Browsing Philosophy by Issue Date
Now showing items 1-20 of 134
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Logic in Pictures: An Examination of Diagrammatic Representations, Graph Theory and Logic
(University of Waterloo, 1994)This thesis explores the various forms of reasoning that are associated with diagrams. It does this by a logical analysis of diagrammatic symbols. The thesis is divided into three sections dealing with different aspects ... -
Occurrent Contractarianism: A Preference-Based Ethical Theory
(University of Waterloo, 1995)There is a problem within contractarian ethics that I wish to resolve. It concerns individualpreferences. Contractarianism holds that morality, properly conceived, can satisfy individualpreferences and interests better ... -
An Inquiry into Mental Variation
(University of Waterloo, 1995)Although there are both common and specialised senses of the term variation, (the OED lists dozens) there seems to be no well defined use of this term in philosophy. The main task of my thesis is to demonstrate that ... -
Conservative Contractarianism
(University of Waterloo, 2004)Moral contractarianism, as demonstrated in the work of David Gauthier, is an attempt to derive moral principles from the non-moral premises of rational choice. However, this contractarian enterprise runs aground because ... -
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 ... -
Rigid Designation, the Modal Argument, and the Nominal Description Theory
(University of Waterloo, 2005)In this thesis, I describe and evaluate two recent accounts of naming. These accounts are motivated by Kripke?s response to Russell?s Description Theory of Names (DTN). Particularly, I consider Kripke?s Modal Argument ... -
Rationality and Group Decision-Making in Practical Healthcare
(University of Waterloo, 2006)In this paper, a view of non-compliance in practical healthcare is provided that identifies certain non-compliant behaviours as rational. This view of rational non-compliance is used to update a current form of doctor ... -
Sentimentalism, Affective Response, and the Justification of Normative Moral Judgments
(University of Waterloo, 2006)Sentimentalism as an ethical view makes a particular claim about moral judgment: to judge that something is right/wrong is to have a sentiment/emotion of approbation/disapprobation, or some kind of positive/negative feeling, ... -
Naturalizing Moral Judgment
(University of Waterloo, 2006-12-18)Philosophers have traditionally attempted to solve metaethical disputes about the nature of moral judgment through reasoned argument alone. Empirical evidence about how we do make moral judgments is often overlooked in ... -
Merleau-Ponty and the Preconceptions of Objective Thinking
(University of Waterloo, 2007-01-18)Maurice Merleau-Ponty thinks that many classical theories of perception, especially reductionism, are influenced by the objective and the scientific form of thinking. Such influence is expressed in two preconceptions. The ... -
The Philosophy of Bioinformatics
(University of Waterloo, 2007-01-22)The development of bioinformatics as an influential biological field should interest philosophers of biology and philosophers of science in general. Bioinformatics contributes significantly to the development of biological ... -
Human Nature and Morality: An invesitgation of the evidence for and implications of genetically-based moral traits
(University of Waterloo, 2007-09-10)In his recent book, Moral Minds, Marc Hauser claims that humans are genetically endowed with a moral faculty operating in much the same way as our linguistic faculty, and that this faculty delimits normative moral systems. ... -
A Defense of Semantic Conventionalism
(University of Waterloo, 2007-09-26)The purpose of this dissertation is to argue that semantic conventionalism of a, more or less, Dummettian variety is unjustly neglected in contemporary philosophy. The strategy for arguing this is to make a conjecture ... -
The Measure Of Meaning
(University of Waterloo, 2007-09-27)There exists a broad inclination among those who theorize about mental representation to assume that the meanings of linguistic units, like words, are going to be identical to, and work exactly like, mental representations, ... -
Igniting the Deontic Consequence Relation: Dilemmas, Trumping, and the Naturalistic Fallacy
(University of Waterloo, 2007-09-27)In this work, Kurt Holukoff examines three formal approaches to representing valid inferences in reasoning regarding obligation and its cognates: deontic logic. He argues that an appropriate formalization of deontic logic ... -
Individual Human Rights: Reconciling Rights with Value Pluralism
(University of Waterloo, 2007-10-01)Abstract: This thesis examines the foundations of individual human rights. The general thought that informs the discussion is that rights and values are two different kinds of moral discourse. Hence, any attempt to simply ... -
Reference and Reinterpretation
(University of Waterloo, 2007-10-02)Reference is the relation held to obtain between an expression and what a speaker or thinker intends the expression to represent. Reference is a component of interpretation, the process of giving terms, sentences, and ... -
Education in the 21st Century: Human Rights and Individual Actions
(University of Waterloo, 2008-01-09)This dissertation has three goals. The first goal is to outline how twentieth century advocates qualify education as a human right. The second goal is to offer an integrative account which argues that, to defend a right ... -
Commercial and Business Incorporation: Enhancing the notion of corporation to include an ethical statement
(University of Waterloo, 2008-01-22)Today’s modern, Canadian, business corporations are hugely influential in determining public policy and many aspects of people’s lives. Because this influence permeates so much of our social construct, we expect corporations ... -
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 ...