Browsing Graduate Theses and Dissertations - Philosophy by Title
Now showing items 1-40 of 61
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A Propositional Attitude Approach to Emotions
(Georgetown University, 2018)Being an emotional being is having a unique mode of access to certain sorts of evaluative facts, such as that a bear is scary. Fear is a way of accessing that fact. What I mean when I say that emotions are unique modes ... -
Agony and Integrity: An Erotic Psychology for Prefigurative Ethical Practice
(Georgetown University, 2012)The goal of this dissertation is to clarify and address a problem of integrity understood as the question of how one ought to live out one's robustly motivating and normatively orienting attachments to persons, projects ... -
Association Theory: An Aristotelian Defense of Claim-Rights
(Georgetown University, 2017)This thesis addresses the following question: Can, and should, Aristotelian normative theory account for claim-rights? In response, I argue that yes, Aristotelian normative theory can account for claim-rights to a degree, ... -
Being-Together: An Essay on the First-Person Plural
(Georgetown University, 2019)This dissertation concerns the philosophy of the first-person. It consists of three principal philosophical studies, each concerning a set of concepts that, when taken together, form a skeletal though unified account of ... -
Eating as a Self-Shaping Activity
(Georgetown University, 2019)My dissertation offers a new account of eating as a self-shaping activity. I argue that the ways we understand and practice eating shape our agency, affects, capacities, values, temporality, and other important aspects of ... -
The epistemological foundation of transcendental phenomenology : Husserl and the problem of knowledge
(Georgetown University, 2009) -
Epistemological Hermeneutics in the Clinic
(Georgetown University, 2021)Sometimes, people using different epistemological strategies have to work together on a shared project. The differences between their epistemological strategies may make it difficult to share knowledge relevant to their ... -
Ethics and the Social Constitution of Agency
(Georgetown University, 2021)In this dissertation, I offer an account of the social constitution of agency and I show how it grounds normative features applying to us as agents. This is a theory that I call social constitutivism. Constitutivism holds ... -
The Ethics of Public Health Nudges
(Georgetown University, 2012)There is growing interest in using non-coercive interventions to promote and protect public health, in particular "health nudges." Behavioral economist Richard Thaler and law scholar Cass Sunstein coined the term nudge to ... -
Euthanasia, assisted suicide, and the philosophical anthropology of Karol Wojtyla
(Georgetown University, 2008) -
Exact Studies of Equilibrium and Nonequilibrium Properties of Correlated Bosons in One-dimensional Lattices
(Georgetown University, 2013)In this thesis, we study both equilibrium and nonequilibrium properties of hard-core bosons trapped in one-dimensional lattices. To perform many-body analyses of large systems, we utilize exact numerical approaches including ... -
Exclusionary Speech and Constructions of Community
(Georgetown University, 2017)This project explores the complex ways language, social power, and identity entwine to structure social interactions and the contours of community boundaries. How an audience takes up discursive moves can constitute who ... -
Exploitation in personal relationships : from consenting to caring
(Georgetown University, 2009) -
First-principles Study of Charge Density Waves, Electron-phonon Coupling, and Superconductivity in Transition-metal Dichalcogenides
(Georgetown University, 2013)In this thesis we investigate the electronic and vibrational properties of several transition-metal dichalcogenide materials through first-principles calculations. First, the charge-density-wave (CDW) instability in 1T-TaSe2 ... -
Fodor and Aquinas : the architecture of the mind and the nature of concept acquisition
(Georgetown University, 2009) -
Get Good: Self-Regulation, Education, and Epistemic Agency
(Georgetown University, 2018)In this dissertation, I defend a unified account of knowledge and use it to articulate and resolve a number of problems in social epistemology. I argue that to know how to Φ is to have a self-regulated ability to live up ... -
Global Climate Justice and Individual Duties
(Georgetown University, 2017)In this dissertation I develop an account of the morality of climate change. As a moral problem that is a function of the aggregation of many seemingly innocuous individual actions, climate change is in significant tension ... -
Gratitude and the Correlativity of Obligations and Rights
(Georgetown University, 2014)Most people take three platitudes about gratitude for granted: -
Heidegger's Investigation of Death: Human Finitude and the Final End
(Georgetown University, 2015)In this dissertation, I put forward a novel interpretation of Heidegger's investigation of death in Being and Time before arguing that death serves to ground the intelligibility of human existence. I show that in situating ... -
Human Well-Being: The No Priority Theory
(Georgetown University, 2009)Desire-fulfillment (DF) theories and objective list (OL) theories are the two dominant types of theories of human well-being. I argue that DF theories fail to capture the good part of `good for', and that OL theories fail ... -
