Philosophy of Science Commons^™

The Philosophical Foundations Of Plen: A Protocol-Theoretic Logic Of Epistemic Norms, Ralph E. Jenkins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I defend the protocol-theoretic account of epistemic norms. The protocol-theoretic account amounts to three theses: (i) There are norms of epistemic rationality that are procedural; epistemic rationality is at least partially defined by rules that restrict the possible ways in which epistemic actions and processes can be sequenced, combined, or chosen among under varying conditions. (ii) Epistemic rationality is ineliminably defined by procedural norms; procedural restrictions provide an irreducible unifying structure for even apparently non-procedural prescriptions and normative expressions, and they are practically indispensable in our cognitive lives. (iii) These procedural epistemic norms are best analyzed in …

Toward A Science Of Morals, Ross Taylor Colebrook

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Morality is not merely a social construction or a convenient fiction. Nor is it supernatural or non- natural. Rather, ethics could eventually be studied as a branch of the social sciences, concerned with empirically discovering the many and diverse best ways of living. There are moral facts (like “murder is wrong”), and these facts are natural, objective, and universal. In other words, moral realism is true.

Philosophers often assume that moral realism matters because it is a commitment of common sense. Drawing on new work in the psychology of metaethics, I argue that ordinary people are not in fact moral …

Footnotes To Footnotes: Whitehead's Plato, Nathan Oglesby

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the presence of Plato in the philosophical expressions of Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947). It was Whitehead who issued the well-known remark that “the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists in a series of footnotes to Plato" -- the purpose of this project is to examine the manner in which Whitehead positioned himself as one such footnote, with respect to his thought itself, and its origins, presentation and reception.

This examination involves: first, an explication of Whitehead’s cosmology and metaphysics and their ostensibly Platonic elements (consisting chiefly in the Timaeus); second, investigation …

Syntax And Semantics Of Perceptual Representation, James K. Quilty-Dunn

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a defense of perceptual pluralism, the thesis that perceptual systems deliver multiple types of representations including those used in thought. In particular, it argues that perceptual systems output iconic (i.e., image-like, analog) representations as well as discursive (i.e., language-like, digital) states. A central thesis is that perceptual representations of objects are propositional and composed of concepts. It also develops a compositional syntax of iconic representation called the coordination model, according to which icons are sets of primitive parts, each of which determines values along multiple analog feature dimensions simultaneously. The dissertation supports the conclusion that perceptual …

Scientifically Responsible Metaphysics: A Program For The Naturalization Of Metaphysics, Amanda Bryant

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

There has been much recent work calling for the naturalization of metaphysics, including most famously James Ladyman and Don Ross’ polemic, Every Thing Must Go. But much work remains to adequately articulate and motivate the call to naturalize metaphysics. My dissertation contributes to that work. Its central questions are: What relationship should metaphysics have to current science? Must good metaphysics be responsive to current science, and if so, how? Why should metaphysics be naturalized and what should its naturalization consist in?

I argue, first, that for that for epistemic purposes, as opposed to heuristic or pragmatic purposes, theories should …

Meaning Through Things, Marilynn Johnson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Interpretation is the process by which we find meaning in the things in the world around us: clouds on the horizon, bones, street signs, hairbrushes, uniforms, paintings, letters, and utterances. But where does that meaning come from and on what basis are we justified in saying a particular meaning is the right meaning? Drawing from debates in the philosophy of language, I argue that a complete theory of meaning and interpretation must be grounded in intentions. My argument employs research in the philosophy of language, aesthetics, linguistics, and cognitive science to develop a general framework of interpretation. This framework is …

Aspects Of Biological Explanation, Derek J. Skillings

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is an evaluation of some strategies used for understanding the biological world. It argues that the complexity of living systems challenges the adequacy of traditional approaches to scientific explanation. An examination of the empirical details—especially those at the microscopic and nano scales—highlights the limitations of mechanistic explanation, common habits of causal reasoning, and theories of individuality. According to this analysis, starting with broad generalizations of how the world is, or a single universal theory of how it ought to be investigated or explained, has things entirely backwards. Instead, we ought to start by looking at the important processes, …

Ecologies Of The Passions In Early Modern English Tragedies, Roya Biggie

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Ecologies of the Passions recovers a neglected model for understanding early modern relationality, one that turns the seemingly inward experience of emotion outward toward the environment. Drawing on early modern medical texts, I argue that the period’s dramatists imagine bodies as humorally vulnerable to other bodies, both human and nonhuman, within dynamically affective environments. As such, my project illustrates the intimate configurations of human and nonhuman life in early modern tragedies. Building upon recent work in the emerging fields of ecocriticism and affect theory, I argue that the period’s dramatic literature exposes the porous fluidity of the Galenic body—its embeddedness …

Rationality, Parapsychology, And Artificial Intelligence In Military And Intelligence Research By The United States Government In The Cold War, Guy M. Lomeo

Theses and Dissertations

A study analyzing the roles of rationality, parapsychology, and artificial intelligence in military and intelligence research by the United States Government in the Cold War. An examination of the methodology behind the decisions to pursue research in two fields that were initially considered irrational.

