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University of Massachusetts Amherst

2016

Agency

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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Agency And Reasons In Epistemology, Luis R.G. Oliveira Jul 2016

Agency And Reasons In Epistemology, Luis R.G. Oliveira

Doctoral Dissertations

Ever since John Locke, philosophers have discussed the possibility of a normative epistemology: are there epistemic obligations binding the cognitive economy of belief and disbelief? Locke's influential answer was evidentialist: we have an epistemic obligation to believe in accordance with our evidence. In this dissertation, I place the contemporary literature on agency and reasons at the service of some such normative epistemology. I discuss the semantics of obligations, the connection between obligations and reasons to believe, the implausibility of Lockean evidentialism, and some of the alleged connections between agency and justification.


"The Book Can't Teach You That": A Case Study Of Place, Writing, And Tutors' Constructions Of Writing Center Work, Christopher Joseph Dibiase Mar 2016

"The Book Can't Teach You That": A Case Study Of Place, Writing, And Tutors' Constructions Of Writing Center Work, Christopher Joseph Dibiase

Doctoral Dissertations

This project questions the relationship between place, writing, and constructions of writing center work. Applying a case study methodology, I investigated how and why writing center tutors draw upon experiences of writing in non-writing center spaces in the course of their tutorial work. Participants completed a survey (Appendix D) detailing their contemporary spatial usage with respect to writing, tracked their writing practices for a two-week period, were observed tutoring in multiple writing center sessions, and participated in a series of interviews exploring their experience of writing in multiple spatial contexts as well as their approaches to writing center work. Using …