Philosophy

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This is the collection for the University of Waterloo's Department of Philosophy.

Research outputs are organized by type (eg. Master Thesis, Article, Conference Paper).

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Communal Inferentialism: Charles S. Peirce’s Critique of Epistemic Individualism
(University of Waterloo, 2019-12-09) MacDonald, Ian; Dea, Shannon
Charles S. Peirce’s critique of epistemic individualism, the attempt to make the individual the locus of knowledge, is a dominant theme in his writings. While scholars often mention this critique, there is, surprisingly, a lack of research on the topic. However, it is necessary to know what motivates Peirce’s critique of epistemic individualism to know why he aims to turn philosophy into a communal study. In this dissertation, I defend the claim that Peirce’s communal inferentialism allows us to assess the rational merits of his critique of epistemic individualism and to grasp his insights into why philosophy must change its course. The questions that have guided the research are the following. What are the central reasons that support Peirce’s verdict that epistemic individualism is a dead-end for philosophy? What roles do Peirce’s fundamental commitments concerning the notion of the community of inquirers and the patterns of correct inference play in his critique? I defend the central claim in four chapters. In Chapter One, I reinvestigate Peirce’s critique in relation to Cartesianism, while in Chapter Two I take up Peirce’s case against nominalism. I begin with these topics since Peirce claims that these two positions in the history of philosophy are prime examples of epistemic individualism. In Chapter Three and Chapter Four, I show that the problem of epistemic individualism crops up again in Peirce’s two most influential papers, “The Fixation of Belief” and “How to Make Our Ideas Clear.” I provide a communal inferentialist reading of both papers. In this dissertation, I further show why, according to Peirce, our key epistemic notions, including knowledge and truth, cannot be individualistic but must be communal notions.
The Continuity of Explanation: Peircean Pragmatism, Reason, and Developing Reasonable Behavior
(University of Waterloo, 2017-09-27) Haydon, Nathan; Dea, Shannon
Charles Peirce, the founder of Pragmatism, is not known for having developed a normative and ethical theory. His remarks on ethics and normativity are scattered and sparse. There is nonetheless increasing interest in developing these aspects of Peirce’s thought. Peirce takes logic to fall under the normative sciences and the open question, as I take it here, is whether the normativity Peirce takes to be present in logic and inquiry can be generalized to form an ethical theory. Most broadly Peirce takes an ethical theory to be a general guide for conduct — it is a guide for conduct in thought, action or behavior more generally, and in feeling. The question becomes whether Peirce’s theory of logic and inquiry can offer a more general guide for conduct. Peirce’s writings on the classification of the normative sciences, as well as his ‘Philosophy and the Conduct of Life,’ have led many scholars to answer in the negative. I think that an ethical theory nonetheless arises from within Peirce’s writings on logic and inquiry. In this dissertation, I lay the foundation for this alternative approach by showing how Peirce’s theory of logic and inquiry serves as a guide for behavior. The basis for the argument can be briefly summarized. Peirce’s logic and theory of inquiry provide normative standards that apply to changes in belief. Peirce takes the formation of a belief to be an inference, and Peirce’s logic and theory of inquiry give us the tools (at least the thought goes) to evaluate these inferences. Peirce also supposes a connection between belief and action. According to Peirce the meaning of a belief is the mode of action the belief establishes. The conjunction of these two claims suggests how a more general guide for conduct can be motivated from within Peirce’s writings. It suggests that for the Peircean pragmatist the normative standards that apply to belief formation apply directly to established modes of action. This dissertation offers a systematic development of this connection. I show how Peirce takes normative standards to apply to belief, and then show how these standards correspond directly to changes in an individual’s behavior. I begin with a characterization of Peircean pragmatism based on what I call the Continuity of Explanation. The Continuity of Explanation is the commitment that every judgment entails consequences for action that are accountable to scientific investigation. The Continuity of Explanation captures what I take to be the core aspects of Peirce’s theory of judgment and inquiry. It follows from situating the role the pragmatic maxim serves in regulating scientific inquiry and distilling this maxim through Peirce’s theory of judgment. I go on to demonstrate how the Continuity of Explanation serves as a guide for developing more reasonable behavior. The characterization of Peircean pragmatism in terms of the Continuity of Explanation yields further advantages. It provides a unified framework to view Peirce’s metaphysics, offers a straightforward account of Peirce’s theory of action, and can account for Peirce’s increasing emphasis on the development of concrete reasonableness.
Evaluation and Value Management in Science
(University of Waterloo, 2018-12-17) Silk, Matthew; Dea, Shannon
The nature of values has been an ongoing topic of discussion in philosophy, particularly in ethics. However, as the issue of how values should play a role in science has become more prominent, the discussion has not always paid due emphasis on clarifying the nature of values as perhaps it should have been. With the rise of arguments against the value-free ideal there has been an emergence of multiple accounts which aim to explain how values can be used in science while maintaining scientific integrity. I term these complex of approaches “value management.” Value management as a normative idea stems from the notion that somehow values represent some kind of threat to the integrity of science, even if how exactly they present a threat is not clear. What values are, and how they are problematic isn’t always explicit and there is no obvious definition of the term that is shared by philosophers of science. Competing visions of what values should play a role in science, and how they should play a role, may lack justification or be talking past one another if they do not share the same concept of value. To address this, I argue that there needs to be a more precise articulation of what values are, and that once we develop a nuanced account of value, many of the concerns that value management accounts respond to change or disappear. Looking to some historical and modern discussions of values and valuation, I show that there are accounts of value that are compatible with scientific thinking as judgments of practice which emphasize problem-solving and the relationship between events rather than reducing to mere desire. I argue that once we focus on values as verifiable judgments of practice, they are actually a source of scientific integrity and that our attention should focus on how values are experimentally formed through the process of inquiry. My analysis reveals that science is a complex and highly developed form of value judgment and that consideration of what makes value judgments successful is the key to ensuring that science can maintain integrity despite the use of various scientific, ethical, and social factors playing a role in the outcome of a scientific judgment.
