Department of Philosophy Graduate Projects
Permanent URI for this collection
Projects submitted by graduate students in fulfillment of their graduate degree requirements in philosophy.
Browse
Recent Submissions
Item Ontological and Ecological Change in Canadian Environmental Policy: Agency of the Other-Than Human, Settler Allyship, and the Centering of Indigenous Philosophies Through Attention to Anishinaabe Relationality(2024) Howe, Zephyr SiannaThis thesis addresses practical applications of indigenous ontologies to promote decolonial views of animal and plant agency regarding issues relating to Canada’s role in the climate crisis. As a Canadian settler scholar, this author aims to contribute to literature that challenges western logic systems and instead centers indigenous ontological theories of being which provide a framework with which to view the agency of the other-than-human without adhering to the ontological limitations of western philosophy. Specific materials examined focus on themes of: Anishnaabe ontology, indigenous water governance, indigenous land claims, moral obligations towards participating in the creation of decolonial futures, and the animacy and agency of the other-than-human. I add to this ongoing discussion that Canada has a moral obligation to approach the settler-caused climate crisis through a lens of indigenous ontology and logic systems, while striving for decolonial futures. Current approaches to issues of climate change are driven by a conceptualization of agency of the non-human dominated by colonial logic systems and philosophies; this is a failure of Canadian politics and academia to put in the sufficient effort to decolonize Canadian public policy. I argue that the only acceptable path for Canadian environmental politics is one which centers indigenous knowledge, and peoples, within Canada.Item Morality Across Time: Exploring the Scope of Mutual Recognition(2020-11) Ball, RobinActions performed in the present can profoundly influence the lives of future people. This fact raises two important questions: can future people be wronged, and if so, do present people have strong reasons to refrain from wronging them? This paper presents and defends a contractualist account of morality, and therefore a contractualist answer to the two questions raised. I argue that future people can be wronged and that each of us do have strong reasons to refrain from wronging them, in virtue of the fact that they belong to the moral relationship. I do this by describing the moral relationship, gesturing toward its intrinsic value, and arguing that its scope extends beyond proximal strangers to include both distant strangers and future people. Before considering the implications of this position for public policy, I respond to two prominent objections. The first objection utilizes the non-identity problem to challenge my claim that future people can be wronged. The second objection denies that the moral relationship is a salient source of obligation, therefore challenging my claim that present people have strong reasons to refrain from wronging future people. In response, I argue that the first objection misunderstands contractualist morality, and that the second objection fails to recognize our capacity to feel genuine concern for distant strangers and future people.Item Wittgenstein and the Appeal to Our Practices(2010-09-27T15:51:19Z) Howe, Kathleen AnnIn On Certainty, Wittgenstein repeatedly responds to an imagined sceptic by appealing to our everyday expressions of knowledge, doubt, and certainty, thereby showing the sceptic's use of these expressions to flout common practice. Where the sceptic would raise doubts, we ordinarily would not blink an eye. The sceptic's words, despite their resemblance to our own, should not be mistaken for ours—in the sorts of context in which she utters them, they do not clearly express anything. Against the backdrop of ordinary use, this argument against the sceptic appears incisive. However, such ordinary use is precisely the sceptic's target. She aims to show that we are unwarranted in our epistemic conduct. If Wittgenstein means to refute scepticism, his appeal to our epistemic practices cannot stand on its own. It may well be that the sceptic disregards their bounds, but unless it can be shown that they so stand to reality as to warrant what we do, as to in fact produce knowledge, any appeal to them comes to nothing. In the following thesis, I will argue that Wittgenstein need not substantiate this relation between our epistemic practices and reality, for with this appeal to our practices, he intends not to refute the sceptic but to transform her claim into something with which we can and do live. In the first chapter, I provide a more detailed account of the thesis's subject and structure. In the second, I present Wittgenstein's response to scepticism in On Certainty and the apparent difficulty it runs into. In the third, I turn to Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations as a parallel problematic from which we can draw insight. In the fourth, I consider two readings of the rule-following considerations that attempt to avoid the parallel problem of substantiating the relation between our practices and reality and argue that having forgone this relation all together, neither is tenable against scepticism. In the final, I argue for parallel readings of the rule-following considerations and On Certainty that, while dependent on a certain relation between our practices and reality, hold that substantiating this relation is something we need not do.