Department of Philosophy Graduate Theses
Recent Submissions
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Meeting Epistemic Challenges in Psychiatry With Embodied Cognition
Psychiatry faces epistemic problems because of its roughly dualist philosophy of mind. Theory and practice that implicitly or explicitly separate mind and body challenge psychiatry’s ability to describe, meet and treat its ... -
Autonomous Misdirection
This thesis will examine how the way we experience knowledge has changed due to the ubiquity of electronic media. Specifically, there will be an examination of how the new digital media – and social media in particular – ... -
Norms, Reasons, and Moral Progress
In the literature of moral progress, there is an ongoing debate over the role of moral reasoning in enabling large-scale behavioural change. On the one hand, rationalists argue that more and better moral reasoning is key ... -
An Encounter between East and West: The Notion of Truth in William James and Swami Vivekananda
William James considered Swami Vivekananda the exemplary example of a monist, and he comes to reject Vivekananda’s philosophy because it ultimately did not suit his active temperament. However, judging from his assessment ... -
Democracy, Instrumentalism, and Power as a Trust: On the Foundations of Political Instrumentalism
In this dissertation, I explore the theory of political instrumentalism and its application to the justification of democracy. I suggest that because of the dominance of intrinsic accounts of the justification of democracy ... -
Reason, Agency, and the Malaise of Mental Health
Mental health conditions create incredibly complex experiences in the world. Some medical professionals argue that mental health conditions are purely physical phenomena – simply a deficiency of brain chemicals. Some ... -
Animal Personhood: A Postanthropocentric Multispecies Legal Subjectivity
This thesis looks at the human relationship to other animals in the eyes of the law. Many contemporary legal systems categorize nonhuman animals as property, which means that they can be objectified and commodified. The ... -
Williams, Scanlon, and the Normativity of Morality
Most debates about the viability of a given moral theory are won and lost, or at least brought to an end, through resort to a familiar pattern of argument: if a theory calls for that course of action, can it really claim ... -
Fascism and Settler Colonialism in Canada
This thesis aims to map out the relationship between fascism and settler colonialism in Canada. In the first chapter, I go through a number of theories of fascism, including by contemporary historians and 20th century ... -
Fair-weather liberalism: institutional preparedness for severe climate change
What if we fail to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and so face its more severe impacts? I argue we must take this possibility seriously and doing so reveals a new obligation of climate justice – contingency planning ... -
Lewis on the Construction of Worlds: the Metaphysical, Epistemic and Practical Costs of Modal Realism
This thesis considers the metaphysics and logic of modalities. In the first section, I give a background to modal realism and present Lewis’ motivations for proposing such a view. In the second section, I explain what it ... -
Inclusive Autonomy: A Theory of Freedom for Everyone
Persons with cognitive disabilities and nonhuman animals are denied the right to make personal choices because it is claimed that they are not autonomous, for autonomy requires the capacity to revise one’s preferences and ... -
Interests and Rights: Minority Communities, Parents, and Children
Children play an integral role in the reproduction and maintenance of cultures. Simultaneously, culture groups inform the identify formation and development of children. For this reason, one would think that theories ... -
The Logically Perfect Language on Words without Objects
Bertrand Russell’s logical atomism holds that the world is made up of a body of structured facts composed of simple objects. A Logically Perfect Language (LPL) is constructed to reflect this hierarchy of facts—every sentence ... -
Matter and Minds: Examining Embodied Souls in Plato’s Timaeus and Ancient Philosophy
With the rise of Platonism influenced by Plotinus and Descartes, philosophers have largely overlooked the fact that Plato directly acknowledges that there is a practical and valuable role for the body. The Timaeus clearly ... -
Epistemic Disjunctivism: A New Story about a Familiar Picture
The primary aim of this thesis is to evaluate the position known as ‘epistemic disjunctivism’ and its relation to the traditional epistemological framework it is meant to replace. In particular, this will involve the ... -
A Pedagogy of Discomfort: A Qualified Defense
This thesis considers Megan Boler’s proposal for a pedagogy of discomfort, an approach to social justice education that harnesses students’ emotional responses of felt discomfort, such as anger or guilt, in order to prompt ... -
A Defence of Associative Duties
In this thesis, I defend associative duties – typically understood as non-contractual, special moral responsibilities that arise from valued relationships – as a genuine class of duties. I do this in the spaces of both ... -
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 ...
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