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What Do We Owe The Other Animals In Health-Related Research?, Jessica A. Du Toit

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this dissertation, I provide an account of the protections to which most captive non-human animals are morally entitled when they participate in health-related research. At least in the animal ethics literature, it is uncontroversial that the protections currently afforded to captive research animals are inadequate. This has much to do with the fact that most animals who serve as research participants are 1) sentient and, thus, have important morally considerable interests; 2) unable to provide informed consent to their research participation; and 3) seriously harmed as a result of their participation.

Unsurprisingly, then, a number of authors have proposed …

Cfl Chaplaincy: How Do Cfl Chaplains Act In Consultation Towards Ethical Decision Making?, Luke J. Thompson Mr.

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Abstract

Although the literature on sport ethics and religion has expanded in recent years, there is little research on the role and concept of “sports chaplaincy” within Canada (Parry, 2007) (Watson, Parker & White, 2016) (Watson, Parker & Adogame, 2018). The Canadian Football League (CFL) chaplaincy program offers a unique form of ministry that has the potential to influence athlete’s ethical behavior. The chaplain's ‘holistic’ counselling approach is not only concerned with the CFL professional’s on-field job performance but offers emotional and spiritual support for every facet of a CFL professional’s life (Roe, 2016; Cheney, 2019). In the sport ethics …

Effective Field Theories: A Philosophical Appraisal, Dimitrios Athanasiou

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The word “effective” has become the standard label attached to scientific theories these days. An effective theory allows us to make accurate predictions about a physical system at a certain (energy, length) scale while being largely ignorant of the details at more fundamental levels. One does not need to know anything about the deeper, quantum structure of water molecules to describe the macroscopic behaviour of waves or water in a glass. Although effective descriptions so broadly construed have been part of research in physics since the earliest stages of modern science, it is particle physics that has most clearly relied …

A Critical Examination Of Informed Consent Approaches In Pragmatic Cluster-Randomized Trials, Cory E. Goldstein

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis addresses the tension in pragmatic cluster-randomized trials between their social value and the requirement to respect the autonomy of research participants. Pragmatic trials are designed to evaluate the effectiveness of treatments in real-world settings to inform clinical decision-making and promote cost-efficient care. These trials are often embedded into clinical settings and ideally include all patients who would receive the treatments under investigation as a part of routine care. Trialists increasingly adopt cluster-randomized designs—in which intact groups, such as hospitals or clinics, are allocated randomly to study interventions—to simplify the inclusion of all patients. But including all-comers conflicts with …

Does The Cogito Have (A) Sex?, Emily Laurent-Monaghan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis begins with a critique of Quentin Meillassoux’s Après la finitude. Chapter One argues against Meillassoux’s injunction to abandon the “transcendental,” while putting forth a Lacanian solution to the “correlationist” problem. Chapter Two expounds the meaning of the Cartesian subject, with a Lacanian twist. Under this view, the subject is split, and this split carries the name “sexual difference.” The cogito is “split” qua sexual difference, whereby sexual difference names the structural antagonism/impossibility that exists in language and bears on all speaking subjects. The second chapter focuses primarily on explaining how sexual difference marks the cogito, by …

Are Near-Death Experiences Veridical? A Philosophical Inquiry, Monika J. Mandoki

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This project is a philosophical investigation into near-death experiences (NDEs). It attempts to answer the central question: Are near-death experiences veridical? The aim of my work is to defend the veridicality of near-death experiences within the framework of idealism. However, this aim is not achieved simply by adopting an idealist standpoint. Instead, I present arguments for the reason this idealist standpoint is necessary. First, I argue that the traditional way of assessing near-death experiences is often oversimplified and carries an unnecessary bias in favour of a materialist interpretation, which eventually sets it up for a failure to demonstrate that an …

Cognition Without Construction: Kant, Maimon, And The Transcendental Philosophy Of Mathematics, Nicholas A. J. Birmingham

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant takes the ostensive constructions characteristic of Euclidean-style demonstrations to be the paradigm of both mathematical proofs and synthetic a priori cognition in general. However, the development of calculus included a number of techniques for representing infinite series of sums or differences, which could not be represented with the direct geometrical demonstrations of the past. Salomon Maimon’s Essay on Transcendental Philosophy addresses precisely this disparity. Maimon, owing much to G. W. Leibniz, proposes that differentials of sensation achieve what Kantian constructions could not. More importantly, Maimon develops a kind of symbolic cognition that …

The Event Of Blues Music And The Effects Of Technology On The Artistic Event, Adam Rejak

