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Articles 61 - 77 of 77
Full-Text Articles in Philosophy
Identity And The Limits Of Possibility, Sam Cowling
Identity And The Limits Of Possibility, Sam Cowling
Open Access Dissertations
Possibilities divide into two kinds. Non-qualitative possibilities are distinguished by their connection to specific individuals. For example, the possibility that Napoleon is a novelist is non-qualitative, since it is a possibility for a specific individual, Napoleon. In contrast, the possibility that someone---anyone at all---is a novelist is a qualitative possibility, since it does not depend upon any specific individual. Haecceitism is a thesis about the relation between qualitative and non-qualitative possibilities. In one guise, it holds that some maximal possibilities---total ways the world could be---differ non-qualitatively without differing qualitatively. It would, for example, be only a haecceitistic difference that distinguishes …
Brueckner And Fischer On The Evil Of Death, Fred Feldman
Brueckner And Fischer On The Evil Of Death, Fred Feldman
Fred Feldman
According to the Deprivation Approach, the evil of death is to be explained by the fact that death deprives us of the goods we would have enjoyed if we had lived longer. But the Deprivation Approach confronts a problem first discussed by Lucretius. Late birth seems to deprive us of the goods we would have enjoyed if we had been born earlier. Yet no one is troubled by late birth. So it’s hard to see why we should be troubled by its temporal mirror image, early death. In a 1986 paper, Anthony Brueckner and John Martin Fischer appealed to a …
Pyrrhonian And Naturalistic Themes In The Final Writings Of Wittgenstein, Indrani Bhattacharjee
Pyrrhonian And Naturalistic Themes In The Final Writings Of Wittgenstein, Indrani Bhattacharjee
Open Access Dissertations
The following inquiry pursues two interlinked aims. The first is to understand Wittgenstein's idea of non-foundational certainty in the context of a reading of On Certainty that emphasizes its Pyrrhonian elements. The second is to read Wittgenstein's remarks on idealism/radical skepticism in On Certainty in parallel with the discussion of rule-following in Philosophical Investigations in order to demonstrate an underlying similarity of philosophical concerns and methods. I argue that for the later Wittgenstein, what is held certain in a given context of inquiry or action is a locally transcendental condition of the inquiry or action in question. In On Certainty, …
Bayesian Epistemology And Having Evidence, Jeffrey Dunn
Bayesian Epistemology And Having Evidence, Jeffrey Dunn
Open Access Dissertations
Bayesian Epistemology is a general framework for thinking about agents who have beliefs that come in degrees. Theories in this framework give accounts of rational belief and rational belief change, which share two key features: (i) rational belief states are represented with probability functions, and (ii) rational belief change results from the acquisition of evidence. This dissertation focuses specifically on the second feature. I pose the Evidence Question: What is it to have evidence? Before addressing this question we must have an understanding of Bayesian Epistemology. The first chapter argues that we should understand Bayesian Epistemology as giving us theories …
On Epistemic Agency, Kristoffer Hans Ahlstrom
On Epistemic Agency, Kristoffer Hans Ahlstrom
Open Access Dissertations
Every time we act in an effort to attain our epistemic goals, we express our epistemic agency. The present study argues that a proper understanding of the actions and goals relevant to expressions of such agency can be used to make ameliorative recommendations about how the ways in which we actually express our agency can be brought in line with how we should express our agency. More specifically, it is argued that the actions relevant to such expressions should be identified with the variety of actions characteristic of inquiry; that contrary to what has been maintained by recent pluralists about …
Sleeping Beauty And De Nunc Updating, Namjoong Kim
Sleeping Beauty And De Nunc Updating, Namjoong Kim
Open Access Dissertations
About a decade ago, Adam Elga introduced philosophers to an intriguing puzzle. In it, Sleeping Beauty, a perfectly rational agent, undergoes an experiment in which she becomes ignorant of what time it is. This situation is puzzling for two reasons: First, because there are two equally plausible views about how she will change her degree of belief given her situation and, second, because the traditional rules for updating degrees of belief don't seem to apply to this case. In this dissertation, my goals are to settle the debate concerning this puzzle and to offer a new rule for updating some …
Human Freedom In A World Full Of Providence: An Ockhamist-Molinist Account Of The Compatibility Of Divine Foreknowledge And Creaturely Free Will, Christopher J. Kosciuk
Human Freedom In A World Full Of Providence: An Ockhamist-Molinist Account Of The Compatibility Of Divine Foreknowledge And Creaturely Free Will, Christopher J. Kosciuk
Open Access Dissertations
I defend the compatibility of the classical theistic doctrine of divine providence, which includes infallible foreknowledge of all future events, with a libertarian understanding of creaturely free will. After setting out the argument for theological determinism, which purports to show the inconsistency of foreknowledge and freedom, I reject several responses as inadequate and then defend the ‚Ockhamist‛ response as successful. I further argue that the theory of middle knowledge or ‚Molinism‛ is crucial to the viability of the Ockhamist response, and proceed to defend Molinism against the most pressing objections. Finally, I argue that a proper understanding of the Creator-creature …
The Functions Of Russell’S No Class Theory, Kevin C. Klement
The Functions Of Russell’S No Class Theory, Kevin C. Klement
Kevin C. Klement
Certain commentators on Russell’s “no class” theory, in which apparent reference to classes or sets is eliminated using higher-order quantification, including W. V. Quine and (recently) Scott Soames, have doubted its success, noting the obscurity of Russell’s understanding of so-called “propositional functions.” These critics allege that realist readings of propositional functions fail to avoid commitment to classes or sets (or something equally problematic), and that nominalist readings fail to meet the demands placed on classes by mathematics. I show that Russell did thoroughly explore these issues, and had good reasons for rejecting accounts of propositional functions as extralinguistic entities. I …
The Senses Of Functions In The Logic Of Sense And Denotation, Kevin C. Klement
The Senses Of Functions In The Logic Of Sense And Denotation, Kevin C. Klement
Kevin C. Klement
This paper discusses certain problems arising within the treatment of the senses of functions in Alonzo Church's Logic of Sense and Denotation. Church understands such senses themselves to be “sense-functions,” functions from sense to sense. However, the conditions he lays out under which a sense-function is to be regarded as a sense presenting another function as denotation allow for certain undesirable results given certain unusual or “deviant” sense-functions. Certain absurdities result, e.g., an argument can be found for equating any two senses of the same type. An alternative treatment of the senses of functions is discussed, and is thought to …
Composition As Identity: A Study In Ontology And Philosophical Logic, Einar Bohn
Composition As Identity: A Study In Ontology And Philosophical Logic, Einar Bohn
Open Access Dissertations
In this work I first develop, motivate, and defend the view that mereological composition, the relation between an object and all its parts collectively, is a relation of identity. I argue that this view implies and hence can explain the logical necessity of classical mereology, the formal study of the part-whole relation. I then critically discuss four contemporary views of the same kind. Finally, I employ my thesis in a recent discussion of whether the world is fundamentally one in number.
