Epistemology Commons^™

Allyship And Affect: Qualitative Investigations Into Social Transformation, Michael Lucinda Jane Greer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Allies have faced several critiques in feminist philosophy. Some have argued that they lack the requisite political interests to be motivated to dismantle the social structures from which they stand to benefit. Others have argued that the epistemic limitations resulting from their social privilege are insurmountable. Yet others have argued that allyship is too individualistic a concept, preferring a more collectivist concept like solidarity. However, there remain privileged individuals who understand themselves as complicit in perpetuating oppressive forms of life, and who wish to transform themselves and work in coalition across difference to dismantle structural oppression. How ought these individuals …

Model-Theoretic Arguments In Philosophy, Peter Susanszky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is on model-theoretic arguments in philosophy, especially those of Quine, Davidson, and Putnam. In the first part, to ground the debate, I give a rigorous introduction to the salient parts of first-order model theory. I start the second part by giving an introduction to Quine's philosophy, and how the model-theoretic arguments fit into it. After considering how Donald Davidson adopted the Quinean lesson, I move on to Putnam's model-theoretic arguments. Putnam's spin on these model-theoretic considerations significantly departs from Quine and Davidson, while retaining many of the core ideas. Most importantly, I argue that the target of Putnam's …

Theatrical Agency In The Constitution Of Logical Space, Esther Marveta Neff

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation takes advantage of our current moment of collapse and shifting episteme to move from resistance and critique into modes of position, prefiguration, and praxiocentricism, giving not only a critique of the colonial-modern logical space of Theatrum Mundi, but also aiming to configure the thetic consciousness that grounds “theatrical agency” in the logic of cognitive and social epistemological modelling.  In what ways do we “build our own worlds”? What does “theatricality” tell us about human agency, especially in the domain of “theoretical attitudes,” and “consciousness”? In what ways, and to what extent, are we responsible for constituting …

Somatic Prosthetics For Planetary Resonance, Disha Dharesh Kumar R

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates how industrial design can transcend extractive technological paradigms in favor of relational interfaces that foster planetary attunement. Framing the climate crisis as a 'crisis of imagination', the research challenges the Western bifurcation of nature and culture by drawing on Indic cosmologies- which recognize stones, plants, and ecosystems as conscious at different levels and participants in a shared cosmic field. By synthesizing research in Biosemiotics, Quantum Information Pansycishm, and Neuroscience, the project redefines intelligence as a distributed, more-than-human phenomenon.

The research materializes as a speculative design artifact: a device that functions as a somatic prosthetic for planetary resonance. …

Receptivity And The Thing In Itself: Allison, Allais, And The Problem Of Outer Affection In Kant’S Transcendental Idealism, Amr Elmargoushy

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Kant’s distinction between appearances and things in themselves within the framework of transcendental idealism, focusing on how this distinction is meant to secure objective validity while respecting the limits of possible experience. It critically evaluates two influential contemporary interpretations: Henry Allison’s epistemological reading, which understands the distinction as marking different ways of considering the same object, and Lucy Allais’s metaphysical reading, which attributes a grounding role to things in themselves. The thesis argues that while Allison’s reinterpretation successfully avoids noumenal causation by construing affection epistemically, it generates a structural epistemic circularity concerning the role of receptivity and …

Weaving Eigengrau, Olivia Claire Luke

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Weaving Eigengrau explores weaving as both a material ritual and an inquiry about how reality is constructed and can be pulled apart. In this project, weaving becomes a method for redirecting forces into woven patterns and examining the relationship of contradiction by treating the contrasts between light and shadow, stillness and motion, and the fixed and the ephemeral as sculptural aspects. I’m driven by theories of reality: science, myth, and philosophy, and the common threads among them. Across systems of knowledge, reality is depicted in contradiction, and I seek to blur the lines between them. Within this convergence, weaving becomes …

Values-Based Clinical Ethics: A New Model Of Health And Ethics Consultation For Patients Suffering In Extremis, Adam Trainer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation argues that contemporary clinical ethics is inadequately equipped to support patients suffering in extremis because it relies on an insufficiently discriminating account of health and a constrained model of moral reasoning. Drawing on Bernard Lonergan, it reconceives health as an emergent, multi-layered, heuristic notion shaped by biological, psychological, social, and existential goods. On that basis, it critiques principlism’s global applicability thesis and the undergirding claim that its principles form part of the common morality, arguing that this justificatory structure is philosophically insufficient and practically limited for clinical ethics in cases marked by profound suffering, moral plurality, and normative …

