Leiden University Student Repository

Tieleman, Laurens 2022

The Malleable Man: Psychopolitics and the Instructional Mode

Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)

open access

Neoliberalism has altered the way in which the subject consumes and subsequently reflects upon media. A popular media genre on the internet nowadays is instruction videos, which can be consumed for...Show moreNeoliberalism has altered the way in which the subject consumes and subsequently reflects upon media. A popular media genre on the internet nowadays is instruction videos, which can be consumed for various reasons, but usually rely on the notion of conveying to the viewer a certain set of skills. Since these media are therefore consumed for a specific purpose intended, the viewer already pre-establishes a certain attitude and understanding, and furthermore gains a reflective understanding of this phenomenon itself. This thesis aims to reconsider the notion of spectatorship through a lens of phenomenology, in order to reevaluate the idea of a spectator's own understanding of their experience of a medium, which this thesis names "cognitive spectatorship," and shows how the genre of instruction videos and this new viewing attitude play into the Neoliberal ideology.Show less

Heshusius, Jesper 2020

Of Attributive Moral Responsibility

Bachelor thesis | Wijsbegeerte (BA)

closed access

In this paper, I criticize a common feature found in theories of moral responsibility, namely that moral responsibility (MR) is supposed to be a property of agents. It shall be argued that MR...Show moreIn this paper, I criticize a common feature found in theories of moral responsibility, namely that moral responsibility (MR) is supposed to be a property of agents. It shall be argued that MR should instead be thought of as a different type of quality. On my account, moral responsibility is an attribute that can be correctly ascribed to agents. I establish firstly four desiderata used to evaluate the adequacy of any theory of moral responsibility. Using these, I argue that neither libertarian nor compatibilist theories of free will provide a sure bulwark of moral responsibility as a property. This, combined with the rationale involving the problematic nature of this property, leads me to a conclusion similar to that of the hard determinist: the property of moral responsibility cannot exist. However, in order to avoid responsibility nihilism that follows from this moral responsibility scepticism, I propose that MR may exist as an attribute that can be correctly ascribed to human and non-human agents by following fair rules. Finally, I opt to explain why such account of attributive moral responsibility (AMR) provides a more adequate response to the desiderata than rival accounts.Show less