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The goal of this dissertation is to find out whether or not blues music is an event. I explore what constitutes a musical or artistic event in modern times and to see how this has changed in relation to earlier periods. I also identify its essential formal elements. I divide blues music into two categories, namely, its technical playing qualities (the micro) and its historical changes (the macro). This division frames the entire project and illustrates that in order to discuss an artistic event, we must account for both its technical and historical aspects. I examine several theories of the …

A Duty To Adopt? On The Ethics And Politics Of Adoption, Veromi Arsiradam

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Around the world, millions of children are in need of parental care. In response to this global crisis, some philosophers defend a moral duty for prospective parents to adopt children rather than procreate. Challenges to the duty focus almost exclusively on parents’ desires to have biological children. However, reasons deriving primarily from one’s membership in a social group that favour procreation over adoption or oppose transracial adoptions are largely overlooked. In this dissertation, I examine whether group-based reasons could justifiably override a duty to adopt for prospective parents who are members of racially oppressed groups. I ultimately argue that group-based …

A Biopsychological Foundation For Linguistics, Jonathan J. Life

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this dissertation, I defend the view that natural languages are concrete biopsychological phenomena to be studied empirically. In Section One, I begin with an historical explanation. Some analytic philosophers, I argue, misapply formal logic as an analysis of natural language, when it was in fact originally developed as an alternative to natural language, employed for scientific purposes. Abstract, quasi-mathematical philosophies of language, I argue, are partially a result of this misunderstanding. I respond to Jerrold Katz’ argument that a proper understanding of analytic truth requires this quasi-mathematical philosophy of language through a model-theoretical analysis of analytic truth in modal …

Deleuze's Apocalypse, Grant Dempsey

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Deleuze refers to the apocalyptic both positively, declaring retrospectively that Difference and Repetition was apocalyptic in its purpose, and negatively, sharing the horror expressed in D. H. Lawrence’s Apocalypse. Deleuze scholars, for their part, tend either to find in Deleuze a manner of living resistance that compels a certain apocalyptic appreciation, or to fear in Deleuze the very same and wonder how a philosophy that seems largely purposed for the promotion of disruption could be anything but escapist at best and socially-politically counterproductive at worst. This thesis is a Deleuzian investigation into the concept of apocalypse: how apocalypse can …

The Reasonable Effectiveness Of Mathematics In The Natural Sciences, Nicolas Fillion

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

One of the most unsettling problems in the history of philosophy examines how mathematics can be used to adequately represent the world. An influential thesis, stated by Eugene Wigner in his paper entitled "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences," claims that "the miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve." Contrary to this view, this thesis delineates and implements a strategy to show that the applicability of mathematics is very reasonable indeed.

I distinguish three forms of the …

Anti-Foundational Categorical Structuralism, Darren Mcdonald

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The aim of this dissertation is to outline and defend the view here dubbed “anti-foundational categorical structuralism” (henceforth AFCS). The program put forth is intended to provide an answer the question “what is mathematics?”. The answer here on offer adopts the structuralist view of mathematics, in that mathematics is taken to be “the science of structure” expressed in the language of category theory, which is argued to accurately capture the notion of a “structural property”. In characterizing mathematical theorems as both conditional and schematic in form, the program is forced to give up claims to securing the truth of its …

Aristotle's Concept Of Nature: Three Tensions, W.W. Nicholas Fawcett

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The concept of nature (phusis) is ubiquitous in Aristotleʼs work, informing his thinking in physics, metaphysics, biology, ethics, politics, and rhetoric. Much of scholarly attention has focussed on his philosophical analysis of the concept wherein he defines phusis as “a principle or cause of being changed and of remaining the same in that to which it belongs primarily, in virtue of itself and not accidentally” (Phys. 192b21-23) and the implications this has in various parts of his philosophy. It has largely gone unnoticed, or unremarked, that this is not the only understanding of phusis present in his thinking. This thesis …

The Role Of Student Success Teachers In Ontario Secondary Schools, Robert Andrew Bell

Digitized Theses

Education in Ontario underwent a series of reforms during the 1990’s, including a

reduction from a 5-year to a 4-year secondary program. As a result of these reforms, several studies were commissioned to determine the success of these changes, and the recommendations were to implement a support program to address the holistic, developmental and individual needs of students who are not successful in secondary school—the Student Success Program. Student Success Teachers (SSTs) were hired in every secondary school in Ontario to be the implementer of Student Success initiatives. In this study, 12 SSTs from two coterminous local school boards were …

