This thesis recasts the traditional arguments for how to interpret both the Daoist work, the Zhuangzi, as well as Socrates’ daemon using Islamic thinker Henri Corbin’s concept of the imaginal. Examining the outward manifestation of masterful skill is . . .

Are border controls coercive? Applying the “enforcement approach” to coercion, I show, provides a positive answer to this question. Thus, I side with Arash Abizadeh in his debate with David Miller over the nature of coercion and the legitimacy of bord . . .

Abstract: Aristotle asserts that the character virtues are inextricably linked to what he calls phronesis, commonly translated as “practical wisdom”. Recently, John McDowell has developed and defended this Aristotelian idea that the ideal practical ra . . .

Belief-states possess certain features that allow them to be instantiated as knowledge-states. In this paper I want to examine these features and ask whether or not other mental states besides belief possess such features. If it is the case that menta . . .

In this thesis, I raise considerations against some arguments that support evidentialism, the view that all normative reasons for belief are evidential reasons. In the first part of the thesis I lay out the main evidentialist claims I will be concerne . . .

I once held the cynical view that the world is valueless, and that our moral evaluations were consequences of our subjective projections onto an indifferent world. A situation is good, or bad, because one deems it so. This position equates moral evalu . . .

In Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, Wilfrid Sellars argues that ostensible perceptions (veridical seeings and non-veridical lookings) share not only a common propositional content but also a common descriptive content. In characterizing this sen . . .

This thesis presents the argument that children and adolescents are oppressed within the context of nearly all major social, cultural, political, and economic institutions. The concept of “developmentalist protectionism” is introduced and described as . . .

Lucretius’ belief in an atomic structure of the universe that is very similar to the view modem science holds, helped to inform his views about the lack of possibility for the survival of the soul after death. He feels that we should not worry our min . . .

Andrei Marmor gives us a formulation of convention that may be a significant contribution to social ontology (the study of social reality) in his Social Conventions: From Language to Law, but the claims he makes about what follows from his formulation . . .

The purpose of this paper is to explore the institution of punishment from a Rawlsian approach by answering the two following questions: would the agents in the original position agree to have punishment and what principle would guide this institution . . .

In this thesis I explore the topic of identity as it relates to the existence of multiple worlds. I take the stance that identity persists across worlds in a fashion similar to how identity is maintained across periods of time. The first section of th . . .

This paper discusses Platonic learning by utilizing Lee Franklin’s interpretation of recollection. Franklin claims that recollection is the elicitation of beliefs through rudimentary comprehension. Such a claim addresses Meno’s paradox and has interes . . .

I start by distinguishing the intellectual passions from the bodily passions due to the lack of animal spirit movements in the latter. After showing the intellectual passions to be distinct from the bodily passions. The intellectual passions are furth . . .

In Mind and World, John McDowell develops his view, which he calls ’‘Naturalized Platonism,” and considers and rejects an opposing view he calls “Bald Naturalism.” I argue, against McDowell and on behalf of the bald naturalist, that there is reason to . . .

This thesis provides an interpretation of Descartes’ account of the will that is not only framework. Such contemporary frameworks (I discuss the interpretations of Ragland, Newman, and Chappell) assume that freedom is grounded in an ability to do othe . . .

In her book, Epistemic Injustice: Power and Ethics o f Knowing, Miranda Fricker defines epistemic injustice as harm to an individual specifically attacking his or her capacity as a knower. Beyond the defining of epistemic injustice, Fricker offers a s . . .

In this thesis I seek to articulate a resolute reading of Soren Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous authorship. In order to do this I contrast my reading of Kierkegaard’s authorship with that of James Conant. Conant articulates the skeptical thread of Kierkega . . .

The Problem of Coordination is an early 20th century philosophical approach to the puzzle of how concepts, notably numbers, can take on empirical significance. Hans Reichenbach, perhaps the most famous scholar who wrote about the Problem of Coordinati . . .

Originally appearing in John Rawls’s A Theory o f Justice, the Linguistic Analogy is a conceptual device used to show how morality can be understood as innate, based on the claim that parallels can be drawn between the manner in which we acquire, deve . . .

In this paper I examine three forms of non-anthropocentric environmental ethics. All three are dependent on scientific, theory realism as their method of natural epistemology and as their source of metaphysical claims. The environmental protections of . . .

Bifurcated resident/non-resident tuition policies are ubiquitous at public universities and colleges in the United States of America. Nonetheless, their political justifications have received minimal academic attention and scrutiny. I start by arguing . . .

In this paper, my goal will be to argue for a defense of moral realism in the spirit of John McDowell's thought. The strategy I will employ is to respond to a critique of moral realism by Christine Korsgaard to situate important features of the positi . . .

In the following paper, I will be arguing against a position held by John Haugeland that puts forth the claim that the sciences are cases of dasein. I draw on Martin Heidegger’s philosophical work, Being and Time, to address this issue and in doing so . . .

In this paper, I will show why accounts that defend Nietzsche’s perspectivism by reinterpreting him to be more in line with a traditional epistemic theory are mistaken. First, I will compare what Nietzsche calls the old philosopher (traditional philos . . .

