No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2002.

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.

Rousseau's work often seems contradictory, but the author himself insists that his works comprise a consistent system based on the principle that man is naturally good. In order that individuals might live up to this natural goodness in society, Rousseau advocates a division of labour between general and particular aspects of reason. This division is exemplified in the different roles that Rousseau assigns to the sovereign and the government in the political sphere, and men and women in the domestic sphere. The difficulties faced by man in the absence of these divisions of labour are illustrated in Rousseau's autobiographical writings. When his various works are examined in light of the principle of man's natural goodness, the apparent contradictions between democratic and authoritarian aspects of his thought and between the roles his ascribes to men and women are resolved.

E. A. Burtt's The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1924) has been described by H. Floris Cohen, writing on the historiography of the Scientific Revolution in 1994, as the "individual thought of an individual thinker...beyond philosophical or historical currents or fashion." The book is something of a puzzle within the context of American twentieth-century intellectual history and more specifically, of the philosophy and history of science of North America and Europe. / Burtt's inter-disciplinary study---as it would be called today---has proved to be both pioneering and prophetic in its rejection of both scientism and positivism. The thesis examines the author's novel interpretation of Isaac Newton's achievement, as well as that of Newton's predecessors in the Scientific Revolution. Burtt's singular view of the rise of modern science from religious underpinnings was, for the most part, either misunderstood or ignored at the time. In fact, the whole idea of a Scientific Revolution was only introduced into the curriculum at leading American universities following the Second World War, in response to Herbert Butterfield and Alexandre Koyre, both of whom owe unacknowledged debts to Burtt. / The Metaphysical Foundations was conceived in the progressive era of the 1920s, the latter part of the "Golden Age" in American philosophy. The thesis examines the role of innovating intellects such as John Dewey, James Harvey Robinson, and Morris R. Cohen in shaping Burtt's view, described against the background of his studies at Columbia university. Under the sway of pragmatic naturalism, Burtt's interpretation of Newton was part of a grand scheme to develop a new philosophy of mind which he intended would overcome the problems of Cartesian dualism. / The dissertation concludes with an extended analysis of Burtt's public, academic, and personal life based upon archives, correspondence and interviews with those who remember him. It considers his politics of conscience during the Cold War and concludes that integrity combined with the relentless search for philosophic understanding drove his more exotic philosophical quests and steered his personal life, including its tragic dimension, toward simple virtues.

This thesis discusses epistemological and ethical issues in classifi cation and diagnosisof psychiatric conditions, and briefly discusses realism about psychiatric conditions. I use autism spectrum disorder (ASD) as a case study to examine whether the explanatory and predictive power of classi fication and diagnosis could be improved if psychiatry adopts a cause-based framework in place of a symptom-based framework. However, there is signifi cant debate regarding the sort of explanatory pattern that will adequately represent the complex causation involved in psychiatric conditions. I develop a preliminary list of criteria for adequate explanatory patterns in psychiatry, and use these criteria to analyze explanations of ASD. I show that explanatory patterns unable to meet these criteria limit the validity and reliability of diagnosis. However, I argue that an integrated pattern that includes biological, cognitive and social levels of explanation may meet the criteria. Thus, diagnosis of ASD could improve if psychiatry adopted a cause-based framework informed by an intergrated explanation pattern. More accurate diagnosis of ASD may allow earlier access to Intensive Behaviourial Intervention/Applied Behavioural Analysis treatment programs, which may increase the effectiveness of this treatment and reduce the amount of resources individuals with ASD require from governments over their lifespans. Explaining these conditions using an integrated pattern of explanation can further challenge myths regarding the causes of ASD, and may provide support for Canadian lawsuits petitioning for expanded public funding of IBI/ABA programs.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Carleton University, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 195-207). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