Plato’S Use Of Attic Oratory, Ashley Erika Skinner

Digitized Theses

The philosophical works o f Plato are characterized by the Socratic dialogue, the dialectical style o f conversation Socrates employs with his interlocutors. However, Plato also occasionally departs from the Socratic dialogue to experiment in genres outside his, own. The Menexenus and the Apology are two o f his works that feature ‘inserted’ genres /o f Attic oratory: the funeral oration and forensic oratory. While these two works are typically characterized as Plato parodying or criticizing oratory, this thesis examines philosophy and oratory in both the Menexenus and the Apology and argues that Plato deliberately uses Attic oratory to communicate …

Alexander Kunitsyn (1783-1840): An Intellectual Biography Of An Early Russian Liberal, Julia Berest

Digitized Theses

Despite the accepted view that the early nineteenth century in Russia was a time of political relaxation and liberal reforms, little is known about the intellectuals who contributed to the development of the Russian liberal thought. Among the many reasons behind this neglect is a long-standing assumption about Russian liberals' indifference to the issues of individual rights and freedoms that comprised the essence of European liberal ideology. The life and writings of Alexander Kunitsyn present a challenge to this assumption. He was one of the first native professors of natural law in Russia who aspired to spread among the educated …

"Er Irrt Der Mensch, Solang Er Strebt:" Critical Studies On The Subject, The Genius Figure And Faust, Matthew James Austin

Digitized Theses

Ultimately my thesis reflects a dedication to a conceit I have labeled teleology without telos, which I have tried to establish in my readings of history, philosophy, and art (literature). Expressive of this conceit is the complex anthropological relationship Kant outlines between Man, as subject, and Nature—as expressed through history and art. In the writing of history and the production of art, the archetypal figures of the philosopher and the genius respectively express Nature’s indeterminate regulation under the compulsion of the Kantian idea. What is ultimately exemplified here is neither natural necessity, nor humanistic freedom. Rather, Kant offers an intriguing …

Frege On Indexicals: Sense And Context Sensitivity, Richard Charles Devidi

Digitized Theses

Indexical expressions--e.g., 'I', 'here', 'yesterday', 'this', etc.--pose a serious challenge for a Fregean theory of meaning. A Fregean theory holds that the meaning of an expression is its sense, and that this sense determines the reference of the expression independently of context. The most notable feature of indexicals, however, is their sensitivity to context. David Kaplan and John Perry argue that there can be no Fregean solution to this issue. They assume (falsely) that the Fregean sense of a singular term is given by a definite description, and argue that this picture cannot work. Kaplan and Perry advance a theory …

Berkeley's Idealism: Arguments Of The First Dialogue, Glen Woolcott

Digitized Theses

Berkeley's arguments in the first of Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous for the claim that the objects of immediate perception are existentially dependent on the mind perceiving them are examined. This claim is central to Berkeley's idealism, since once he has established it, he uses it as the basis from which to argue that apart from minds nothing exists but what these minds immediately perceive.;The first section is an examination of Berkeley's grounds for limiting objects of immediate perception to sensible qualities. The next three sections provide an account of the three arguments which Berkeley employs in his attempt …

On Searle On The Background Of Communication, Beata Gallay

Digitized Theses

This is a detailed exposition and development of some of the epistemic implications of John R. Searle's ontology of the "Background" of communication. Detailed references are made to Searle's more recent and therefore lesser known relevant works, including his 1992 text. The Rediscovery of the Mind, and The Construction of Social Reality, published in 1995. 'Communication' refers to the intentional action of an individual speaker to let another individual (the addressee) know the contents of the speaker's subjective conscious mental state, by way of producing a linguistic utterance made in one or the other conventional language, as well as to …

Leibniz's Puzzle And The Smooth Continuum: A Study In The Philosophy Of Mathematics, Gregory Ralph Hagen

Digitized Theses

Kant distinguished between sensible and intellectual representation. The intellect represents mathematical objects as composed of their parts and so the continuum must be represented intellectually as a collection of punctual parts. However, an influential line of argument, advanced by Aristotle, Kant, and others contends that the continuum cannot be composed of parts, and so not determined by the intellect. Thus an intuition of space and time must be used in addition to intellection to determine mathematical objects.;The semantic tradition, in contrast, holds that intuition is not needed in order to determine objects. The closely related approach of transfinite set theory …

The Role Of The Concept Of "Showing" In Wittgenstein's Philosophy, Dean Bodo Proessel