This paper aims at justifying Hegel’s method through a Hegelian criticism of Kant. The main clue is Hegel’s claim that Kant smuggles unjustified presuppositions into his system. Developing that line of criticism not only reveals the fundamental flaws . . .

Imagination is a central component of human cognition. With imagination, we engage in fictionalizing, pretense, and knowledge-gathering. We make spatio-temporal inferences, and we make conclusions about other's state of mind. Here I attempt to answer . . .

Descartes is commonly framed as the great defender of the individual- i.e., the lone meditator: reaching clarity and distinctness in solitude, by the light of his own nature, perpetually flirting with solipsism. Here, I contrast such a framing of Desc . . .

Peter Kosso argues that the execution of experiments under the guidance of theory is epistemologically problematic. In particular, he asserts that the inclusion of theory in experimental design, observation, and instrumental manipulation biases result . . .

In this paper I address the role of mind and conceptuality in absorbed and expert coping as brought forth in the McDowell/ Dreyfus debate. I aim to support McDowell's view of practical rationality and situation specific conceptual understanding by pro . . .

The purpose of this work is to identify factive beliefs and their use, give an explicit definition, and evaluate their use within epistemic systems. The methodology is to examine the use of factive beliefs across three different epistemic systems, two . . .

I contend that music is like a language and it complements language. I present my thesis against the backdrop of two investigations: (a) similarities between Plato’s and Wittgenstein’s thoughts on music and (b) two theoretical approaches of understand . . .

In this paper, I present two possible ways of interpreting Descartes’s views on the individuation of time: Descartes either as a phenomenalist or as a realist. I argue that a phenomenalist reading of Cartesian time represents the correct interpretatio . . .

The purpose of this study is to critically investigate how public school kindergartens have become subject to changing educational policies that are academically oriented and less focused on play. Methodology consisted of interviews with public school . . .

The purpose of this thesis is to develop a defensible account of international justice. Theorists such as John Rawls and Thomas Nagel have advocated the domestic priority view of international justice, according to which strict principles of justice a . . .

In the Introduction, I present the problem of change, also known as the problem of temporary intrinsics, in contemporary philosophy. Then, I briefly discuss Lewis's two main solutions to the problem of change, namely, Lewis's perdurantism, and Haslang . . .

Most would agree that humans must consider the needs of nonhuman animals in our ethics. This paper examines extreme implications of different systems of animal ethics and addresses why these systems lead to intuitively absurd conclusions, arguing that . . .

In the philosophy of emotion, theories that favor the cognitive side of the emotion process have incorporated a rich account of the intentionality of emotion, while forfeiting the essential place of feelings in emotional experience. In contrast, propo . . .

What are the identity conditions for streams of consciousness? Elizabeth Schecter poses this question in her paper, “The unity of consciousness: subjects and objectivity.” In particular, she is interested in the capacity of a recent thesis about the u . . .

This paper will try to answer the question of whether Confucius can commit acts of civil disobedience. The first part will focus on Confucian writings, as well as skillful analysis by contemporary writers, to determine what the Gentleman can do under . . .

The objective of this article is to provide a reasonable account of the political significance of health within the liberal theory of justice as elaborated by John Rawls. First, I argue against the biomedical approach of defining health when the notio . . .

According to John Rawls, a well-ordered liberal democratic society requires citizens to possess the virtue of reasonableness, regarding fellow citizens as standing in a relationship of reciprocity among equals. To maintain a stable overlapping consens . . .

In this paper I give a basic over-view of Helen Longino’s account of objectivity in scientific knowledge and then offer two different readings of Longino’s basic account. The first reading is what I call the purification reading. The second reading is . . .

This project examines the soul in Henry More’s ethical work, Enchiridion Ethicum. The thesis considers Grace Neal Dolson’s position on the role of the Boniform Faculty and Right Reason and argues for a reading of these as separate faculties of the sou . . .

Although Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition and Michel Foucault’s late works on ethics initially appear to be incommensurable, I demonstrate in this paper how in fact Arendt and Foucault engage in analogous emancipatory projects that propose aestheti . . .

In Lack o f Character, John Doris argues that virtue ethics has been debunked by social psychological studies, which he argues indicate a lack of character traits in individuals. Doris argues that situational variance, rather than character traits, is . . .

Ernest Sosa’s virtue epistemology presents a powerful tool with which to construct a new theory of knowledge that can avoid the pitfalls of traditional foundationalism and coherentism, by basing knowledge acquisition in the proper use of specialized i . . .

I analyze Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument by conceiving of human experience as consisting of three types of information: the phenomenal, propositional, and indexical. The knowledge argument raises two questions, one epistemological and the other me . . .

This paper critiques the positions taken by Holmes Rolston in his article "Feeding People Versus Saving Nature." Specifically, I argue that Rolston's accounts of the causes and effects of Poverty on the natural environment in developing countries are . . .

A solution to the problem of the unity of the proposition is of recently renewed interest among philosophers of language. John Collins argues in his book, The Unity o f Unguistic Meaning, that the reigning doctrine of top-down semantics has shirked th . . .