Philosophy (Theses and Dissertations): Recent submissions

Now showing items 21-40 of 44

    • Substantial priority : an essay in fundamental mereology 

      Inman, Ross (Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2013)
      Philosophical inquiry concerning the relationship between wholes and their parts (mereology) has occupied center stage in some of the most fruitful periods in the Western philosophical tradition. With the recent resurgence ...

    • Relativism about truth : a critique 

      Hamilton, Richard (Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2012)
      This thesis examines John MacFarlane's attempt to make sense of relative truth, but concludes by rejecting the coherence of such an attempt, on the grounds that it fails to adequately address a problem that was posed by ...

    • Radical minimalism and the possibility of a context-free semantics 

      Grant, Robert (Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2012)
      This thesis explores the nature of the distinction between two types of meaningful content associated with human language: context-free linguistic content and pragmatically enriched communicated content.

    • The metaphysics of 18th century natural religion 

      Curtin, Thomas John (Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2011)
      The main focus of this dissertation concerns the influence that Malebranche's conception of causation, which understands causal power in terms of absolute necessity, had upon the writings of George Berkeley and David Hume, ...

    • Infinite emotion : Matte Blanco's bi-logic in psychoanalytic context 

      Alava, Pihla (Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2010)
      This thesis attempts to outline and assess Matte Blanco's theory of bilogic, and place it in psychoanalytic context using comparative analysis. Bilogic is studied in relation to Freud, Klein and Bion. These particular ps ...

    • Language, displacement and censorship : a philosophical analysis of Sigmund Freud's common-sense method of dream-interpretation 

      McLoughlin, Joseph Henry (Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2002)
      This thesis is a contribution to the tradition in philosophy of psychoanalysis in analytic philosophy of viewing Sigmund Freud's method of interpretation as an extension of common-sense psychology. The thesis addresses the ...

    • Weakness of will and practical reason 

      Halley, Karina M. (Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2004)
      This thesis argues that a correct understanding of weakness of will (that is, freely failing to act as one thinks one has most reason to act) is crucial to a correct understanding of practical reason. Central to a theory ...

    • Freud's psychoanalysis of religion 

      Garvey, Brian P. (Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2000)
      Freud was part of a long tradition of non-believers who offered a story about how religions originated. Notable works in this tradition include Hume's The Natural History of Religion and Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity. ...

    • On the disunity of the sciences and Ceteris Paribus laws 

      Tobin, Emma (Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2006)
      This thesis examines the claim that the sciences are disunified. Chapter 1 outlines and introduces different accounts of the stratification of the sciences in the literature, in particular, Unificationism, Disunificationism, ...

    • Anscombe's philosophy of action and its origins 

      Meagher, Terence (Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2006)
      G. E. M. Anscombe's work is seminal to action theory. Her major work in this area, Intention, first published in 1957, has been very influential in shaping the modern debate on issues such as the nature of action, the ...

    • Quine between Russell's extreme realism and Carnap's extreme relativism : a coherent alternative? 

      Forde, Alan (Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2006)
      In the philosophical literature of the past century few if any philosophers present a greater wealth of ideas or pose more important problems than W. V. Quine. In spite of the diversity of his contributions to philosophy, ...

    • Seeking Spinoza: The Spinozistic Origins of Early Psychological Theory in Wundt, James and Freud 

      KENNEDY, LAURA (Trinity College Dublin. School of Social Sciences & Philosophy. Discipline of Philosophy, 2019)
      This thesis investigates the previously unexamined convergence between Spinoza's monistic philosophy of psychology and early psychological theory. It argues that the three 'founding fathers' of the field of psychology, ...

    • The role of Kinêsis and Statis in Plato's Sophist : an inquiry into the two forgotten Megista Genê of the Sophist 

      Sabrier, Pauline (Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2017)
      This dissertation addresses the general question of the relation between the problem of being and the theory of the five great kinds (megista genê) in Plato’s dialogue the Sophist. In contemporary scholarship, the two ...

    • A Kantian Reconciliation of Moral Realism and Moral Supervenience 

      LYONS, MICHAEL (Trinity College Dublin. School of Social Sciences & Philosophy. Discipline of Philosophy, 2018)
      The 'Moral Supervenience' thesis is a deeply intuitive and popular one within philosophy, and can be defined as follows: "There can be no changes in any moral properties without at least some kind of change in non-moral ...

    • Duality and opposition in Heraclitus and modern philosophy of language and linguistics 

      Begley, Keith (Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2016)
      Aim: To investigate the phenomenon of Duality, that is, opposition in its many forms. In particular, as it appears in Heraclitus’ philosophy and his reaction to his predecessors, in the form of the thesis, apparently ...

    • Akrasia: Plato and the limits of Education? 

      SHANAHAN, COLM (Trinity College Dublin. School of Social Sciences & Philosophy. Discipline of Philosophy, 2018)
      In this dissertation I shall argue for the following main claim: (1a) the motivational neutrality of reason. I will show that this concept reveals that, for Plato, (1b) reason is itself a necessary condition of the possibility ...

    • Ideas, relations, and signs : 'intuition' and 'symbolic substitution'in Berkeley's theory of knowledge of nature 

      Nakano, Yasuaki (Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2014)
      The chief aim of this thesis is to develop an interpretation of Berkeley's theory of knowledge of nature through clarification of two prominent motifs which underlie it 'intuition' and 'symbolic substitution'. I regard ...

    • Chomsky Quine and naturalistic philosophy 

      King, David (Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2015)
      [Exerpt from Introduction, page 6] I will argue that while Chomsky's claims about language acquisition have been tested over the last fifty years and have not all stood up to critical scrutiny, Quine's views have not been ...

    • The argumentative unity of Plato's Parmenides 

      Horan, David (Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2014)
      The purpose of this thesis is to make the case that Plato's dialogue Parmenides constitutes an argumentative unity whereby certain philosophic difficulties presented in the first part of the dialogue are resolved by the ...

    • Falsificationism and Theory Adjudication : a critical rationalist critique of justificationist theories of science 

      Clarke, Steven William (Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Philosophy Department, 2014)
      My aim in this thesis is to present a critique of the currently dominant approach to this problem, the broad-ranging epistemological position described herein as "justificationism." This critique of justificationism—the ...