Digitized Theses

This dissertation will examine the role of the concept of showing in Wittgenstein's philosophy. In the early writings Wittgenstein drew a sharp distinction between what can be said and what can only be shown. Accordingly, he held that one can use language to represent the world, but one cannot represent the logic of language, since all representations already presuppose an acceptance of logical form. In the later writings this idea lives on. Although Wittgenstein abandoned his early conception of logic, he continued to hold that grammar is the inexpressible background which gives sense to everything one says and does. In …

The Cultural Context Of Perception: On Colour, Representation, And Imaging, M Carleton Simpson

Digitized Theses

This work investigates some of the philosophical implications of current theories of the psychophysiology of perception. First, I consider the use of recent investigations into psychophysiological theories of vision, in particular, the perception of colour, and the important role assumed here for cognition and language. I conclude that a relation between colour perception and language has not been established, that consideration of special colours is too limited, and that the experimentation to date generates misleading results. I consider the interdependence of our psychophysiological response to the entire visual array, the world present to our fovea and its surround, and the …

Contextualism And Nonlocality In Quantum Mechanics, Michael William Kernaghan

Digitized Theses

I describe the conceptual problems associated with the Kochen-Specker theorem including the presuppositions of the theorem and plausible interpretations of the conclusions motivated by the theorem. I describe an idealized quantum system which demonstrates both the Kochen-Specker theorem and the Bell argument for nonlocality. I present new findings about the mathematical structures which support a proof of the Kochen-Specker theorem.

Legal Fictions, Ian Randall Kerr

Digitized Theses

Many judges faced with the task of rendering difficult decisions have a habit of pretending things that they know to be false. In so doing they employ legal fiction. Generally, a legal fiction is a false assumption of fact made by a court as the basis for resolving a legal issue. One of its purposes is to reconcile a specific legal result with an established legal rule. Legal fictions are thought to provide a mechanism for preserving the rule while ensuring a just outcome. By feigning the facts, the rule is said to remain intact. Historically, the fiction has achieved …

Knowledge Practices: A Critique Of Scientific Ideology, Kent Donald Hogarth

Digitized Theses

The scientific ideology is identified as that perspective which considers knowledge to consists in propositional truths or representations of reality--knowledge-that--and which grants ultimate epistemic authority to science. A critical alternative view (the "praxical perspective") is presented in which know-how, modeled after simple skills, is epistemologically primary. The view of know-how developed in the context of simple skills is used as a model to re-conceptualize higher-order abilities--such as the achievements of modern science and technology--as forms of skilled practice rather than applied theoretical knowledge. In order to accomplish this, non-representational views of perception and language are presented. Perception is characterised as …

Term-Forming Operators In First Order Logic, David Michael Devidi

Digitized Theses

The two main accomplishments of this thesis are that it provides the first adequate semantics for Hilbert's epsilon-operator and that it describes a general semantics for term forming operators (often called "variable binding term operators" of "vbto's") more flexible than any in the literature.;The epsilon-operator was introduced by David Hilbert in the 1920s as a term forming operator in first order logic. The semantics so far available for epsilon has been designed for classical two-valued logic, and has required that additional extensionality assumptions be made. This thesis provides complete semantics for epsilon in classical extensional, classical non-extensional, Boolean valued, and …

A Direct-Realist Alternative To Inferentialist Theories Of Perceptual Knowledge, Zhaolu Lu

Digitized Theses

The thesis title, "A Direct-Realist Alternative to Inferentialist Theories of Perceptual Knowledge," aptly describes what I have attempted to achieve in this dissertation: I have sought to develop and defend a strong direct-realist alternative to the traditional inferentialist model, the model called the Establishment by its two most prominent contemporary defenders, Jerry Fodor and Zenon Pylyshyn.;My research project has been motivated by the conviction that the development of a correct epistemology lies in the acceptance of the possibility of a direct, noninferential, epistemically unmediated comprehension of things and events. In the thesis I argue against Fodor and Pylyshyn's Establishment theory, …

Nonreductive Materialism And The Computational Theory Of Mind, Wayne Ian Henry

Digitized Theses

This dissertation is a project in the philosophical foundations of cognitive science and inquires into the prospects for a materialist theory of mind which is scientifically respectable and realistic about intentional phenomena. This requires at least two things: (1) A materialistic solution to the mind/body problem; and, (2) a naturalistic solution to the problem of intentionality. With respect to the first, I argue that Computationalism holds out what is, at the present juncture, the only prospect for a materialistic theory of mental processes. And, with respect to the naturalization of intentionality, I argue that it is at least possible to …