published_or_final_version / Chinese Historical Studies / Master / Master of Arts

One of the most significant questions in ethics is this: under what conditions are people morally responsible for what they do? Assuming that people can only be praised or blamed for actions they perform of their own free will, the particular question that interests me is how we should understand the nature of this freedom – with what kind of freedom must people act, if they are to be morally responsible for what they do? A natural answer to this question – and the one I think is correct – is to point to the freedom to do otherwise. This is encapsulated in the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP), the principle that a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. PAP has led many to believe that the freedom required for moral responsibility must be incompatible with determinism or the existence of God because it is plausible to argue that if determinism is true or if God exists, then people would lack genuine freedom of choice and hence could not be morally responsible for their behavior. In the light of two important articles by Harry Frankfurt almost four decades ago, which challenged the claim that moral responsibility requires the freedom to do otherwise, compatibilism – the opposing view that the freedom for moral responsibility is compatible with determinism – has experienced a resurgence. Inspired by Frankfurt’s work, those wanting to reject PAP – typically compatibilists – attack the principle on two main grounds: directly and indirectly. First, they have argued directly that PAP is false by developing alleged counterexamples to it. Second, they have challenged PAP indirectly by arguing that there are alternative conceptions of freedom from freedom of choice that, it is claimed, are not reliant on alternative possibilities but are sufficient to capture the freedom required for moral responsibility. My dissertation evaluates these two lines of attack on PAP. In particular, I attempt to defend the truth of PAP against both kinds of challenge. / text

The Neo-Confucian philosopher Yang Shih (1053-1135) flourished during one of the most fertile periods in the history of Chinese philosophy. His curiosity about differences among the Confucian classics, his interest in the Book of Change, his exploration of Buddhist philosophy and his reaction against the philosophical foundation of Wang An-shih's political policies mark Yang Shih as highly representative of his generation. That these factors led to his formulation of a Confucian metaphysics makes him philosophically significant. Further, as the Ch'eng brothers' emissary to southern China, the founder of the Tung-lin Academy, and a progenitor of Chu Hsi, Yang's historical significance is considerable. Yang Shih forms the link between northern and southern China, the Ch'eng brothers and Chu Hsi. This study offers two types of framework within which the diverse elements of Yang Shih's thought may be analyzed: (1) a systemic approach based on the centrality of metaphysics to his teachings, and (2) a comparative approach examining Yang's reaction to the philosophical underpinnings of Wang An-shih's political theories. The major portion of the dissertation deals with Yang's concept of the Tao as a palpable entity, its operator (the principle of change), and its dynamic (response). It examines the ramifications of this groundwork for Yang's theories of human nature and the value of wen (the written and cultural heritage) as well as his attitude toward so-called "heterodox" schools, most notably Buddhism and Taoism. The secondary portion of the dissertation focusses on Yang Shih's criticism of Wang An-shih's Tzu-shuo. Despite the marked divergence of their approaches to political and social issues, an examination of their respective philosophical theories shows the difference between Yang Shih and Wang An-shih to be predominantly one of discourse and emphasis rather than fundamental metaphysical theory. Three appendices follow the body of the dissertation. The first describes the various available editions of the primary source text; the second consists of a biography of Yang Shih; and a glossary of Chinese terms forms the third.

