Browsing Philosophy (Theses and Dissertations) by Title
Now showing items 2-21 of 41
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Abstract objects and semantics: An essay on prospects and problems with abstraction principles as a means of justifying reference to abstract objects
(Trinity College Dublin. School of Social Sciences & Philosophy. Discipline of Philosophy, 2020)The aim of this thesis is to reconsider the role that abstraction principles play, for neo-Fregeans, in establishing reference to abstract objects, in a way that brings to light both their significance and ... -
Akrasia: Plato and the limits of Education?
(Trinity College Dublin. School of Social Sciences & Philosophy. Discipline of Philosophy, 2018)In this dissertation I shall argue for the following main claim: (1a) the motivational neutrality of reason. I will show that this concept reveals that, for Plato, (1b) reason is itself a necessary condition of the possibility ... -
Anscombe's philosophy of action and its origins
(Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2006)G. E. M. Anscombe's work is seminal to action theory. Her major work in this area, Intention, first published in 1957, has been very influential in shaping the modern debate on issues such as the nature of action, the ... -
Berkeley's Analyst: Rigour and Rhetoric
(King's College London, 2018)Consider the following puzzle: in 1732, Berkeley published Alciphron, and with it a sweeping pragmatic vindication of concepts whose terms fail to represent clear ideas. In that pragmatic semantics, he uses mathematical ... -
Chomsky Quine and naturalistic philosophy
(Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2015)[Exerpt from Introduction, page 6] I will argue that while Chomsky's claims about language acquisition have been tested over the last fifty years and have not all stood up to critical scrutiny, Quine's views have not been ... -
A deliberative account of causation: How the evidence of deliberating agents accounts for causation and its temporal direction
(Columbia University, 2016)In my dissertation I develop and defend a deliberative account of causation: causal relations correspond to the evidential relations we use when we decide on one thing in order to achieve another. Tamsin’s taking her ... -
Duality and opposition in Heraclitus and modern philosophy of language and linguistics
(Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2016)Aim: To investigate the phenomenon of Duality, that is, opposition in its many forms. In particular, as it appears in Heraclitus’ philosophy and his reaction to his predecessors, in the form of the thesis, apparently ... -
Falsificationism and Theory Adjudication : a critical rationalist critique of justificationist theories of science
(Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2014)My aim in this thesis is to present a critique of the currently dominant approach to this problem, the broad-ranging epistemological position described herein as "justificationism." This critique of justificationism—the ... -
Freud's psychoanalysis of religion
(Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2000)Freud was part of a long tradition of non-believers who offered a story about how religions originated. Notable works in this tradition include Hume's The Natural History of Religion and Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity. ... -
Hannah Arendt's Unwritten Theory of Political Judgment
(Trinity College Dublin. School of Social Sciences & Philosophy. Discipline of Philosophy, 2023)This project develops a new reading of Hannah Arendt’s interpretation of Immanuel Kant’s aesthetic reflective judgment. The aim of this project is to justify Arendt’s claim that she brings Kant’s unwritten political ... -
Idealist philosophy of space : Kant's criticism of Berkeley
(Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2009)In this thesis I have argued that Kant and Berkeley both took our experience of things in space to be real and veridical. Further, and what I take to be the most striking conclusion from this thesis, is that in fact these ... -
Ideas, relations, and signs : 'intuition' and 'symbolic substitution'in Berkeley's theory of knowledge of nature
(Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2014)The chief aim of this thesis is to develop an interpretation of Berkeley's theory of knowledge of nature through clarification of two prominent motifs which underlie it 'intuition' and 'symbolic substitution'. I regard ... -
Infinite emotion : Matte Blanco's bi-logic in psychoanalytic context
(Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2010)This thesis attempts to outline and assess Matte Blanco's theory of bilogic, and place it in psychoanalytic context using comparative analysis. Bilogic is studied in relation to Freud, Klein and Bion. These particular ps ... -
Kant on the possibility of action from duty but not in accordance with duty
(Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2010)The central theme of this study is a curious and controversial feature of Kant's account of acting from duty in the Groundwork:, his apparent omission of the possibility of action from duty but not in accordance with duty. -
Kant's realism. An investigation into the essential interdependence of the formal and material conditions for the possibility of empirical knowledge in Kant's epistemology
(Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2009)My central claim in this dissertation is that in Kant's epistemology (1) the conditions for the possibility of empirical knowledge (CPEK) comprise not only formal but also material conditions, i.e. CPEK = FCPK and MCPK, ... -
Kant, Cantor, and the unconditioned
(Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2012)In this thesis I inquire into the possible connections between the philosophical problem that Immanuel Kant called the First Antinomy of Pure Reason and some of the paradoxes that were discovered in set theory in the second ... -
A Kantian Reconciliation of Moral Realism and Moral Supervenience
(Trinity College Dublin. School of Social Sciences & Philosophy. Discipline of Philosophy, 2018)The 'Moral Supervenience' thesis is a deeply intuitive and popular one within philosophy, and can be defined as follows: "There can be no changes in any moral properties without at least some kind of change in non-moral ... -
Language, displacement and censorship : a philosophical analysis of Sigmund Freud's common-sense method of dream-interpretation
(Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2002)This thesis is a contribution to the tradition in philosophy of psychoanalysis in analytic philosophy of viewing Sigmund Freud's method of interpretation as an extension of common-sense psychology. The thesis addresses the ... -
On the disunity of the sciences and Ceteris Paribus laws
(Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2006)This thesis examines the claim that the sciences are disunified. Chapter 1 outlines and introduces different accounts of the stratification of the sciences in the literature, in particular, Unificationism, Disunificationism, ... -
Plato's Theory of Perception
(Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2012)This dissertation defends the view that in a number of later dialogues (Theaetetus, Philebus, Timaeus, Sophist, as well as, incidentally, the earlier Phaedo) Plato articulates a coherent and systematic account, and thus a ...
