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Practical knowledge and abilities
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009)
The thesis is an exploration of the relations between know-how, abilities, and ordinary knowledge of facts. It is shown that there is a distinctively practical sort of know-how and a corresponding interpretation of 'S knows ...
Two approaches to human rights
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009)
Contemporary philosophy of human rights is dominated by two seemingly opposed approaches. This dissertation is concerned with the choice between them. The traditional approach to human rights is characterized by the belief ...
The significance of fairness/
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009)
This dissertation is about fairness and the role it plays in political and personal morality. Specifically, I investigate when it is appropriate to rely on considerations of fairness to draw substantive conclusions about ...
The articulatory basis of positional asymmetries in phonological acquisition
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009)
Child phonological processes that lack counterparts in adult phonological typology have long posed a problem for formal modeling of phonological acquisition. This dissertation investigates child-specific processes with a ...
Partial belief and expert testimony
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009)
My dissertation investigates two questions from within a partial belief framework: First, when and how should deference to experts or other information sources be qualified? Second, how closely is epistemology related to ...
Measurement that transcends time : a Lebesgue integral approach to existential sentences
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009)
In the study of natural language semantics, sentences that assert the existence of entities predicated of by noun phrases have traditionally been analyzed with simple usage of the existential quantifier. In this thesis, I ...
Segmental alternations and metrical theory
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009)
This dissertation focuses on phonological alternations that are influenced or constrained by word-internal prosody, i.e. prominence and foot structure, and what these alternations can tell us about metrical theory. Detailed ...
Desires and dispositions
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009)
In philosophy of mind, desire is an also-ran when it comes to theorizing about mental states - all the attention is on belief, (visual) perceptual experience, and pain. Desire is largely ignored, as it is assumed to be ...
Antidepressants, bioenhancements, and the ethics of self-respect
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009)
Antidepressants and bioenhancement technologies raise special concerns - both for those who use them and those who don't - about who we are and how we should treat ourselves. In this dissertation, I confront these concerns ...
Constraining credences
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009)
This dissertation is about ways in which our rational credences are constrained: by norms governing our opinions about counterfactuals, by the opinions of other agents, and by our own previous opinions. In Chapter 1, I ...