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1	Teleological moral realism an explication and defense / Alexander, David Eric, Beaty, Michael D. January 2008 (has links) Thesis (Ph.D.)--Baylor University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 173-179)
2	Modality in flux Willer, Malte 05 October 2010 (has links) I develop a novel semantic theory for modals that has important consequences for contemporary work in epistemology, metaphysics and ethics. My theory replaces the dominant view about semantics--that our best theory of meaning should ascribe truth-conditions to modalized sentences--with a non-truth-conditional yet fully compositional semantics for modals. Its contributions to current debates in analytic philosophy include an explanation of the possibility of modal disagreement that avoids relativism, a solution to the paradoxes about conditional obligations (including the gentle murder paradox), and new impulses for a generalized solution to the Frege-Geach problem for noncognitivism. / text Dynamic semantics Conditionals Deontic modals Epistemic modals Frege-Geach problem Noncognitivism
3	Beyond Frege-Geach : neglected problems for Expressivism Köhler, Sebastian January 2014 (has links) This thesis is about the viability of meta-normative expressivism. On what I take to be the dominant conception of the view, it subscribes to two theses. First, that the meaning of sentences is to be explained in terms of the mental states these sentences conventionally express. Second, that there is a fundamental difference in the roles of the states expressed by normative sentences and the states expressed by descriptive sentences: descriptive sentences, according to expressivists, express mental states which are representational and non-motivational, while normative sentences express non-representational and motivational states. Expressivism has attracted many naturalistically inclined philosophers for its ability to explain many of the distinctive features of normative discourse and thought, without adding entities to our ontology that are metaphysically and epistemologically problematic. In this way, expressivism promises to preserve the legitimacy of our ordinary normative practice within a naturalistic world-view, without giving up on any of its distinctive features. Despite it’s benefits, expressivism also faces significant problems. While one of these problems, the Frege-Geach Problem, has attracted a lot of attention, there are several other problems that have not been sufficiently addressed by . But, given that the reasonable assumption that the plausibility of philosophical theories needs to be assessed holistically, it seems that one should pay attention to these problems to be able to assess expressivism’s overall plausibility. In this thesis I explain how expressivists can solve two of these problems. The first problem the dissertation is concerned with is the normative attitude problem. This is a dilemma based on the challenge that expressivists need to give an account of the nature of the attitude that normative thinking consists in. The dilemma is then that expressivists could either do this by holding that normative thinking consists in sui generis attitudes, which is uninformative and potentially in conflict with naturalism, or by holding that normative thinking reduces to attitudes fully describable in non-normative terms, which is in conflict with our intuitions about normative thinking. I argue that this dilemma is structurally identical to a dilemma which meta-normative representationalism faces (expressivism’s dialectical rival) and that expressivists can use the same theoretical resources to address the normative attitude problem meta-normative representationalists have used to address their version of the dilemma. I also argue that these resources will not only help more traditional versions of expressivism, according to which normative thinking reduces to familiar kinds of attitudes fully describable in non-normative terms, but opens up the possibility of an expressivist view according to which normative thinking consists in sui generis attitudes. The second problem I consider is a challenge to a particular expressivist project: quasi-realism. Part of this project is to show that expressivism is compatible with a web of closely connected assumptions, namely, that normative thought and discourse are truth-apt and normative judgements are beliefs. While quasi-realists have made some progress in this direction, there is one relevant phenomenon that has so far been neglected, namely, those uses of that-clauses that are associated with propositional content. This is a problematic neglect, because that-clauses figure prominently in platitudes characterizing our ordinary notions of “truth-aptitude” and “belief ”, and so expressivists need to provide a plausible account of these uses of that-clauses which fits with their allowing that normative thought and discourse are truth-apt and normative judgements are beliefs. I address this challenge as follows: I first remove any worries that one might have that a plausible account of that-clauses that helps the quasi-realist could be given, by introducing the distinction between semantics and meta-semantics and locating expressivism at the level of metasemantics. I then develop a deflationist view of that-clauses which suits the quasi-realist’s purposes. I start by giving such a view for the use of that-clauses in meaning-attributions by expanding on the work of Wilfried Sellars. I then go on to explain how the account can be generalized to the use of that-clauses in belief-attributions and propositional attitude ascriptions more generally, in a way that allows expressivists to say that normative judgements are beliefs. 170
4	Embryo Adoption: Implications of Personhood, Marriage, and Parenthood McMillen, Brooke Marie 14 April 2008 (has links) Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / One’s personal claims regarding personhood will influence his moral belief regarding embryo adoption. In Chapter One, I consider the personhood of the human embryo. If the human embryo is a person, we are morally obligated to permit the practice of embryo adoption as an ethical means to save human persons. However, for those who do not claim that an embryo is a person at conception, embryo adoption is not a necessary practice because we have no moral obligation to protect them. There are still others who claim that personhood is gained at some point during gestation when certain mental capacities develop. I offer my own claim that consciousness and sentience as well as the potential to be self-conscious mark the beginning of personhood. Embryo adoption raises several questions surrounding the institution of marriage. Due to its untraditional method of procreation, embryo adoption calls into question the role of procreation within marriage. In Chapter Two, I explore the nature of the marriage relationship by offering Lisa Cahill’s definition of marriage which involves both a spiritual and physical dimension, and then I describe the concept of marriage from different perspectives including a social, religious, and a personal perspective. From a personal perspective, I explore the relationship between marriage and friendship. Finally, I describe how the concept of marriage is understood today and explore the advantages to being married as opposed to the advantages of being single. Embryo adoption changes the way we customarily think about procreation within a family because in embryo adoption, couples are seeking an embryo from another union to be implanted into the woman. This prompts some philosophers to argue that embryo adoption violates the marriage relationship. In Chapter Three, I further consider the impact of embryo adoption on the family as an extension of the marital relationship as well as the impact of embryo adoption on the traditional roles of motherhood and fatherhood. I examine motherhood by looking at how some philosophers define motherhood and when these philosophers claim a woman becomes a mother. After considering these issues regarding motherhood, I examine the same issues surrounding fatherhood. Peg Brand, PhD., Chair Embryo adoption Embryo rescue Embryo Adoption Rescue Motherhood Fatherhood Marriage Personhood Gestation Conception Reproductive technology Reproduction Surrogacy Conscious Consciousness Sentience Person Self-conscious Self-consciousness Procreation Conjugal union Marriage relationship Procreate Pregnancy Genetic motherhood Gestational motherhood Social motherhood Genetic father Social father Mother Motherhood Father Fatherhood IVF In vitro In vitro fertilization Pregnancy Postnatal adoption Althaus Aquinas Conee Crosby DeGrazia Finnis Ford Locke Lovering McMahan Parfit Quinn Singer Sumner Thomson Tooley Warren Cahill Moller Landau Mill Catholic Lutheran Calvinist Calvinism Aristotle Catholicism Kant Parsons Primoratz Feldman Firestone Tonti-Filippini Watt Geach Human embryo -- Transplantation Adoption -- Religious aspects Motherhood Fatherhood Marriage

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