Soma: Exploring Touch As Performance And Performance As Therapy, Erica Pamson

Expressive Therapies Theses

This project investigated the role of touch within a performative context and its potential as a creative intervention within Expressive Arts Therapy. Grounded in phenomenology and intersubjectivity, the study draws on Expressive Arts Therapy (EXAT) and Performance Art frameworks that position meaning as emerging through embodied, co-created experience. Existing literature identifies touch as a primary mode of perception and communication, essential to both physical and emotional well-being, while also noting its increasing absence and regulation within contemporary Western culture. Performance art literature further highlights the body as both medium and site of relational exchange, often dissolving boundaries between performer and …

Believe It Or Not: An Examination Of The Nature And Implications Of Evidence-Resistant Beliefs, Jack Geruc

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

The aim of this thesis is to contribute to a growing body of academic research regarding the nature and origin of evidence-resistant belief systems and examine the influence that they have upon our lives. This examination of the origin of these beliefs draws on two intellectual disciplines: psychology and epistemology. A psychological approach examines the cognitive mechanisms that allow for the formation and persistence of these beliefs. The psychological approach focuses on the biological drives of belief formation and resilience. Furthermore, an examination of the psychology of identity shows an entanglement of one’s identity with belief systems that allows for …

Wind In A Dry Glass, Khia Hong

Theses and Dissertations

Khia Hong’s paper unfolds in five sections, tracing the ontological and epistemological inquiries behind her sculptures. When the sculptures stepped down from the pedestal and entered the plane of lived reality, the question “What is sculpture?” expanded into “What is sculpture, the self, and the world?” Through reflections on the self, Hong details how these questions emerge and are addressed in her material encounters.

We Are Not What We Think: Solipsism & The Concept Of Mind, Michael Marcoux

Student Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I argue that the persuasiveness of solipsism—understood as skepticism of the existence of anything or anyone outside of one’s own private mental life—rests not on its intrinsic argumentative force, but on the degree of commitment to a certain philosophical dogma. I use the problem of solipsism to tease out this dogma, which I dub the Primacy of Privacy. It is characterized by the conviction that in dealing with what there is and what we know, the mental, be it construed in terms of perceptions or thoughts, is the only certain datum from which most if not all …

Parallel Concepts Found In The Thousand And One Nights And Sufi Hagiography, Walaa Kamal Emam Kamel

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that The Thousand and One Nights functions as more than mere populist entertainment; rather, it constitutes a literary corpus imbued with Sufi mystical epistemologies that reflect the spiritual quests and Sufi concepts evident in hagiographical traditions. Through discourse and intertextual analysis of two Nights stories, “The City of Brass” and “The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad,” alongside Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār’s Tadhkirat al-awliyāʾ, this study demonstrates how shared rhetorical strategies—specifically David Pinault’s Leitwörter analysis and L.A. Paul’s Transformative Experience concept—reveal a narrative and rhetorical emphasis on the metamorphosis of the self from worldly attachment toward …

Systems Epistemology, Boris Ayala

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation develops a new kind of theory of knowledge, which I call Systems Epistemology (SE). Currently available theories tend to follow the TB+ format according to which knowledge is a true belief plus certain additional properties. Insofar as these theories offer a conceptual gap between the additional properties and truth, however, they are vulnerable to intuitive counterexamples. Building on work by Richard Foley and Stephen Hetherington, SE focuses not on a target belief and the properties it must have to count as knowledge, but rather on the beliefs that surround it and hold it in place. This shift in …

Fighting The Black Snake: The Dapl And The Case For Indigenous Environmental Stewardship, Kenny Moll

Student Theses 2015-Present

This thesis analyzes the current scope of environmental injustice on Native lands in the U.S. Specifically it examines The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and its impacts on the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North Dakota. Western colonialism and capitalism have dominated North American ecosystems since their forcible introduction hundreds of years ago, causing the commodification of natural resources and leading to injustices such as that of the “Black Snake.” However, the story of The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s resistance will be analyzed through the framework of Indigenous philosophy and environmental justice. Chapter 1 analyzes the implementation of the DAPL and …

Emptiness Is Enlightenment: Two Interpretations Of Nāgārjuna's Middle Way As Buddhist Soteriology, Isabella R. Sullivan

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the soteriological implications of Nāgārjuna’s doctrine of emptiness (śūnyatā) as presented in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (MMK), or Root Verses of the Middle Way. While Nāgārjuna’s radical denial of intrinsic existence (svabhāva) is widely recognized as a masterful critique of metaphysics, modern scholarship remains divided on whether this "right view" can sufficiently ground the Buddhist Path to Liberation. This project centers on a comparative analysis of two prominent modern interpretations: Jay Garfield’s semantic anti-dualism and Giuseppe Ferraro’s anti-metaphysical realism.

