Filosoofia osakonna magistritööd – Master's theses

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Browsing Filosoofia osakonna magistritööd – Master's theses by Author "Davies, Alex Stewart, juhendaja"

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    Against epistemic partiality in friendship
    (Tartu Ülikool, 2019) Ametefio, Saviour De-Graft; Davies, Alex Stewart, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Humanitaarteaduste ja kunstide valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Filosoofia osakond
    In conclusion, I have argued that epistemic partiality undermines friendship if we accept that friendship in a stricter sense is based on character. The argument I have present give two justification for that. The first is that when we allow an excellent friend to behave doxastically biased in favor of his friend consistently, this will promote more vices. Epistemic bias seems to be a bad epistemic practice. This is because knowingly leading away from the evidence and correct judgment of your friend's conduct is unjust. Cultivating such behavior in friendship will only corrupt the friendship. The second is that the fact that you esteem your friend’s character by deceptive means does not change the reality that the person has flaws in his character. When in our assessment of information about our friends, intentionally favor that which seek to portray him more favorably in a good light, we act deceptively. When we notice this shortcoming, we must correct it. The instrumental argument aims to encourage friends to help each other in their development as a person. Therefore, recognizing their flaws may be one of the ways to help them grow. In fact, in friendship relations that works well the idealization of your friend and the friendship itself helps in the longevity and flourishing of that relationship. However, if the bias becomes excessive and unwarranted, for example, if negative feedback is not considered at all or the positive attitudes towards your friend become unrealistically optimistic, then the bias may become dysfunctional.
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    Law statements and generic generalizations
    (Tartu Ülikool, 2022) Rashtipour, Mani; Davies, Alex Stewart, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Humanitaarteaduste ja kunstide valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Filosoofia osakond
    Many philosophers and scientists believe that the statements of laws of nature can be given a unified analysis. Law statements are thought to be true lawlike generalizations, where to be a lawlike generalization is to be a universal, spatiotemporally unrestricted, and modally robust generalization. It is the legacy of logical empiricists that such generalization can be analyzed as a universal generalization of the form ∀x.(Fx→Gx). Since the logical empiricists, this analysis has been criticized and various alternatives have been proposed. One proposed analysis is that lawlike generalizations, and hence law statements, should be analyzed as generic generalizations (e.g. Drewery 1998, 2005; Nickel 2010; Claveau & Girard 2019). These accounts, however, endorse the assumption that law statements can be given a unified analysis and attempt to analyze law statements as generic generalizations in unified manner. In this thesis, while endorsing the suggestion that law statements are generic generalizations, I will challenge this assumption arguing that law statements should be divided into two distinct groups, the definitional laws and descriptive laws, which require distinct analyses. I will, then, provide an analysis of law statements on the basis of the works of Manfred Krifka and Yael Greenberg on definitional and descriptive generic generalizations.