I argue against the claim that normative political theory is 'autonomous' with respect to moral philosophy. I take the simple view that political theory is a form of moral philosophy, and is differentiated by pragmatic rather than theoretically significant criteria. I defend this view by criticizing arguments for the autonomy thesis. In the first three chapters I introduce and analyse the autonomy thesis and provide a framework for understanding the various claims that are made in the literature. In Chapters 4 to 8 I proceed to criticize a series of arguments for the autonomy thesis. In Chapter 4 I explain why Kant's division of morality into ethics and right is not as useful as it may seem to those who wish to defend the autonomy thesis, and argues that Arthur Ripstein gives no reason to think that political philosophy is autonomous that can be endorsed independently of commitment to a Kantian normative theory. In Chapter 5 I examine the political liberal argument for the autonomy thesis, concluding that even if a freestanding political conception of justice can be regarded as autonomous, it does not follow that political philosophy can also. Chapters 6 to 8 tackle various political realist arguments for the autonomy thesis. In Chapter 6 I argue that political theory is not required to deal with empirical facts in any way that distinguishes it from moral philosophy, and any argument for its autonomy that is based on a prior claim about the purpose of political theorizing would be question-begging. In Chapters 7 and 8 I provide various arguments against the idea that there is a distinctively political form of normativity, and diagnose some of the mistaken assumptions about morality that I take to lie at the heart of the realist case. In Chapter 9 I conclude.

This thesis examines the relationship between political virtue and moral virtue in the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. After critically engaging with Rousseau's compelling yet complex theory of human sociability, focusing more particularly on the seminal relationship between the two forms of self-love, the "natural" amour de soi and "social" amour-propre, it is observed that the culmination of Rousseau's moral theory in Emile sees him espouse a particular kind of moral excellence called vertu, defined as a striving to master one's passions, and a particular type of freedom named liberté morale, inherent in the act of obeying the inner law originating in man's conscience. After further exploring Rousseau's conception of vertu, and insisting upon the ambitiousness of his moral theory, the thesis argues that Rousseau's political theory differs from it in "taking men as they are", and starting from the assumption that men are driven by their passions. That the hegemony of amour-propre is pre-supposed by Rousseau's political project is demonstrated through a detailed comparison of the civic education described in his prescriptive political writings with the moral education advocated in Emile. Finally, it draws the implications of the discrepancies between Rousseau's moral and political versions of virtue for his political theory, identifying a strong tension between two ideals that have generally been regarded as wedded within it, those of republican liberty and moral freedom.

Many political philosophers believe that sometimes we ought to tolerate substantive injustice for the sake of the intrinsic importance of democracy. In this thesis, I argue that they are mistaken. The substantive justice of outcomes has primacy over the putative intrinsic procedural justice of democracy. This is a very strong form of instrumentalism: if we face a choice between a minor substantive injustice and massive political inequality, then we ought to accept the political inequality. The thesis is divided into three parts. In the first part, I lay out the conceptual landscape for the discussion. I argue that assertions about justice are reducible to assertions about rights and that assertions about rights can be appropriately dealt with by the Hohfeldian analytic framework. Instrumentalists would gain from using this framework. The Primacy of Substance (POS) is true if people lack non-derivative individual or group democratic claim rights to do injustice. I defend my thesis by appealing to intuitions about injustices committed by gangs. I argue that gangs do not have rights to do injustice and this does not change merely because they choose to do the injustice democratically. Many philosophers accept this for severe injustices, but deny it for mild injustices. I argue that those positions are in error. People do not have democratic rights to do even mild substantive injustice. In the second part, I argue that popular intrinsic proceduralist arguments from equal respect and autonomy pose no threat to the POS. An appeal to equal respect in political philosophy, on one sense of respect, is equivalent to an appeal to the requirements of political morality. Interpreted in this way, in the absence of further argument, the appeal to equal respect begs the question against the POS. The POS is a theory about the requirements of political morality and so about the requirements of equal respect. Other arguments from equal respect rely on the appeal to contingent social beliefs which may be associated with political power. If this argument were sound, then there could be rights to do severe injustices such as rape and murder. Since people cannot have rights to do these things, contingent social beliefs cannot ground rights in the way suggested and so cannot ground democratic rights. Arguments from autonomy also do not threaten the POS. People's rights to act autonomously stop at the rights of others. This is true from the point of view of a variety of different theories of autonomy. Finally, one cannot, contra prominent arguments defend intrinsic proceduralism on the basis of what I call Truth Restricting Intrinsic Proceduralism (TRIP), which holds that people have democratic rights to decide on reasonably contentious matters of substantive justice. When we are responding to the fact that someone reasonably believes that a law ought to be enacted, we ought to pay attention to the content of that belief. Intrinsic proceduralism asks us to pay attention to the fact that they reasonably believe it. This is a mistake. Even if we accept that people have a right to impose their reasonable view, many voters in the real world are not reasonable, many people reasonably deny the reasonableness of others, and many people reasonably deny the proposition that people have a right to impose their reasonable view. Thus, even if we accept the premise, it does not imply that we ought to use democracy in the real world or in a large number of close possible worlds. Moreover, all of the most prominent arguments for TRIP have failed. Finally, proponents of TRIP have failed to recognise that it entails the democratic right to do severe substantive injustice. Since we ought to reject all theories which have this implication, we ought to reject TRIP. There is no remaining way to refute the POS.

