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Varieties Of Objectivity: What's Worth Keeping?, Lori Kantymir

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation addresses the problem of whether or not morality can be objective. Objectivity seems built into our everyday moral discourse and practice, yet it can be difficult to say just what moral objectivity consists in. There is significant disagreement in the philosophical literature on this topic. I examine three influential contemporary accounts of objectivity: Derek Parfit’s non-naturalist realism, Sharon Street’s anti-realist constructivism, and Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons’ cognitivist expressivism. Despite their differences, these authors share a common aim: to defend the idea that the truth of moral claims are at least in some sense invariant with respect to …

The Primacy Of Resistance: Anarchism, Foucault, And The Art Of Not Being Governed, Derek C. Barnett

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Beginning with a critical inquiry into the reasons why the field of the political is traditionally elaborated in the archic nexus between government and state sovereignty, this study examines the possibilities of elaborating an alternative theory of the political in the intersections between Michel Foucault’s theory of resistance and anarchist political theory. Taking Foucault’s fifth thesis on power from The History of Sexuality as an alternative paradigm from which to reread the history of the political, the aim of this study is to demonstrate that the hallmark of Foucault’s work emerges in the ways in which his analytic of power …

The Moral Status And Welfare Of Patients Diagnosed As Vegetative With Covert Awareness, Mackenzie S. Graham

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Several neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that a minority of patients diagnosed as being in the vegetative state are able to modulate their brain activity in response to the commands of researchers, thus demonstrating that they are ‘covertly aware.’ I examine the moral significance of this discovery, with a specific focus on the implications for patient welfare. I argue that the presence of awareness in these patients is important because it allows for the presence of sentience—the capacity for suffering and enjoyment—which I argue is a sufficient condition for moral status. Insofar as these patients have moral status, their interests matter …

Tesitmony As Significance Negotiation, Jennifer F. Epp

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation addresses the following questions: How should epistemologists conceptualize testimony? What do people use testimony to do? And why does ‘what people do’ with testimony matter epistemically? In response to these questions I both define and characterize testimony.

While doing so I argue for the following answers, given here very briefly: What do people do when they testify? They tell each other things and avow that those things are true, offering their statements to others as reasons to believe. More importantly, they interact with each other in order to negotiate about significance. Why do these activities matter epistemically? Because …