Department of Philosophy Graduate Theses
Recent Submissions
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Nietzsche's Idea of the Overman and the Current State of Collective Consciousness
Nietzsche’s idea of the overman has been interpreted in several ways and is often misunderstood. Observing people’s tendencies to act in specific ways along with the common forms of social organization and development ... -
Beyond the Geometrical Method: Nature, Necessity, and Nihilism in Spinoza's Philosophy
This dissertation is a study of Spinoza’s method. I begin with Spinoza’s own views on method. I show that he begins with a largely Cartesian outlook, while acknowledging a debt to Bacon, and adopts a monistic framework ... -
How Compassionate Education can Assist in Repairing Injustice: A Study into the Enduring Injustices of Black People
The focus of this project is to think more deeply, and also differently, about the injustices experienced by Black people. One initial problem is that of reparations: why have reparations never been given to Black people ... -
The Ethics of Care of the Self as Resistance to a “Peculiar Institution”
This thesis discusses some of the critiques of modern moral theories (deontology, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics) posed by Elizabeth Anscombe, Michael Stocker, Bernard Williams, and Susan Wolf. It focuses on Stocker’s ... -
Heidegger and the Meaningfulness of Questioning and Thinking
What does it mean to question and think? Questioning and thinking are two activities which we consider imperative to doing philosophy and the two activities that we involve ourselves in most of the time, albeit without ... -
Understanding the Role and Nature of Intuition in Philosophical Inquiry
This thesis explores the role and nature of intuition in philosophical inquiry. Appeals to intuition have either been used as evidence for or against philosophical theories or as constitutive features of judgement. I attempt ... -
The Structure of Blame and its Relation to the Moral Emotions
It is not clear what role emotions play in our conception of blame. In this thesis, I aim to understand the role of the emotions in blame, and the question that I explore can be phrased in the following way: is blame ... -
The Reasonable Person in Criminal Law
The reasonable person standard has permeated the legal sphere as a guideline for determining the appropriate judgment in various situations. If one is to be justified, he or she must have acted as a reasonable person would ... -
TOWARD A POLITICAL CONCEPTION OF MINORITY RIGHTS: RECONCILING SOVEREIGNTY, HUMAN RIGHTS AND MINORITY CLAIMS
The question that I will explore in this research dissertation is whether one can defend the rights of homeland minorities as a progressive extension of the existing norms of human rights. This question calls for several ... -
Experience, Education and Subjectivity: A Comparison of John Dewey's and Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Conceptions of Experience and Their Implications for Education
(2016-10-27)This thesis compares John Dewey’s philosophy of experience and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, and illustrates how Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology can strengthen and further Dewey’s philosophy of education. I begin ... -
Paternalism and Competent Patient Choice in the Standards of Care for the Health of Transsexual, Transgender, and Gender-Nonconforming People
(2016-10-13)In 2016 physicians in Ontario will be granted the authority to refer patients with gender dysphoria for sex reassignment surgery. In order to be granted this authority physicians must be trained in the World Professional ... -
A Restorative Theory of Criminal Justice
(2016-10-12)In this project, I defend a restorative theory of criminal justice. I argue that the response to criminal wrongdoing in a just society should take the form of an attempt to heal the damage done to the community resulting ... -
Language, Logos, and Social Ontology: Naturalist and Post-Naturalist Narratives of Human Rationality and Social Reality
(2016-10-04)I distinguish two ways that philosophers have approached and explained the reality and status of human social institutions. I call these approaches “naturalist” and “post-naturalist”. Common to both approaches is an ... -
Education and Self-Cultivation: Foundational Changes for Existential Flourishing
(2016-10-03)The strained relationship between pedagogy and self-cultivation is often overlooked in favour of more pressing and profitable concerns within educational institutions. However, the end of education is not a well-paying ... -
Waking (To) Thinking Being: A Study of Education, Metaphysics, Mind, and Language
(2016-09-29)This dissertation articulates the basic aims and achievements of education. It recognizes language as central to thinking, and philosophy and education as belonging profoundly to one another. The first step is to show that ... -
Bipartite Assertion: A New Account of Assertion, Defined in Terms of Responsibility and Explicit Presentation
(2016-09-10)Assertion is a speech act that stands at the intersection of the philosophy of language and social epistemology. It is a phenomenon that bears on such wide-ranging topics as testimony, truth, meaning, knowledge and trust. ... -
Consciousness: How its Subjectivity is Compatible with Physicalism
(2016-03-30)Though our everyday life is made up of contacts with the world through conscious experiences, our understanding of this basic fact is limited. Consciousness and the “hard problem” have been one of the most controversial ... -
A Role For Ideal Theory In Light of The Theory of Second Best
(2015-11-03)Political theorists, in increasing frequency, have focused on the application of theories of justice to concrete social issues and policy prescriptions. This so called “policy turn” has made it ever more important to reflect ... -
Technological Moral Proxies and the Ethical Limits of Automating Decision-Making In Robotics and Artificial Intelligence
(2015-10-29)Humans have been automating increasingly sophisticated behaviours for some time now. We have machines that lift and move things, that perform complex calculations, and even machines that build other machines. More recently, ... -
Markets, Games, and Lobbying
(2015-10-09)Contemporary business ethics asks the question: what moral responsibilities do actors in a market economy have? Specifically, what obligations do corporate managers have? In this paper I consider a new method for answering ...
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