Ryan Jepson, University College London
Abstract. This essay examines whether environmental philosophy should retain or abandon a commitment to “nature,” in light of widespread human influence on the planet. Classic moral arguments in environmental ethics, like those of Taylor (1986) and Katz (1997), sought to improve our environmental practices by defending nature’s intrinsic value. However, contrastive “postnaturalist” arguments, from McKibben (1989) and Vogel (2015), maintain that nature is already dead, and that accepting this reality is key to improving our environmental practices. In this essay, I evaluate Vogel’s claim that environmental philosophy should move beyond the concept of “nature.” Vogel’s criticism of Taylor and Katz’s arguments suggests we have good reason to abandon concern for “nature,” since moral defences of nature imply problematic artifice-nature distinctions. However, drawing on Plumwood (2005), I argue that highlighting, rather than abandoning, the concept of “nature” is needed to combat anthropocentric “backgrounding” of nature’s agency – the dominant thinking underlying our ecological crisis. I draw on Hailwood (2012) to reconceive a monist account of the “natural world,” one that acknowledges humanity’s continuity with nature and actively “reworks” anthropocentric narratives. The defended “natural world” account provides environmental philosophy with a more robust ethical framework than either classic moral arguments or “postnaturalist” abandonment of “nature.”
Ryan Jepson is undertaking a Doctor of Philosophy in Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. He has a Master of Philosophy in Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of Cambridge, and a Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Arts from the University of New South Wales. His philosophical interests include environmental philosophy, consciousness, the mind–body problem, and philosophy of language
Ruiwen Guo, Australian National University
Abstract. The kind of self that Descartes intuits in his Meditations is one that exists independently of experience, yet possesses and actively participates in it. The Buddha’s argument against the “Cartesian Self” – which should be distinguished from his argument against the identification of the self with the totality or any component of the five aggregates – is that the Cartesian Self is both cognitively meaningless and morally harmful. However, as I will argue in this essay, the Buddha’s argument against the Cartesian Self is grounded in his epistemology and soteriology, for which he offers no independent argument, and which his opponents may reject because of their own deeper convictions. The Buddha’s argument against the Cartesian Self is therefore philosophically unsuccessful in the sense that it cannot persuade a rational person who believes in the Cartesian Self to abandon this belief on the basis of the Buddha’s argument; in fact, the argument would simply appear to such a person as a groundless assertion.
Ruiwen is a recent graduate of the Bachelor of Arts (Honours) program at the Australian National University. His research interests include philosophy of religion and Asian philosophy
Zakhar Zolotarev, Monash University
Abstract. In response to David Lewis’ original counterfactual account of causation’s inability to deal with late preemption cases, Patrick Williamson suggests that we could adopt extreme standards of fragility. I outline the implications of this solution and defend Lewis’ view that spurious causes pose a greater challenge to extreme fragility than they do to the original counterfactual account. I then argue that adopting extreme standards of fragility ultimately fails to adequately address late preemption. Williamson advocates that, in order to allow for the intrinsicality of causal processes, we should adopt the original counterfactual account as quasi-dependence. He indicates that proponents of quasi-dependence must make some metaphysical concessions, namely that all trumping cases involve cutting and that absences not only do not exist, but that propositions describing absences are really describing contrastive positive claims. I address each concession in turn and draw out its implications, showing that not only do they not provide a satisfying solution to the problems they aim to solve, but that they likely generate further problems.
Zakhar Zolotarev is an undergraduate student at Monash University, where he is pursuing a double degree in law and science. Over the past year, Zak has been reading philosophy in his spare time, developing a particular interest in contemporary analytic philosophy
Alex Anderson, University of Sydney
Abstract. Dante’s portrayal of Beatrice has long confounded readers, but in mapping a Platonic “ladder of love” in Dante’s writing, we invite a new perspective on the problematic of her character. This essay attempts to do this by a comparison of Diotima’s account of love in Plato’s Symposium with Dante’s musings on Beatrice in La Vita Nuova and the Divine Comedy. These accounts are bridged by the influence of Aquinas’ Fourth Way for Proving the Existence of God on Dante – a work which is inherently Platonic in nature. In drawing this comparison, we find that, in Plato, love is more like a means to the end of contemplating the abstract ideal of beauty, but in Dante, love is instead the resonance of God’s own love, a divine power which not only enables ascension but is evidence of ascension’s telos – the attraction that all beings have towards their creator. This discussion of Plato and Dante produces new ideas about the character of Beatrice and the extent to which she is cast in either a passive or active light, whether she is an object or a subject. In fact, the answer is the latter in both cases as our perspective shifts from a focus on Dante’s love for Beatrice to Beatrice’s love for Dante.
Alex Anderson is a current Honours student in philosophy at the University of Sydney. The aim of his thesis is to comment on the methodology of environmental ethics using the work of Germaine de Staël and with an especially keen focus on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust and plant sciences