Orientador: Roberto Nardi / Banca: Silvia Regina Quijadas Aro Zuliani / Banca: Mario Roberto Quintanilla Gatica / Banca: Otávio Aloisio Maldaner / Banca: Odete Pacubi Baierl Teixeira / Resumo: Uma problemática bastante conhecida, mas pouco estudada pela pesquisa em educação em ciências, é a falta de consideração de aspectos históricos, filosóficos e sociológicos na formação inicial de professores de Ciências, fato que pode criar uma visão distorcida das ciências entre os futuros professores. Argumentamos que uma abordagem que forneça estes subsídios seria importante para atingir os objetivos do Ensino de Ciências que atenda os anseios de uma sociedade contemporânea. Desta forma, esta pesquisa defende que a população deve "saber ciência" e "saber sobre a ciência", com a finalidade de estar capacitada para tomar decisões informadas sobre assunto de política, tecnologia e ambiente. Assim, compreende-se que ensinar ciências significa, primeiramente, elaborar um sistema de representações estruturadas, interpresetadas e modeladas pelo professor, dependendo de como ele entende a ciência, suas teorias e modelos, para interpretar e recriar os fenômenos científicos, recorrendo ao saber disciplinar e ao saber disciplinar e ao saber pedagógico do conteúdo. Com estes pressupostos foi elaborada e desenvolvida uma proposta de ensino que procurou construir o "saber" e o "saber fazer" de professores em formação inicial de Química da Universidade Distrital (Bogotá-Colômbia), mediantea vivência de uma experiência docente em sala de aula em uma escola pública da cidade de Bogotá. Foram analisados os discursos dos futuros professores para compreender como os domínios e as manifestações do conhecimento lhes permitiram trabalhar as suas "representações científicas", ou seja, transformar o conhecimento científico em representações e ações pedagógicas e desenvolver habilidades como pensar, atuar e comunicar a ciência, ao mesmo tempo procurando promover atitudes e valores nos estudantes durante os processos... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: A question sufficiently know but little studied by the science education researchers is the lack of consideration of historical philosophical and sociological aspects in the scientific practice and education in the teachers' initial education, which could create a distorted vision of the sciences among the future teachers. An approach taking into consideration these subsidies would be important to reach the aims of science education for the society. In this sense, this research stands up that the population is able in taking decisions informed on subjects of politics, technology and environment, which depends on the kind of scientific education is received by the citizens. In this way, it is understood that teaching sciences means, first of all to elaborate a system of representations that are structured, interpreted and shaped for the teachers, depending on how they understand science, their theories and models, to interpret and to recreate scientific phenomena appealing to the disciplinary knowledge and the pedagogical knowledge content. With these pressuppositions it was elaborated and developed a proposal of teachers education that aimed to construct the "knowledge" and the "knowledge making" for Chemistry teachers initial education at the "District University" (Bogota-Colombia), by means of a teaching experience in the classroom at public schools in Bogota City. The future teachers discourses were analyzed in order to undestand how their domains and knowledge manifestations allowed them to work their "scientific representations", in order to turn the scientific knowledge in pedagogical representations and actions and to develop abilities as to think, to act and to communicate science, and, at the same time, to look for promoting attitudes and values in the students during the processes of teaching and learning Chemistry. The... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Doutor