The Evolution of Reason
(University of Waterloo, 2017-01-17) Abdallah, Sajad; Dea, Shannon
Aristotle’s metaphysics bridges the gap between mind and nature explaining how their relationship constitutes development in life. Charles Sanders Peirce’s objective idealism similarly aims to investigate how the principles of thought are fundamental in the way the universe operates and develops. The method of this inquiry hopes to investigate Aristotle’s metaphysics through the scope of Peirce’s objective idealism in the significance of the argument that reason is the driving substance for development in the world. This ontological position is grounded in Ancient and Pragmatic thinking, providing an alternative understanding, that perhaps, challenges the modern narratives concerning the concept of evolution.
Harm Reduction for Corporations
(University of Waterloo, 2020-09-04) Correia, Vanessa; Dea, Shannon
When corporations set out to do good for the environment and society, they usually do so under the banner of corporate social responsibility. This approach has become commonplace among the public, in business schools, and in issues of academic journals. However, corporate social responsibility has a few flaws. First, some corporations may never be socially responsible because of their core business. Second, there are corporations who pursue corporate social responsibility campaigns that are highly removed from their core business and these campaigns seem inappropriate. Finally, there are corporations for whom corporate social responsibility is unattainable because it requires too many resources. This thesis offers another tool for social responsibility: harm reduction for corporations. My harm reduction framework fills the gaps left by corporate social responsibility and encourages every corporation to set and meet goals that reduce the harms that they do to the environment and society. My harm reduction framework offers a low threshold for engagement, where corporations can reduce harms for any reason they choose and to any extent that they choose. This low threshold approach makes room for every corporation to contribute to reducing harms done to the environment and society.
Harm Reduction is a Social Movement
(University of Waterloo, 2019-09-17) Solanki, Jay; Dea, Shannon
Harm reduction is a label given to a suite of health and social service practices that seek to mitigate the harm associated with illicit drug use without demanding or expecting drug users to abstain. It is also a label under which a diverse and globalized social movement has organized to alter the conditions that give rise to drug-related harm, broadly construed. The central argument of this thesis is that a philosophy of harm reduction will benefit from taking a social movement perspective. Philosophical engagement in the area that focuses on or isolates narrow issues of policy while neglecting the social movement, risks reproducing or strengthening a tendency toward technocratic management that many harm reduction activists struggle to resist. By adopting a social movement perspective, the philosophizing that is done can be better attuned to the actual politics, and actual needs that are identified in practice.
Psychological and Phenomenological Perspectives on the Hard Problem of Consciousness
(University of Waterloo, 2017-01-19) Simard, Jonathan; Dea, Shannon
In reexamining the hard problem of consciousness through the history of the concept of mind, I argue that psychologists, cognitive scientists, and analytic philosophers of mind should return to the first-person perspective or “what it is like”, to uncover its existential-phenomenological structure. Classical phenomenology which describes the structure of first-personal consciousness provides insight into the intrinsic quality of conscious experience. However, this insight into experience as a phenomenon for the subject is problematic for psychological explanation. Phenomenal “qualia” are seen as extra-mental entities not necessary for explaining the nature of consciousness. There appears to be nothing left to explain about consciousness after considering evolutionary and computational paradigms in psychology. On this view, mind is thoroughly and completely a system of complex causal mechanisms. In response, I examine criticism of Husserl’s phenomenology that resulted from increasing skepticism of introspective methods throughout the history of psychology. Namely, that phenomenological analysis must equate to a Cartesian, solipsistic, and ultimately limited analysis. Heidegger’s existential-phenomenological interpretation of consciousness addresses concerns about introspective methods. I show that Heidegger’s examination of the self-representing nature of consciousness serves to destructure the mechanistic attitude we have developed toward mind. In doing so, one may provide an answer to the hard problem – “what it is like” to be a conscious human being - eluded by mechanistic explanations. While Heidegger’s account is only one possible interpretation of the human experience, the mechanistic understanding can then also be seen as only one interpretation among many of what properly explains human conscious experience.
Semiosis and the Crisis of Meaning: Continuity and Play in Peirce and Derrida
(University of Waterloo, 2019-09-17) Metzger, Scott; Dea, Shannon
Semiosis and the Crisis of Meaning addresses the difference between continuity and play in Charles Peirce’s and Jacques Derrida’s theory of signs. The main aim is to offer a reply to Derrida’s reading of Peirce in Of Grammatology—a reading which results in a crisis of meaning by redefining the process of semiosis as a limitlessness of play. To furnish a Peircean reply, I draw connections between Peirce’s semiotic and both his categories of being and method of scientific investigation. In doing so, I attempt to circumscribe Derrida’s play by restoring a direction to the movement from sign to sign. In the first chapter, I give an account of Peirce’s early theory of signs in order to set the stage for Derrida’s reading of Peirce. In the second chapter, I turn to Derrida’s work, give a general outline of his project in Of Grammatology, and provide a close reading of his brief encounter with Peirce. In the final chapter, I return to Peirce to show how there is a continuity to the process of semiosis that is missing in Derrida’s reading. This continuity provides us with the means to solve what is at stake in the crisis of meaning.

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Browsing Philosophy by Author "Dea, Shannon"