In the past decade the burgeoning field of gay and lesbian studies has been mired in a philosophic and epistemic morass over the question of sexual identity. Known as the essentialist/constructivist debate, there is much agreement among scholars that the debate has outlived its usefulness, but it persists nonetheless to divide gay and lesbian communities, within academia as well as without. This question of sexual identity is not without consequences, as the perceived determinants of sexuality inform the social and political question "What is to be done with the sodomite, the homosexual, the gay and lesbian person?" Examining the epistemological models developed in the Nineteenth century to explain first the sodomite, and then the homosexual, I argue that these same models of criminal deviance, medical disorder, and psychological illness circulate still in the modern representation of the gay or lesbian person. Central to this debate over sexual identity, is political identification. How the State represents gays and lesbians in policy decisions will have a great impact on the daily lives of millions of gay and lesbian people. From civil rights and employment rights to privacy rights and protection from harassment and violence, the modern State has become both arbiter for, and contributor to the political creation of the gay/lesbian 'other.' Examining this process of political identification in the policy texts and political debates in The United States, I focus on the recent controversy over allowing "homosexuals" in the military, demonstrating how the state deploys both essentialist and constructivist strategies, often contradictorily in its construction of the modern gay and lesbian person. Finally, I examine the gay community's "flight to essentialism," questioning whether this recent trend is really the most productive and strategic conceptualization of identity. I conclude that although it may prove useful in the short run, it may also open the door to forms of regulation and scrutinization of our intimate lives previously unknown. There is much which suggests that this process of heightened surveillance and control is already underway.

In my dissertation I develop and defend a deliberative account of causation: causal relations correspond to the evidential relations we use when we decide on one thing in order to achieve another. Tamsin’s taking her umbrella is a cause of her staying dry, for example, if and only if her deciding to take her umbrella for the sake of staying dry is adequate grounds for believing she’ll stay dry. I defend the account in the form of a biconditional that relates causal relations to evidential relations. This biconditional makes claims about causal relations, not just our causal concepts, and constrains metaphysical accounts of causation, including reductive ones. Surely we need science to investigate causal structure. But we can’t justify any particular account of causation independently of its relevance for us. This deliberative account explains why we should care about causation, why we deliberate on the future and not the past, and even why causes come prior in time to their effects. In chapter 1 I introduce the motivations for the project: to reconcile causation and our freedom as agents with the picture of the world presented by physics. Fundamental physics makes no mention of causes. And the lawlike character of the world seems to rule out freedom to decide. My dissertation offers a combined solution—I explain our freedom in epistemic terms and use this freedom to make sense of causation. In chapter 2 I draw on philosophy of action and decision theory to develop an epistemic model of deliberation, one based in requirements on belief. If we’re to deliberate, our beliefs can’t epistemically settle how we’ll decide, yet our decisions must epistemically settle what we’ll do. This combination of belief and suspension of belief explains why we rationally take ourselves to be free to decide on different options in deliberation. In chapter 3 I defend this model from near rivals that also explain freedom in terms of belief. Accounts of ‘epistemic freedom’ from David Velleman, James Joyce and Jenann Ismael appeal to our justification to form beliefs ‘unconstrained’ by evidence. Yet, I will argue, these accounts are susceptible to counterexamples and turn out to rely on a primitive ability to believe at will—one that makes the appeal to justification redundant. J. G. Fichte’s Idealist account of freedom, based in a primitive activity of the ‘I’, nicely illustrates the kind of freedom these accounts rely on. In chapter 4 I develop the epistemic model of deliberation into a deliberative account of causation. I argue that A is a type-level cause of B if and only if an agent deciding on a state of affairs of type A in ‘proper deliberation’, for the sake of a state of affairs of type B would be good evidence of a state of affairs of type B obtaining. This biconditional explains why we should care about causal relations—they direct us to good decisions. But existing accounts of causation don’t adequately explain why causation matters. James Woodward’s interventionist account explicates ‘control’ and ‘causation’ in the very same terms—and so can’t appeal to a relation between them to explain why we should care about causal relations. David Lewis’ reductive account relies on standards for evaluating counterfactuals, but doesn’t motivate them or explain why a causal relation analysed in these terms should matter. Delivering the right verdicts is not enough. The deliberative account explains why causation matters, by relating causal relations to the evidential relations needed for deliberation. In chapter 5 I use the deliberative account to explain causal asymmetry—why, contingently, causes come before their effects. Following an approach from Huw Price, because deliberation comes prior to decision, deliberation undermines evidential relations towards the past. So an agent’s deciding for the sake of the past in proper deliberation won’t be appropriate evidence of the past, and backwards causation is not implied. To explain why deliberation comes prior to decision, I appeal to an epistemic asymmetry, one that is explained by statistical-mechanical accounts of causation in non-causal terms. But statistical-mechanical accounts still need the deliberative account to justify why the relations they pick out as causal should matter to us. The deliberative account of causation relates causal relations to the evidential relations of use to deliberating agents. It constrains metaphysical accounts, while revealing their underlying explanatory structure. And it does not rule out explanations of causal asymmetry based in physics, but complements them. Overall this project makes sense of causation by foregrounding its relevance for us.

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This dissertation aspires to revive the dystopian liberalism which identifies the avoidance of the worst as the fundamental aim of politics. The theory I present consists of three elements overall: The first element is what I call the Priority Claim, stating that the most important aim of social institutions should, morally speaking, be to avoid cruelty qua worst evil (Part I). The second element is the identification of the informal structure, the set of social norms within a population, as an important site to realize this ideal (Part II). The third element is the application of the principle that cruelty be avoided to the in-formal structure (Part III). This leads to an account of desirable social norms and in turn to a concrete answer to the question how individuals can in their everyday lives do their part to create a world that is overall less cruel and more humane.

Mathematical aggregation frameworks are general and precise settings in which to study ways of forming a consensus or group point of view from a set of potentially diverse points of view. Yet the standard frameworks have significant limitations. A number of results show that certain sets of desirable aggregation properties cannot be simultaneously satisfied. Drawing on work in the theory of imprecise probabilities, I propose philosophically-motivated generalizations of the standard aggregation frameworks (for probability, preference, full belief) that I prove can satisfy the desired properties. I then look at some applications and consequences of these proposals in decision theory, epistemology, and the social sciences.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Open University. BLDSC no. DX201106. / 2 volumes.

published_or_final_version / Philosophy / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Politics and Public Administration / Master / Master of Philosophy

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