Philosophy
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2268
Browse
119 results
Search Results
Item Unawareness, and its Effect on Beliefs, Learning, and Group Decision Making(2024) Tashiro, Masayuki; Pacuit, Eric; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation consists of three standalone papers centered around the concept of unawareness. The first paper, titled `Weak Explicit Beliefs', concerns the effect of unawareness to one's beliefs and extends the standard logic framework of awareness with a novel notion of beliefs under unawareness. The second paper, titled `Learning under Unawareness' concerns the effect of unawareness in one's learning process and extends the standard logic framework of awareness with two dynamic modal operators: learning and change of awareness. Lastly, the third paper, titled `Models of Group Deliberation with Asymmetric Awareness' concerns the effect of unawareness in group decision making situations, in which each agent in the group may be un/aware of different things, and explores a normative question whether it is always better to become more aware (of what the other agents in the group are aware of) via two formal models of group deliberation.Item Local Information in Discourse(2024) Kendrick, Jonathan Caleb; Williams, Alexander; Cariani, Fabrizio; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation argues that the interpretation of modals, expressions like “might,” “should,” and “must,” are constrained by their local context. For epistemic modals, local contexts bound the admissible domains of modal quantification. In Chapter 2, we use this fact to explain why epistemic “must” is weaker than the □ operator from epistemic modal logic. For root (i.e., non-deontic) modals, local contexts restrict the domain of quantification. In Chapter 3, we show this yields a solution to the Samaritan Paradox concerning why deontic modals do not inherit presuppositions under entailment. In Chapter 4, we propose a solution to the “if ?, ought ?” problem based on default logic. According to this solution, “ought”’s ordering source consists of default rules and the domain consists of the conclusion of the defaults triggered in the local context.Item The Defeasibility of Rights(2024) Gomez, Cody; Horty, John; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Consider the following puzzle. Presumably, you and I both have an equal right to life. But what happens if I try to kill you, and you kill me in self-defense? By most accounts, you did something morally permissible by killing me in this scenario. But, if killing me is permissible, then what happened to the initially granted right to life we both started out with? There is currently significant debate over how to explain this situation. Some have argued that my violent transgressions altogether forfeit my initial right. Due to my actions, I no longer have the right to life at all. Others have claimed that while I still generally have the right to life, this scenario satisfies criteria for a built-in exception to that standing right: I have the right in other cases, but not this one. Finally, others have suggested that I maintain my right to life in this scenario, but that it takes a lower priority in comparison to the right of the defendant, i.e., it is overridden. While the differences between these understandings of rights may appear subtle, they have drastically different implications. How we solve this puzzle affects how we adjudicate apparent conflicts of rights, how we make sense of what is owed when rights are intruded upon, and how rights function within our broader ethical and legal theories.In this dissertation, I develop a model of the last of these positions. To substantiate my view, I offer a precise model of the defeasibility of rights—situated in non-monotonic/default logic, a kind of non-classical logic—and highlight its strengths against competing views. Specifically, I show that this new schema not only salvages intuitions about infringement, but also prevents the unwieldy proliferation of rights. This is an especially desirable outcome, as it avoids blurring the line between rights and other important normative considerations. The first paper, Hohfeldian Conceptions of Rights and Rights Proliferation, argues that competing theories allow for wild proliferation of rights by adopting some form of the “correlativity doctrine,” wherein myriad duties and permissions are equivalent to rights, e.g., an act of charity no longer seems charitable if the recipient has “a right” to aid. The second paper, Rights as Defaults remedies this by rejecting the correlativity doctrine in favor of my Rights-as-Defaults Model. Using US free speech case law and work in default logic, I argue that fundamental rights are best understood as modifiable collections of defeasible generalizations. This model allows the right to free speech and its protections to accommodate new cases without building long lists of exceptions into the rights themselves while avoiding proliferation. Finally, the third paper, Revising the Right to do Wrong, applies this model to