Browsing by Subject "Collective agency"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3

Open Access
Armies as corporate agents: a new response to Lazar’s ‘responsibility dilemma’
(2019-05) Boğa, Dilara
The ‘Responsibility Dilemma’ is a significant issue for Just War Theory. The dilemma deals with the question of how to explain why non-combatants are not liable for lethal defensive harms despite being blameworthy. In this thesis, I suggest that we can overcome this dilemma by recognizing armies as corporate agents who bear liability. This explains why armies are liable, and why civilians are not. I also claim that there is a distinction between liability and blameworthiness.
Open Access
May ı treat a collective as a more means?
(University of Illinois Press, 2014) Wringe, B.
According to Kant, it is impermissible to treat humanity as a mere means. If we accept Kant's equation of humanity with rational agency, and are literalists about ascriptions of agency to collectives it appears to follow that we may not treat collectives as mere means. On most standard accounts of what it is to treat something as a means this conclusion seems highly implausible. I conclude that we are faced with a range of options. One would be to rethink the equation of humanity with rationality. Another would be to abandon the prohibition on treating as a means. The last would be to abandon literalist construals of attribution of agency to collectives
Open Access
Truth in theatrical works
(2022-05) Çelik, Zeynep
The question of how to define truth in fiction has caught the interest of many philosophers. The reason for this lies in the complexity of claiming whether fictional entities exist or not. Most philosophers have dealt with truth in relation to prose fiction. My interest, on the contrary, lies in how we can identify truth in theatrical works. The question is intriguing because theatre contains literary as well as performative elements. The latter element renders it difficult to identify truth in theatre. There are immeasurable plays based on one script alone, and this makes it difficult to form true statements about a particular play. In this thesis, I take into account three different theories on truth in theatre. The first one is that of David Lewis. The truth conditions he provides and the possible worlds account are applicable only to prose fiction. He disregards the performative aspect of theatre, and that is why I eliminate his account. I next examine Kendall Walton’s imagination and prop theory, but I don’t find his account satisfactory either. Although Walton acknowledges the performative aspect of theatre, he cannot give an account of avant-garde theatre. I finally look into a more recent account, which is Michael Morris’s real likenesses view. Morris comes closest in defining truth in theatre, yet his account fails due to his inability of defining what the medium is in theatre. Ultimately, I argue that the existing theories of truth in fiction do not give a tenable account of truth in theatrical works.