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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 2015

Howe, Ernest A.

Providing students with the necessary critical thinking skills to scrutinize knowledge claims is generally recognized as an important educational goal. Many critical thinking textbooks utilize a criteria-based practice of critical thinking whereby a number of criteria are set out for the...

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...

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...

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...

Spring 2020

Bradshaw, Jason R.

In a world inundated with information that is becoming increasingly more digital by the day there is value in unique academic disciplines that can make sense of this new landscape—interdisciplinary fields like the Digital Humanities (DH). DH scholars have the ability to breach the divide between...