Browsing Philosophy by Title
Now showing items 37-56 of 134
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Ethical Leadership for Machiavellians in Business
(University of Waterloo, 2016-10-13)Despite some progress in instilling ethics into business practice, businesses continue to make decisions that result in incredible harms to people and the environment around the world. Academics, the public, and the media ... -
Ethical Pluralism and Informed Consent in Canadian Health Care: Exploring Accommodations and Limitations
(University of Waterloo, 2017-09-26)Vibrant and evolving diversity has become an integral part of Canadian identity. Communities are experiencing an enrichment of new ideas, and unique opportunities to learn about those with whom we share the world. At the ... -
The Ethics of Deception in Caregiving: A Patient-Centered Approach
(University of Waterloo, 2015-08-24)Deception is a central issue in bioethics. This emerges most clearly when considering ways of assisting individuals who are incapable of making their own decisions. Deception can be defined as purposefully misleading another ... -
The Ethics of Nuclear Waste in Canada: Risks, Harms and Unfairness.
(University of Waterloo, 2010-04-30)The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) --- the crown corporation responsible for the long-term storage of nuclear fuel waste in Canada --- seeks to bury our nuclear fuel waste deep in the Canadian Shield, with ... -
Evaluation and Value Management in Science
(University of Waterloo, 2018-12-17)The nature of values has been an ongoing topic of discussion in philosophy, particularly in ethics. However, as the issue of how values should play a role in science has become more prominent, the discussion has not always ... -
Everything Is Going to Be Okay, Right? Kindness, Compassion, and the Moral Permissibility of Self-Deception
(University of Waterloo, 2012-09-28)Most people seem to have the intuition that self-deception is always and obviously wrong. In this thesis, I make the case that under certain circumstances, self-deception can actually do a great deal of good and ought to ... -
The Evolution of Reason
(University of Waterloo, 2017-01-17)Aristotle’s metaphysics bridges the gap between mind and nature explaining how their relationship constitutes development in life. Charles Sanders Peirce’s objective idealism similarly aims to investigate how the principles ... -
An Examination of the Moral Authority of Use of Advance Directives with the Alzheimer's Dementia Population
(University of Waterloo, 2010-01-22)Advance directives in Canada are instructions made by capable adults that pertain to future healthcare treatment choices at a time of incapacity. My experience as an ethicist working in an Ontario long-term care facility ... -
Existence Assumptions and Logical Principles: Choice Operators in Intuitionistic Logic
(University of Waterloo, 2015-09-02)Hilbert’s choice operators τ and ε, when added to intuitionistic logic, strengthen it. In the presence of certain extensionality axioms they produce classical logic, while in the presence of weaker decidability conditions ... -
Explaining the Mind: The Embodied Cognition Challenge
(University of Waterloo, 2008-05-15)This thesis looks at a relatively new line of research in Cognitive Science – embodied cognition. Its relation to the computational-representational paradigm, primarily symbolicism, is extensively discussed. It is argued ... -
Exploring the Justifications for Human Rights
(University of Waterloo, 2005)In this paper the concept of a ?human right? is analysed and clarified. Some justifications for human rights ? such as natural rights theory, contractarianism, utilitarianism and rights as vital interests ? are explored ... -
Fairness through Legal Literacy: A Case for Active Involvement
(University of Waterloo, 2012-05-04)This thesis started with one question: “how could we make the legal system more fair for more people?” One possible answer is given to that question in the four chapters that follow: we can achieve a more fair and efficient ... -
Ficino's Efforts to Reunite Philosophy and Religion
(University of Waterloo, 2011-09-12)Marsilio Ficino (1433 to 1499) was the first Renaissance philosopher to have access to the full Platonic corpus. He desired to use these ancient writings, plus faith, scripture, and reason to reunite religion and philosophy ... -
Foundations of Deduction's Pedigree: A Non-Inferential Account
(University of Waterloo, 2010-01-05)In this thesis I discuss the problems associated with the epistemological task of arriving at basic logical knowledge. This is knowledge that the primitive rules of inference we use in deductive reasoning are correct. ... -
Fractional-Reserve Banking and the Double-Title to Property Problem
(University of Waterloo, 2020-09-11)This thesis discusses the legitimacy of fractional-reserve banking under the title-transfer theory of contract. Fractional-reserve banking is the practice of banks lending out some of the money that is deposited with them. ... -
A Framework for Analyzing Broadly Engaged Philosophy of Science
(Cambridge University Press, 2022-01-01)Philosophers of science are increasingly interested in engaging with scientific communities, policy makers, and members of the public; however, the nature of this engagement has not been systematically examined. Instead ... -
The Free Self: What Separates Us From Machines
(University of Waterloo, 2023-08-29)Could a machine ever achieve consciousness? Will it ever make sense to hold a machine morally responsible? In this thesis, I argue that the architecture of SPAUN - the largest WIP functioning brain model currently in ... -
From Objects to Individuals: An Essay in Analytic Ontology
(University of Waterloo, 2008-12-05)The brief introductory chapter attempts to motivate the project by pointing to (a) the intuitive appeal and importance of the notion of an object (that is, a “paradigmatic” individual), and (b) the need – for the sake of ... -
From the Standpoint of The Reasonable Person: Epistemic Ignorance, Culpable Dispositions, and the Objective Standard
(University of Waterloo, 2022-05-16)The concept of reasonableness is both vital to the law and frustratingly vague. Efforts to articulate the concept often rely on “common sense” community-based notions of what counts as reasonable. While using common sense ... -
Genetic Renaissance: A Legal, Philosophical, and Ethical Examination of Consent Using Autonomy & Privacy in Genetic Testing
(University of Waterloo, 2023-09-28)Genetic testing has gained traction in the media with the recent Pentagon ban and continuing increases in public consumption of at-home tests. Public discourse surrounding this technology prompts further exploration of the ...