the question: do we have a moral right to do wrong? Do I have a moral right to offend a stranger even if I am required not to? I claim that there is no need for a standalone “right to do wrong” because understanding rights as defeasible means that any right can be overridden (or override competing considerations). I show how it is not paradoxical to say I have the right to offend you even though I, all-things-considered, should not, and even if we think interference would be justified.Item Moral Transformation in Theory, Practice, and Application(2024) Good, Michael David; Singppurwalla, Rachel; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This three-paper dissertation explores challenges to moral transformation and moral development. The first two papers explore puzzles that challenge whether moral transformation is possible in the way it is usually conceived. In the first paper, I address the issue of whether it is possible to rationally choose to morally transform. Recently, Laurie Paul has argued that it is impossible to rationally choose to have what she calls a transformative experience. I argue that moral transformation is a species of transformative experience and also, against Paul, that it is possible to rationally choose to morally transform. In the second paper, I address a challenge to the process of moral development. According to Aristotle and others, one becomes virtuous by acting as the virtuous person acts. But how is this possible if one is not already virtuous? I argue that it is, but one must first practice habituating the practical attitudes (i.e. the beliefs and desire) of the virtuous person. In this way the self-controlled person and the weak-willed (or akratic) person can grow in virtue. Additionally, I provide practical exercises—types of spiritual disciplines and moral drills—to help learners shape their practical attitudes. In the final paper, I explore an instance where moral development is disrupted. More specifically I show how moral injury interrupts and causes dysfunction within one’s character, making further transformation towards virtue impossible. I then identify strategies and tactics to inoculate people, especially soldiers, from moral injury—what I call developing the virtue of moral resilience—thereby safeguarding their path to moral development.Item Essays on the Epistemology of Polycentriicty and Democracy(2023) Manor, Aylon; Kogelmann, Brian; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation investigates the epistemic properties of two institutional types, polycentricity and democracy, and explores how these ideals can be translated into concrete plans for institutional design. The dissertation consists of four papers, with the first two papers investigating the epistemic case for polycentricity and its relation to moral arguments, while the remaining two papers investigate the epistemic properties of democracy. The first paper argues that the epistemic case and moral case for polycentricity point toward different polycentric arrangements, while the second paper highlights two dimensions through which polycentric arrangements can generate epistemic value. The third paper proposes a two-stage political process using a Wikipedia-inspired platform to filter for quality information and allow all citizens to participate, while the fourth paper argues for the normative significance of "epistemic equality" in voting methods and explores its implications for alternative methods.Item A Theory of Leadership and Its Applications(2023) Schwab, Leisa Elizabeth; Horty, John F; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)No system of laws and political institutions is without gaps, and leaders are required—often in the face of uncertainty and under a heavy burden of risk—to fill them. This project adopts a view of individual leadership that finds its roots in the ancient world with Plato, but which speaks to modern problems like the role of appointed administrative officials in a complex democracy and the problems of autonomous weapons. It is composed of a series of papers exploring this gap-filling leadership activity in a modern democratic state from both normative and descriptive perspectives. The first paper, “Making Ourselves Accountable: An Ethics for the Administrative State” addresses the discretionary decision making by un-elected officials through which many of our society’s important leadership decisions are made. It argues for the necessity of these leaders and recommends criteria to guide their decision making in conformity with contemporary democratic ideals. The second paper, “Seeking Standards for Leadership Reasoning in the Executive Branch by Analogy to Representation and Judicial Reasoning,” looks deeper into the work of such leaders to better understand the place of their role in shaping the law alongside legislative representation and judicial discretion. The third paper, “A Different Kind of Responsibility Gap: Trust and the Burden of Risk as a Limit on Military Automation” considers the problem of autonomous weapons in the context of this theory of the individual