I wrote my honours dissertation in the Philosophy of Literature, looking particularly at genre-classifications, value-judgements, whether fiction can be classed as a thought-experiment in the philosophical and / or scientific sense, and whether thought experiments can be reduced to arguments, all of which have had some bearing on the marginalized status of both science fiction and fantasy as genres within the literary canon. If you're interested, my dissertation can be found at this online science-fiction journal. But you have to pay like, a dollar or something to see it. (That is such a bargain). Yip. Yeah! Yip.

My Masters was in Applied Ethics and Political Philosophy, looking at Tolerance. I addressed the fact that tolerance is one of the most highly-esteemed of the modern virtues, and attracts a lot of academic attention (it's quite fashionable, really), and argued that in fact tolerance is something like a social minimum rather than anything we need to struggle to justify and continue to glorify. What drives this argument is the idea that one state of affairs being better than another does not make the better state of affairs 'best' or even good or right, and especially does not make it virtuous or ideal.

I turned out to be mostly wrong about Tolerance (thanks to Dennis Robinson for so politely pointing this out!) so now I’m just concentrating on my PhD, which is a hybrid sort of project between Social and Political Theory (SPT) and Philosophy of Biology. I’m working on feasibility constraints for political ideals, ideas and policy. Earlier in the year I was looking at the general principle of ‘ought implies can’ and treating ’can’ as a biological/psychological possibility constraint. Now I’m trying something slightly different...

If anyone has similar interests (ought implies can, possibility, feasibility constraints, the impact of findings from philosophy of biology upon normative theory, etc.) I’d be delighted to hear from them!

phone: +61 02 6125 8318
mail (and treats): c/o- SPT Programme, RSSS/CASS, Building 9, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200