The inquiry evaluates these perspectives against the doctrinal frameworks of the Four Noble Truths, dependent …

Some Assembly Required, Tanner Maxey

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

The dead do not carry their memory. We do. But when memory becomes the only way we can continue to hold on to our loved ones, how do we derive meaning from the fragments when memory begins to fade? Some Assembly Required examines loss as a condition in which meaning is no longer stable, but must be constructed from what remains. Through an interdisciplinary practice that combines ceramics, textiles, and installation, this work explores how domestic objects—once associated with care, function, and familiarity—can be transformed into fragile, unusable forms that persist as evidence of what has been lost. These objects …

What It Takes To "Become" Another: An Account Of Immersive Character Imagining, Ariana G. Didomenico

Scripps Senior Theses

Often, when one engages with fiction, one imaginatively portrays the mental states of the characters within said fiction. Typically, when one does this, one relates to the character as separate from oneself, and is consciously aware that what they are imagining is fictional. However, this is not always the case: when one engages in what I will call ‘immersive c-imagining’, one feels roughly as though a character’s thoughts and feelings are one’s own. Furthermore, there is a special subtype of immersive c-imagining, ‘inferential immersive c-imagining’, which occurs when one immersively c-imagines while, at the same time, efficiently and accurately inferring …

Creativity Through Thought Exercises: Developing A Personal Heuristic For Choreographic Decision-Making, Jalisa R. Johnson

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis explores the development of a personal set of heuristics, or accessible thought tools, that can be used in choreographic or creative decision-making. Through an in-depth study of the visual art of Romare Bearden paired with an evaluation of patterns of the author’s personal history, three tools or “dials” emerge: derealization, contextuality and inversion. A close study of Bearden’s work demonstrates a pattern of repurposing and distorting ideas in ways consistent with the three dials. The author found similar patterns emerge in an excavation of her personal narrative, indicative of a cyclical and prophetic re-imagining of previous life experiences. …

Ideology, Issue Consistency, & Rationality In Political Preferences Among Bgsu Students, Cassidy Kroggel

Honors Projects

Affective polarization — negative feelings toward the opposing political party — is increasing in the United States. As partisanship becomes weaponized, an individual’s ideological consistency becomes an important determiner for their negative feelings toward other individuals with different beliefs. This concern reaches beyond mere disagreement, and has serious implications for the future of our democratic principles: open dialogue, compromise, and policy making. Rationality and the ability to change one’s mind seems to be at the forefront of this issue, acting as a bottom-up driver for policy preference formation. This research analyzes the connection between ideological consistency, rationality, and affective polarization …

Human Evil (In The Weird), Lucas Ethridge

University Honors Theses

This paper examines a trending doom in speculative fiction: the post-human age. Many modern works have started to look past human civilization as humans surrender all hope and faith in a climate-doomed world. Honing in on core concepts in Weird fiction, this paper explores human merit through Old and New Weird. A good part spends time establishing the canon, looking at similar patterns across age, philosophy, war and genre. The chief question asks if humankind was ever worth saving.

Elizabeth Female Academy: A Historical Case Study Revealing Antebellum Mississippi's Role In Shaping The Southern Belle, Summer Cutrer Tierno

Dissertations

Historians and educational scholars have extensively examined the subject of women's education, resulting in a rich body of literature that traces its evolution over the centuries. Moreover, this body of work encompasses significant movements advocating for women's rights to education and the establishment of colleges specifically for women. Scholars have also analyzed the challenges women encounter in accessing educational opportunities, including societal norms, economic barriers, and institutional discrimination. Notable works highlight the contributions of key figures, such as Mary Wollstonecraft, who advocated for women's education in both historical and contemporary contexts. Overall, this comprehensive scholarship not only documents the advancement …

The Impact Of Adverse Childhood Experiences And Living With Hiv On Cardiovascular Health And Cardiometabolic Disorders In An African Population: An Analysis Of The Indepth Community In Rural South Africa, Samuel Gavi

Theses and Dissertations

Background: Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) have been shown to be associated with cardiometabolic disorders (CMDs) and poor CVH; however, in Africa, this has not been well studied. Cardiovascular health (CVH) is an important measure of risk for cardiovascular diseases (CVD) developed by the American Heart Association (AHA). With the increasing prevalence of CVD in Africa, CVH is a potential upstream prevention approach. Africa also has the highest prevalence of HIV, and an increasing prevalence of comorbidities associated with it. Various mechanisms have been investigated to explain the relationship between CVD and chronic HIV infection. This study explores the potential relationship …

Democracy, Expertise, And The Disinformation Problem, Richard Randall Frohock Iv

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Experts are an essential part of our social epistemology. They grant us access to knowledge that would otherwise be inaccessible. Because of this, experts are also typically seen as invaluable political contributors. Without expert contributions, public policy risks being ill-informed and therefore incapable of addressing society’s needs. Recently, however, the extent to which expertise should inform public policy has come into question. Fueled largely by disinformation, there is a growing movement against traditional experts. Those within this movement argue that experts have overstepped their bounds and are working against the societies they are meant to be helping. Fearing that that …

