This thesis employs perspectives inspired by General Systems Theory to address issues in philosophy, including moral philosophy and philosophy of mind. I present an overview of a range of ideas from the study of physical systems that may be used to provide a firm physicalist foundation to explorations of some common questions in philosophy. I divide these topics into three categories: the Physical Category, the Relevance Category and the Signal Elements Category. I interpret concepts from General Systems Theory, including information and entropy, in a way that I believe facilitates their incorporation into philosophical discussion. I also explain various points arising from General Systems Theory, such as order and disorder, stability, complexity, and self-organisation, and show how ideas from these areas can be applied to certain philosophical problems. I explain relevance in terms of stability, in order to link these scientific perspectives to questions in moral philosophy. I suggest a possible physical foundation for a theory of morality, which takes the form of a variety of Utilitarianism, intended to balance the competing needs of open systems to manage entropy. Such a theory of morality must be capable of dealing with limitations arising from the physicality of information; I propose game theory as a solution to this problem. This thesis also covers issues connected to the above points regarding the nature of consciousness and communication. In particular, I examine the role of linguistic associations in consciousness; and some related features of language and other non-linear representational schemes.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:canterbury.ac.nz/oai:ir.canterbury.ac.nz:10092/1022 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Ingram, David |
| Publisher | University of Canterbury. Philosophy and Religious Studies |
| Source Sets | University of Canterbury |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic thesis or dissertation, Text |
| Rights | Copyright David Ingram, http://library.canterbury.ac.nz/thesis/etheses_copyright.shtml |
| Relation | NZCU |
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