Chilvers, Luka Watanabe;
(2025)
Anscombe on Promises.
Masters thesis (M.Phil.Stud), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
This thesis is intended primarily to give an interpretation of Anscombe’s account of promising. In particular, it is an attempt to understand what it means to call Anscombe a conventionalist about promising. It argues that we should conceive of Anscombe’s conventionalism as responsive to a series of circularities which arise in the attempt to explain promises; the appeal to a practice, provides us with the means to accept those circularities as unproblematic, and indeed to account for them. Positively, Anscombe offers an account of the internal logic of the practice of promising, and ties the obligation to keep a promise to “necessities” in other domains, in particular those proper to rules and rights. Having given an account of the inner workings of the practice of promising, she emphasises that our duty to “go along” with the practice is explained in terms of the necessity of said practice for social life. This necessity, which Anscombe invokes in justifying the practice, is carefully distinguished from the sort of necessity at play in promissory obligation. I finally consider a series of concerns which have been raised against views, notably Rawls’ which, like Anscombe’s, endorse a logical distinction between the reasons for keeping a promise, and the reasons relevant to justifying a certain practice. I attempt to show that, while Anscombe herself does not provide much material to respond to these difficulties, a response can be made which is not only consistent with her stated views, but is in fact enabled by the way in which she characterises the necessity of the practice of promising.
| Type: | Thesis (Masters) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | M.Phil.Stud |
| Title: | Anscombe on Promises |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2025. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Dept of Philosophy |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10210408 |
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