Global ETD Search
Search theses and dissertations gathered from participating repositories worldwide. Every result links back to the library that holds it. No account is needed.
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Showing 1 to 20 of 210 for “"defence of"”.
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In Defence of the Doctrine of Common Purpose
The doctrine of common purpose has been subject to much criticism, especially concerning its use under apartheid. However, the doctrine predates the apartheid era and I argue that it should now be recognised as a tool to achieve justice. The constitutionality of the doctrine was confirmed in Thebus …
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Reasons, Agency, and Responsibility: A Defence of Soft Compatibilism
I defend a thesis of soft compatibilism. First, I argue that libertarian free will is incompatible with causal determinism and indeterminism because the human will is subject to antecedent conditions. If causal determinism is true, then these antecedent conditions are sufficient for the will to be …
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Prescriptions and universalizability: a defence of Harean ethical theory
R.M. Hare had an ambitious scheme of providing a unified account of meta-ethics and normative ethics by combining expressivism with Kantianism and utilitarianism. The project of this thesis is to defend Hare’s theory in its most ambitious form. This means not just showing how the expressivist, …
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Decision and Dependence: A Defence of Causal Decision Theory
… theory (CDT) has been the orthodox version of philosophical decision theory. However, ever since CDT was first developed there have been those who have disputed the adequacy of this theory. Then, in the last decade and a half, opposition to this theory has intensified, with a vast array of …
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A defence of predicativism as a philosophy of mathematics
A specification of a mathematical object is impredicative if it essentially involves quantification over a domain which includes the object being specified (or sets which contain that object, or similar). The basic worry is that we have no non-circular way of understanding such a specification. …
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Persons, property and morality : a defence of political libertarianism
… known and that political philosophy is a branch of ethics. The author identifies three variants of libertarianism on the basis of their different treatments of the right to private property, which all three consider to be the cornerstone of political libertarianism. The author evaluates the …
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Combining Minds: A Defence of the Possibility of Experiential Combination
This thesis explores the possibility of composite consciousness: phenomenally conscious states belonging to a composite being in virtue of the consciousness of, and relations among, its parts. We have no trouble accepting that a composite being has physical properties entirely in virtue of the …
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Luke and the Law: A Defence of Christian Law-Observance
A majority of scholars over the last century and a half have characterized the discussion of the Law of Moses in the Gospel of Luke and Acts of the Apostles as ‘inconsistent’. These interpreters offer various proposals to explain this alleged inconsistency: Luke wrote at a later date, far-removed …
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The efficacy of song itself : Seamus Heaney's defence of poetry
The defence of poetry dates back, in English literature, to Sidney's 'An Apology for Poetry' (1595), and the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have seen an increasing number of writers advancing arguments in support of an art form that seems, more than ever, to be under threat. In this thesis, …
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EXPLANATORY GAPS ABOUND: A DEFENCE OF PHYSICALISM AGAINST ARGUMENTS FROM EPISTEMIC CONTRAST
According to a popular line of thought, there is a special explanatory gap found in reductive explanations of the phenomenal in terms of the physical. In contrast, this explanatory gap is not found in paradigmatic reductive explanations. This special explanatory gap, which can be cashed out in …
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Agent-based modeling framework for adaptive cyber defence of the Internet of Things
The adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to increase significantly, introducing unique challenges and threats to cybersecurity. In parallel, adaptive and autonomous cyber defence has become an emerging research topic leveraging Artificial Intelligence for cybersecurity solutions that …
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Framed and Framing Inquiry: Development and Defence of John Dewey's Theory of Knowledge
This thesis develops Dewey’s theory of inquiry and provides a novel perspective on what realists consider to be Dewey’s most controversial claims: his rejection of the view that inquiry aims at providing an accurate representation of reality, his claim that the object of knowledge is constructed, …
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Chiffchaffs chirp and cherries are real: a scientifically informed defence of wholehearted emergentism
… this thesis, I provide a scientifically informed defence of metaphysical emergence, the idea that some systems are metaphysically distinct from their constituent parts and possess properties that are not reducible to their parts’ properties. Moreover, I argue that metaphysical emergence is …
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In Defence of the Realm : Mobility, Modernity and Community on the Camino de Santiago
… semiotic and symbolic approaches to the study of pilgrimage, following pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago across Spain. My starting point has been to examine pilgrims’ construction of a different place, time and experiencing self, while on pilgrimage in the company of others engaging in similar …
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In defence of flowers: The ecology and biochemistry of a chemical defence, cyanogenesis, in Proteaceae
… organisms, plants produce a remarkable diversity of chemicals to defend their tissues against herbivory. The large body of research into plant defences has primarily focused on plant-herbivore interactions and foliar defences, whereas floral chemical defences have received little attention. This …
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