The purpose of this paper is to address the doubts that surround the intention/foresight distinction of the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE). The claim is made by some that this distinction is merely a semantic one or if real, it is morally irrelevant. It will be argued that this is the result of doubts that surround the contributions of theory in applied ethics and the double think that sometimes results from the misuse of the DDE. I will argue that the intention/foresight distinction in the DDE is a real one and can be made on the level of practice, without the need for theoretical support. In order to see this it is necessary to understand several things. First one must appreciate the historical development and context of the DDE. Secondly, is the need to understand the deontological framework from which the DDE grew a framework in which intention figures prominently though not exclusively. I further argue that one must appreciate the difference between theory and practice as seen in the difference between a theoretical and practical epistemology. Lastly, it will be argued that the DDE is better used as a principle of explanation rather that a principle of justification. Then based on what has been discussed I will give to two examples of possible illegitimate uses of the intention/foresight distinction in DDE in the area of bioethics and note why they are problematic. Then I will provide examples of two legitimate use of the intention/foresight distinction in the DDE and note why they are legitimate

This thesis concerns the introduction of mystical knowledge into a debate about God that relies on scientific evidence. The thesis focuses in particular on the relevance of Thomas Aquinas' view of mystical experience. After first presenting Aquinas' theory of rapture as an anticipation of the beatific vision and distinguishing it from other ways of knowing God, I argue that such a theory convincingly renders mystical knowledge inadmissible into a debate about God that relies on scientific evidence, owing to one's inability to either remember or communicate such an experience. As a result, introducing mystical knowledge into the debate causes the religious participants in the debate to appear intellectually inept.

In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls argues that justice is to be understood as fairness. The theory of justice as fairness is an ethical theory which argues that broad principles are able to capture the nature of what constitutes a just society. Rawls argues that all that is required for a society to be just is for it to be fair. A just society is one which has institutions which protect individual rights and liberties of all citizens and has a pattern of distribution of resources. Rawls' institutional approach to justice has one problem. Rawls' theory of justice as fairness seeks to ignore the issue of moral desert. According to Rawls, a just society is not necessarily responsible for providing people what is intuitively considered their just deserts. Justice is an attribute of society and not individuals. Rawls' treatment of the issue of moral deserts reveals that his theory of justice as fairness is actually two theories of justice. The first is concerned with the hypothetical structure of an ideal society. The second is his theory of just institutions. In the ideal hypothetical society, Rawls can ignore the issue of desert. In actual social institutions, the issue of desert is more problematic. The issue of desert reveals that Rawls is committed to two theories of justice. The hypothetical theory does not need a theory of desert. The instantiation of the theory, as found in institutions, does require a working conception of desert.

Contextualism is the epistemological thesis that holds context to significantly affect the truth value of claims such as S knows that p. A shift in context can lead to a shift in the standards by which we evaluate propositional knowledge claims, and thus a shift in the truth values of these claims: a statement S knows that p may be true when evaluated in one context while simultaneously false when evaluated in another context. A contextualist says it is by playing on these shifting standards that the skeptic manages to destroy knowledge with her skeptical arguments. Once this is understood, the contextualist holds, we can see that skeptical arguments like those of external world skepticism do not threaten our ordinary knowledge. In this thesis I argue that if contextualism is as successful as it claims, then it should be possible to use the techniques of contextualism to solve skeptical problems other than those with which the contextualist is usually concerned; namely it should be possible to solve the problem of induction. Taking Stewart Cohens relevant alternatives derived contextualism as my representative, I show that it is possible to construct such a solution consistent with the tenets of contextualism, but that in doing so certain troubling question-begging assumptions are shown in sharp relief, invalidating the proposed solution. In the end we are left with the question: Can a relevant alternatives contextualism successfully solve any skeptical argument without a proper solution to the problem of induction?

This thesis presents three views of anomaly in explanation: the linguistic view, the perceptual view, and the mechanistic view. The linguistic view is based on the notion that an anomaly is an instance of logical inconsistency. According to the perceptual view, an anomaly is a perceptual event which consists of a phenomenon deviating from a paradigmatic set of expectations. Lastly, the mechanistic view defines anomaly as a phenomenon which reveals the predictive failure of a model of the mechanism underlying the phenomenon to be explained. Each view is evaluated in terms of its heuristic utility, in two ways: first, according to how well the view allows one to detect that there is an anomaly in explanation; and second, according to the resources it provides for exploring different kinds of anomaly. Three criteria are used to evaluate the heuristic utility of each view for anomaly detection: (1) Does the view allow one to distinguish between anomalies in explanation and non-explanatory anomalies? (2) Are there explanatory contexts in which a view cannot determine if there is an anomaly in explanation? (3) Given a view, what are the conditions of possibility for the appearance of an anomaly in explanation? The criteria for evaluating the heuristic utility of a view for engaging the question of which kind of anomaly there is are the following: (1) How well does the view allow one to localize, for heuristic purposes, an anomaly according to its kind? (2) What resources does the view provide for exploring theoretical anomalies? (3) For exploring phenomenal anomalies? (4) For exploring factual anomalies? The thesis argues that, as it stands, the mechanistic view is heuristically the most useful for anomaly detection and exploration. It also provides some suggestions as to how the linguistic view and perceptual views could be strengthened.