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In this study in political theory I challenge the way in which national identity and liberalism are traditionally counterposed, by arguing that this opposition does not of existence rooted in time and space. On the proposed understanding, Locke’s position is a reaction to Hobbes’s demand for the complete surrender of individual particularity in exchange for an immutable state of perfect stability. It is argued that Locke appreciates the requirement of stability for generating future-oriented motivations in individuals, but exhibits a more humble approach to the human capacity to rule its own existence. The unbound autonomy to take charge of reality that Hobbes grants to humanity is replaced by a constrained ability to administer its existence within the corporeal confines of time and space. It is argued that the timespace constraints that Locke insists are metaphysically inherent to humankind, conflict with the boundary-free assumptions of cosmopolitanism. Conversely, it is maintained, Hobbes’s radical argument for dislodging humankind from spatiotemporal constraints serves as a platform for a cosmopolitan outlook, albeit a markedly authoritarian one. obtain in the work of one of the key figures in liberal thought, John Locke. This controversial assertion is supported by arguing that the conventional reading of Locke is tainted by Hobbesean preconceptions. Rejecting the view that Locke builds upon, or enhances, Hobbes’s position, this thesis instead maintains that Locke is replying to, and moreover divorcing himself from Hobbes. Thus Locke’s stance is portrayed as a distinctive and far more substantial contribution to political theory than he has traditionally been credited with. Furthermore, the distancing of Locke from Hobbes serves to expose the roots of the misconception of Locke’s political thought as a precursor of, and foundation for, a boundary-free cosmopolitanism. It is argued here that Locke’s political theory has become entangled with Hobbes’s due to a lack of attention to the formative relation between metaphysics and politics in their thought. This has obscured the metaphysical foundation of the social problem they are attempting to resolve, reducing it to the language of a clash of conflicting interests, so that the difference between their political prescriptions is presumed merely to echo the different degrees of potential conflict they observe, rather than being a substantive difference. The conventional framing of such conflict as a security problem, a concern for the harm of one’s person and possessions, is replaced here with that of an insecurity problem: an anxiety about the inability to identify regular rules that attach attributes, including possessions, to persons. In social terms, the future having not been secured, it cannot be trusted to connect with the past and present in a continuum. On the interpretation proposed here, Locke and Hobbes offer radically different measures for the artificial generation of this ‘continuum’. Their divergence concerns the degree of control they assume political solutions can exert over the social parallel of the metaphysical ‘continuum’ problem. It is maintained that Hobbes proposes to reverse the causes of anxiety about the future by artificially generating a constant environment, detached from the fluctuations inherent to a mode.

According to Eli Hirsch many ontological disputes are verbal because, in these disputes, each side is most charitably interpreted as speaking the truth in its own language. In this thesis I argue that the ontological disputes Hirsch targets can’t be verbal. The problem with Hirsch’s proposal is that these ontological disputes are explicable in terms of ancillary disagreements about the explanatory value of intrinsic properties. If Hirsch believes that the ancillary disagreements are nonverbal, I argue, then he should interpret ontological disputes as being nonverbal as well. Alternatively, in order for Hirsch to interpret the ancillary disagreements as being verbal, he must reject an assumption implicit in ontologists’ existence assertions. In this case, he ought to interpret ontologists’ positive existence assertions as false. Either way, there is no plausible way to interpret the disputes Hirsch targets as being verbal.

