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A proprietarian theory of custodial rights over children
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2010)
[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] I defend a view that individuals have custodial rights over children in virtue of being the genetic parents of the child and that those rights are ...
Rawlsian ethical act contractarianism
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2010)
Assuming that contractarianism is appropriate for developing an ethical theory, which contractarian ethical theory is best? My dissertation provides an answer to this question. Drawing on the work of Rawls, I provide an ...
Absences as causes : a defense of negative causation
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2010)
In this dissertation, I confront the issue of negative causation, (i.e., causation by or of absences). I investigate the causal status of absences with regard to particular philosophical concerns and argue that absences ...
Choice, ownership and responsibility
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2012)
My dissertation is to answer these two questions: "Does moral responsibility require choice?" and "If not, what does it require?" Classic accounts of moral responsibility, such as libertarian accounts, assume a volition ...
Justifying war : an account of just and merely justifying causes for war
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2012)
[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] My project is to offer a new answer to the traditional question: What can justify the resort to war? I defend substantive accounts of the Just Cause ...
Van Fraassen and a defense of inference to the best explanation
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2011)
Inference to the best explanation (IBE) is an inductive argument type that takes advantage of the fact that explanatory considerations serve as an epistemic guide to believing what is the case. Bas van Fraassen has presented ...
Optimality explanations : a new approach
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2012)
[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Despite its importance, philosophers have found it difficult to say precisely what constitutes a scientific explanation. One of the most prominent ...
Bounded rationality in games of strategy
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2011)
[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] Traditional game theory predicts behavior contrary to how real people actually behave. And what traditional game theory prescribes as the rational ...
A new defense of the knowledge norm of assertion
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2012)
[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Recent work in both the philosophy of language and epistemology has relied on the premise that there is a norm of assertion, that there are certain ...
Rethinking the evolution of human intelligence
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2012)
[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Humans have very large, complex brains for their size. Why are humans so intelligent and why did we become intelligent so quickly? My dissertation ...
The nonepistemic psychological requirements for knowledge
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2010)
A question tracing back to Plato's Meno asks, "What is knowledge?" Very plausibly, a person knows a proposition only if he believes it and it is true. However, true belief is not sufficient for knowledge. A person who ...