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- 1Actor-Network Theory
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A crossdisciplinary exploration of essentialism about kinds: philosophical perspectives in feminism and the philosophy of biology
DownloadFall 2011
“Essentialism about kinds” is the belief that there are necessary and sufficient conditions for membership in a kind. This thesis addresses the parallels in the discussions of essentialism across feminism and the philosophy of biology. Specifically, I address the similarities and differences...
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A Defense of Bertrand Russell’s Theory of Definite Descriptions against Donnellan’s Distinction
DownloadFall 2017
According to Russell’s theory of descriptions, a sentence of the form “The F is G” expresses the general proposition There is exactly one F and whatever is an F is G. According to Donnellan, there are two types of uses of a definite description: an attributive use and a referential use. A...
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Spring 2018
In contemporary scientific theories of evolution, organisms are construed as if they were the products of genes and gene-expression. Much of our biological research operate on the assumptions that (1) organisms are reducible to and reconstructible from their genes, and (2) the organism, as a...
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Cognitive Homology: Psychological Kinds as Biological Kinds in an Evolutionary Developmental Cognitive Science
DownloadSpring 2013
In this philosophy of science thesis I develop a conceptual framework for thinking about cognitive activities by drawing on the conceptual resources of evolutionary developmental biology, providing first steps toward an evolutionary developmental cognitive neuroscience. Focusing on ontological,...
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Fall 2021
This thesis is framed in terms of a larger project — articulating a dialectical materialist conception of STS based, largely, on the work of Marx and Engels. Here, “materialist” is to be understood as a commitment to the proposition that being precedes thought in the order of ontological primacy;...
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Fall 2023
This dissertation is a novel application of conceptual engineering that intersects the history and philosophy of science, metaphysics, value theory and metaphilosophy. It argues for the dual thesis that human sex is a biological kind and that humans are in need of a new sex concept. This...