John Anderson provides the materials for meeting this challenge. According to Direct Realism, mental phenomena are relational situations obtaining between certain organisms (including humans) and their environments. As such, mental phenomena are included in the range of phenomena occurring in the natural world and they are therefore subject to all of its ways of working, including its deterministic mechanisms. The particular challenge that a Direct Realist theory of mental causation faces, that of demonstrating that relational situations can be causal, is revealed upon examination of the character of causation to be unproblematic. Furthermore, the seeming incompatibility between human rationality and natural necessitation is resolved when it is acknowledged that, rather than be an inherent feature of thought and action, logical structure is a characteristic of the natural environment that organisms are at times sensitive to, as revealed by its effects on the characters of their thoughts and actions. Far from being remote or illusory, the prospects for reconciling human mentality with the causal mechanisms of the natural world are discovered in the present thesis to be favourable when a realist approach to the characters of both mental events and causation is adopted.

Zugl.: München, Univ., Diss., 2007

Thesis (M. A.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1997. / Bibliography: leaves 174-179.

Thesis (B.A.)--Haverford College, Dept. of Philosophy, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references.

Recientemente, algunos críticos del enfoque davidsoniano de la atribución intencional han señalado que el mismo no puede ser aplicado para el caso de los delirios psiquiátricos, dado que las creencias delirantes no satisfacen los requisitos de racionalidad que este impone. En este trabajo: i) reconstruyo, a partir del análisis del caso del delirio de Capgras, la crítica a la idea de que solo podemos interpretar a un agente con creencias irracionales si mantiene aún un trasfondo de racionalidad; ii) objeto la misma y argumento que este delirio no representa un verdadero contraejemplo ya que un examen adecuado del mismo muestra que los sujetos con delirio de Capgras conservan un trasfondo de racionalidad. Señalaré así, que las condiciones mínimas para que la atribución de estados intencionales tenga lugar se encuentran garantizadas.

In this thesis I give a response to external world scepticism. I first argue that scepticism arises when we accept that it is an empirical question whether I am in a sceptical scenario, that is, a scenario in which my beliefs are coherent, and yet my empirical beliefs are false. The idea that it is an empirical question whether I am in a sceptical scenario gets its plausibility from the realist claim that our empirical beliefs have an objective subject matter. I then attempt to give a response to scepticism that is compatible with this realist claim. Three promising responses to scepticism are considered, but are found to be inadequate. Seeing why these responses are inadequate helps us to appreciate some of the conditions on an adequate response to scepticism. By drawing on the work of Donald Davidson I develop a response to scepticism that is compatible with the realist claim, and that meets these conditions. According to this response, when we get clear about the concept of belief we see that sceptical scenarios are a conceptual impossibility. Thus, just as it is not an empirical question whether I am a married bachelor, it is not an empirical question whether I am in a sceptical scenario, and the argument for scepticism breaks down.

What is an event? What sort of object are they? How is a given event distinguished from other events and other objects? This thesis on science oriented metaphysics will take Davidson's account of events as its starting point to answer the above questions. It will develop this conception of events into one that is consistent with the special theory of relativity by updating its notions of change, cause and property. The new concept of a proper property, a generalization of the notion of an invariant, is introduced to solve some of these metascientific problems. Other features of the work include an analysis of the Lorentz force equation as it applies to one family of cases of causation, showing that a use of cause and effect to help individuate events cannot be complete until relativistic features are built into it. I propose that the conception of a proper property will also solve this worry over the nature of causation as it affects the issues of events above. In particular, it will attempt to solve a charge of circularity which has been leveled at Davidson's account. This property analysis also has the feature that it makes the account of events which started with Davidsonian inspiration (i.e. causes and effects are intimately connected to events) more like Kim's. Kim's account of events is modified on the grounds it does not do justice to our intuitions about changes and events. / Arts, Faculty of / Philosophy, Department of / Graduate

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