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Now showing items 1-20 of 43
Skepticism, reason, and decision
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2018)
[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] "This dissertation is a combination of three different projects. The first project investigates the history of philosophy: Kant's refutation of idealism. In this project I...
A defense of the relational account of morality
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2023)
In this essay I shall defend the thesis that morality is an intrinsically relational normative domain constituted by relational claims and corresponding directed duties. On the relational approach to morality, moral ...
Non-cognitivism, internalism, and the Frege-Geach problem
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2007)
This dissertation is about the prospects for non-cognitivism. Chapter One provides some background and introduces the remaining chapters. Chapter Two focuses on the distinction between non-cognitivism about moral thought ...
Citizenship goes to the dogs
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2020)
The conclusion I defend is that "domestic animals" have a moral claim to what I refer to as "basic citizenship rights," and that they do so for the same reason that "non-autonomous humans" do. I define each of these key ...
Clarifying relational egalitarianism
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2018)
[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] I clarify the nature of relational egalitarianism, a theory in political philosophy that concerns equality. Relational egalitarians understand equality as a relationship between...
The consciousness of visual experience
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2018)
[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] "This monograph mainly concerns two distinctive features of visual experience. First, visual experience has its own phenomenal dimension. Following the familiar terminology...
Natural law and the challenge of legal positivism
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2007)
In this dissertation I develop and defend a version of a general theory of the nature of law inspired by the classical natural law tradition, with special intellectual debt to the articulation of that tradition by John ...
Using and coming to own : a left-proprietarian treatment of the just use and appropration of common resources
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2008)
How is it that people come to appropriate (privately own) and justly use resources in the world that initially exist within conditions of "common ownership"? The historical story in our world is surely that the strong ...
Standing and status : a dissertation on the necessary and sufficient conditions for moral standing and an analysis of moral status
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2023)
Moral standing is the property by which an entity is considered to be capable of being wronged or is morally considerable. For example, when I kick a rock, I do not do anything wrong, nor is the rock wronged. On the other ...
Obligations and indeterminism: a challenge for dominance act utilitarianism
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2020)
[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-COLUMBIA AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] This paper is an investigation into an area of philosophical logic called deontic logic. More specifically, this paper is a critical evaluation of an agentive deontic...
Sellars and Socrates : an investigation of the Sellars problem for a Socratic epistemology
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2006)
The Sellars problem threatens the viability of epistemic foundationalism. Foundationalism claims that there are some beliefs whose justification does not depend upon other beliefs. Foundationalism is a popular, non-skeptical ...
Defending an indirect normativity of belief
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2019)
In this dissertation, I seek to answer the following questions: is there such a thing as deontic epistemic normativity -- obligations, permissions, and prohibitions to act in a certain way based on epistemic grounds -- and ...
The idealism of Kant
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 1912)
The philosophy of Kant is undoubtedly one of the most stubborn and daring attempts of the mundane mind to furnish a true account of its own knowledge. This philosophy, both on account of its teachings and through its ...
A revised Hobbesian argument for conflict among humans
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2023)
Thomas Hobbes believed that a state of nature (that is, a state without a society) is a miserable condition for humans because human individuals have a natural inclination to fight each other. In addition, Hobbes argued ...
Philosophical intuitions -- philosophical analysis
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2008)
This work is a defense of philosophical intuitions and the use of them in philosophy. First, I survey the main forms of intuition-based philosophical methods - conceptual analysis, explication, and reflective equilibrium ...
Examining the nature of epistemic value
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2018)
Evident yet opaque: a defense of the evaluative normativity of logic
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2022)
The research in this dissertation concerns the philosophy of logic. More specifically, it concerns the normative status of deductive logic. Many philosophers and logicians have thought that logic tells us how we ought to ...
A defense of moral perception
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2008)
I defend the possibility of moral perception and the contentious view that at least some of our moral knowledge is perceptual knowledge. The first part of the dissertation is spent establishing the possibility of moral ...
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 ...
Placement of special obligation in morality
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2005)
[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] My thesis attempts to explain how special obligations are moral obligations. The morality of special obligations is put into question by the thesis of voluntarism. Voluntarism...