Magicicada And Mathematics: What The Parochiality Of Our Explanations Means For The Indispensability Argument, Jadyn Malone

Philosophy Senior Theses

This thesis examines whether the indispensability argument justifies belief in the existence of mathematical entities. I adopt ontological naturalism, arguing that we should believe in entities that feature in our best scientific theories, which are determined through inference to the best explanation. The indispensability argument contends that because mathematical entities are explanatorily indispensable to our best scientific theories – as demonstrated by examples like the prime number explanation of cicada life cycles – we should believe they exist just as we believe in electrons and stars.

However, I identify a challenge: our scientific explanations are inherently parochial, shaped by human …

Epistemic Dysfunction In American Politics: The Impact Of Misinformation On Knowledge Acquisition., Megan Crowley

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

Political misinformation has become an increasingly prominent topic of discussion among scholars across disciplines, particularly in the wake of the 2020 American presidential election. Despite growing scholarly interest in this phenomenon, however, contemporary research has yet to examine misinformation alongside traditional epistemological theory. This thesis aims to remedy this gap by synthesizing classical epistemology, journalism and media research, and political science to investigate the impact of misinformation on political knowledge acquisition. To accomplish this goal, the analysis will focus on the justification condition, conceptualized according to both internalist and externalist perspectives. The internalism section will cast misinformation as a form …

Strategic Construction Of Anomalies: A Quantum International Relations Framework For Uap, Nate Ostdiek

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), commonly known as UFOs, are notoriously tricky to understand and analyze. The persistent ambiguity surrounding UAPs is not accidental but strategic; by keeping them in a liminal state of explanation, actors construct a geopolitical anomaly that blurs the boundaries between threat, curiosity, and control. Utilizing a Quantum International Relations (QIR) framework pioneered by Alexander Wendt, James Der Derian, and others enables new analytical tools to explain the creation and impact of these strategic anomalies. The social ontological status of UAP (extraterrestrial, fake, interdimensional, secret technology, natural phenomena, etc.) is determined by an entangled network of epistemological …

Pedro Aceves Mfa Thesis, Pedro M. Aceves

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

My Work is about looking at Cruising through a queer decolonial lens. Using multiple mediums such as photo, glass, Augmented reality, and film, I explore these queer histories and aesthetics through not just an anthropological approach but also an artistic epistemological approach weaving together narratives of prehispanic and modern queer Latinidad.

Navigating Climate Action: The River As Teacher For Eco-Literacy, Educational Regeneration And Creative Participation, Bibi (Silvina) Calderaro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cultures' engagements with land and its more-than-human elements reveal their attitudes toward these dimensions, spanning a spectrum from reciprocal to transactional practices. In time, these engagements form a body of knowledges that nurtures the culture and its land, or arrests their vital and diverse qualities. This research project aims to bring to light how the different ways of engaging with and relating to land are embedded in knowledge production, distribution and communication—in short, in general educational endeavors and their philosophies—to promote a better understanding of the principles of eco-literacy. Additionally, a purpose of this project is to provide insights into …

Johann Georg Hamann And The Liberal Project, Jesse D. Ansley

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the political thought of Johann Georg Hamann, his relationship to liberalism, and the importance to modern concerns for consensus formation and intercultural dialogue. This contributes to the line of literature sparked by Isaiah Berlin debating the political legacy of Hamann and its relation to the development of modern politics. Berlin labels Hamann an anti-rationalist whose current developed into the ideology of the Nazi party. My work supports the countervailing arguments that Hamann’s work is importantly different from the Romantics he inspired and even more so from the Nazis. By examining two complete works and a number of …

Perspectivism And Wicked Problems: Patterns In The Discovery Process Of Leibniz, Bohr, And Turing, Ernesto Diaz

Natural Sciences and Mathematics | Faculty Authored Dissertations and Theses

This research investigates fundamental patterns in how transformative scientific knowledge emerges and becomes established, examining three pivotal cases: Leibniz's development of calculus, Bohr's formulation of complementarity, and Turing's conceptualisation of computation and artificial intelligence. The study introduces the o-é-c model (Ouverture Ontologique - Épistémè Socialisante - Connaissance Éclairante) to explain how individual insights become integrated into collective knowledge through structured phases of development. Drawing on Minsky's conception of knowledge as mental models for problem-solving and Longino's social epistemology, the research demonstrates how wicked problems—those that resist formulation within existing frameworks—catalyse the creation of new knowledge domains. The model reveals how …