Browsing Philosophy by Subject "Philosophy"
Now showing items 41-60 of 79
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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, First Aid and the Moral Requirements of Rescue
(University of Waterloo, 2012-09-27)In cases involving the rescue of people in need of immediate medical care, it is often thought that the responsibility to save the lives of the imperilled falls to advanced professionals, such as paramedics, doctors, nurses, ... -
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. ... -
Logic in Pictures: An Examination of Diagrammatic Representations, Graph Theory and Logic
(University of Waterloo, 1994)This thesis explores the various forms of reasoning that are associated with diagrams. It does this by a logical analysis of diagrammatic symbols. The thesis is divided into three sections dealing with different aspects ... -
The Measure Of Meaning
(University of Waterloo, 2007-09-27)There exists a broad inclination among those who theorize about mental representation to assume that the meanings of linguistic units, like words, are going to be identical to, and work exactly like, mental representations, ... -
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 ... -
Moral Encroachment
(University of Waterloo, 2011-10-28)Can practical factors influence a subject's position to know? Traditionally this question has been answered in the negative. A subject's position to know proposition p is not thought to improve merely because the subject ... -
Moral Fictionalism and Moral Reasons
(University of Waterloo, 2008-08-28)One major problem with moral discourse is that we tend treat moral utterances as if they represent propositions. But complex metaphysical problems arise when we try to describe the nature of the moral facts that correspond ... -
Moral Responsibility and the Self
(University of Waterloo, 2011-08-31)Moral responsibility is an issue at the heart of the free-will debate. The question of how we can have moral responsibility in a deterministic world is an interesting and puzzling one. Compatibilists arguments have left ... -
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 ... -
Naturalizing Moral Judgment
(University of Waterloo, 2006-12-18)Philosophers have traditionally attempted to solve metaethical disputes about the nature of moral judgment through reasoned argument alone. Empirical evidence about how we do make moral judgments is often overlooked in ... -
The Nature of Pluralism in Economics: A Case Study of the Gender Wage Gap
(University of Waterloo, 2015-10-02)Understanding and measuring a socially relevant and complex phenomenon like the gender wage gap requires a thorough understanding of the causal factors arising in the real world. This thesis investigates the Marxist and ... -
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 ... -
ON BRANDS | An Investigation into the Nature of Consumer Brands | Are they real or constructed?
(University of Waterloo, 2014-10-08)This thesis investigates the nature of consumer brands in the context of the contemporary realism debate. It comprises three chapters. The first chapter introduces the what, the why and the how of brands, to wit: I describe ... -
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 ... -
Practical Reasoning and Rationality
(University of Waterloo, 2009-04-30)Theories of practical reasoning and rationality have been expounded at least as far back as the Greeks. Beginning with several historical perspectives, I attempt to answer the descriptive and normative questions of practical ... -
The Pregnant Self
(University of Waterloo, 2009-10-02)Pregnancy, a human phenomenon experienced throughout the world and throughout history, has been largely ignored by the philosophical community. A preference for the abnormal and the extraordinary has left this common yet ... -
A Preservationist Approach to Relevant Logic
(University of Waterloo, 2014-08-29)The semantics I develop extend an approach to logic called preservationism. The preservationist approach to logic interprets non-classical consequence relations as preserving something other than truth. I specifically ...