Browsing W&L Dept. of Philosophy by Title
Now showing items 9-28 of 29
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Freedom and Moral Responsibility in a Deterministic Universe: Perspectives from Buddhism and Clinical Psychology (thesis)
I will be arguing that the concept of an ultimately free agent who takes final responsibility for his actions and desires is inherently incompatible with the dominant western paradigm of materialism and universal causation. ... -
How to Do Things With Rules
Truth within governing systems can come in two forms: judicial and meta-judicial. Judicial facts arise from verdicts or rulings, whereas meta-judicial facts arise from application of a governing system's standard in a way ... -
How to Meet People: Rehabilitating Particularity and Reciprocity Below Levinas, Heidegger, and Augustine (thesis)
To be clear, my main goal here is to highlight the transcendence in each thinker's work, and to highlight how, consequently, that transcendence distracts attention from a relationship with the concrete other person and ... -
Implicit Imagination in Pathology: Phenomenology in the Abnormal World (thesis)
After briefly elucidating, in more detail, the nature of phenomenology and its use in providing a description of the ‘normal' individual's being-in-the-world, my aims in this project are threefold: (1) To illuminate the ... -
Improving Science -- Insights from Feminist Standpoint and Coherence Theory (thesis)
I will begin with a brief exploration of what science is commonly thought to be, and provide a philosophical schema for choosing between scientific theories. This discussion will introduce the complex nature of scientific ... -
Incommensurability Reassessed: The Cognitive Science Foundations of World-View (In)comparability (thesis)
Thomas S. Kuhn's contributions to the philosophy of science are among the most prominent and contentious of the 20th century; his Structure of Scientific Revolutions remains one of the most cited philosophical works in ... -
The Interwoven Fabric Of Humanity: A Merleau-Pontian Ethics (thesis)
Given this phenomenological approach to metaphysics, we return to the overriding question of this paper: Based on Merleau-Ponty's account of humanity, how are human beings obligated to act towards one another? I will ... -
Knowledge Through Participation: The Epistemic Status of Religious Belief (thesis)
Critical philosophy has severely restricted the role of philosophy of religion. A hallmark of the critical approach is an acceptance of Locke's epistemological ethics: belief ought not to go beyond what explicit data or ... -
Mathematical Ontology and Epistemology: An Analysis of Quine's and Maddy's Unique Arguments (thesis)
This thesis is concerned with the existence and knowledge of mathematical objects within a naturalistic philosophy. I will begin with a brief explanation of what constitutes a mathematical object and will then define and ... -
The Moral Permissibility of Torture in a Terrorized World and The Problem of Dirty Hands (thesis)
In this paper, I will argue that despite philosophers' and legal theorists' attempts to justify the use of torture in certain situations, torture has always been and will always be universally morally impermissible. [From ... -
More Than Just Victors' Justice: A Defense of the Solely Retributive Character of Atrocity Crime Punishment by International Criminal Tribunals
Because atrocity crimes are sui generis, nothing other than the pursuit of retribution can justify their international prosecution. Other commonly given general justifying aims for punishment all fail -- to incapacitation, ... -
Nietzsche's Forgotten Spirit: Woman in Nietzsche's Philosophy (thesis)
In this thesis, I will attempt first to show how some major themes in Nietzsche's philosophy such as the rejection of dualisms and capital-T truths make room for an interpretation that suggests many of the same ideas that ... -
Nietzsche's Metaethics: A Eudaimonistic Theory, An Investigation into Nietzsche's Theory of Value (thesis)
In this paper, I will first outline how modern philosophers typically make the distinction between non-moral and moral value. The rest of the paper will be divided into three parts: first Brian Leiter's interpretation of ... -
On Empathy in Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments and Its Role Within a Contractualist Framework (thesis)
In the eighteenth century, Scottish Enlightenment thinkers emphasized the importance of sympathy in the construction of the moral self. Among this group of philosophers, Adam Smith's moral account is especially astute. ... -
Personal Identity in Illness
Locke argues that personal identity consists in consciousness, not the substance of either the soul or the body. I raised objections to Locke and offered criticism of Locke raised by others. Determining that an element of ... -
Please Vote Responsibly: An Argument for Why We Have an Ethical Responsibility to Inform Ourselves Before Voting (thesis)
. . . Given the fact that citizens living in a free and democratic state have the right to vote, this entails a civic responsibility to sufficiently inform themselves before voting or before engaging in other politically ... -
The Reality of Fiction: An Inquiry into the Ontology and Logic of Fiction (thesis)
This paper will begin by outlining and explaining David Lewis's argument for the existence of possible worlds. In Lewis's extreme form of modal realism, all worlds are equally as real as the actual world. I will then address ... -
Redefining 'Lying' (thesis)
My definition of 'lying' is better able than the prevailing definition to capture common intuitions about what is a lie and what is not. It does so specifically by making novel inclusions to the definition, such as the ... -
To Live Gratefully: The Grateful Response to the Gift of Life (thesis)
To evaluate the proper response to receiving the gift of life, we must ask what constitutes proper gratitude. I claim that there are two fundamental parts to gratitude: the mental state and the return. While this return ... -
Transcendental Idealism: An Original Interpretation (thesis)
As Paul Guyer and Allen Wood note in the preface to their translation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, "within a few years of the publication of his Critique of Pure Reason in 1781, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was recognized ...