Phenomenal Acquaintance, Kelly Trogdon
Phenomenal Acquaintance, Kelly Trogdon
Open Access Dissertations
Chapter 1 of Phenomenal Acquaintance is devoted to taking care of some preliminary issues. I begin by distinguishing those states of awareness in virtue of which we’re acquainted with the phenomenal characters of our experiences from those states of awareness some claim are at the very nature of experience. Then I reconcile the idea that experience is transparent with the claim that we can be acquainted with phenomenal character. In Chapter 2 I set up a dilemma that is the primary focus of the dissertation. In the first part of this chapter I argue that phenomenal acquaintance has three key …
On The Objectivity Of Welfare, Alexander F. Sarch
On The Objectivity Of Welfare, Alexander F. Sarch
Open Access Dissertations
This dissertation is structured in such a way as to gradually home in on the true theory of welfare. I start with the whole field of possible theories of welfare and then proceed by narrowing down the options in a series of steps. The first step, undertaken in chapter 2, is to argue that the true theory of welfare must be what I call a partly response independent theory. First I reject the entirely response independent theories because there are widely-shared intuitions suggesting that some psychological responses are indeed relevant to welfare. Then I reject the entirely response dependent theories …
On The Measurability Of Pleasure And Pain, Justin Allen Klocksiem
On The Measurability Of Pleasure And Pain, Justin Allen Klocksiem
Open Access Dissertations
The topic of my dissertation is the hedonic calculus. The hedonic calculus presupposes that pleasure and pain come in amounts amenable to addition, subtraction, and aggregation operations. These operations are ones that utilitarianism and related normative ethical theories treat as central to moral phenomena. The first chapter is an introduction to the problem--in it, I explain what the hedonic calculus is, why it is important, and why it has recently come under disfavor. The second chapter explores the nature of hedonic phenomena, arguing that pleasure and pain are propositional attitudes; they are not feelings or feeling-tones, nor are they fundamentally …
Synthetic Ethical Naturalism, Michael Rubin
Synthetic Ethical Naturalism, Michael Rubin
Open Access Dissertations
This dissertation is a critique of synthetic ethical naturalism (SEN). SEN is a view in metaethics that comprises three key theses: first, there are moral properties and facts that are independent of the beliefs and attitudes of moral appraisers (moral realism); second, moral properties and facts are identical to (or constituted only by) natural properties and facts (ethical naturalism); and third, sentences used to assert identity or constitution relations between moral and natural properties are expressions of synthetic, a posteriori necessities. The last of these theses, which distinguishes SEN from other forms of ethical naturalism, is supported by a fourth: …
Post-Marxism After Althusser: A Critique Of The Alternatives, Ceren Ozselcuk
Post-Marxism After Althusser: A Critique Of The Alternatives, Ceren Ozselcuk
Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014
This dissertation provides a particular Marxian class analytical political economy critique of post-Marxism. The dissertation demonstrates the ways in which different positions within post-Marxism continue to essentialize the conceptualizations of class and capitalist economy. What distinguishes this dissertation from other dominant critiques of post-Marxism is the anti-essentialist epistemological and ontological position it adopts. By adopting an anti-essentialist epistemological position the dissertation is able to demonstrate the discontinuities and continuities between post-Marxism and the Marxian tradition. The dissertation does this by reading the heterogeneous and disparate post-Marxian approaches as so many different ways to "resolve" the central tension of the Althusserian …
Sosa In Perspective, Hilary Kornblith
Sosa In Perspective, Hilary Kornblith
Hilary Kornblith
Ernest Sosa draws a distinction between animal knowledge and reflective knowledge, and this distinction forms the centerpiece of his new book, A Virtue Epistemology. This paper argues that the distinction cannot do the work which Sosa assigns to it.
Reply To Bermudez And Bonjour, Hilary Kornblith
Reply To Bermudez And Bonjour, Hilary Kornblith
Hilary Kornblith
No abstract provided.