The aim of this dissertation is to explore the nature of scientific progress and to broaden existing theories of what constitutes progress in science. I do this by means of a close analysis of the main post-Kuhnian philosophical accounts of scientific progress, namely those put forward by Imre Lakatos, Larry Laudan and Philip Kitcher. I test these three accounts by reconstructing a series of scientific episodes in evolutionary ecology in terms of each account and then assessing the degree to which each account incorporates what is progressive. The episodes I have selected concern the resource competition research of Dolph Schluter on Galapagos finches and related work leading up to it. After distinguishing between macroscopic and microscopic levels in science, I attend carefully to the microscopic level of each episode as it relates to epistemic progress. This investigation demonstrates that some important aspects of scientific progress have been overlooked. I conclude that there are three main ways in which the philosophies of science surveyed do not adequately represent instances of scientific progress. First, the accumulation of factual knowledge is not well accommodated. Second, the role of evidence and argument in scientific theories is not adequately captured. Third, the fine-grained level at which much important epistemic progress in science occurs is often not accounted for. These criticisms relate to a more general tendency of contemporary philosophical accounts to emphasize the macroscopic level of entire research programmes and traditions while failing to attend to the microscopic level of progress inherent in a detailed case study. I end by offering a positive account of scientific progress in light of these criticisms. / Arts, Faculty of / Philosophy, Department of / Graduate

What is democracy? Is it something that suits all countries. The western world encourages the outside world to democratize according to their guidelines. The purpose of the essay is to present two reasons, one about Iraq's failure to democratize, and the other about Tunisia's democratic success. The method in this essay include qualitative methods, where a democratized comparative study as well as the most similar systems design approach will be used. These studies will attempt to determine the composition of democratization outcomes, using three of the dimensions internal and external democratization factors as suggested by Larry Diamond in his book, as well as like the regime transition of Daniel Silander. The results of this study indicate that Iraq had more political dissent as well as ethnic and extremist groups during the invasion and less international support for its democratization beside the United States. On the other hand, Tunisia has a more unified civil society and thanks to the democratic support of the European Union, a peaceful transition to a democratic system is possible. In this essay, a deeper analysis of democratization will be highlighted, including how these essential factors have caused different outcomes in each country.

The problem of demarcation continues to attract attention, in part because solutions are perceived to have enormous social significance. The civic motivation, however, I argue is in tension with the heterogeneity of the sciences. Philosophers of science would be better employed reflecting on the features, causes, and consequences, of created, scientific controversies. These arise when relevant experts are in broad agreement about what conclusions can sensibly be drawn from available evidence, but the public perceives an expert community deeply divided and conclusions that are plagued by profound and systemic uncertainty. In the second part of the paper I explore this concept further.

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This essay aims to answer how domestic politics and events have affected the democratic development in Turkey from 2005 until 2015. Two questions are being discussed and answered; how has the democratic development in Turkey between 2005 and 2015 played out, and; which internal factors have contributed to the democratic development direction. The study is a theory consuming case study with both an explanatory and descriptive approach. The theoretical framework is built upon theories regarding democratization, regime types challenges of democratic consolidation are collected from well-established scientists. This framework is used on the empirical material of the study to bring forward answers to the research questions. The results of the study show that after some positive democratic around 2005, the democratic development has taken an anti-democratic turn after 2011. What could be described as an electoral democracy with liberal democratic tendencies in 2005 is 2015 better described as a hybrid regime, with authoritarian tendencies.

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One common approach to managing the inevitable erroneous convictions and erroneous acquittals produced by criminal justice systems is to employ various means (rules and procedures) to decrease the number of erroneous convictions at the expense of increasing, even many more times, the number of erroneous acquittals. Blackstone’s famous dictum (1765) that “[i]t is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer” (“the Blackstone ratio”), and others like it, have inspired this error distributing approach to error management. A mathematical analysis is provided demonstrating that, under certain conditions (“the R-conditions”), error distributing approaches result in criminal justice systems that function worse, by all quantitative measures (including the number of innocents convicted), than similar systems in which defendants are randomly acquitted. These results follow from one of a pair of derived fundamental equations applicable to all criminal justice systems, regardless of circumstance. Thus, the results hold irrespective of the means used to avoid convicting the guilty and challenge those who wish to engage in a particular error distributing approach to show that the R-conditions do not obtain for that approach (with reasonably convincing accuracy). Further, the results presented herein identify an upper bound to the Blackstone ratio, according to one conception of that ratio. / text

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Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2008. / Includes vitae. Department of Philosophy, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) Advisor(s): Peter H. Schwartz. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 61-66)

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wyoming, 2009. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on June 15, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 61-62).