Seeing And Perceptual Content, Ben S. Phillips

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

There are two widely held assumptions about perception: ascriber-independence (the view that the facts regarding what a subject perceives, as well as what her perceptual states represent, are independent of the interests of those attributing the relevant states to her), and determinacy (the view that perceptual content is relatively determinate). I challenge both of these assumptions, and develop a new approach to perceptual content, with implications for theories of mental content more broadly. In chapter one, I address the question of whether, in addition to low-level features, vision represents ordinary objects. I argue that there is just no fact of …

Mind-Dependent Kinds, Muhammad Ali Khalidi

Publications and Research

Many philosophers take mind-independence to be criterial for realism about kinds. This is problematic when it comes to psychological and social kinds, which are unavoidably mind-dependent. But reflection on the case of artificial or synthetic kinds (e.g. synthetic chemicals, genetically modified organisms) shows that the criterion of mind-independence needs to be qualified in certain ways. However, I argue that none of the usual variants on the criterion of mind-dependence is capable of distinguishing real or natural kinds from non-real kinds. Although there is a way of modifying the criterion of mind-independence in such a way as to rule in artificial …

Transdisciplinarity: A Review Of Its Origins, Development, And Current Issues, Jay H. Bernstein

Publications and Research

Transdisciplinarity originated in a critique of the standard configuration of knowledge in disciplines in the curriculum, including moral and ethical concerns. Pronouncements about it were first voiced between the climax of government-supported science and higher education and the long retrenchment that began in the 1970s. Early work focused on questions of epistemology and the planning of future universities and educational programs. After a lull, transdisciplinarity re-emerged in the 1990s as an urgent issue relating to the solution of new, highly complex, global concerns, beginning with climate change and sustainability and extending into many areas concerning science, technology, social problems and …

Leveraging Capacity: Technical Solutions To Hunger In The Era Of Neoliberalism, Elizabeth Perry Bullock

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Leveraging Capacity: Technical Solutions to Hunger in the Era of Neoliberalism takes the Global Seed Vault and the value of "global crop diversity" as a point of departure for raising questions about the influence of digital technology on the seed and about the solution to hunger known as "global food security." Discussions about food security among food studies scholars highlight either the failures of global public health advocates to regulate the food and beverage industry or they view food security, like earlier campaigns against global hunger, as an instrument for U.S. foreign policy. On either side of this debate, the …

All At One Point: The New Physics Of Italo Calvino And Jorge Luis Borges, Mark Thomas Rinaldi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work of comparative literary criticism focuses on the presence of mathematical and scientific concepts and imagery in the works of Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges, beginning with an historical overview of scientific philosophy and an introduction to the most significant scientific concepts of the last several centuries, before shifting to deep, scientifically-driven analyses of numerous individual fictions, and finally concluding with a meditation on the unexpectedly fictive aspects of science and mathematics. The close readings of these authors' fictions are contextualized with thorough explanations of the potential literary implications of theories from physics, mathematics, neuroscience and chaos theory. …

Uv-Visible Microscope Spectrophotometric Polarization And Dichroism With Increased Discrimination Power In Forensic Analysis, Dale Kevin Purcell

All Open Access Legacy Dissertations and Capstone Projects

Microanalysis of transfer (Trace) evidence is the application of a microscope and microscopical techniques for the collection, observation, documentation, examination, identification, and discrimination of micrometer sized particles or domains. Microscope spectrophotometry is the union of microscopy and spectroscopy for microanalysis. Analytical microspectroscopy is the science of studying the emission, reflection, transmission, and absorption of electromagnetic radiation to determine the structure or chemical composition of microscopic-size materials. Microscope spectrophotometry instrument designs have evolved from monochromatic illumination which transmitted through the microscope and sample and then is detected by a photometer detector (photomultiplier tube) to systems in which broad-band (white light) illumination …

Pearson Studies Philosophies, Ethics Of Science, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Interactive Kinds, Muhammad Ali Khalidi

Publications and Research

This paper examines the phenomenon of 'interactive kinds' first identified by Ian Hacking. An interactive kind is one that is created or significantly modified once a concept of it has been formulated and acted upon in certain ways. Interactive kinds may also 'loop back' to influence our concepts and classifications. According to Hacking, interactive kinds are found exclusively in the human domain. After providing a general account of interactive kinds and outlining their philosophical significance, I argue that they are not confined to the human realm, but that they can also occur elsewhere. Hence, I conclude by arguing that interactive …

Nature And Nurture In Cognition, Muhammad Ali Khalidi

Publications and Research

This paper advocates a dispositional account of innate cognitive capacities, which has an illustrious history from Plato to Chomsky. The ‘triggering model’ of innateness, first made explicit by Stich ([1975]), explicates the notion in terms of the relative informational content of the stimulus (input) and the competence (output). The advantage of this model of innateness is that it does not make a problematic reference to normal conditions and avoids relativizing innate traits to specific populations, as biological models of innateness are forced to do. Relativization can be avoided in the case of cognitive capacities precisely because informational content is involved. …

An Alternative Policy For Obtaining Cadaver Organs For Transplantation, James L. Muyskens

Publications and Research

Two moral principles have been basic to the legal decisions concerning the rights and duties toward the newly dead. They are the duty to give decent burial and the denial to anyone of a right to ownership of the dead body for commercial profit. The next-of-kin-rather than the church or the state­ have come to bear the primary responsibility for providing decent burial.

The familial duty to give decent burial has come to be understood as a legal right to determine what is to be done to the body in the interval between death and burial.

Armed with this right, …