Browsing Philosophy by Type "Doctoral Thesis"
Now showing items 21-40 of 50
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An Examination of the Moral Authority of Use of Advance Directives with the Alzheimer's Dementia Population
(University of Waterloo, 2010-01-22)Advance directives in Canada are instructions made by capable adults that pertain to future healthcare treatment choices at a time of incapacity. My experience as an ethicist working in an Ontario long-term care facility ... -
Existence Assumptions and Logical Principles: Choice Operators in Intuitionistic Logic
(University of Waterloo, 2015-09-02)Hilbert’s choice operators τ and ε, when added to intuitionistic logic, strengthen it. In the presence of certain extensionality axioms they produce classical logic, while in the presence of weaker decidability conditions ... -
From Objects to Individuals: An Essay in Analytic Ontology
(University of Waterloo, 2008-12-05)The brief introductory chapter attempts to motivate the project by pointing to (a) the intuitive appeal and importance of the notion of an object (that is, a “paradigmatic” individual), and (b) the need – for the sake of ... -
From the Standpoint of The Reasonable Person: Epistemic Ignorance, Culpable Dispositions, and the Objective Standard
(University of Waterloo, 2022-05-16)The concept of reasonableness is both vital to the law and frustratingly vague. Efforts to articulate the concept often rely on “common sense” community-based notions of what counts as reasonable. While using common sense ... -
Harm Reduction for Corporations
(University of Waterloo, 2020-09-04)When corporations set out to do good for the environment and society, they usually do so under the banner of corporate social responsibility. This approach has become commonplace among the public, in business schools, and ... -
How Prejudice Affects the Study of Animal Minds
(University of Waterloo, 2017-08-24)Humans share the planet with many wonderfully diverse animal species and human-animal interactions are part of our daily lives. An important part of understanding how humans do and should interact with other animals is ... -
Individual Human Rights: Reconciling Rights with Value Pluralism
(University of Waterloo, 2007-10-01)Abstract: This thesis examines the foundations of individual human rights. The general thought that informs the discussion is that rights and values are two different kinds of moral discourse. Hence, any attempt to simply ... -
Inferential Role Semantics for Natural Language
(University of Waterloo, 2017-08-22)The most general goal of semantic theory is to explain facts about language use. In keeping with this goal, I introduce a framework for thinking about linguistic expressions in terms of (a) the inferences they license, (b) ... -
An Inquiry into Mental Variation
(University of Waterloo, 1995)Although there are both common and specialised senses of the term variation, (the OED lists dozens) there seems to be no well defined use of this term in philosophy. The main task of my thesis is to demonstrate that ... -
Intentionality as Methodology
(University of Waterloo, 2012-01-25)In this dissertation, I examine the role that intentional descriptions play in our scientific study of the mind. Behavioural scientists often use intentional language in their characterization of cognitive systems, making ... -
Knowledge, Justice, and Subjects with Cognitive or Developmental Disability
(University of Waterloo, 2019-09-20)This thesis includes four research papers, each devoted to a topic in philosophy of cognitive disability and its intersection with other areas of philosophy. Three focus on issues of cognitive or developmental disability ... -
Logic In Context: An essay on the contextual foundations of logical pluralism
(University of Waterloo, 2013-10-02)The core pluralist thesis about logic, broadly construed, is the claim that two or more logics are correct. In this thesis I discuss a uniquely interesting variant of logical pluralism that I call logical contextualism. ... -
Mature Minor Eligibility for Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD): An Ethical Analysis
(University of Waterloo, 2021-08-24)Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) was legalized in Canada on June 17, 2016, following a landmark Supreme Court of Canada decision, Carter v. Canada (2015). Currently, the law controversially denies three groups access to ... -
Merleau-Ponty and the Preconceptions of Objective Thinking
(University of Waterloo, 2007-01-18)Maurice Merleau-Ponty thinks that many classical theories of perception, especially reductionism, are influenced by the objective and the scientific form of thinking. Such influence is expressed in two preconceptions. The ... -
Miracle Reports, Moral Philosophy, and Contemporary Science
(University of Waterloo, 2008-10-22)In the case of miracle reports, David Hume famously argued that there is something about "the very nature of the fact" to which the testimony testifies which contains the seeds of the testimony's destruction as credible ... -
A Multidimensional Model of Biological Sex
(University of Waterloo, 2012-01-10)This dissertation is about biological sex and how we ought to make sense of it. By biological sex I mean those elements of an individual’s body that are involved in reproduction of the individual’s species; by make sense ... -
Occurrent Contractarianism: A Preference-Based Ethical Theory
(University of Waterloo, 1995)There is a problem within contractarian ethics that I wish to resolve. It concerns individualpreferences. Contractarianism holds that morality, properly conceived, can satisfy individualpreferences and interests better ... -
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF QUINE'S D-THESIS
(University of Waterloo, 2016-02-02)The philosophical significance of Quine's D-thesis is considered. The D-thesis - "Any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system? (W.V.0. Quine, From a Logical ... -
The Philosophy of Bioinformatics
(University of Waterloo, 2007-01-22)The development of bioinformatics as an influential biological field should interest philosophers of biology and philosophers of science in general. Bioinformatics contributes significantly to the development of biological ... -
Politics, Principles and Pluralism: On why liberalism must be inconsistent if correct
(University of Waterloo, 2014-10-24)In this dissertation, the author argues that constructivist foundations of political liberalism require a rarely recognized sort of pluralism—not only the familiar pluralism between ideas about how we ought to live that ...