Australasian Philosophy

... Rather, acts are made right because they are done by a virtuous agent; or because they proceed from a virtuous motive; or because of some similar fact. ... (Q1) An act is right iff it is what a virtuous agent would do in the circumstances [1997: 228]. ...

The objective of this paper is to report on the definitions of the terms used and in use across different regions for identity crime, namely, identity fraud, identity theft, and identity deception. The purpose is to clarify the meaning of the terms used with a view to gaining a consensus amongst the various stakeholders. This consensus is essential to enable further research. Without consensus measurement and comparisons are meaningless. Our study of identity fraud has an industry-driven research agenda. A ...

THIS PAPER REPORTS ON an analysis of teachers' talk of play-based learning and intentional teaching of mathematics. The participants in the study were two early childhood teachers in a pre-Prep program (the year before school). Teachers' talk of how they engaged in the interplay between children's play and the use of intentional teaching practices to introduce mathematics concepts formed the data set to be analysed. Conversational interviews and stimulated recall were used to gather data. A poststructural analysis of the teachers' talk suggests that socially and culturally constructed ways of being an early childhood teacher are both enabled and constrained by discourses of play and intentional teaching.

I consider the metaphysical consequences of the view that propositional attitudes have essential normative properties. I argue that realism should take a weak rather than a strong form. I argue that expressivism cannot get off the ground. And I argue that eliminativism is self-refuting.

The Quine/Putnam indispensability argument is regarded by many as the chief argument for the existence of platonic objects. We argue that this argument cannot establish what its proponents intend. The form of our argument is simple. Suppose indispensability to science is the only good reason for believing in the existence of platonic objects. Either the dispensability of mathematical objects to science can be demonstrated and, hence, there is no good reason for believing in the existence of platonic objects, or their dispensability cannot be demonstrated and, hence, there is no good reason for believing in the existence of mathematical objects which are genuinely platonic. Therefore, indispensability, whether true or false, does not support platonism. Mathematical platonists claim that at least some of the objects

This paper reports on an analysis of teachers' talk of play-based learning and intentional teaching of mathematics. The participants in the study were two early childhood teachers in a pre-Prep program (the year before school). Teachers' talk of how they engaged in the ...

Constitutivism is the view that it is possible to derive contentful, normatively binding demands of practical reason and morality from the constitutive features of agency. Whereas much of the debate has focused on the constitutivist's ability to derive content, David Enoch has challenged her ability to generate normativity. Even if one can derive content from the constitutive aims of agency, one could simply demur: ‘Bah! Agency, shmagency’. The ‘Why be moral?’ question would be replaced by the ‘Why be an agent?’ question. It is the aim of this paper to show that the shmagency objection is essentially correct, though not as originally defended by Enoch. Since Enoch posed his argument as ruling out the normative authority of agency under any conception of the constitutive features of agency, constitutivists have responded by arguing for the inescapability of certain minimal features of agency. I argue that this amounts to equivocation: the constitutivist appeals to a minimal conception of agency in answering the normative question but to a richer understanding in answering the content question. The key to the shmagency objection, as I shall defend it, is to insist that the same sense of agency must be employed in answering both questions. A shmagent can concede that there may be inescapable ways of understanding agency, but insist that any such understanding would have to be too minimal to generate substantive content.

Psychopaths have emotional impairments that can be expressed in persistent criminal behavior. UK and US law has traditionally excused disordered individuals for their crimes citing these emotional impairments as a cause for their criminal behaviour. The discussion of whether psychopaths are morally responsible for their behaviour has long taken place in the realm of philosophy. However, in recent years, this has moved into scientific and psychiatric investigation, fundamentally so with the development of Robert Hare's diagnostic tool, the ...

The 2008 Australasian Association of Philosophy (AAP) Conference in Melbourne was attended by 345 delegates: 245 from Australia, 27 from New Zealand, 8 from Singapore, and 55 from a range of other countries. Over the course of the conference, there were 265 papers presented in thirteen different subject streams and at a diverse range of symposia. The conference concluded with an overlapping three-day mini-conference on relations between ‘analytic’ and ‘continental’ philosophy.

By way of contrast, the 1999 AAP conference was also held in Melbourne. This conference was attended by 275 delegates who presented 213 papers. The papers were not streamed, though there were three special themes for the conference: Wittgenstein; Fictionalism; and ‘Beyond Analysis’. Among the delegates who presented papers, there were 164 from Australia, 11 from New Zealand, and 38 from a range of other countries. This conference served as an umbrella for conferences of the Australasian Association of Logic (AAL), Women in Philosophy (WiP), and the Australasian Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy (ASACP), and 74 of the 213 papers presented were to these associated conferences.

Comparison between these two conferences suggests that philosophy in Australasia has prospered in the first decade of the twenty-first century. On almost every measure, these numbers indicate an increase over the course of the decade: more conference delegates, more conference papers, and more focussed debates on matters of contemporary concern. In what follows, we shall look more closely at the current state of Australasian philosophy, to see whether this optimistic view can be sustained.

We begin with a brief overview of the state of higher education in Australia, and then a similarly brief overview of the state of the humanities. This overview establishes context that is necessary for a proper evaluation of the performance of philosophy in the past decade.