Hume's Faculty-Based Account of Reasoning
(Georgetown University, 2013)I resolve several longstanding disputes about Hume's view of reasoning and his faculty psychology by clarifying Hume's use of terms related to reasoning. After first arguing that Hume uses many terms in more than one sense ... -
In Defense of Dependence on Moral Testimony
(Georgetown University, 2015)In this dissertation, I defend dependence on moral testimony. To that end, against pessimistic views regarding dependence on moral testimony I argue that moral testimony can confer epistemic warrant and that dependence on ... -
International Political Legitimacy and Procedural Justice
(Georgetown University, 2016)In this project, I offer and defend an account of international political legitimacy of international actors with economic charters, such as the International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization. With an emerging ... -
Islamic Democracy: The Struggle for and Limits of Recognition
(Georgetown University, 2012)The post-uprising Arab world is facing a problematic socio-political situation. For some, infusing the political realm with Islamic principles and reasoning - the practice of Islamic politics - is key for their emancipation. ... -
Justifying self-defense, defense of others, and the use of force in law enforcement
(Georgetown University, 2009) -
The Language of Emotion
(Georgetown University, 2016)In this dissertation, I defend a novel analysis of emotional expression, and then use it to explore the myriad ways in which emotional expressions function in communication. I argue that emotional expressions may be best ... -
Mental Diversity and Meaningful Psychiatric Disabilities
(Georgetown University, 2017)This dissertation provides a philosophical investigation of key claims arising from the psychiatric user/survivor movement. Users/survivors insist that psychiatric conditions do not necessarily diminish someone’s agency ... -
Metaethics Is Social
(Georgetown University, 2021)Philosophy is in the midst of a social turn. Our community is pouring new energy into fields like social epistemology and social ontology, and across the discipline we have turned our focus toward political and ethical ... -
The metaphysical role of causal roles
(Georgetown University, 2010) -
Microaggressions and Moral Responsibility
(Georgetown University, 2017)In this dissertation I answer three central questions: What are microaggressions? In what ways are they morally significant? What should our responsibility-holding and responsibility-taking practices be regarding microaggressive ... -
Mind, Body, and World: Resolving the Dreyfus-McDowell Debate
(Georgetown University, 2013)In recent years Hubert Dreyfus and John McDowell have engaged one another in several fora, debating the pervasiveness of our conceptual experience. Dreyfus offers arguments unique to the debate over nonconceptual content, ... -
Moral Status: A Political Approach
(Georgetown University, 2020)In this dissertation I develop a political approach to the subject of moral status. While much of the moral status literature focuses on questions of individual morality—like whether I may permissibly eat meat for dinner ... -
Moral Structures: Scientific Reflections on Rationalist Themes
(Georgetown University, 2021)In this dissertation, I develop a substantive, scientific account of the nature of practical normativity and then use this account to articulate an empirically tractable version of the rationalist approach to ethics. In ... -
Nanoscale Gas Sensors and Their Detection Mechanisms: Carbon Nanotubes and Beyond
(Georgetown University, 2013)The research presented in this thesis focuses on the experimental investigation of nanoscale electronic devices for gas sensing applications. The majority of the experiments were conducted on carbon nanotube field-effect ... -
The normativity of personal commitment
(Georgetown University, 2009) -
On Reasons to Live Justifiably: In Support of a Humean Contractualist Account of Moral Reasons
(Georgetown University, 2014)The goal of this dissertation is to explore a new answer to the very old question, "Why be moral?" Or, as the question is often phrased today, "What reason does one have to be moral?" I begin my investigation into this ... -
On the Moral Significance of Conscience
(Georgetown University, 2015)Moral reasons are considerations that count in favor of or against actions in light of a moral standard. They can be functionally defined as authoritative guides to morally right action. Embedded in this concept is a deep ... -
Owing it to Us
(Georgetown University, 2013)Ethical theorists have traditionally analyzed duties, both individual and collective, into two categories: duties to others and duties to oneself. Reflection upon the moral domain, however, suggests cases in which an ... -
The Phenomenology of Moods: Time, Place, and Normative Grip
(Georgetown University, 2017)Moods are powerful forces in our lives. When we enter into a mood—such as an anxious, irritable, depressed, bored, tranquil, or cheerful mood—we often find ourselves thinking, feeling, and acting in ways that are out of ... -
The Political Dimensions of Quotidian Choice and the Expressive Theory of Rationality
(Georgetown University, 2013)Many of our everyday choices take place within sprawling and complex political structures and processes that bring about outcomes that we view as harms. Yet, because an individual's actions do not contribute measurably ...
