Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1984. / Bibliography: leaves 94-96.

No Abstract / Philosophy & Systematic Theology / (D. Lit. et Phil. (Philosophy))

This thesis engages with three topics and the relationships between them: (i) the phenomenon of disagreement (paradigmatically, where one person makes a claim and another denies it); (ii) the normative character of disagreements (the issue of whether, and in what sense, one of the parties is “at fault” for believing something that's untrue); (iii) the issue of which theory of what truth is can best accommodate the norms relating belief and truth. People disagree about all sorts of things: about whether climate is changing, death penalty is wrong, sushi is delicious, or Louis C.K. is funny. However, even focusing on disagreements in the evaluative domain (e.g., taste, moral and comedic), where people have the intuition that there is ‘no fact of the matter' about who is right, there are significant differences that require explanation. For instance, disagreement about taste is generally perceived as shallow. People accept to disagree and live comfortably with that fact. By contrast, moral disagreement is perceived as deep and sometimes hard to tolerate. Comedic disagreement is similar to taste. However, it may involve an element of ‘intellectual snobbery' that is absent in taste disagreement. The immediate questions are whether these contrasts allow of precise characterization and what is responsible for them. I argue that, once a case is made for the truth-aptness of judgments in these areas, the contrast can be explained in terms of variable normative function of truth – as exerting a lightweight normative constraint in the domain of taste and a stricter constraint in the moral domain. In particular I claim that while truth in the moral domain exerts a sui generis deontic control, this normative feature of truth is silent in both the taste and the comedic domains. This leads me to investigate how to conceive of truth in the light of normative variability. I argue that an amended version of deflationism – minimally inflated deflationism – can account for the normative variability of truth.

The dissertation is a study of the connection between justification and truth. It presents and critically discusses various ways of construing the connection. A dilemma is argued for to the effect that any construal of the connection is defective, while any theory of epistemic justification that ignores the connection incurs an explanatory deficit. The objective construal of the connection between epistemic justification and truth views such justification as probabilistic. A currently popular version of this view is a theory called Reliabilism. This theory is discussed in terms of both intuitive and purely logical considerations. Another way to cast out the connection between justification and truth is subjectively. It might be claimed that a subject must have beliefs about the connection between his evidence and the truth of the proposition he believes. This approach is characteristic of coderence theories. These theories are assessed with respect to their psychological reality. Since objective and doxastic construals of the connection between epistemic justification and truth fail, theories which eschew a truth connection altogether are discussed. Such an approach is characteristic of foundations theories. It is argued that these theories fail to achieve a level of generality that provides very much insight into the nature of epistemic justification. The final section of the dissertation is a detailed discussion of naturalized epistemology. The stalking horse is Fred Dretske's information-theoretic approach which relies on a very strong truth connection. The lessons of the previous chapters are applied to Dretske's theory demonstrating its inability to account for the normative aspects of epistemic justification.

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My goal in this thesis is to propose a new theory of truth in fiction. In Chapter One, I will examine David Lewis, Gregory Currie and Alex Byrne’s theories of truth in fiction. By the end of Chapter Two, I will discuss six conditions a theory of truth in fiction must meet (for example, the theory must account for stories in which there is no intelligent life to tell the tale, and also for truths in authorless fictions.) In Chapter Three, I will explain Kendall Walton’s distinction between the “work world” and the “game world” — the fictional world of the story versus the fictional world of the game of make-believe that the reader plays with the story. Finally, I will introduce a new “fictional author,” located in a game world, in order to propose a new theory that satisfies the conditions. / October 2016

Using patients in the training of healthcare students is required by the World Federation of Medical Educators. South African legal instruments such as the Constitution and the National Health Act recognise patients’ right to autonomy. This descriptive, analytical study investigated whether patients should be informed that the person involved in their care is a student. International studies and the ethical guidelines of regulating bodies support informing patients of the academic status of persons participating in their care. While patients are willing to participate in the training of healthcare students, they do not waive their right to informed consent. South African health care practitioners are increasingly required to disclose non-medical information to patients, such as treatment costs. Patients should be informed about the academic status of persons involved in their care and have the right to refuse to participate in medical education. The HPCSA should draw up guidelines to support this.

Thesis advisor: John Sallis / This dissertation gathers four studies on related topics in the phenomenological tradition and Martin Heidegger's philosophy in particular. Methodologically, it addresses the question as to how a reading of a philosophical text can offer access to the phenomena relevant for philosophy. Beginning with a reading of one his latest lectures on the end of philosophy and the the potential of phenomenology (The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking), the first chapter questions Heidegger's dismissal of the notion of ground in this lecture, arguing that an innovative reading of a passage from Contributions to Philosophy can address a problem left unresolved in the lecutre. Instead of reducing it to its alleged function in metaphysics, I propose to explore the semantic and descriptive potential of `ground' and related notions outside of the ontological and metaphysical discourse. The second chapter inquires about the particular position of On the Origin of the Work of Art in the context of Heidegger's theory of truth. In contrast to an interpretation highlighting the function of art in the so-called history of Being, the artwork essay is shown to display a specific form of transcendental argument aiming to disclose the `clearing' as the condition of possibility of phenomena. Particular attention is paid to Heidegger's discussion of untruth as concealment because the distinction between a denial (Versagen) and a restraint (Verstellen) of truth elaborates an important difference in discussing phenomena of negativity. The third chapter explores the notion of `earth.' The attempt is made to distinguish four phenomenal traits specific to earth by not only relying on Heidegger's discussion and the examples he gives in On the Origin of the Work of Art but by also connecting these to discourses on earth both in one of Husserl's later manuscripts (Foundational Investigations of the Phenomenological Origin of the Spatiality of Nature) and the philosophy of nature in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. The discussion is oriented by an interpretation of two sculptures by Andy Goldsworthy; I reflect both on their methodological role for describing phenomena associated with earth and on the status of Heidegger's own examples. The chapter aims in particular to establish an explanatory priority of phenomene associated with earth over the lived body, showing that experiences featuring the phenomenal trat sof earth are irreducible to eminenty sensible experiences as experiences for my bodily being. The fourth chapter takes its departure from the German word Erklüftung that Heidegger mentions in Contributions of Philosophy. In discussing its particular position in Heidegger's discourse on both projection (Entwurf) and ground (Grund) in Being and Time, Contributions to Philosophy, The Origin of the Work of Art and Art and Space, I show why Erklüftung, although it can be established as the description of a specific phenomenon by referring to other occurrences of the word (such as in Goethe's writings on geology), I maintain that it is not apt for the purpose to which Heidegger submits the word. The failure of Erklüftung thus makes an important contributions to the understanding of Heidegger's discourse on ground. The conclusion offers a reading of the second half of Heidegger's last lecture course The Principle of Reason (Der Satz vom Grund) in order to situate the four studies vis-à-vis Heidegger's late comprehensive treatment of ground. His attempt to determine the meaning of ground and its equivalents in Latin ratio and Greek logos is distinguished from the regress to the beginning of the history of Being that the lecture develops. In contrast to this ontological way to determine ground, I defend the view that the semantic explorations and descriptions Heidegger gives offer more adequate access to the phenomena of ground. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.