Browsing Philosophy by Title
Now showing items 103-122 of 134
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Rationality and Group Decision-Making in Practical Healthcare
(University of Waterloo, 2006)In this paper, a view of non-compliance in practical healthcare is provided that identifies certain non-compliant behaviours as rational. This view of rational non-compliance is used to update a current form of doctor ... -
A Realist Critique of Structural Empiricism
(University of Waterloo, 2009-11-04)In his latest work, Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective, Bas van Fraassen has argued for a position he describes as empiricist structuralism. This position embraces a structuralist view of science which ... -
Reasonable Assertions: On Norms of Assertion and Why You Don't Need to Know What You're Talking About
(University of Waterloo, 2012-04-17)There’s a widespread conviction in the norms of assertion literature that an agent’s asserting something false merits criticism. As Williamson puts it, asserting something false is likened to cheating at the game of ... -
Reducing the Emergence of the Gaps: Computation for Weak Emergence
(University of Waterloo, 2014-09-29)This thesis contributes to the growing literature surrounding the importance of weak emergence by showing it can account for more phenomena than originally conceived via the use of computational reduction. Weak emergence ... -
Reference and Reinterpretation
(University of Waterloo, 2007-10-02)Reference is the relation held to obtain between an expression and what a speaker or thinker intends the expression to represent. Reference is a component of interpretation, the process of giving terms, sentences, and ... -
Renaturalizing the Individual with Borderline Personality Disorder
(University of Waterloo, 2013-05-24)Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is among the most troubling Personality Disorders. Individuals with the disorder have exaggerated fears of abandonment, distorted self-identity and problems in interpersonal relationships, ... -
Rigid Designation, the Modal Argument, and the Nominal Description Theory
(University of Waterloo, 2005)In this thesis, I describe and evaluate two recent accounts of naming. These accounts are motivated by Kripke?s response to Russell?s Description Theory of Names (DTN). Particularly, I consider Kripke?s Modal Argument ... -
The Role of Concrete Models in the Revolution in Superconductivity
(University of Waterloo, 2015-10-13)The distinction between the abstract and the concrete is useful in understanding the way in which theories relate to phenomenon, respectively, or vice versa. The connection between theory and the actual workings of ... -
Semiosis and the Crisis of Meaning: Continuity and Play in Peirce and Derrida
(University of Waterloo, 2019-09-17)Semiosis and the Crisis of Meaning addresses the difference between continuity and play in Charles Peirce’s and Jacques Derrida’s theory of signs. The main aim is to offer a reply to Derrida’s reading of Peirce in Of ... -
The Sense of Self and Sensorimotor Functions
(University of Waterloo, 2018-03-28)This thesis investigates whether biological sex and motor function have a role in the visual representation of the self. The principal contribution is a new virtual reality experiment that systematically varied an avatar’s ... -
Sentimentalism, Affective Response, and the Justification of Normative Moral Judgments
(University of Waterloo, 2006)Sentimentalism as an ethical view makes a particular claim about moral judgment: to judge that something is right/wrong is to have a sentiment/emotion of approbation/disapprobation, or some kind of positive/negative feeling, ... -
Sex, Dementia, and Consent
(University of Waterloo, 2018-08-01)Sex and dementia is becoming an increasingly important topic in applied ethics. By the year 2030, more than 74.7 million people are expected to be diagnosed with dementia worldwide; many of these people may want to engage ... -
Show me the numbers: a quantitative portrait of the attitudes, experiences, and values of philosophers of science regarding broadly engaged work
(Springer, 2019-09-23)Philosophers of science are increasingly arguing for the importance of doing scientifically- and socially-engaged work, suggesting that we need to reduce barriers to extra-disciplinary engagement and broaden our impact. ... -
Simone de Beauvoir and The Problem of The Other's Consciousness: Risk, Responsibility and Recognition
(University of Waterloo, 2013-05-23)In an interview with Jessica Benjamin and Margaret Simons in 1979, Simone de Beauvoir identified the problem that had preoccupied her across her lifetime, that is, “her” problem, as the problem of the “the consciousness ... -
Skeptics and Unruly Connectives: A Defence of and Amendment to the Non-Factualist Justification of Logic
(University of Waterloo, 2018-10-04)This thesis attempts to positively solve three problems in the foundations of logic. If logical connectives are defined by their introduction and elimination rules, then how might one prohibit the construction of dysfunctional ... -
The Social Dimension of the Self: Self-formation as Revealed by Depersonalization
(University of Waterloo, 2010-09-30)In this thesis I investigate the social and cultural dimensions of the self through an examination of the psychiatric disorder of depersonalization. Specifically, I apply Thagard's Multilevel Interacting Mechanisms framework ... -
A Social-Pluralistic View of Science Advising
(University of Waterloo, 2023-05-30)In this dissertation, I bring together two disciplines: Science, Technology, and Society studies and the Philosophy of Science, to develop a social-pluralistic account of science advising. I use three prominent theorists ... -
Speaking of 'Violence'
(University of Waterloo, 2022-08-18)In this project, I engineer a new concept, which I call a “violence figleaf”, in order to make sense of the many instances of gendered violence which are dismissed or characterized as some other kind of thing: a misunderstanding, ... -
Spectrum Epistemology: The BonJour - Goldman Debate
(University of Waterloo, 2009-02-04)Socrates teaches in the Meno that in order for a belief to be justified, an appropriate relation must ‘tie down’ the belief to its (apparent) truth. Alvin Goldman’s position of externalism holds that for a belief to be ... -
A Study of the Discursive Aspect of Scientific Theorizing and Modeling
(University of Waterloo, 2014-09-26)My dissertation contributes to the study of scientific theories and models by using a speech-act-theoretic framework to investigate the discursive aspect of theorizing and modeling practices. In the philosophical study of ...