This thesis will address the issue of appealing (or deferring) to the authority of expertise. The effects of the social character of knowledge highlight two points with regard to this issue. First, they leave the layman in an epistemically inferior position. Thus, the layman must appeal to the authority of experts. The second point, related to the first point, is the implicit role of trust in deferring to expert authority. Though I will pay attention to each of these points, the focus of this thesis will be on the former. If we accept that one must appeal to the authority of experts in order to be on epistemically firm ground, then as a consequence we leave ourselves open to the problem of adjudicating between conflicting expert testimonies. The goal of this thesis will be to examine a process by which one can arrive at the most epistemically justified position given the amount of information that one has at ones disposal.

A disagreement over two questions contributes to further disagreement about the war on terrorism. First, what is terrorism? If terrorism is a term to intensify negative connotations of any activity, then all unjust acts are terrorism potentially. I argue that terrorism is a specific act; it is the use, or threat of use, of premeditated violence against noncombatants, intended to coerce a group into some course of action. Second, is the war on terrorism just? Because terrorism is not a pejorative, we must evaluate terrorism to determine if response to terrorism is response to an unjust aggressor. Using Michael Walzers Just War Theory, I show that victims of terrorism and the international community have just cause to respond to terrorism because all terrorists intentionally harm innocents to advance their cause. Even if terrorists have just cause, their terrorist acts are unjust because they maximize civilian risk. When nothing else will stop a terrorist attack, war is just. Just war minimizes civilian risk and only targets people responsible for unjust aggression. The Bush administrations war on terrorism uses a preventative strategy to eliminate future terrorist attacks. Using war to prevent future terrorism is just only when there is a legitimate threat of terrorism and no alternative short of war will stop the attack. The United States had just cause for the war in Afghanistan because war was necessary to stop al Qaida, a legitimate threat, from attacking again; however, the United States did not have just cause for the war in Iraq because although Saddam Hussein was a legitimate threat, means short of war were available to restrain him from supporting terrorists. By defining terrorism properly and using the resources of Just War Theory, we can continue to evaluate engagements in the war on terrorism.

Written in the burgeoning tradition of Aristotelian liberalism, my thesis seeks to enrich this tradition by developing a liberal theory of autonomy based on a broadly Aristotelian foundation. Chapter One summarizes and critiques the major contemporary theories of autonomy developed by Kant and analytic philosophers. Chapter Two explicates the Aristotelian conception of autonomy, drawing on recent work by Fred Miller and Roderick Long. Aristotle is chided for not being liberal enough and so Chapter Three develops an Aristotelian-liberal theory of autonomy based in part on recent work by Douglas Rasmussen, Douglas Den Uyl and Roderick Long. Global and local individual autonomy are distinguished, with global autonomy being the exercise of one's rational faculty (or self-direction) and local autonomy relating to particular desires, preferences, actions, and so forth. Local autonomy is further conceived as having three fundamental dimensions: political, social, and personal. Political autonomy equates with the traditional classical liberal/libertarian concept of liberty, and is normatively protected by the right to liberty. Social autonomy involves freedom from social influences other than the threat or use of physical force that lead a person to deviate from his telos. Personal autonomy involves internal freedom from deviant desires, severe addiction to drugs, and so forth that lead a person to deviate from his telos. Personal and social autonomy cannot be promoted at the systematic expense of political autonomy. Aristotelian liberalism, and an Aristotelian-liberal theory of autonomy, promise to transcend the liberal/communitarian debate. An Aristotelian-liberal theory of autonomy avoids the Enlightenment pitfalls that plague Kantian and analytic theories of autonomy.

Michel Foucault uses the term biopolitics to highlight the focus on life that is at the center of contemporary politics. Biopower or biopolitics is the maximization of life through various regulatory apparatuses that monitor, modify, and control life processes. I elucidate and exemplify Foucault's framework in order to show how the medical discourse exercises a certain kind of power over bodies in the name of health. My argument is that through the mechanisms of biopower, the juridico-medical discourse simultaneously makes pregnancy into an object of study and the pregnant woman into a subject of power. With the help of a Foucauldian interpretation, I attempt to unmask the not-so-visible techniques of biopolitics that surround the pregnant woman. The unmasking makes it possible to think differently which is the primary task of philosophy. Specifically, such a critique helps in reformulating the problem as one of subjectivation.

In the late twentieth century, moral realists began to resurrect a type of argument that emerged during the Enlightenment. These realists appealed to moral progress as evidence for moral facts, and their arguments took the form of inferences to the best explanation. Recently, the argument style has emerged again. This time, the inference to the best explanation is being used by empirically-informed sentimentalists to argue that their theories can provide accounts of moral evolution that have greater explanatory and predictive power than the accounts offered by the moral realists. This thesis examines the arguments to the best explanation of such moral realists as Nicholas Sturgeon, Michael Slote, Michael Smith, Peter Singer, and Thomas Nagel. The views of these moral realists are confronted with the substantial empirical evidence provided by Shaun Nichols to bolster his Sentimental Rules account, which is a variety of sentimentalism. Nichols attempts to expand epidemiological approaches to cognitive anthropology to accommodate his research on affect-backed norms. I elucidate Nichols research and his own inference to the best explanation of the data he examines as well as his attack on the accounts provided by the moral realists. After examining this substantive piece of the debate over what actually counts as the best explanation of moral evolution, I argue that the inference to the best explanation is actually being employed in two distinct uses by these theorists. The first use presupposes a metaethical thesis regarding the nature of moral facts and renders the inference circular. The majority of the moral realists examined employ the inference in this fashion. The second use is not circular, but leaves the theorist with a very restricted ability to fill out the content of moral beliefs and moral facts.