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Fall 2011

Weaver, Sara

“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...

Fall 2017

Sultana, Nasrin

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...

Spring 2018

Huang, Zi Yun

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...

Spring 2013

Murphy, Taylor S.

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,...

Fall 2021

Hayden, Spencer

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;...

Fall 2023

Rosario, Esther M

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...