Thesis advisor: Eileen C. Sweeney / This work aims to initiate a comprehensive and definitive account of St. Thomas Aquinas' doctrine of the principle of the individuation of substances of a common species, which adds some sort of "quantity" or "dimensions" to the Aristotelian account of matter as the principle of individuation. After laying out the interpretative problem in its entirety through a review of the Scholastic and modern traditions of commentary, I determine the first step on the path to its solution, and take that first step by offering a properly limited interpretation of the account set forth in Question 4, article 2 of the Expositio super librum Boethii De trinitate. I argue that this text presents a sapiential metaphysical account of the principle of individuation informed by a properly metaphysical understanding which it leaves implicit. St. Thomas resolves the ratio of the numerically individual composite substance of a species as apprehended by the logician to its first per se principle, defined as "matter under dimensiones interminatae." As individuating, the dimensiones interminatae do not belong to the accidental category of quantity, but are merely a dimensional continuum, a certain composite of a potency--the parts of dimensions, which can be united or divided--and the unifying act of situs, the "order of the parts in the whole," or beginning-middle-end structure, by virtue of which the dimensions possess in themselves the ratio of the numerical individual. In each of these respects, the dimensions qualify the potency of the matter subject to them. Qua potency, the dimensiones interminatae qualify matter's intrinsic potency for unity with form in the substance as a whole by restricting its scope in the real order. Qua act, they qualify this complex restricted potency in a merely rational manner, rendering its restricting potency (i.e., that of the dimensional parts for situs) actual, and thus they make the complex restricted potency of matter intelligible, possessed of the ratio of the numerical individual. Accordingly, matter under dimensiones interminatae is this (and not that) matter, one unified principle belonging to the category of substance. In the properly metaphysical understanding of individuation which underlies the explicit account given in Question 4, article 2 of the Expositio, matter is understood as the potency for the corruptibly contingent mode of the act of substantial existence. Being subjected to the restricting potency of the dimensiones interminatae renders matter thus considered a principle of contingency, in the real order, in respect of divisibility. As before, this complex restricted potency is rendered partially actual in the rational order, and thus the ground of the ratio of the numerically individual substance qua being, by the dimensiones interminatae according to the act of situs. In this way, matter is constituted as this matter, this potency for the corruptibly contingent mode of existence, and not that matter--or in other words, it is constituted as numerically individual matter, the first per se principle of individuation. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Thesis advisor: Patrick H. Byrne / This dissertation assesses the relevance and significance of Lonergan’s work to feminist philosophy. In particular, this work examines the debate between several contemporary feminist philosophers regarding the question of the relation between sex and gender, as well as their critiques of the Western metaphysical tradition. Ultimately, the trajectory of the work argues that Lonergan’s philosophy, in particular his re-envisioning of the meaning of what it is to do metaphysics, provides a unique and compelling response to the critiques made by feminist philosophers, despite the appearance of overt sexism in his writing. In fact, Lonergan’s approach clarifies the relevance of metaphysical thinking to feminist philosophical analysis. The first chapter examines likely feminist criticisms of Lonergan’s philosophy, as well as points of commonality, particularly between Lonergan’s cognitional theory and various feminist epistemologies. In particular, this chapter undertakes an analysis of Lonergan’s notion of “the pure desire to know” which he claims is a primordial, normative human response to our experience of the universe of being. Chapter Two focuses on the feminist debate regarding the “sex/gender” distinction. This chapter examines the analyses of sex and gender by four prominent feminist philosophers, Luce Irigaray, Elizabeth Grosz, Moira Gatens, and Judith Butler, and their critiques of the Western metaphysical tradition. Chapter Three explicates Lonergan’s cognitional theory, as well as his analysis of four patterns of experience – the biological, aesthetic, intellectual and dramatic. In addition, the notion of “neural demands” developed by Lonergan is discussed, as well as the connection between “neural demand functions” and patterns of experience. Chapter Four is dedicated to an exploration of the complexity of Lonergan’s approach to metaphysics. The chapter begins with Lonergan’s notion of being, and moves on to explore his notions of finality, emergent probability and objectivity. I turn next to a discussion of Lonergan’s revision of the traditional metaphysical vocabulary of potency, form, and act. This is followed by an examination of Lonergan’s understanding of the relationship between metaphysics and development, as well as dialectic. Chapter Five elaborates a dialectical exchange between Lonergan’s philosophy and the philosophy of Irigaray, Grosz, Butler, and Gatens. In addition, this chapter articulates Lonergan’s notion of anti-essentialism, and argues that his unmistakably clear rejection of essentialism supports the repudiation of the idea that human natures are fixed and determined by biological sex. In addition, Chapter Five explores the metaphysical and ethical significance of classical and statistical law, as well as the relationship between metaphysics and ethics as it pertains to feminist philosophy. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2008. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Thesis advisor: Gary M. Gurtler / This dissertation examines Plotinus’ pedagogy. I argue that his pedagogy aims at teaching students how to think and be attuned to their own unity, both of which have ethical ramifications. I identify six techniques he uses to achieve these aims: (1) using allusions, (2) leading readers to an impasse (aporia), (3) using and correcting images, (4) self-examination and ongoing criticism, (5) treating opposites dynamically, and (6) thought-experiments. I also explain why and how these techniques are not applied to passive recipients but require their active involvement. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.