Thesis (Th. M.)--St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, 2008. / Abstract. Description based on microfiche version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 144-145).

Biodiversity is a concept that plays a key role in both scientific theories such as the species-area law and conservation politics. Currently, however, little agreement exists on how biodiversity should be defined, let alone measured. This has led to suggestions that biodiversity is not a metaphysically robust concept, with major implications for its usefulness in formulating scientific theories and making conservation decisions. A general discussion of biodiversity is presented, highlighting its application both in scientific and conservation contexts, its relationship with environmental ethics, and existing approaches to its measurement. To overcome the limitations of existing biodiversity concepts, a new concept of biocomplexity is proposed. This concept equates the biodiversity of any biological system with its effective complexity. Biocomplexity is shown to be the only feasible measure of biodiversity that captures the essential features desired of a general biodiversity concept. In particular, it is a well-defined, measurable and strongly intrinsic property of any biological system. Finally, the practical application of biocomplexity is discussed.

Thesis (Th. M.)--St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, 2008. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 144-145).

Thesis (Th. M.)--St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, 2008. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 144-145).

Orientador: Arley Ramos Moreno / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-23T16:37:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Tavares_FranciscoRenato_M.pdf: 1081407 bytes, checksum: c33afbb41536aa3265aa929f764636b6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013 / Resumo: Este trabalho mostra que o misticismo do Tractatus é de fundamental importância para a compreensão da atitude de Wittgenstein perante o mundo e a vida. O místico que se mostra na estrutura do mundo e da linguagem é inefável e, é a única solução para a metafísica. O Tractatus não pretende ser uma negação positivista da metafísica, como sugerido pela interpretação dos membros do Círculo de Viena. Wittgenstein, nesta obra, inaugura uma nova postura diante da metafísica. Quando se atinge a perspectiva de contemplação do mundo sub specie aeterni, é possível perceber porque a metafísica é incapaz de expressar o que há de mais sublime. O silêncio é a única atitude lógico-filosófica de quem compreende que a linguagem esbarra em seus limites, nos limites do mundo, toda vez que queira dizer algo sublime / Abstract: This work shows that the mysticism of the Tractatus is of fundamental importance for the understanding Wittgenstein's attitude towards the world and life. The mystic which is showed in the structure of the world and language is ineffable, and is the only solution for the metaphysics. The Tractatus is not intended to be a positivist denial of metaphysics, as suggested by the interpretation of the members of the Vienna Circle. Wittgenstein, in this work, inaugurates a new attitude toward metaphysics. When one achieves the perspective of contemplation of the world sub specie aeterni, it is possible to see why the metaphysics is unable to express what is most sublime. Silence is the only logical and philosophical attitude of one who understands that language comes up against its limits, within the limits of the world, every time one wants to say something sublime / Mestrado / Filosofia / Mestre em Filosofia