leader as a necessary component within the legal and institutional system. Inspired by ancient notions of the activity of governing as an activity fundamentally about leaders before it is about laws, it argues that even fallible human leaders who fall short of the ideal remain necessary no matter how sophisticated or accurate an automated system we may devise.Item Using AquaticHealth.net to Detect Emerging Trends in Aquatic Animal Health(MDPI, 2013-05-17) Lyon, Aidan; Mooney, Allan; Grossel, GeoffAquaticHealth.net is an open-source aquatic biosecurity intelligence application. By combining automated data collection and human analysis, AquaticHealth.net provides fast and accurate disease outbreak detection and forecasts, accompanied with nuanced explanations. The system has been online and open to the public since 1 January 2010, it has over 200 registered expert users around the world, and it typically publishes about seven daily reports and two weekly disease alerts. We document the major trends in aquatic animal health that the system has detected over these two years, and conclude with some forecasts for the future.Item The Measurement Problem from the Perspective of an Information-Theoretic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics(MDPI, 2015-10-28) Bub, JeffreyThe aim of this paper is to consider the consequences of an information-theoretic interpretation of quantum mechanics for the measurement problem. The motivating idea of the interpretation is that the relation between quantum mechanics and the structure of information is analogous to the relation between special relativity and the structure of space-time. Insofar as quantum mechanics deals with a class of probabilistic correlations that includes correlations structurally different from classical correlations, the theory is about the structure of information: the possibilities for representing, manipulating, and communicating information in a genuinely indeterministic quantum world in which measurement outcomes are intrinsically random are different than we thought. Part of the measurement problem is deflated as a pseudo-problem on this view, and the theory has the resources to deal with the remaining part, given certain idealizations in the treatment of macrosystems.Item On Quantum Collapse as a Basis for the Second Law of Thermodynamics(MDPI, 2017-03-09) Kastner, Ruth E.It was first suggested by David Z. Albert that the existence of a real, physical non-unitary process (i.e., “collapse”) at the quantum level would yield a complete explanation for the Second Law of Thermodynamics (i.e., the increase in entropy over time). The contribution of such a process would be to provide a physical basis for the ontological indeterminacy needed to derive the irreversible Second Law against a backdrop of otherwise reversible, deterministic physical laws. An alternative understanding of the source of this possible quantum “collapse” or non-unitarity is presented herein, in terms of the Transactional Interpretation (TI). The present model provides a specific physical justification for Boltzmann’s often-criticized assumption of molecular randomness (Stosszahlansatz), thereby changing its status from an ad hoc postulate to a theoretically grounded result, without requiring any change to the basic quantum theory. In addition, it is argued that TI provides an elegant way of reconciling, via indeterministic collapse, the time-reversible Liouville evolution with the time-irreversible evolution inherent in so-called “master equations” that specify the changes in occupation of the various possible states in terms of the transition rates between them. The present model is contrasted with the Ghirardi–Rimini–Weber (GRW) “spontaneous collapse” theory previously suggested for this purpose by Albert.Item What's the coincidence in debunking?(Wiley, 2022-07-19) Bhogal, HarjitMany moral debunking arguments are driven by the idea that the correlation between our moral beliefs and the moral truths is a big coincidence, given a robustly realist conception of morality. One influential response is that the correlation is not a coincidence because there is a common explainer of our moral beliefs and the moral truths. For example, the reason that I believe that I should feed my child is because feeding my child helps them to survive, and natural selection instills in me beliefs and dispositions that help my children survive since that is conductive to my genes continuing through the generations. Similarly, the reason that it's morally good to feed my child is because it helps them to survive, and survival is morally valuable. But if we look at some cases from scientific practice, and from everyday life, we can see, I argue, why this response fails. A correlation can be coincidental even if there is a common explainer. I give an account of the nature of coincidence that draws upon recent literature on scientific explanation and argue that the correlation between moral belief and moral truth is a coincidence, even given such common explainers. And I use this to defend a certain form of debunking argument.