When an act is right or wrong, there may be an explanation why. Different moral theories recognize different moral facts and offer different explanations of them, but they offer no account of moral explanation itself. What, then, is its nature? This thesis seeks a systematic account of moral explanation within a framework of moral realism. In Chapter 1, I develop a pluralist theory of explanation. I argue that there is a prima facie distinctive normative mode of explanation that is essential to moral theory. In Chapter 2, I characterize normative explanation through its formal properties. I then draw on John Mackie’s claim that moral explanations are queer to develop a powerful form of moral scepticism. In Chapters 3–4, I reject attempts to reduce normative explanation to logical necessity, metaphysical necessity, or conceptual (analytic) necessity. The failure of these accounts is taken to reinforce Mackie’s scepticism. In Chapter 5, I defend a partial analysis of normative explanation in terms of irreducible normative laws. I argue that irreducible normative laws offer a realist, though non-naturalist, answer to Mackie’s scepticism. The existence of irreducible normative laws then is defended as offering the best realist explanation of why rightness and wrongness supervene on descriptive properties. In Appendix A, I discuss the claim the normative explanation has an essential connection to the motivation of virtuous agents. I defend this claim from certain difficulties posed by Jonathan Dancy’s recent work.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [313]-326) and index.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2006. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 204-208). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Horrendous evils pose distinctive challenges for belief in an ethically perfect God. To home in on these challenges, I construct an ethical framework for theodicy by sketching four cases of human action where horrors are either caused, permitted, or risked, either for pure benefit (i.e., a benefit that does not avert a still greater harm) or for harm avoidance. I then bring the framework and the moral valuations confirmed by this casuistry to bear on the project of theodicy. I construct four analogous structures – one for each case – and identify examples of each structure in theodicies in contemporary philosophy of religion. I summarize each theodicy and evaluate whether it is structurally promising with respect to horrendous evils. That is, if the proposed interconnected set of facts and reasons were true, would God be ethically in the clear? My initial conclusions impugn the dominant structural approach of depicting God as causing or permitting horrors in individual lives for the sake of some merely pure benefit. This approach is insensitive to relevant asymmetries in the justificatory demands made by horrendous and non-horrendous evil and in the justificatory work done by averting harm and bestowing pure benefit. I next argue that the structurally promising theodicies I have identified are implausible due to their overestimation of the extent to which finite human agents can bear primary responsibility for horrendous evils and their underestimation of the importance for theodicy of being consonant with a broadly Darwinian approach to evolutionary theory. The project of theodicy is in trouble. The second half of my thesis develops an approach to theodicy that falls outside my proffered taxonomy. Following a suggestion of Leibniz, Robert Adams has argued that theodicy can be aided by the insight that almost all of the evil of the actual world is metaphysically necessary for the community of actual world inhabitants to be comprised of the specific individuals who comprise it. Beginning with this insight, I develop (what I term) Non-Identity Theodicy. It suggests that God allows the evil he does in order to create and love the specific individuals comprising the community of inhabitants of the actual world. This approach to theodicy is unique because the justifying good recommended is neither harm-aversion nor pure benefit. It is not a good that betters the lives of individual human persons (for they wouldn’t exist otherwise), but it is the individual human persons themselves. In order to aim successfully at the creation of particular individuals, however, God would need a control of history so complete that it might be argued to be inconsistent with beliefs about human free will that are important to some theologies. I construct a second version of Non-Identity Theodicy designed to avoid this problem by considering whether God’s justifying motivation for allowing the evil of this world could be his aiming for beings of our type, even if it could not be his aiming for particular individuals. I suggest that God would be interested in loving those he creates under various descriptions (e.g., biological, psychological, and narrative descriptions), and argue that a horror-prone environment is necessary for us to be the type of being we are under each of the descriptions. I assess the structural promise and plausibility of Non-Identity Theodicy. In order to do so, I engage with Derek Parfit’s non-identity problem and with some influential assumptions in the ethics of procreation literature. I end by recapping what I take to be the key areas of overemphasis and under-emphasis in contemporary theodicy.

The thesis comprises three foundational studies on the topics named in its title, together with an introduction. Ch. 1 argues against a popular combination of views in the philosophy of language: Propositionality, which says that the semantic values of natural language sentences (relative to contexts) are the propositions they express (in those contexts) and Compositionality, which says that the semantic value of a complex expression of a natural language (in a context) is determined by the semantic values its immediate constituents have (in that same context) together with their syntactic mode of combination. Ch. 1 argues that the Naïve Picture is inconsistent with the presence of variable-binding in natural languages. Ch. 2 criticizes the strategy of using “operator arguments” to establish relativist conclusions such as: that the truth values of propositions vary with time (Time Relativism) or that they vary with location (Location Relativism). Operator arguments purport to derive the conclusion that propositions vary in truth value along some parameter P from the premise that there are, in some language, sentential operators that operate on or “shift” the P parameter. I identify two forms of operator argument, offer a reconstruction of each, and I argue that both they rely on an implausible, coarse-grained conception of propositions. Ch. 3 is an assessment of the prospects for semantic internalism. It argues, first, that to accommodate Putnam’s famous Twin Earth examples, an internalist must maintain that narrow semantic content determines different extensions relative to agents and times. Second, that the most thoroughly worked out version of semantic internalism – the epistemic two-dimensionalism (E2D) of David Chalmers – can accommodate the original Twin Earth thought experiments but is refuted by similar thought experiments that involve temporally or spatially symmetric agents.